The Dallas Morning News
Performance: Dallas, Texas
08-Oct-95

The news broke minutes before the curtain went up on the wacky comedy at the Kennedy Center in the nation's capital.

It was Jan. 16, 1991. The veteran actors and creators of Greater Tuna were enjoying a long run with their sequel, starring Aunt Pearl, Bertha Bumiller and the rest of the zany characters who lived in Tuna, the third-smallest town in Texas.

Over the years, Jaston and Joe had laughed their way through blizzards, storms and various other calamities. In Austin, a blue bolt of electricity zapped across the stage during a thunderstorm . In San Francisco, just days after the 1989 earthquake, a jittery audience and cast froze when a rumbling sound filled the theater, which turned out to be only a swimming pool cleaner switching on somewhere else in the building.

But they had never been upstaged by a war.

Word quickly spread in the theater lobby that the fighting had started. Backstage, Jaston's thoughts flew to his son and only child - a Marine stationed with U.S. forces in the Gulf.

"They gave us about 10 minutes, mainly for me to get my bearings," Jaston recalls. "Then you had to go on and do the show and not think about it."

In the first scene of Tuna Christmas, a bulb pops on a scraggly Christmas tree. It's a visual gag to soften up the audience. That night, in a city crackling with rumors of bomb threats, it had the opposite effect.

"And when that Christmas bulb popped, a woman in the front row let out a scream," Joe says. "It's the only time that's happened in the whole history of Tuna Christmas. She was so frightened. And that scream scared the heck out of me, too" he says.

Then, mysteriously, the tension broke.

"So the actors, the audience, the stage crew, everybody was aware that a war had just started, and that we're all in this theatre, and we might as well try and laugh. And we did."

"It was an amazing night."

It's been an amazing run.

Sipping coffee on a recent morning in Austin's venerable Paramount Theater, Joe Sears and Jaston Williams are on the first leg of yet another road trip. This time, it's a 34-city tour of Tuna Christmas, which includes performances at the Majestic Theater in Dallas Oct. 2 through Nov. 5.

If nothing else, they are proof that one can live (and make a very good living) by Tuna alone. Like legendary Texas wildcatters of yore, Joe and Jaston found themselves sitting on something big when they struck Tuna nearly 15 years ago.

It all started when they performed an impromptu skit at a friend's party in Austin. The bit proved so wildly popular that they decided to turn it into a play, launching Greater Tuna in 1981. Achieving moderate success, Greater Tuna went to New York for an Off-Broadway run, overcame a pan in the The New York Times and went on to become the most produced play in the country in the mid-1980s.

To date, Greater Tuna's success has led to an HBO special, a popular sequel, a Tony nomination and lots and lots of money.

But the two actors have always been more than just a successful comedy team. Jaston, 44, and Joe, 46, have been best of friends virtually from the moment they met during an audition 22 years ago. Through the years, they shared success and failure, grueling road trips and the deaths of close friends.

So it was not surprising that on the biggest day of Joe's life, the day he was singled out for the greatest honor of his career, the first person he thought of was Jaston.

Last May, Joe was nominated for a Tony Award as best actor in a Broadway play. The two friends were traveling through D/FW Airport on their way to Washington when they got the news.

They sat down in an airport coffee shop and Jaston remembers exactly what Joe said to him: "For one of us to get a nomination was something that spoke for our entire friendship, all of our time together, all of the hard times."

"That's the thing that will always stick with me," Jaston says. "The first thing Joe started thinking about was me."

Redneck Humor

They share the easy give-and-take humor of longtime friends, a quality that comes across naturally in their two-man shows.

They wrote Greater Tuna as political satire, poking fun at the conservative "Moral Majority" movement, which rose to prominence in the early 1980s.

The play is set in Tuna, a mythical small town in West Texas, where everyone listens to Radio OKKK, all 275 watts of it. Topping the headlines is the winning entry in the American Heritage Essay Contest, entitled: "Human Rights, Why Bother?"

