‘Every Brilliant Thing’ starts small, thinks big in Walnut Creek

What are the things that make life worth living? For the main character in “Every Brilliant Thing,” the solo play that Center Repertory Company is opening at Walnut Creek’s Lesher Center for the Arts, there’s a very long list that he keeps adding to all the time.

It’s not an idle exercise. He started the list to give to his mother, who struggles with depression and the will to live. But the list takes on a life of its own that’s inextricably entangled with his own life.

It’s not a typical solo show. Written by English playwright Duncan Macmillan with its original performer, Jonny Donahoe, the play involves a lot of audience interaction, but in a uniquely beautiful, purposeful way.

“This is a piece of theater that does what we oftentimes will say theater is at its finest, which is a piece of community building,” says director Jeffrey Lo, who directed Caridad Svich’s “Red Bike” for Center Rep last year. “I think it’s step-by-step building community, building comfort within the audience, and then also getting them ready to receive.”

“You add a lot of your own experience in seeing it, I think,” says actor William Thomas Hodgson, who stars in the show. “There’s that sense of play, that sense of commune and togetherness. I feel like a lot of people go to a show and they’re like, ‘Wait, there’s audience interaction?’ This is just so palatable. It’s short and it’s funny. I want people to leave with a sense of joy. I think that there’s simultaneously a message of hope for people who are struggling and a message of empathy for people around people who are struggling.”

Hodgson previously performed the play in 2021 with Oakland Theater Project (formerly Ubuntu Theater Project), of which he’s a co-founder and co-artistic director. Directed by his fellow co-AD Michael Moran, the show was OTP’s first indoor show during the pandemic, after a few parking lot productions with the audience seated inside their cars.

“I was really passionate about doing this during the pandemic at OTP, because I was meditating on loss and gratitude and how to stay afloat,” Hodgson says. “And two years later, so many people I know are still in that place. I’m still in that place. The world is really hard right now. And there is a complexity to the way this play approaches that.”

“Every Brilliant Thing” predates the pandemic and is about something else, but it’s all about moments of human connection both large and small, and that theme gained a whole new level of poignancy in recent years.

At the same time, coming back to in-person performance with such an intimate, interactive show had its challenges.

“I was like, keep people away from me!” Hodgson jokes with a laugh. “There’s no way you could, but we were trying to be cognizant of that and keep our audiences low. I think that I was just so excited to play with people that it didn’t matter. And there was something about human touch that was so important. Even if it’s just me and one other audience member, it’s going to milk a tear out of your eye after however many months isolated. And now that’s different. We’re just in a different space in time. But that is still a currency of the play, that we’re together.”

The play premiered in the UK in 2013, but it’s been a popular choice locally in the last few years. Los Altos Stage Company did it in 2021, as did San Jose’s City Lights Theater Company in 2022.

It was at City Lights that Lo had his introduction to the play. Going in knowing little to nothing about it, he went to see it to support actor Tasi Alabastro, who starred in that production.

“I had no idea what to expect,” Lo recalls. “I walked out of that experience being incredibly moved by it, and then I sort of tucked it away as one of those shows where maybe one day I’ll get to work on this play.”

Unlike most Center Rep shows, “Every Brilliant Thing” is not performed in the midsize Margaret Lesher Theatre upstairs at the Lesher Center, but the small George & Sonja Vukasin Theatre downstairs, next to the box office.

It’s a necessary shift, because bringing people together is central to the message and experience of the show.

“It’s a play that wrestles with the challenges and sadnesses of life, but tries to deal with it through community and through joy,” Lo says. “I think for me, the biggest strength of the play is that it’s trying to remind us that we’re not really in this alone. We’re all in some way, shape or form dealing with this, or know someone directly who’s dealing with this. So just know that we’re all in this thing called life together.”

Contact Sam Hurwitt at [email protected], and follow him at Twitter.com/shurwitt.

If you or someone you know is struggling with feelings of depression or suicidal thoughts, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline offers free, round-the-clock support, information and resources for help. Call or text the lifeline at 988, or see the 988lifeline.org website, where chat is available.