Playwright lends heart, smarts to community theater scene

Death by her own hand drew artistry out of his own heart.

How else does a playwright -- one as outwardly affable but inwardly dark as this one -- react to discovering his new wife's hanged body?

"Unfinished" and "Sundrops" by Ernie Curcio.

"My wife and I, who were very close to Barb, we were just sobbing in the front row," says Will Adamson, co-founder with Curcio of Cockroach Theatre. "It wasn't in a despair kind of way, but a healthy, cathartic cry. It was helping me to heal."

Chill with the Las Vegas community theater's do-it-all writer/director/actor dude -- as we did in a Maryland Parkway Starbucks -- and see what seems the absolute inverse of a driven artist: a smiling, self-effacing, ball-capped nice guy who projects an aw-shucks-iness that would serve him perfectly as one of Sheriff Andy's Mayberry buddies.

One who, on Dec. 17, 2008, found his wife of two months and fellow local theater traveler Barbara Ann Rollins dead from suicide at age 31. "The plays were like therapy, but 'Unfinished' was very much torture," says the 32-year-old Curcio about the drama in which a man who has just lost his best friend, an up-and-coming visual artist, to suicide, holds a seminar to examine her last painting to determine whether it is finished. "Sundrops" tells of a girl coping over the suicide of her lover.

"I was truly trying to ask her, 'What's going on here?' " he says. "The only thing I had right there was the writing, but she was the silent writer. I walked into the room where she committed suicide -- full throttle, screaming. 'Why? What's the point of existence? What's the point of living?' There was a lot of drinking, depression, a lot of chaos in the brain."

Transience and casual commitment are common to local theater, where a let's-put-on-a-Broadway-show-as-best-we-can mentality can dominate over serious, original artistry.

That isn't this man. Perhaps the strongest symbol of what community theater can accomplish, this is an artist who pays his bills by appearing in "Tony 'n' Tina's Wedding" at Planet Hollywood and the Mob Experience at the Tropicana and -- recently remarried -- spends off-time performing, directing and churning out plays at a pace that would make Neil Simon dizzy.

So far? Twenty-six, many about or referencing Las Vegas, including titles such as "Rambis," "Teacup Trophy," "Corner of Hacienda," "War Mouth," "No One Cares," "Al's Donuts," "Perturbed" and "Tribeca Che & The Grey."

Lately, Curcio's been occupied with the Insurgo Theater Movement, which is about to move into a new, 75-seat theater in downtown's about-to-reopen Plaza. Curcio will portray Vladimir in Samuel Beckett's classic exercise in absurdism, "Waiting for Godot," beginning previews Sept. 1 before officially premiering Sept. 8 for an open-ended run.

"He's the reluctant megastar," says John Beane, Insurgo's artistic director. "He's an incredibly gifted writer and he challenges you, not just in the shock of what he's exploring, but also the aggregate effect of humanity. He's a gifted actor and he's a workhorse. He's manic as hell. And he's good-looking and such a nice guy it's just disgusting. I can't believe it, it's like -- give me something, man, a hunchback, something."

Creativity is a volume business for Curcio, who witnessed violence and ugliness during his East Las Vegas childhood. Though it didn't touch him directly, it did strike that artistic match. Consider his subject matter as a writer:

"Meth, crack, gang stuff, dysfunctional families, a lot of social issues I'm interested in," Curcio says. "I came from a great home so there wasn't even a question of being in a gang, but meth has definitely been around me. I know some kids who got shot and killed and a couple of guys who are still in prison. They've got heart and soul and they're human beings, not statistics. But I've been trying to get lighter, find the brightness."

Unlike many playwrights, Curcio seems blissfully unconcerned with commercial success or literary legacy. He writes ... just to write. To express. To explore.

"I'm more interested in instant contact, seeing how the play works with people in the audience right now," he says. "I've revived them once or twice and it's boring to me. We're not going to be here forever, so let's enjoy the present moment. Shakespeare's the only one we still talk about, and we barely talk about him anymore. You'll drive yourself insane if you want to exist forever."

One of several co-founders of the theatrically adventurous, offbeat Cockroach Theatre in 2002, Curcio headed east to New York, where he joined its heralded theater scene from 2003-2008. There, Curcio and like-minded friends -- including wife-to-be Rollins -- created the Boon Theatre and performed off-off-Broadway while his writing snowballed, but the city's relentless pace exhausted him.

"It was going pretty good, but it's so overpopulated, not just with people but with artists and theaters, so it was like performing in a void," Curcio says. "I remember carrying things all over the city, the wind is blowing the platforms I'm carrying into taxicabs and I'm like, 'What are we doing? We're not making any money.' But it was also great because it pushed you to create all the time."

Internal storm clouds -- in an ironic precursor to the tragedy to come -- stalked him there as well. "I ran out in front of a cab," he recalls. "I was really drunk, but I knew what I was doing -- you know, the artist, tortured."

Returning home, Curcio and Rollins took up residence in a room he describes as no bigger than a tool shed at the Katherine Gianaclis Park for the Arts near Boulder Highway, a bubbling cauldron of experimental theater, art and music.

There -- with the couple married merely two months -- Rollins snuffed out her life. "It was right after a big fight, but I didn't see it coming at all," Curcio says, the regret ringing in his words.

"We went to Chaparral High School together, we were best friends, but neither of us would back down, that's what we loved and hated about each other. We would go at each other -- bang, bang, bang. Walking in there, finding her and having to take her down, and no resolution of the fight, I think that's what caused post-traumatic stress disorder."

Nearly three years past the tragedy and with new wife Abby with him (they got hitched June 19), he's looking to escape the blackness that still can engulf him. "She has brought a lot of light in my life," he says, sipping a caffeine cocktail at Starbucks. "I'm so gung-ho on leaving the darkness. I'm reading self-help books. I even read 'Tuesdays with Morrie.' But I'm not going to put crystals on my head."

Why not? Tucked inside those sparkly nuggets is surely an Ernie Curcio play.

Light, dark or otherwise.

Contact reporter Steve Bornfeld at sbornfeld@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0256.