Fun Developments for Loveswell

Have to blog about a great recent development for my one person show, Loveswell. In developing the material I tried out using surfing and the ocean as a backdrop, for metaphors, for my relationship. Loveswell is about relationship, but uses surfing and the ocean in a way that anyone can relate. And people really loved it, thus I had confidence in using it in the show.



This run starting May 1st at the Hudson Theatre here in LA, Loveswell will have the privilege of having famed surf artist, Meegan Feori, along for the ride. I had the instinct when I first saw her work on a site online. One of the first paintings I saw was Night Flyin Femlin and I was immediately taken.


All of Meegan's paintings share the ocean and surfing in a way that anyone can enjoy. It's not in the flashy maneuvers that surfing can easily take on, only appealing to surfers, but it's in her representations of the ocean as a playful place, of a connection place, of a meaningful place where we, as man or woman, share time bathing in the beauty of one of our most important natural worlds, the ocean.

As she says, “I am a bella niña bruja ocean-loving dreamer compelled to create what my heart and mind envision. While my work represents surfing, it is not exclusive to surfing. It transcends the act of surfing becoming a visual representation of human emotion and experience.”

After talking and meeting with Meegan recently at The Hudson Theatre on Santa Monica Blvd, in LA, she happily agreed to have a showing of her work coinciding with our Loveswell run. Then I had the idea to ask her to paint the set and use her own colors and interpretive talent to create the world where Loveswell will take place. And Meegan said yes.

So Loveswell is proud to bring Meegan aboard for what will be a wonderful and fun run of Loveswell, my one person show about a man fighting for his relationship through the ups and downs of marriage as seen through the eyes of a surfer.

Hope you can make it down to see both of these fabulous works. www.loveswell.com

Writing Loveswell

Hey John Fortson here. I'm back to blogging. Thought it would be fun as my One Person Show Loveswell is hitting the stage soon.

Someone asked me why I wrote Loveswell today. My one person show. It's not a new question but one that gets refined everytime I answer it.

I simply had to do it. I suppose like most writers, creators of things, these ideas come to you as if you were an antenna. Loveswell, sat in me for almost 10 years in another form, as another story. After a series of dead ends, I heard these bits and pieces of the story bumping around inside of me and finally had to listen. I've been very interested and challenged by the relationships in my life, with my relationship with even myself and so through my acting and my writing, Loveswell came to be.

The hilariously uplifting story of a man fighting for his relationship through the ups and downs of marriage as seen through the eyes of a surfer. It's a story about relationship, about grey areas of life, about all of us. Through telling our stories we all connect no matter how personal.

People said of Loveswell, "I felt as if I was at an intimate dinner party with you and found out things I never knew." I say to that I'm not embarrassed or ashamed to tell the things I feel insecure about because we all feel the same. We all have the same lives, just yours is in a different state and you go by a different name, but we are all the same.

I'm excited to share Loveswell again. It's been so fun to work with my director, Terrie Silverman again. To improv and dig deep to find the gold of stories lying beneath my skin. I look forward to Loveswell hitting the Hudson Theatre, here in Los Angeles, May 1st-June 7th.
Take care, John

surfing my relationship

This piece was performed at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, part of the Lifestories series.

As a note: I never wanted to include, well I shouldn't say never, actually, I always wanted to include surfing into my written performances. The reason for my swaying is that surfing in America carries so many stereotypes. Through movies, surfers have been characterised as the surfer dude, the unresponsible, the stoner, the beach bum, none of which describe me. I'm not putting anyone down, just saying I've always been highly passionate about surfing and have surfed for over 29 years now, but at the same time, I've led a responsible life outside of surfing.

However, once I took a risk and performed this piece about my relationship, relating it through surfing, the audience loved it and thus the inclusion of surfing into my show, Loveswell, became
inevitable. People who never surfed came up to me to comment on how much the ocean and surfing make perfect backdrops to relationships. One wave being the perfect day with your love, a ride you never want to end. The next wave closing out on you reflecting those days when your love looks like the scariest wave you've ever seen. So here is one piece that really inspired me. See what you think...


