JOSEPH N. BELL -- The Bell Curve

You live with them for almost 20 years. And you fuss at them for the

chaotic condition of their room, for not checking the oil in the decrepit

old car you bought them to drive to school, for not writing thank-you

notes for gifts received. For dying their hair pink. Or blue. Or

lavender.

But you also have dinner with them every night, and you talk. They

carefully guard things they don’t want to tell you, but they talk about

other things. Substantial things on their mind. And they play head games

with you. And they laugh a lot. With you.

And then they go off to college and begin a life completely outside

your vision and the connection becomes fuzzier and less frequent, along

with the trips home. Not the love. Just the connection. And subtle and

inevitable and highly desirable changes take place in a relationship that

can well deal with those changes.

And then they get out of college and go to work, and you see them less

and less because their schedule won’t allow it. But you see them enough

to know that they are using the tools with which they have been blessed

in strong and productive ways, and you find that exciting. And then one

day you drive into Los Angeles and see the tangible results gleaned from

those tools, and you are stunned. And finally, driving home, you are

warmed by the hope that you might, somehow, have had some small part in

helping what you just saw happen.

Last week was Erik’s week.

For the past year and a half, my stepson, Erik Patterson, has been

working a full-time day job as a production assistant for survival pay,

most recently at Universal Studios. He then gulps down an unhealthy and

unsatisfactory dinner and dons his other hat -- as playwright and actor.

For the last six months, this has meant arriving at the Actor’s Gang

theater in Hollywood at 6 in the evening to spend the next five hours

participating in acting seminars and taking an increasingly important

part in productions underway. Somehow, he also found time to fine tune

plays he has written and even to start new ones.

Last week, we saw some of the fruits of all that work.

On Saturday night, at the Actor’s Gang theater, we attended the

opening of “Mephisto” -- a passionate and anguished look at Germany in

the years of Hitler’s rise to power through the eyes of an outlying

theater troupe. Erik, asked to assist director Tim Robbins with routine

tasks, made himself so invaluable during early rehearsals that he ended

up with a credit on the program as dramaturge in addition to his walk-on

part.

After the performance, Robbins, hanging out in the lobby, said some

glowing things to us about Erik. Later, a half-dozen of the actors sought

his mother and I out to add to the accolades, delivered with clear

affection. Then, five days later, we had a repeat performance -- but this

time Erik’s work was the centerpiece.

In a tiny venue called Theater of Note on Cahuenga Boulevard in

Hollywood, Erik made his debut in commercial theater with a one-act play

he had written that served as an anchor for a program of three one-acts.

Although we had seen readings of Erik’s play before, this was the first

full production, and it was done superbly. He also got his first review.

LA Weekly wrote of his play: “Erik Patterson’s ‘Tonseisha’ is the

highlight of the triple bill. . . . Patterson’s writing is original,

poetic and funny.”

In the last year, Erik has introduced us to a new world, with rather

clearly defined geographic borders in a down-at-the-heels portion of

Hollywood off and around Santa Monica Boulevard. Here new plays are

incubated in several dozen tiny storefront theaters, where parking is an

adventure and seating might be for 50 or even fewer. Here, people

committed to the theater hold forth on love and hope -- and clearly not

on money. Here can be found the crucible of young playwrights and actors

hoping to develop their craft and be seen, along with successful older

artists reaching back to their roots or once-hopeful actors still

embracing a love that has passed them by as a means of earning a living.

This is a lively and vital group of people who hold up a mirror to our

society and ourselves and support themselves any way they can to buy time

to create their own form of art. Erik is presently facing that problem

anew. The TV show on which he has been working at Universal has been

canceled, and he will soon be out of a job. And so his creative work will

be in jeopardy until he finds a new base of support. It’s a problem

familiar to most of the young people who share his passions, and if this

seems frivolous at a time of national testing, I would suggest that never

do we need the perspective of our artists more than at such a time.

Virtually every civilized society in the world except ours understands

this and supports its artists in tangible ways. Here, where $200 billion

is poured into the abyss of a missile protection program that isn’t

needed, doesn’t work and probably never will, and where huge tax breaks

are given the people who least need them, legislators fight annually to

preserve a tiny pittance in support of the arts.

That probably isn’t going to change. Erik will find a new job, go back

to his writing, and hope. Hope that one day a producer will come to one

of those tiny theaters to see a play he has written and pick it up for a

bigger production or subsidize a new work by him. If quality is the

catalyst in such a scenario, it will happen. Maybe even before he finds

that new job.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.