How do we change? Can we change?
That was one of the questions local performer Dan Hoyle had in mind when he set off for parts unknown (Florida, South Carolina, Missouri and elsewhere) to do what he’s known for: engaging seemingly everyday ordinary Americans—male, female, Black, white, Latinx, etc.—in friendly, in-depth chats on topics that are swirling in the national zeitgeist, then bringing those conversations onstage as a series of monologues.
He’s had tremendous success with previous such shows—“Border People,” “Talk To Your People” and more—and now returns with “Takes All Kinds,” developed with Charlie Varon and Michael Moran and directed by Aldo Billingslea, giving a fresh slant to the cliché title by inhabiting those each of those characters in exquisite detail. His acting is sublime.
At a time when things could hardly be more divisive politically—he conducted his interviews through 2022 to the present—he has cherry-picked a handful for the show, resulting in a diverse cast. Among them are a few men in a barber shop and a gravelly voiced bartender who says he was a mercenary in a Middle East war; every empire sacrifices humans, he observes.
With all that’s going on in this world, if you don’t feel pain, you’re the one I’m worried about, says a Black woman.
In Charleston, a white woman tells Hoyle how she discovered, through 23andMe, that her ancestors were slave owners, even slave traders. Her agony at this revelation induced a reaction that, she says, felt like a primal scream.
A cheerful Black guy in Georgia, whose grandmother came from a family of sharecroppers, begs passersby to register to vote.
Hoyle includes a few queries from, presumably, friends who saw earlier iterations of the show. One says: Do you ever feel like, who am I, the white guy, to be telling these stories?
Bringing that provocative comment into the play’s text implies that yes, Hoyle does wrestle with that reality.
But the very fact he can so fully inhabit these diverse characters is itself justification. Hoyle’s gift is not just the ability establish trust with interviewees, to strike up meaningful conversations in tense times with complete strangers, but to share those experiences, viscerally. With the slightest change of mannerisms, accents and vocal tones, a tiny adjustment to his hair, his posture, the most subtle of changes in the way his lips curve when he smiles, the way his eyes glitter, his varying vocal rhythms—we can see these real-life characters as part of the diverse human, American family.
Maybe one component of true change is the kind of uncanny empathy that an actor like Hoyle—and others, like Anna Deavere Smith before him–can share.
“Takes All Kinds” continues through Oct. 26 at The Marsh, 1062 Valencia St., San Francisco. Tickets are $20-$100 at themarsh.org.
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