Sitting out on my board, bobbing up and down, waiting, scanning the calm waters for a ripple. A ripple turning into a wave I’ll catch and surf back to the beach. Man, I love this.

Cool water on my hands as I wave them like flippers beneath the still water. I can see my dangling feet, my reflecting face, my thoughts. I look out and see water meeting sky, light blue meets dark forming a line, asking the sun to set. A pelican glides by so uniform, so perfect, waving its fingery feathers above the water, balancing the air. The rusty sea kelp washes and bends over my board and my leg, reminding me I am not alone, then disappears.

The ocean’s been my sanctuary since I was a kid helping me surf through boring summers, girlfriend heartbreaks, my father’s absence. I feel at one in my mother ocean. I feel perfect, because I have completely forgotten that this weekend I will be getting married for the rest of my life.

I’m not scared of getting married, just scared of getting through the marriage, because I’m marrying her. Christie, my long life friend, room mate, acting buddy, the drive me crazy then turn soulmate, love of my life. I had always dreamed of a fantasy someone, it just was never her. Don’t get me wrong, I am truly in love. Oh, excuse me.

Automatically my feet spin circles under the water as my eyes have caught the sight that makes me happy. A wave's coming. My body doesn't think, it moves. Hands pull through green water and I'm facing the beach. My chest lies down on my friend, my board. She knows all my waves good, bad, and foreign. I paddle, stroking each hand in front of me as hard as I can. Muscles strain as my breathe reaches out for the cool air. The wave rises toward the sky behind me as if it were to pounce on my back. It pulls me toward it, the water underneath my board dragging me backwards, until I'm nuzzled up right against it and then it happens. The wave that could seem menacing playfully pushes me. My hands no longer reach out to paddle, they lift out of the water, knowing their next job is to push me up. And they do, lightening fast, they hit the deck of my board, palms open, fingers spread, lifting my entire body up into a gymnasts maneuver. My legs swing underneath me and in an instant I'm standing. My eyes take in the beauty of the wave before me and as I drop in, gliding up and down it's face, I get to know the wave that will be part of my life now forever.

Whheehoooo!!! Look at this wave. Sometimes, you just want to stand there, feeling free, at one with this living thing you've caught. You don’t need or want to do any fancy tricks, you just want to remember the moment forever, love it.

Like when I stood there looking at Christie in Bed Bath and Beyond. She's in deep thought, dressed in her old t-shirt and overall shorts, looking at a blue colander. My face had this silly grin on it. She gets me. I feel free with her. I can be myself. I wanted to bask in the perfect moment forever. I wanted to be her man, to take care of her, to love her all at once. I wanted that blue colander to mean something to us. I wanted us to be making dinner with that colander together, forever.

But you see, I am scared because all I have ever known is divorce. My parents divorce’s. I mean just in between my parents there have been 7 marriages and 6 divorces. In between Christie’s parents there have been 5 marriages and 3 divorces. Between our parents 12 marriages and 9 divorces??? I worry about the reasons that my parents got divorced. I mean, as far as I know, it wasn’t because someone cheated or stole money or decided they were gay, it was for the plain, old, reliable, irreconcilable differences. We just can’t get along.

My mom, to this day, still says, I will always love your father, Johnny, but I just can’t live with him. I believe in true love, in someone that’s meant for me and I believe that someone is Christie. I couldn’t imagine it any other way. Oh, hold on.

Another wave approaches. I turn around, paddle as she lifts me up, playfully daring me to ride. I push up and stand, but this wave won't have me and as soon as I've dropped in, as soon as I've reached the bottom of the wave, she's decided it's over. She walls up, shouting her disapproval at me by breaking over my head, pushing me off my board, pushing me under, into the darkness. Water races around my face, my body, pulling my arms, my legs in different directions. Then just like an earthquake, the shaking is over. I relax and reach for the surface. My head bobs into the air and my lungs expand with new air.

It’s okay, it happens. Sometimes surfing is scary.

