Mutual admiration for "Babylon" actor, playwright

In 1992, Armando Durán was a busy Los Angeles paralegal in his 30s, with no plans for a theatrical career, when friends invited him to a play at the Mark Taper Forum.

The play was the historical epic "The Kentucky Cycle" by Robert Schenkkan, which had just debuted at Seattle's Intiman Theatre and would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize. And watching it, says Durán, helped turn his life around.

"It inspired me to go back to school, and get a master's degree in acting at California State University, at Long Beach," recalled the upbeat, craggily handsome actor, over coffee recently.

But the artistic inspiration, chimed in the Seattle-based Schenkkan, flowed both ways.

A prominent screenwriter ("The Quiet American") and playwright, Schenkkan says Durán snagged his interest a few years later, when the actor appeared in Schenkkan's play "Handler," at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Ore.

"Armando was so compelling, such a presence," he noted. Intrigued, he wrote his next play, "By the Waters of Babylon," with Durán in mind.

"I'd always wanted to do a two-hander," explained Schenkkan, "and I wondered what it would be like to write something for Armando and another wonderful Ashland actor, Catherine Colson, to do."

The romantic drama debuted at OSF in 2005. Its second production, in a new staging by Richard Seyd, is currently in previews at Seattle Repertory Theatre, with Durán in the cast.

Starting afresh

At OSF, Durán played the embittered immigrant Arturo opposite Colson's gregarious but troubled divorcée, Catherine. At Seattle Rep, Duran has a new co-star (local favorite Suzanne Bouchard) and a much-revised script to perform.

The production follows closely on the heels of another Rep show with a Cuba angle: Eduardo Machado's "The Cook," a box-office winner about a Cuban woman who remains in Havana after Castro's Marxist revolution.

"Babylon," in contrast, is about a Cuban exile working as a gardener in Texas, who warily gets involved in a cross-cultural affair with an Anglo-American female client.

On a short break from OSF (where he's still a valued company member), Durán wants his Rep turn as Arturo to be "very fresh, as if I'd never played the part before."

But his deep connection to the play prompted him to do some additional research recently. A second-generation Mexican American, Durán wanted "to differentiate Arturo's life from my own experience. He's almost an accidental exile. My family came here with a strong intention, to make a new life in this country."

Two recent trips to Guanajuato, Mexico, helped the actor get in touch with Arturo's "sense of being out of place. Despite my family connection, I felt like such a stranger in Mexico, just like I imagined Arturo would feel [in Texas]."

He also envisioned "a dark blue cloak covering up Arturo's real personality. I want the audience to see that cloak, to know this is not just some terse, surly guy. This is somebody who is hiding something."

Cuban ambiguity

Schenkkan's own homework for "Babylon" took him to Cuba in 2003, on a group excursion arranged by Seattle's Experience Music Project.

"I couldn't make the same trip today, because of our government's tighter travel restrictions to Cuba. But I'm glad I went. It was a wonderful process of discovery."

"For many politically conservative Americans," suggested Schenkkan, "Cuba is hell and Castro is the devil. And for some liberals, Cuba is heaven and Castro is a saint. But the place is much more complex than either of those stereotypes. It's very diverse, very much in motion."

What he found, and funneled into the role of Arturo, was "a lot of ambivalence and ambiguity among Cubans, a fiercely proud people, culturally rich, hard-working. Most people I met were proud of some things their revolution had achieved, but in the same moment very cynical too."

While Cuban history informs "By the Waters of Babylon," the play is primarily a love story — and to this critic, at OSF it was not always a persuasive one.

Schenkkan says the romantic element is stronger in his revised script, and in the chemistry between Durán and Bouchard.

As with all his plays, Schenkkan considers this drama a reflection of our nation's current spiritual and social temperament. "It's about redemption, trying to find connection in a world where people feel adrift, alienated, anxious — like a lot of us feel right now," he mused.

"It's a very difficult time in America. We've got to step out of a fear-driven place and extend ourselves, get out of this us versus them mentality, this tribalism, and connect."

As for Durán, he's still amazed to be doing a role tailor-made for him by the guy whose "Kentucky Cycle" sent him on a new career path.

"I didn't even start my acting career until I was 40," Duran noted with a broad smile. "So this is all like a dream."

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com