Playwright John Patrick Shanley subtitled his Danny and the Deep Blue Sea \u201cAn Apache Dance.\u201d In French culture, this refers to a volatile and often violent encounter, leavened with moments of tenderness.<\/p>\n
In the current Jobsite Theater production, \u201cdancers\u201d Danny and Roberta are played by Alex Teicheira and Georgia Mallory Guy. They thrust and parry, zig and zag and stomp on one another\u2019s feet as they move towards an inevitable clinch.<\/p>\n
Danny and Roberta meet, awkwardly, in a dive bar in a working-class Bronx neighborhood. They\u2019re both emotionally battered, shattered, abused and broken people.<\/p>\n
It is not, observes actress Guy, \u201cpedestrian broken-ness that we might find on an everyday level.\u201d<\/p>\n
Summer Bohnenkamp directs the dance between these two walled-up people for whom openness, and intimacy, are but distant memories.<\/p>\n
Somehow, they connect.<\/p>\n
Although Guy is a well-known Tampa Bay thespian (most recently seen in God of Carnage at Tampa Repertory Theatre), Teicheira is making his local debut. The California native lives in Sarasota and frequently works with Florida Studio Theatre.<\/p>\n
Teicheira remembers performing scenes from Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, as well as Shanley\u2019s Doubt and Savage in Limbo, during his undergraduate days at Berkeley.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s also a fan of actor John Turturro, who originated the character of Danny off-Broadway in 1983, and of the story\u2019s \u201cgritty\u201d New York realism.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe thing about this play,\u201d Teicheira says, \u201cyou never can quite predict where the other person\u2019s going. And once you see that person\u2019s consumed in flames, how do I put out that fire? Oh, that fire\u2019s out? Great! Now there\u2019s another fire. I gotta put that fire out.<\/p>\n
\u201cOr maybe we gotta let each other burn for a while. Let it burn off, and then we can talk to each other again.\u201d<\/p>\n
After an initial audition via Zoom, Teicheira was called in to read with actresses under consideration for Roberta. The chemistry had to be right.<\/p>\n
\u201cI already had this rhythm in my head of what I wanted to do with Danny,\u201d explained Teicheira. \u201cMaybe he was a bit off-center, off-balance, maybe talks a little loud. Has to control something.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then I got paired with Georgia. And I could tell right away that she had done some homework. She had some choices made, and she was fun to play off of. So I think there was some idiosyncrasies in the rhythm of his pattern of speech, and his thought process too, that made it stand out. With Georgia, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Like Danny and Roberta, they clicked.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou could tell what she wanted, and you could tell there were moments when she was considering something and maybe making choices I wasn\u2019t expecting. Which was fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
Guy, who\u2019s also the producing artistic director of the theater company ThinkTank, fully inhabits the dramatic characters she portrays (see Jobsite\u2019s scarily good 2025 production of The Pillowman).<\/p>\n
\u201cI always joke about when I have to get up and give curtain speeches, as myself, I\u2019m never super one hundred percent comfortable in a room full of people looking at Georgia,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019ll walk offstage and say \u2018Was that dumb? Did I sound dumb?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cBut when I get to say someone else\u2019s words, and try to find the life of them, I just feel so much more comfortable sometimes in another person\u2019s skin.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her graduate school mentor told her it would take 10 or 15 years before that \u201canother person\u2019s skin\u201d thing would work without her trying too hard. \u201cAnd that was true. And so now, I feel like I can dig into a script and a character, and find little nuances, and trust that I\u2019m also guided by the director who\u2019s watching that.\u201d<\/p>\n
With the support of Bohnenkamp, and her co-star, \u201cit\u2019s not hard to go there if you just really open up. And that\u2019s the joy of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the play\u2019s dark tone, Guy insists there\u2019s a positive message among the wreckage of the character\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf these people can find each other and connect, I think it provides a little piece of hope that a person who\u2019s carrying their own personal baggage \u2013 because we all do \u2013 can still find connection.<\/p>\n
\u201cOr move through things that are bogging them down or depressing them, or something that they just can\u2019t seem to get rid of. For whatever reason.\u201d<\/p>\n