Jaston
This weekend I am looking forward to seeing An Evening with Jaston Williams at the State. That man can sure tell a story, and some of them are true. Most people know him as the Greater Tuna guy—Vera (god………DAMMIT!) Carp has cult-like status—but to me he’s the one responsible for my moving to Austin 37 years ago.
Way back in the early 80s, we met at Southern Theatre Conspiracy in Atlanta, where one night Jaston volunteered to run lights for Lysistrata—I was playing Lysistrata—and had only some very vague instructions as to light cues, something like, no sweat man, turn ‘em on at the beginning and when Lysistrata’s buddy Calonice (played by Stephanie Astalos-Jones) sits on a coke bottle towards the end, that’s when you kill the lights. Or something like that. At any rate, just at the moment I was winding up for the closing speech, the lights went black. And there we stood in theatre interruptus. I yelled up to the light booth, “If somebody can turn on the lights, I can end this damn play!” And that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Jaston’s stories about Austin made it sound like a magical place. Hippies. Amazon women. Skinny dipping. Perhaps drugs were mentioned. Years before, right out of college, I had been lured to Texas, East Texas, by a job at a wilderness camp for emotionally disturbed adolescent girls. If you’re thinking that sounds all wrong for me, you’re right. I went back to Atlanta.
But Jaston thought Austin would be a great place for me and arranged for me to audition for a theatre troupe in Austin— we did Ionesco’s The Lesson in his living room for the audition!—but before I could get to Texas , I was hit by a car and hospitalized for a week. Kink number one. And just as I had my Datsun B210 packed, at long last, for the drive out to Austin, Jaston called to say that the theatre company had met an untimely demise. Kink number two. Well, shit. But I’d given up my house and job, so I thought what the hell I might as well take a road trip and see Austin. Nothing but shrapnel left of the theatre when I arrived, but out of its ashes rose Greater Tuna. For a week or so, I lived in a tent with my girlfriend and calico cat in a compound inhabited by a tribe of lesbians and swam nekkid in Barton Creek. Idyllic. But there was nothing for me to do in Austin so back we went to Hotlanta.
A few years later, I came back to Austin the third time to do an evening of one-acts called Rodents and Rumors directed by Jaston, one of my most memorable theatre experiences. He is well known as an actor and writer, of course, but he also he is one of the best directors I’ve ever worked with. This time, I didn’t go back to Atlanta. I stayed. And stayed and stayed.
Jaston has stuck with me through every joy and loss in my life since the day we met. He has believed in me and been there when I needed him most, and he makes me laugh every single day. He looked at a first draft of the piece I recently did at FronteraFest and told me succinctly what he thought it was about and said to take out anything that wasn’t about that. And I did.
Tonight I am grateful for Jaston, the best friend any person could ask for, and the person who brought me to Austin, Texas. If you get a chance this weekend, check out his latest batch of stories.
©2023 Joy Cunningham