By Tim Adam Donnelly • Special to the Guide
To draw a verbal picture of Vincent Van Gogh, playwright David J. Loehr decided to go outside the artist’s mind — and to several decades after his death.
His play “Seeing Red” is told from the perspective of Emile Bernard, a Van Gogh friend and protégé who outlived the famous painter by 50 years. As Bernard faces the end of his own life, he reflects on the message Van Gogh was trying to get across — and what their friendship meant.
“The playwright started with the idea of a man who lost his best friend a long time ago,” said actor Jim Stark, who portrays Bernard in the one-man play, which opens this week for a brief run at the South Carolina Repertory Company. “How does he continue to live with that for decades and make sense of it, and how does that change him, his view of life, his view of art and his view of his own future?”
Stark, who previously appeared in the company’s productions of “Gutenberg! The Musical,” “Auntie and Me” and “Night in November,” said the story of Bernard and Van Gogh’s friendship stands out because it’s relatable.
“They saw each other’s talent when nobody else did. These guys were not world-famous artists when they were young, but they could see the potential that each had,” he said. “We know what it’s like to perceive that somebody has a great gift to share with the world, and how much we want that gift to be acknowledged by others.”
The play is based on actual letters exchanged between the two artists. Stark, who teaches theater at Hanover College in southern Indiana, portrays several characters in the story, including Paul Gauguin. While it’s a one-man show, he says, the message of the performance is about the power of collaborative art.
“The play is about an artist that works alone normally wants someone to share the work with,” he said.