The fears, pitfalls and risks associated with online dating are portrayed in the new play “Stella’s Last J-Date,” now running at the Whitefire Theatre in Sherman Oaks.
The action begins in a bar, as Stella (Amy Smallman-Winston) and Isaac (Barry Livingston), who met on J-Date, are having their first face-to-face encounter.
According to playwright Andy Rooster Bloch, the two have decided to try online dating one more time to see if something can finally come of it. “They don’t want to go back on the computer and go through the process of trying to find someone. They want this to work, and they want to try to find something in each other that they can latch onto to start some type of relationship.”
But they both have skeletons in their closets, and each is burdened with painful baggage. Some of their issues are revealed right from the start; others only become apparent over time. Isaac, a schoolteacher in his 50s, tells Stella almost immediately that he’s an alcoholic. And it becomes apparent as soon as she starts talking that Stella, who is in her 40s, has a habit of saying whatever comes into her mind, no matter how outrageous or inappropriate, a trait that accounts for much of the play’s comedic flavor. Very early in their conversation, she tells Isaac what she was thinking about on the way to their meeting: “Which degenerate du jour is going to paw at my womanhood this time?”
Despite her difficult demeanor, Bloch said, Stella wants to fall in love. “She wants to be happy, and she just can’t quite get there. She has intense insecurities that keep getting in her way, and that brings us to what the whole play’s about. She sabotages her own happiness, and I think that’s presented in a very unique way.”
Stella is a dog trainer, and, at one point, she talks about how puppies are vulnerable and feel mistreated by people who don’t know how to train them properly.
“She says that there’s only a three-second window where they can relate to what they’ve done. So, if you wait too long [before you] stick their noses into whatever their business is that they should not have done on the floor, they don’t know why you’re shouting at them. So she’s really talking about herself, and she can put herself in that position of being extremely vulnerable, like a defenseless little puppy,” Bloch explained.
Into this mix comes Don (Elvis Nolasco), a bully who physically attacks Isaac and aims angry words at Stella. “This is a really emotional part of the play. No one has ever fought for this poor woman, until this night,” Bloch said. “Isaac is the first one to stand up to this person. … He’s scared to death of this, but the only way to get to be with Stella and to prove to her that he’s for real, and that there is potential, is to take this man down. And he does it in a very, very weird, unique way.”
Don is not Jewish, and, though Bloch acknowledged that — theoretically — his romantic couple could have been any ethnicity, he said it was important for his purposes that the two of them be Jewish.
“I wanted it to be J-Date. I thought I’d get the most humor out of that. And it’s the kind of humor that I’ve grown up with … Neil Simon, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, the Marx Brothers. Those are my influences. And I’ve always loved writing that type of humor. Three of my plays are based almost entirely on Jewish humor.
“I think what’s great about [Jewish humor] is that it just plays on your neuroses. It takes any normal situation and puts this colorful spin on it that doesn’t work with any other type of humor.”
Bloch recalled his Jewish upbringing, which included Hebrew school and a bar mitzvah. He added that, though he is not as religious now, he and his wife plan to raise their child with a strong Jewish foundation.
“It’s important to me. It’s an important part of my life, and it’s circling back around and coming back into play, because my wife and I have a 2 1/2-year-old daughter. And I want her to experience the things I experienced when I was little — the holidays, bat mitzvah, great friends that she’ll meet at Hebrew school, all that. It’s very grounding to me.”
As for his play, Bloch said that while it is replete with comedy, it also has a serious underpinning.
“It is about loneliness. It is about breaking the chain of being alone. … There’s millions and millions of people on these dating websites, and it’s crazy. Everybody wants to find that person. It’s not easy. … It’s all about wanting to connect.”
He continued, saying that he would like audiences to leave the theater feeling that there’s good in everybody, and there’s a ray of hope in the darkest of times.
“Anything is possible, and love is there for the taking. You just have to fight for it.”
“Stella’s Last J-Date” runs through May 5 at the Whitefire Theatre, 13500 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks. For more information, visit brownpapertickets.com.
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