What if I fail her? What if I lost the true love of my life? I think my heart would melt, spiral into deep depression, standing alone in a corner for the rest of my life. Sometimes when Christie and I get into a fight, I get that same scary feeling and think, maybe I am not cut out for marriage.

What if I can’t handle it one day when Christie won’t take out the trash or we’re yelling and screaming in the middle of the night because it’s hot and I’ve got her elbow in my ear. Will you scoot over? No. Please? No. Christie! John, I’m sleeping! Or I swear, if I miss a turn off the freeway and she says one more time, Where are you going???!!! I am pulling over and walking because I’ll explode. And she will get mad that I got mad, and the whole thing will get blown out of proportion and we will end up in divorce because I missed the exit to the movies. OOOOOHHHHHHHH!!!

I have never quit surfing, falling, failing, frustrated in my learning, cursing my board, pulling my feet up because I swear I saw a shark, or the waves were big and broke my board in half. I never quit. Would I be a quitter if I left my marriage? Is it strength or weakness? For now, I choose to live in the remembrance of the kisses, the hugs, the laughs, the frozen pictures, thousands of pictures glued to the membranes of my mind bringing a smile to my face when I think of her. This is where I want to live, so like the wave that crashes me, I wait under the water until I feel it pass me by. I pull myself back up onto my board and turn back to the horizon, back toward the ocean I love and the next playful wave she'll cook up for me. Because I want to keep surfing. I love it too much to quit.

Love Warriors

Walking along in our neighborhood, her at the end of a half hour walk with our new little baby, me at the end of my half hour run, I felt the weight on my shoulders. I lifted them up to say the weight wasn't there. I hate the weight. I stretched for freedom. Freedom from arguments, from harsh looks, from harsh labels and declarations, from misunderstandings and miscommunication. I need to be free. Tomorrow is our 10 year wedding anniversary. Crazy, amazing, awesome, and really something. I'm proud of us.

I feel like a love warrior. We are love warriors.

On top of the weight, walking next to her, I felt scars, I felt bruises and gashes, I felt tears, and pounding fists, I felt ego and hurt feelings. I felt our life together. It's ironic that on the eve of our big anniversary, we've felt nothing but overwhelming frustration with each other and I'm straining to even remember what it's all about. That's the crazy thing, what are we upset about?!

"Just listen to me!" "Stop interrupting me!" "I can't talk to you." "Great, walk away." "Lower your voice in front of the baby." " Whatever." "Don't you ever say whatever to me, again. That's disrespectful."

We have a baby, now and so it seems that time has flown out the window. Our time to get things done has become so limited because now we have to and WANT to take care of, love, and teach our new little person in our lives. Our daughter was born March 14th, 2008 and is now a little over 3 months old.

It wasn't that bad during the first month. Sure it was tough, but I set my entire life aside. Took off of work for a month. Christie, my wife set her career on the side as well and we just coasted. Just time to take in this new little creation in front of us. We could get lost for hours looking into her little face and beaming smile. Nothing to fight about. Nothing really had to get done except meals, and dishes and diapers.

Then it crept back in, our careers. After the month was over, I went back to work. After 6 weeks she wanted to audition again. Now 3 months later, I'm working and auditioning, writing and planning, she's auditioning and suddenly we are low on food, the diapers haven't been washed, and we are juggling our lives in a way we have never had to do before.

I can see why people fall apart, why marriages don't make it. It's brutally hard to balance your life with a baby while working on a career, while being in a place where it's just the two of you, no nannies, no mothers, no other help, just you two. Wow.

So fifty feet from our house, walking side by side. I felt the bruises, still sore from this morning's talk. Then I felt her hand in mine. Or did I reach for hers. It doesn't matter. There we were, in step, hands swinging, her warm little frail hand wrapping around my fingers, squeezing my fingers as if her hand wanted to be there. I squeezed back, because I wanted to be there as well. We turned to each other and looked deep into each other's eyes. There was no doubt we loved each other, that we belonged together. We couldn't help but smile and feel our lips pull together. They had missed each other too long.

"I think we are love warriors," I said. "Love warriors," she said, "I like that."