Tuna's residents include a variety of eccentrics, bigots, oddballs and mean spirits. There's Aunt Pearl, who poisons the town's stray dogs; Vera Carp, the richest woman in town and vice president of the Smut Snatchers club, which aims to rid the high school dictionaries of all offensive words; and Didi Snavely, a gun shop owner, who decorates her Christmas tree with grenades and whose slogan is, "If Didi's can't kill it, it's immortal".

Joe and Jaston play each and every one of the characters - a total of 20 in Greater Tuna and 24 in Tuna Christmas - jumping in and out of dresses or overalls in as little as nine seconds.

But the Tuna phenomenon is more than just a marvel of quick costume changes, says Charles Duggan, Joe and Jaston's producer since 1984.

"I think it speaks to anybody who's had any small town experience, and that is a huge audience," Mr. Duggan says. "We play in a lot of towns that could be Tuna."

Joe and Jaston bring depth to their characters, lifting the play above the level of political satire, says their longtime director Ed Howard, who also worked on the original script.

"The whole tone of both plays is set when Bertha Bumiller is banning books one moment and the other moment is emoting her life and what her life has become. Someone we're set up to hate and despise, we fall in love with."

For that reason, says Joe, he is careful not to portray his characters as buffoons.

"We like to say, 'We like our characters. We have the right to disagree with them.'"

Home on the range

It's easy for audiences to tell the difference between Joe and Jaston: Joe's the big burly guy, a cross between John Goodman and Jackie Gleason; Jaston is a short and wiry Barney Fife.

Beneath the surface, the two share much in common. Both grew up in small towns. Both showed an early interest in theater. And both have more that a professional familiarity with the residents of Tuna.

"I have the sense that most of these characters are somebody from their lives," says Mr. Duggan.

Jaston grew up in the Panhandle town of Crosbyton, the son of a farmer and rancher. His father's family "were pioneers in West Texas, incredible salt of the earth people," Jaston says.

When his father died 10 years ago, family and friends held a cowboy funeral for him. The final song played was Home on the Range. Arles, Tuna's laconic newscaster played by Jaston, uses his father's gestures and expressions, Jaston says.

I think that's something both Joe and I try to do with our characters. We have these old-timer members of our family who spoke in a very specific way and had very unusual inflections, which are disappearing from our language. And we try to keep those alive."

The last of five children, Jaston was spared from ranch work, which his mother deemed dangerous. An older brother was killed by a drunk driver. A sister died when she was a toddler after an appendicitis attack.

"My mother was very protective of me. She didn't want me on tractors. She was very concerned that something would happen to me."

He became interested in theater in Junior high school. Encouraged by his high school counselor, he pursued drama in college, ending up at San Jacinto Junior College in Houston. At 20, he found work with the First Repertory Company of San Antonio, which "was one of the finest repertory companies in Texas," Jaston says.

First Repertory exposed him to the classics, ranging from Shakespeare to Chekov. It also brought him together with another young actor from Oklahoma named Joe Sears.

Budding Actor

Growing up in Bartlesville, Okla., Joe was surrounded by cowboys and ranchers. His father worked for the Bureau of Mines, but all his uncles and grandparents were ranchers and competed in rodeos.

Joe wasn't cut out to be a cowboy, however. "I wasn't very good at it. They would tell me to stand in front of the gate and not let the steers go by. I would inevitably be run over. My uncles would shake their heads and call me a gunsel."

Luckily, Bartlesville provided other outlets. "They had a very good arts scene, including civic ballet and orchestra and theater," Joe says. "I could study drama at my high school and go down the street and participate in a little theater."

He also studied his family's mannerisms and conversations, which he later wove into his characters in Greater Tuna.

"I had fun hanging around in the kitchen watching my aunts prepare Thanksgiving dinner. The way they carried on conversation, joked with one another, I always watched that."

