While undergoing chemotherapy in 2001, Atlanta playwright Topher Payne began writing the two-act comedy "Relations Unknown." The then-21-year-old writer and actor dealt with his health crisis by creating Chris Harrburn, an autobiographical character in "Relations" who, like Payne, had recently come out to his God-fearing Southern parents and was facing down a cancer diagnosis.
With one exception: Chris died in Act One.
"Killing myself was awesome!" says Payne, now 28, as he folds his 6-foot-2 frame into a chair in the upstairs bar at the Four Seasons hotel in Midtown.
"To write about what you're most afraid of was incredibly liberating. Killing myself taught me that you continue. To the people that matter, you continue."
Payne is now a three-time cancer survivor. The bouts with blood work, chemotherapy and hair loss have taught him not to waste time.
Through May 15, "Three by Topher," a world premiere of his latest plays —- "Above the Fold," "Don't Look at the Fat Lady" and "Perfect Arrangement" —- is being staged by the Process Theatre at Whole World Theatre in Midtown.
Later this month, "Necessary Luxuries: Notes on a Semi-Fabulous Life" (Xlibris/Random House, $19.95), a collection of his popular weekly David magazine "Maybe It's Just Me" columns, will hit stores as both an audiobook and paperback. Payne also works full time as general manager of MetroFresh restaurant in Midtown, where more than 3,800 e-mail menu subscribers eagerly await his amusing missives each morning.
Last year, Payne and his partner, Tommy Nixon, bought a house in Decatur.
While others in his peer group are still figuring out what they want to be when they grow up, Payne appears to be forever fingering the fast-forward button.
"But why isn't everyone?" he asks, taking a stab at the lime in his vodka and tonic. "I was given a gift by having my mortality presented to me at an early age. But nobody's guaranteed a long life."
Payne pauses and then adds sunnily, "I mean, people get hit by buses every day!"
To understand what experiences informed the writer as a kid it's helpful to hit the rewind button on the tape recorder he received for Christmas when he was a 6-year-old growing up in Kosciusko, Miss. Payne promptly installed the gizmo underneath the dining room table where his mother, Sheryl, and her sisters would gather to discuss current events. The pint-size playwright would transcribe the conversations and act out the scenes with his stuffed animals.
"Mama couldn't figure out how I learned words like 'hysterectomy,' " Payne says.
Adds Sheryl Payne, speaking from Kosciusko: "Even as a young boy, he could tell a story better than anyone I know. He never stopped talking. I remember telling him, 'Topher, now rest your mouth, son.' "
Kosciusko's other notable export is also a talker: Oprah Winfrey.
Cracks Payne: "If you were from Kosciusko, you would know how deliciously ironic it is to have a single black female billionaire and gay playwright as the two people to brag about. But unlike Oprah, I'm well-known for a radius of about eight blocks in Midtown."
The power of words
Technically, the reach of Payne's work extends a bit further. A production of his play "Entertaining Lesbians" was staged at the Clemente Soto-Valez Performing Arts Center in Manhattan in 2004, and his plays have graced stages in Columbus, Roswell and in Clinton, Miss.
At 10, Payne spent time with his grandmother Shirley Henderson when he visited after school to give the diabetic her insulin shot. He was all ears as neighbors would drop in for gossip sessions.
"I didn't have to watch 'Steel Magnolias,' " he says. "I was living it." (Perhaps not coincidentally, when callers ring his cellphone these days, they're greeted with the theme from "The Golden Girls.")
Later, at a self-imposed stint at a New England boarding school, Payne discovered writing at age 15. He composed an essay about his growing alienation at school and was selected to read it in front of his English class.
"I was not designed for the environment," he recalls. "Conformity has never been my strong suit. Plus, I was straight off the turnip truck. These kids [expletive] hated me. But when I finished, they applauded. I changed their minds about me. It was the first time I understood the power of my own words to change my life."
A few years later, Payne took a job in Atlanta with Kaiser Permanente's educational theater division as an actor in "Professor Bodywise and His Traveling Menagerie." The chain smoker played Nikki Teen, an enormous blue cat who instructed school kids on the perils of Pall Malls.
He also started writing plays.
A little less 'cute'
Eleven plays into his career, Payne has established himself by writing Southern-set comedies. He often arms his characters with withering one-liners but manages to retain a strong emotional core. Family dynamics fascinate him. But with "Three by Topher," he wanted to branch out a bit.
