Luke Walker and His Play that Might Make Charles Bukowski Blush

It is probably safe to say that not many plays are born out of a fever dream. Nor that they are completed in two weeks. But that’s precisely how The Wake of Dick Johnson came to playwright Luke Walker.

“The entire thing was just there,” he told me via a Zoom call last week. “There wasn’t a single word that was missing. It was really a matter of transcribing it. I did that in a week and had the first draft. The second week was just to polish it.”

The Wake of Dick Johnson, which has six performances at The Hollywood Fringe Festival beginning on Monday, August 16th, finds the title character returning from the dead to explain his view of the afterlife.

Walker never planned to be playing the part, but he suddenly found himself forced to do so.

“I’m not an actor. I never intended to be an actor. I worked with an actor for a year for the premiere. I said, ‘Please don’t abandon me with this because I’m investing my time in you.’ He loved it so much and he really wanted to do it. We worked on it for a year. A month before the show was premiering I got a call. He was in a rehab facility and said the play gave him a nervous breakdown. He wasn’t going to do it. I didn’t have an understudy. I didn’t have time to find somebody else. So I had to do it myself.”

It surprised Walker that he could do the part which has fast-paced dialogue and requires him being on stage for the entire show.

“I don’t have a good memory,” he reveals. “I think because of how the show was delivered to me it’s just there. It was two years since my last show and I started rehearsing about a month ago. At the first rehearsal everything was exactly as it should be.”

Perhaps one reason the material is so accessible to Walker is that it is based on very personal circumstances from his own life.

“A lot of this content is very close to me. It’s a very heavy burden to have. It came from my life.”

During our conversation Walker detailed battles with alcohol and drug abuse, but said those demons are behind him.

“I’ve gotten back to healthy living, at least for now. I never think long term on these things. But I’m never going to go back to that. My life is just not pleasant when it’s like that.”

He went on to discuss his relationship to death which, after all, is the setting for The Wake of Dick Johnson.

“I’m very close to death. I’ve experienced a lot of loss in my life; people close to me. So I lived in that state of death for the majority of my life until I was probably 35. I’m 40 now and I’m living life for the first time. And I’m seeing that life can be pretty good.”

Walker’s script employs healthy amounts of crude language, some racial epithets and includes depictions of sexism and abuse. I suggested that even as colorful a writer as Charles Bukowski might blush at his play.

“I love Charles Bukowski. He’s one of my favorite writers. I can’t say he’s an inspiration and I don’t think it’s the same. I think a person like Bukowski wouldn’t be published today. I like that people are being respectful and trying to be good social advocates. But it’s kind of sad to me that this movement has, in a way, stifled art. A show like mine, where there’s graphic language and it’s offensive, but I’m depicting somebody and intentionally depicting them authentically – for a reason. These people exist and it would be inauthentic to do it any other way.”

For all the intensity that Walker put into the play and puts into his performance, he believes there is ultimately a positive message that comes from the two hours spent with The Wake of Dick Johnson.

“This interpretation of the afterlife isn’t heaven or hell, it’s a continuum of this life. Every action we take in this life has a reverberating effect on everything and everyone because everything is connected. I think there’s a misconception about the show which is you’re going to leave all depressed. That’s not the message. It’s very clear once you’ve seen it. It’s one of hope and that we can shape our destinies and we can shape our futures…if we’re just good to each other.”

The Wake of Dick Johnson begins performances at the Hudson Theatres on Monday, August 16th and continues through August 25th. For tickets, please go here.

Photo: Luke Walker in The Wake of Dick Johnson (Photo by Olivier Riquelme)