He studied education at Northeastern State University in Oklahoma, and gained stage experience working on summer productions of Trail of Tears, an Indian drama. The director, choreographer and many of the actors came from theater programs back East. "I learned from good pros from New York and the East Coast," he says. "I think that helped my training a lot."

After college, he toured for a season in New York. But he felt he could do better in regional theaters, "where I could work, instead of waiting on tables."

He went to San Antonio to work with low-income youth in an arts program. His first day in the city, he auditioned at the First Repertory Company for A Midsummer Night's Dream. That's where he met Jaston, who was also trying out for a part.

"And I always find it amazing," says Jaston, "that Joe and I met within hours of his coming to town."

Two Pair

They started spending substantial time together. They talked about theater. And about politics. And about home and small-town life.

"I think one reason the Tuna plays have been successful is that Joe and I had established a very strong friendship that started in the theater but eventually had nothing to do with the theater," Jaston says.

"It had to do with our political beliefs, with our background. When we went home for Christmas, I could hardly wait to get back to San Antonio to exchange stories and hear what was going on the Joe's family and his cousins and everything," he says.

Inevitably, the two friends looked for ways to work together.

"When you stumble onto someone who thinks like you and enjoys the craft like you, you start to share inner ideas," Joe says. "I like someone who stimulates me intellectually and Jaston and I hit it off there. That's why Greater Tuna happened."

In the summer of 1981, Jaston and Joe were working at the Trans Act, a commercial theater in Austin. A co-worker asked them for help entertaining guests at his party. While trying to decide what to do, they saw an editorial cartoon in the Austin American-Statesman. It was a spoof of a Reagan administration official trying to explain the difference between a totalitarian and authoritarian government, Jaston says.

"It was the same picture of the same cop beating the same poor guy, and the caption was 'Listen up. I'm not going to explain this again.'"

Tuna surprise

Inspired by the cartoon, they brainstormed about a skit involving a small-town conservative radio station.

"Joe said, 'We could call it OKKK.' And he said, 'What do we call the town?' I said, 'It could be anything. It could be Tuna.' It just was going that fast," Jaston says.

The routine became the surprise smash of the party. About the same time, the Trans Act theater folded. With no immediate job prospects, Jaston suggested they write a play based on the skit.

They worked marathon hours, stirring their creative juices each day with an icy plunge into the chilly spring waters of Barton Creek. They rummaged through thrift stores hunting down costumes for Aunt Pearl, Vera Carp and the rest of the characters.

"I went and fought a housewife over a lime-green pantsuit at Operation Friendship in San Antonio," Jaston says. "This woman had either the pants or the top in her hands and I said, 'Is that an extra large? I've got to have it.' She looked at me like I was sick."

Ed Howard, their director, withdrew all his savings - $10,000 - to bankroll the production, and by the winter of 1981 they were in business.

Joe wasn't convinced he could play the part of a woman. I mean, I'm a big man. So on opening night, when I saw people laughing with me, not at me, I thought, 'Wow. It's happened. We really have succeeded.'"

They got their first break when a couple of New York theater critics, including Dick Hummler with Variety, passed through Austin to check out the country-music scene. "They didn't want to see any plays," Joe says, but "everyone was talking about Greater Tuna."

The rave that followed in Variety gave the play a big boost. The show opened at Circle-in-the-Square in New York almost a year after debuting in Austin. The reviews were all favorable except for the New York Times.

"So often that is the kiss of death," Jaston says. "The only thing New Yorkers like better than the Times knocking someone out is someone who refuses to lie down and die. We just kept going. And word got out that this was something to see."

When the rights were released in 1984, hundreds of local theaters rushed to perform Greater Tuna, making it the most widely staged play in America in 1985-86.

A Tuna Christmas came along in 1989 when it appeared that Greater Tuna was getting dated. But now the original play has experienced a revival.

Two words explain the resurgence, says their producer, Charles Duggan: Newt Gingrich.

"Fortunately for us, unfortunately for some people, the politics have swung back around, so the satire is fresh again."