"I wanted to see if I could write something that ran the risk of not being liked," he explains. "Something that elicited a strong reaction. . . . Traditionally, people walk out of one of my plays and say, 'Darlin', that was cute.' I wanted to work a little less 'cute' with these plays. I really wanted to talk about what's going on out there."
One particularly edgy comic piece in Payne's "Above the Fold" has some audience members squirming. A catatonic, wheelchair-bound Shonda (inspired by the Terri Schiavo case and played by Atlanta actress Jo Howarth) is being prepared for a media-manipulated TV appearance by Godfrey, a flamboyant makeup artist (portrayed by actor Greg Morris).
The title of the piece: "Fruit and Vegetable."
He had workshopped "Beached Wails" (about four vacationing sisters from Kosciusko) and was planning a production of the comedy at the 14th Street Playhouse when he was first diagnosed with cancer shortly after his 21st birthday.
"I learned that cancer is a disease operating on a cellular level," Payne says. "The only thing you can control is how you react to it. Getting up every day and thinking about when you're going to die isn't much of a life."
When the Burkitt's lymphoma returned in late 2003 as a tumor in his inner ear, Payne pulled out the script for "Relations Unknown" and gave it an overhaul.
"The plays are my children," he says. "It's as close to a legacy as I have. It's important to get it right."
When "Relations Unknown" was eventually staged at Dad's Garage in 2003, the playwright's family drove in for opening night.
In a last-minute plot twist, the actor portraying Chris was in a car crash after the final dress rehearsal. The playwright had to step in and play the wise-cracking cancer patient.
"I just sat there and cried," Sheryl Payne recalls. "It was so autobiographical. Being separated from Topher when he went through treatment, I had no idea what he experienced."
Smoothing the catch in her throat, Sheryl quietly discusses the play's death scene: "I was almost hysterical. He's my baby. The 'what ifs' were right there, being acted out. My son has taught me a lot. ... When you think you couldn't love someone any more, God manages to open that door a little more. No one in the family ends a phone conversation now without telling the other person 'I love you.' "
The fat lady
Payne's writing in "Don't Look at the Fat Lady" is eliciting similar emotional responses. Written as a one-act monologue for Howarth, the play focuses on Gloria Dickey, a 600-pound Floridian who has melded with her living room couch. Payne was inspired to write the piece after reading about Gail Grinds, a 40-year-old Florida woman who died in 2004 after enduring a similar plight.
"Because of how she died, she became a Darwinism," Payne says. "But Gail Grinds was a person. I took the emotional truth of that and created Gloria. It's a way of honoring this woman's life without using her death as a punchline."
Adds Howarth: "Gloria is someone you want to know. Topher translated a sensational death into a really beautiful life."
Payne, director DeWayne Morgan and Howarth underscore the audience's initial discomfort by placing Howarth, already in her fat suit and sewn into the sofa and surrounded by snack-food wrappers, onstage when they enter the theater.
Back at the Four Seasons bar, a fresh round of drinks arrives, along with rapper Jay-Z and his bodyguards, who silently slip into place at the doorway.
The famous, the infamous and fame-seeking reality TV "stars" all serve as fodder for Payne's other new one-act, "Above the Fold."
It's a subject Payne has been thinking about ever since readers of his column in David magazine, a free Atlanta gay and lesbian weekly, began recognizing him from his photo.
"Most people who approach me are extremely nice and just want to extend a compliment," Payne says. "But I was fascinated by the ones who are a little Looney Tunes. Some people need that encounter with fame if they can't be famous themselves. It's a little alarming."
During its three-year run in David, Payne's comic and poignant columns often have taken on a confessional tone. He's dished on dating, getting dumped, dieting, even his personal lubricant preferences. But when his cancer returned for a second encore in October 2006, Payne never mentioned the "c" word in his copy.
That was intentional.
"I lived for it," Payne explains. "Every week, I had an opportunity to enter an alternate universe where I wasn't sick. I got to pretend my biggest problems were: 'I'm single! I'm fat!' The column actually got better during that period. It was the most healing thing I could have done for myself."
Adds Payne's MetroFresh boss Mitchell Anderson: "Topher has taught me how critically important a sense of humor is in life. He would come into work the day after a chemo treatment and be all smiles. He never let the cancer affect how he represented himself to the world."
