‘Every Brilliant Gift’ of Humboldt’s Theater Scene
Chased from their Sierra foothills home by wildfire in 2021, Chuck Supple and his family — including two donkeys, six chickens, two German Shepherds and one cat — explored the ever-wetter coasts of Sonoma and Mendocino counties before resettling in Freshwater.
The family, donkeys and all, had never considered an alternative to their post-retirement lives in the Sierra, not until their lives bent to the lived experience of climate change. Consuming 221,835 acres and a thousand structures, the voracious Caldor Fire burned within miles of the family chapel on their dream rural property.
Five years later, Supple has found a creative outlet to express his profound gratitude to the adopted Humboldt community that welcomed him and his family with open arms and hearts. His role in the upcoming play “Every Brilliant Thing” allows him to look at the brilliant things found in daily life here. Supple’s Humboldt is the place where “Never Don’t Stop” — the Peg House bumper sticker — means something funny yet deep about our quirky communities.
Supple remembers the exquisite moment when his dad, who lived with the family his last two years, ate his last oysters at 95. He adored oysters. Surrounded by thousands of joyous people on a beautiful Oyster Festival day, his dad’s look of utter happiness as he tipped back his head and slurped the oyster still brings a teary smile to Supple’s face.
After five years in his new home, Supple remembers standing within “the pulsating garden of humanity that is the Farmers’ Market in motion all around me. I had to sit down. I felt so profoundly and overwhelmingly a part of it. Not in it. A part of it.”
Like almost all of us, Supple’s life contains hardship and tragedy, which he navigates in part through plunging into the Humboldt theater community, having acted in three recent plays, including the role of Admiral von Schreiber in the Humboldt Light Opera production of “The Sound of Music.”
Next month, Supple and director Leira Satlof will present the one-actor, audience-engaging play “Every Brilliant Thing” at Synapsis in Eureka, Nov. 6-8 and 13-15. The play celebrates everyday moments of brilliant hope and joy, while the story navigates a personal struggle with tragedy and mental health.
The script “charmed the socks off my body,” wrote Helen Shaw in The New York Times. “It’s going to make you love your fellow man.”
Humboldters far and wide will be asked to contribute their brilliant “things” to the play. A link below is one place to do so.
In the meantime, Supple loves living where “tie dye meets camouflage,” where his new neighbors on Howard Heights were relieved to find them building the Fort Knox of chicken coops, not a McMansion.
Supple and his family have found a place where the neighbors don’t complain when the donkeys are as loud as donkeys can be. They just bring more carrots.
Go to synapsisperformance.com/ events for tickets for “Every Brilliant Thing” at Synapsis, 1675 Union St., Eureka.
Peter Pennekamp discovers brilliant things in Eureka every day.
