‘Woody Sez’ channels folk icon’s spirit

“A human being is nothing but a hope machine.”

Those words belonged to Woody Guthrie, the Oklahoma-born balladeer whose songs of peace, freedom and protest gave new meaning to the term “folk singer.”

There’s probably not an American over the age of 5 who doesn’t know at least one Woody ­Guthrie song, but not too many people know the story of the man himself. Now, the life and music of Woody Guthrie are the subjects of a new theatrical event that weaves together songs and storytelling.

“Woody Sez,” at the Booth Playhouse, 130 N. Tryon St. in uptown Charlotte through Feb. 21, tells the fascinating and sometimes tragic story of Woody Guthrie’s life. Four multitalented actor/musicians offer up two dozen Guthrie songs, from classics we’ve all learned in school, to some lesser-known – but not less interesting – compositions. The music is performed on 15 instruments ­ranging from guitar and fiddle to jaw harp, banjo and dulcimer.

The show is completely acoustic, performed with no microphones or amplification. This could be a disaster in a larger hall, but in the intimate space of the Booth Playhouse, with its proscenium-style layout, the players’ voices and instruments make it all the way up to the balconies without any of the “canned” quality of some miked productions. Better still, the producers have extended the center of the stage by a few rows to get the players even closer to the audience.

The show is the brainchild of Broadway veteran David Lutken, who plays the title role with an engaging folksiness and an impressive amount of musical versatility. One of Lutken’s special interests is playing traditional American instruments, and he has the chance to show his range here. As for his role-playing as Guthrie, Lutken wisely doesn’t try to impersonate the folk music icon, whose twangy voice and idiosyncratic delivery inspired lots of singers, from Bob Dylan to John Mellencamp. Nevertheless, Lutken manages to bring Guthrie’s spirit to life on the stage, drawing much of his material from Guthrie’s 1968 autobiography “Bound for Glory,” and from the “Woody Sez” newspaper columns that Guthrie wrote for the Communist newspaper People’s Daily World when he lived in California in the 1940s.

“Woody Guthrie was a political figure. He was never a member of the Communist party,” said Nick Corley, Lutken’s collaborator and the show’s director. “But when he saw a cause whose voice was not represented he would write about it. It was about the need, about the people. The politics were not as important as the people he was trying to give voice to.”

Lutken and his fellow cast members, Darcie Deaville, Andy Tierstein and Helen Russell, all had worked together on other productions that featured Woody Guthrie music, but none of the shows were about Guthrie’s life.

“I got the idea to do this show because there are a lot of shows about music but not a lot of shows about the person,” said Lutken. “This is a biographical show.”

“Woody Sez” made its debut as a one-hour theatrical concert at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2007. The show had the usually stalwart Scots weeping by the final curtain. Lutken and Corley refined the piece further, and took it to other European festivals. In 2009, the show played to what may have been its toughest crowd yet: the people of Oklahoma City. Guthrie’s sister was in the audience and said it was the best show she’d ever seen. Guthrie’s picture now hangs in Oklahoma’s state capitol, eight decades after he had to leave his home state, which had become unlivable because of the double whammy of dust storms and the Great Depression.

Guthrie was born in Okemah, Oklahoma in 1912. His father was, at first, a successful landowner and businessman, but lost everything in a series of bad business deals. His mother was a tragic figure. She was presumed to be insane after she was suspected of setting fires at the family’s home, in which Guthrie’s sister was killed and his father was injured. She died in an asylum, an undiagnosed victim of Huntington’s disease, a degenerative neurological disorder. It was the same illness that eventually caused Guthrie’s own death.

He began to sing and write songs when he was a teenager. The Great Depression and its effect on common people defined his life. He was one of thousands of “Okies” who took to the roads to escape the Dust Bowl that Oklahoma had become after prolonged drought and subsequent dust storms destroyed the state’s farmlands. Traveling alongside migrant workers headed for California, Guthrie found inspiration for many songs in the hardships of the refugees.

As he became better known as a singer and social commentator, his political sympathies became increasingly aligned with the Communists. He wrote and illustrated two years’ worth of acerbic social commentary in the party’s West Coast newspaper. The column was written in an exaggerated “hillbilly” slang that didn’t fail to hide Guthrie’s acute intelligence.

When he moved to New York City during World War II, he was in a group of folk singers who lived in a leftist “cooperative” house in Greenwich Village; during this period he composed many of the now-famous protest songs on pacifist and anti-fascist themes. He finally started recording for Folkways Records in 1944, and he wrote and recorded upwards of a thousand songs before he became unable to perform due to the ravages of Huntington’s disease.

Over three decades of writing and performing, Guthrie proved that music could be an agent for political change. In most photographs of Guthrie holding a guitar (he played the harmonica, mandolin and fiddle too), the instrument has the words “this machine kills fascists” written on it or printed on an attached card. In the performance of “Woody Sez,” Lutken’s guitar also has those words on a neatly printed sign.

“Critics have said that Woody didn’t ­wallow,” said Corley. “There’s a hopefulness in the songs. They’re uplifting and positive. What he did with his music was to unlock something beautiful and positive, even though tragedies were happening.”

Want to go?

Woody Sez runs through Sunday, Feb. 21, at the Booth Playhouse at the Blumenthal Arts Center, 130 N. Tryon St. For tickets or more information, call 704-372-1000 or visit www.blumenthalcenter.org.