'Take ownership'
In March 2007, a month after being given a clean bill of health once again, Payne met Tommy Nixon. On their third date, the columnist presented the Atlanta retail director with a notebook filled with his columns.
"I didn't want strangers to know more about me than he did," he explains. "Also, I write with humiliating candor, and I write about the people in my life. I had just gotten through cancer again. I was not about to waste my time dating someone who couldn't deal with that aspect of my life."
Nixon apparently doesn't mind his portrayal as the recurring "Preppy" character in "Maybe." He said yes when Payne proposed last Christmas. The two are planning a ceremony in May 2009.
As he has tackled drafts of his new plays and book galleys in his study over the past few months, Payne has quietly observed the circle of life taking place on his kudzu-draped window sill where birds built a nest and recently hatched babies.
A framed autographed photo of Faye Dunaway in full over-the-top, arched-eyebrow glory as Joan Crawford in "Mommie Dearest" looks on, silently judging. Payne bought the rarity off eBay for $60.
Dunaway stopped signing the photos after the 1981 film was released, and audiences turned the biopic into an unintended camp classic. Dunaway has famously disassociated herself from the role.
The autograph serves as a life lesson for Payne.
"Take ownership of every decision you make in life," he says. "What's wrong with owning your crap? You don't get to walk away from it. It becomes a part of you. Everything I've learned as a writer goes back to discovering that our humanity lies in our flaws. Own the good and the bad. We would all be a little better off if we lived under those terms."
Payne drains his second vodka and tonic and contemplates a Marlboro Light.
He laughs and adds: "Well, within reason."
IN TOPHER PAYNE'S OWN WORDS
From the upcoming book "Necessary Luxuries," a collection of his columns from David Magazine
I use fancy laundry stuff. The label says it's "Aromatherapeutic," which I'm not sure is even a real word. ... What I am sure of is that it smells like geraniums, and one teeny tiny bottle costs three times more than a box of Gain. It might not even work as well as regular laundry soap. I have no idea. I do not care. Buying it makes me feel deliciously overindulgent, like a pampered Morningside housewife.
Maybe it's just me, but there are certain things, regardless of financial circumstance, that I will not skimp on in life. If I can't afford real Oreos, I will go without, not make do with "Kroger Chocolate Sandwich Cookies." I'll eat peanut butter and jelly for a week before I buy the cheap cigarettes. There may be nothing to drink in my house but water and vodka, but you can rest assured that vodka will be delicious, incomparable 3 Soy Vodka.
When times are tough, it never even crosses my mind to drop my gym membership, or my brunches with Slutty Mandy, or God forbid, my hairdresser. That finance guru I see on TV all the time, Suze Orman, would have an aneurysm if she saw our bank statements.
We are the fabulous poor. ...
From the one-act play "Don't Look at the Fat Lady"
Gloria: "Syndicated programs are so wonderful, because when you see one you already saw, it's like hearing your best friend tell someone a story you already know. It's still funny, but now you're in on the joke. Sometimes I see 'Friends' on 36, and Monica and Chandler will be married wanting a baby, and then I'll see it on 17, and she'll still be dating Tom Selleck, and I'll think, 'Oh, honey, I know what's gonna happen!' I can see it all: Rachel and Ross are going to have a baby. ... Anna Nicole will die, and that makes me sad because even though she was crazy as a pig in heat, when she first came around they said she was pretty, even though she was the same size I was in high school. I was pretty, too, then. Not because I was thinner, just because I was young. I think it's so unfair that you don't know you were beautiful until later, and you think, what would I have been, if I'd known it when I needed to?"
From his Metrofresh menu e-mails
Friday, November 23, 2007
Hey y'all, it's Topher. So yesterday, I made Thanksgiving dinner. I had a 22-pound Butterball that would not defrost, despite my best efforts. I cooked it for ages, and it was still stone cold in the middle. ... So, three hours before people were scheduled to arrive, while Sweet Tommy was raking the back yard, I told him I had to go to the grocery for butter. Then I pulled that dang bird out of the oven, threw it in a trash bag, and tossed it in the passenger seat of the car. The two of us went to Kroger, I bought a pre-cooked turkey, then hurled the half-frozen bird into a nearby dumpster, made the switch at the house, and no one was any the wiser. Everyone was very complimentary. So next year, I'm skipping that first part and going straight to step two, which involves a lot less work. I'm not very domestic, I'm discovering. But I am creative in a pinch.
