OSF veteran Rodney Gardiner plays himself in one-man show
By Jim Flint for Ashland.news
Let’s play a little Jeopardy.
Answer: He has performed the role of Nathan Detroit in “Guys and Dolls” three times — at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Guthrie Theater, and the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts.
Question: Who is Rodney Gardiner?
With 10 OSF seasons under his belt, Gardiner is returning this year as the writer and performer of a one-man show, “Smote This, A Comedy About God … and Other Serious $H*T.”
Playing at the Thomas Theatre on select dates now through May 12, “Smote This” weaves a web of stories and tangents about an undocumented Black child growing up during a time of racial unrest, an immigration crisis and the drug war.
Gardiner, who describes himself — tongue firmly planted in cheek — as a “comedian and recovering Shakespearean actor,” looks in the mirror to tell this tale of one man’s struggle to reconcile with his religion, his grief and legacy itself. He tells his story with an abundance of humor.
A stand-up guy
“This all started because I was looking for laughs,” he said.
“I was doing a lot of stand-up comedy in the Los Angeles area and naturally wanted to draw from my own life.”
He acknowledges that most comics lace their routines with observational humor.
“But the more I dug into my own story for humor, the more I would come up against moments that were both funny and difficult. I didn’t want to back away from the difficult stuff,” he said.
What started out as a 10-minute set abut being raised by a strict Caribbean mother turned into an exploration of what it meant to grow up undocumented in 1980s Miami, wrestling with grief and faith.
It was a time when shopping malls getting sprayed with bullets wasn’t a common thing, but it was happening in Miami. And most other cities then weren’t dealing with a refugee crisis or a pervasion of cocaine like Miami was.
“Miami in the ‘80s was wild,” he said, “but I didn’t realize it until reflecting upon it as an adult and fully diving into the history of the time.”
Gardiner, originally from Turks and Caicos in the Caribbean, has played a lot of characters during his career on stage. This time he plays himself.
“My story is the plot. There is something very freeing in getting to tell your story and hear an audience find what’s universal in it,” he said.
Smiling at smiting
The use of “smote” in the title comes from remembering how often the word shows up in the Bible.
“God did a lot of smiting to the disobedient or ungrateful,” Gardiner said. “I remember when I was very young, thinking that if I did something horrible enough, I’d be struck down by God.”
As an adult, he finds humor in the idea of smiting. But as a kid, it was a different matter.
“There I was, worrying that God was going to smite me for stealing a candy bar when half of Miami’s police force was being paid off by drug cartels. It’s surreal.”
Humor certainly is entertaining, but it also can provide a catharsis.
“Humor is what has allowed me, ever since childhood, to look beyond my circumstances,” he said. “It has always been my way of coping with the things in life I cannot control.”
Although he has found fulfillment and meaning from embodying the many characters he has played on stage, doing this one-man show about himself is special in a different way.
Empowering
He believes that everybody has some sort of superpower.
“Each of us has a unique story, and that is our superpower that sets us apart and makes us interesting,” he explained.
“I encourage people from every walk of life to share their stories. When we share in each other’s stories, we celebrate each other’s humanity.”
He hopes audiences walk away from the show laughing “and cherishing the gift of life just a bit more.”
For more information about “Smote This” and other OSF plays, and to purchase tickets, go to osfashland.org.
Reach writer Jim Flint at jimflint.ashland@yahoo.com.