Indeed, business is good in Tuna. The Tuna Little Theater, which opened six months ago at the Wyndham Anatole, features performances year round with a cast trained by Joe and Jaston. In theater lobbies, vendors hawk Tuna ballcaps ($15), sweatshirts ($25), T-shirts ($15), tote bags ($15), scripts ($10) and keychains ($2). There's a convenient toll-free number for ordering merchandise or a catalog.

Meanwhile, Joe and Jaston are working on their third Tuna offering, Red, White and Tuna, tentatively scheduled to open in 1997.

For two actors, who were out of work when this all started, they are now quite wealthy by theater standards.

"Anytime a stage actor makes over $100,000 a year, you're very successful," Joe says. "We make over $100,000 a year, and we're stage actors. You can't go wrong."

Steady diet

Joe and Jaston have performed Greater Tuna more that 2,500 times and Tuna Christmas, which first debuted in 1989, about 900 times.

Factor in two dozen or so character changes in each performance and the mind reels.

"It's not as hard as it seems. Slow is fast," says Jaston, sounding like a Zen philosopher. "You stay calm. It's the sort of thing that if you put an arm in a sleeve and jerk it real quickly, it will catch. If you let it flow, it will keep you calm."

The real mystery might be how the two friends have managed to get along so well through years of working closely together.

"They're wonderful together," says Mr. Duggan. "They make each other better than they are separately. When the whole is greater that the sum of the parts, then you've got a good team. Because it has as much to do with the backstage atmosphere as anything else."

Joe and Jaston are quick to acknowledge that they occasionally fight and get on each other's nerves. But such times are relatively rare, Joe says. "We know each other so well. We're like an old couple that's been together 65 years. You know what's going to set someone off, so you don't do it."

On the road, they often have dinner or drinks together. And they both have homes in Austin.

They are hardly clones, however. They like to go in separate directions when they get some time off in the summer. Jaston keeps an apartment in the French Quarter, New Orlean's party central. Joe retreats to the pristine natural setting of his Wyoming ranch.

"Jaston likes to go to New Orleans, party, let his hair down," says Joe. "He's always been the type to do that and I like that about him. He gets energy from that. For me, I go up and watch the beaver and the moose."

Both men are reserved about their personal lives. Jaston, who has been divorced for many years, says work takes up most of his time. Beyond that he is "very, very private. A lot of it is resting and traveling and then writing."

Joe says that for many years he was too busy to have any relationships. Now, he says, "I have found someone and am very happy with him. But I was 42 years old whenever I had my first relationship."

Tuna has consumed a lot, but not all, of their professional lives. Joe has also written several plays, including Last Stand, based on General Custer, which premiered in Jackson Hole, Wyo., in 1994. He also plans to use his ranch, located along the Shoshone River in Cody, Wyo., as a guest retreat where acting students and teachers would conduct workshops.

Jaston has directed numerous plays in his career, including Jo Carol Pierce's recent Bad Girls Upset by the Truth. He is currently writing another play, Romeo and Thorazine, which explores connections between the acting and mental health professions.

Joe has taken some small parts in movies, including one recently in Rude Awakenings. But he has no plans to pursue a film career. Both actors have turned down jobs writing for television in Hollywood, because they have no interest in living in Los Angeles.

Their careers, like their plays, are firmly rooted in the heartland, Jaston says.

"Part of what I don't like about L.A. is you've got these guys with these indoor tans and these little gold chains, and they assume that everyone who has ever written or acted is just waiting for them to call and for you to move out into that rat race," Jaston says. "We don't fit the mold in that we are able to live in Austin and do what we do in the theater."

Everyone told us we couldn't from agents to producers to friends to everyone," he says. "But we just refused to believe that. As a result, we do a lot of Greater Tuna and Tuna Christmas. We do a lot of time on the road. But I think we're the luckiest actors that I know. The luckiest stage actors, anyway."