Brian Davis showcases his theater talents

A new comic stage play called Cupid’s Crush, takes its aim at Chabot audiences in two weeks, focusing on the fun side of love  and  life  in its multi-talented writer/actor of the play.

You could walk into an Alameda drugstore late one night for a stick of gum and brush by the late night clerk at the register, thinking very little about this moment in life, yet not realizing that you have just become a new character in a story written by Brian Davis.

Standing at 6-foot-1 with flashing eyes, a dark athletic look, and keen personality Davis commands a presentation that is one of kind. Once you meet him its hard not to forget this kind of person. “He has all the talent, smarts, and good looks to be what he should be in the artistic world.” said Chabot theater arts instructor Rachel LePell.

His new play, Cupid’s Crush, puts these talents on display with Davis writing and acting in  the play as Cupid himself. The play itself  is a high concept observational comedy about the Greek love god, Cupid, and how he would handle love in today’s frantic game playing world.

“You’ve never seen moments like there were right out of a movie, so I try to recreate those moments that have happened to me or heard from other people,” Davis recalled moments about the people at Chabot and Walgreens where he works.

Davis, who has been working at Walgreens in Alameda for the past six years, has met his fair share of characters. “We tend to judge people over who and what they are on first seeing them,” said Davis, “but we don’t know what people are really like, I see a lot of potential for comedy and drama to be mixed together in this.”

As a writer Davis wants to put his focus on changing the status quo. “He wrote a really sharp first-time time script called Rude America, which changes our assumptions of cultural differences,” recalled LePell about when Davis was in her writing class a few years a back. The characters in that play where based off of his growing in the harsh urban neighborhoods of Oakland.

Growing up in the Oakland neighborhood of 98^th and D streets, Brian’s life was divided by the strong spiritual upbringing of his mother and the harsh street life of his father.

“It was really rough out there; a lot of my friends now are either in jail, had kids real young, or ended up dead,” said Davis. “But theater pulled me out of there and became my drug of choice to escape.”

When going to Enical High School in Oakland, Davis describes himself as the class clown. Davis said about those times, “I use to always be pulling jokes on people and that got me into trouble, then one day my counselor told  me I should do theater.” said Davis, “I was first like, I ‘ain’t doin’ Shakespeare and shit’, but I tried it and it hooked me ever since.”

After being inspired by his high school counselor, Davis now goes to the Juvenile Correctional Facilities of Alameda County to help delinquent kids get into improv and acting games. He says of his experience working with them, “They don’t have a lot and I would been one of them if wasn’t for the people I met when I was young. But you would be surprised how good of  actors some of them are. It’s just a shame that they didn’t get to explore it earlier.”

            As for the future calling on Davis’s plate of performances, he has tried now for several years to get on the stand-up comedy circuit, Davis  said of today’s comedy, “Stand-up comedy is dying, nothing is fresh and it’s all the same. I went to this comedy club last week and the jokes where all about taking dumps or smoking weed. I feel it my calling to wake it up again and put back on its feet.”

Yet Davis feels pulled back about getting his feet fully wet in stand-up because of his feelings about moving to L.A., “If I make it out to LA, I’m afraid that I won’t be able to do what I set out to do,” said Davis. “Community College theater is very flexible and it’s just always there, so getting out to L.A.  is scary with a new environment and freeway entrances/exits that are totally different.”

Though LePell said sternly about  Davis and his fear on leaving, “Its just now he needs a kick in the butt so he can go out and make himself  known. Its tough  because community college is place where a lot people who don’t have regular college privileges go.”

The arrows  to his success are pointing in the right direction with his new play coming out soon and a recent mature character performance of Flip with Our Lady of 121^st Street. “This play and the performance have definitely given me a push and I’ve been looking to move out to L.A. maybe around April or May of next year; it’s going to be tough though.”