The Single Guy

Performance artist Kevin Augustine is happy to go it alone — plus puppets.

He's one of the most compelling actors working in Philadelphia today. Even so, most local theatergoers don't know of him.

When actor/performance artist Kevin Augustine applied for a residency at New Hampshire's MacDowell Colony, he did so on a whim.

"A lot of famous people have spent time there and I didn't really think I had such a great chance with it. But I was wanting to get paid for what I was doing, so I applied for different grants and residencies and that was one of them." The colony serves as a retreat for artists working in a variety of disciplines, providing free room, meals and private studio.

Kevin notes that lunch is brought to your studio door, so one need not necessarily chit chat with fellow colonists. The isolation suited him fine. "It was awkward for me. This community thing. I have a hard time in social situations. Everyone's sizing people up and saying, 'Is this your first time? It's my third.' My reaction is, I can't compete. I just go off."

By being so reclusive Kevin claims he raised speculations. "At first, when you're shy, it's like, 'Okay, he's shy.' Then it gets to be, 'He's mysterious.' Then it graduates to 'He's a little strange,' and then it goes to, 'I think he's dangerous.' That's the progression."

It wasn't until Kevin performed a work-in-progress that he felt at ease with other MacDowellites. "I had a prelude where I could talk to people. I know it sounds corny and clich, but the stage is where I feel the most at ease. It's where I'm the most comfortable."

During our interview in his Fairmount apartment (sparsely furnished in bachelor-pad thrift-store motif), the shyness shows. He sits with back pressed into a corner of the living room couch, and when we get to discussing his work in the theater — why he does it, where he wants to go with it, are the dark issues in his work the same ones he grapples with in real life — his arms and legs cross, the torso hunches over. When asked why he repeats certain themes — loss of love, faith or lack thereof, missed opportunities and memory — he hesitates, looks up in the air, and responds, "I'm searching." He begins to elaborate, then stumbles over his own words, asking out loud, "Wait a minute, what am I saying? I don't know. I'm lost with that."

The truth of the matter is not so much that he's shy — the guy is literally wrapped up in his own head (not in an egotistical way — he's just trying to sort things out for himself). As for being dangerous, well, he takes incredible chances on stage, where through his various characterizations he bares his heart, mind and soul with ferocious intensity.

He's one of the most compelling and charismatic actors working in Philadelphia today. Even so, most local theatergoers don't know of him. Except for appearing in one play each by the Wilma Theater and Freedom Theater, he's not been in a production by a major city theater company. That's by choice. Augustine likes to float his own boat, preferring to do solo shows of his own making. As Ken Marini, artistic director at Cheltenham Center for the Arts, puts it, "He wants to find out if his unique voice has something to say to people."

He's lauded by numerous individuals in our theater community who make it their business to develop emerging talent. Elizabeth Fuller is associate director of the Independent Eye, where Augustine has appeared in Dividing Lines and Mine Alone and is a member of the Genesis Ensemble, an improvisational playwriting lab; she thinks Augustine has "extraordinary ability, both his skills and his intuition." Linda Lough, executive artistic director of the Brick Playhouse, saw Augustine's senior solo project at the University of the Arts, and asked him what he wanted to help advance his acting career. He said he needed space to rehearse, leading Lough to create The Playground, a resident artist program providing solo actors and performance artists with space, plus peer assessment of works-in-progress.

Before UArts, he was the product of an all-Catholic school education. His inclination toward acting surfaced early on, and in fifth grade he wrote his own version of The Wizard of Oz." I was Dorothy. We rehearsed in my back yard. We went to the Emerald City and it was closed down."

At UArts, he found that taking roles in other people's work for which he felt no particular attachment made him feel "disjointed." He says for much of the time there, "My head was in different places. I had no clear plan." Finally, with his senior solo project, Unbridled Carousel, he began to discover a sense of direction. The piece, which concerned Kevin's conflicts with Catholicism, proved a turning point; since then, integration of what is most personal has become a crucial component of Augustine's material.

He enriched his skills by taking two workshops, one in butoh, a post-war Japanese dance style, and another in voice, the latter at the theater lab of famed Polish avant-gardist Jerzy Grotowski.

Augustine has further distinguished himself from his peers by his use of puppets. Last winter at the Painted Bride Art Center's Festival of New Performance, in a solo piece entitled The Very Last Matty & Jimmy Show, he played both a marginally talented ventriloquist and his cranky old dummy with invigorating insight. And this weekend at the Community Education Center, he premieres his latest solo, Anonymous Clown, in which three of the four characters are puppets. All are hand-crafted by him, and his manipulation of them is so superb these inanimate objects come to seem tangibly human.

Anonymous Clown concerns a performer absorbed with the process of creating a winning shtick. In doing so he sacrifices bonds between those closest to him. "It's about losing something for something else but not knowing at the time what you're sacrificing," explains Augustine. "The clown guy is dragging around this trunk. He's been many places and the show he puts on now is his own life story. He goes through segments of his life, and as he does that he's commenting on it, re-living it in some way. It becomes difficult. Because the thing that he's putting on, this show, is the thing that got him to this solitary place."

Is this how Kevin sees himself? He hesitates, then avers, "Some parts are me, I guess."

Watching a performer kvetch about being a sensitive creative soul can be a drag. Augustine's artistry is unique enough to make the scenario fresh and exciting. Says Cheltenham Center's Ken Marini of the 27-year-old performer, "He's like a hot molecule on the table. He can go anywhere and cause all kinds of reactions."