Stunning ‘Dana H.’ in Berkeley tells abduction story in captive’s own words — literally

Actor Jordan Baker’s first solo show is a doozy.

In Lucas Hnath’s “Dana H.,” opening at Berkeley Repertory Theatre on June 8, Baker plays Dana Higginbotham, a psychiatric ward chaplain who was kidnapped by one of her patients in 1997 and taken from one motel room to another by him for five months.

“For people in the audience, it’ll be interesting what happens to you when you try to ask yourself, ‘Could it happen to me?’” Baker says. “How does this happen to somebody? Could I have made decisions like this? And I don’t know. I don’t know.”

It’s a true story told in Dana’s own words. And those words are heard in her own voice, from interviews conducted many years later for this play and then reorganized into a dramatic narrative by playwright Hnath, who’s also Higginbotham’s son.

So not only is Baker holding the stage embodying Dana for the 90-minute length of the play, but she’s also lip-synching the whole time.

“I’ve never had to lip-sync anything before,” Baker says. “To lip-sync an entire show is very interesting, to say the least. I have no control over my own intonation. It’s like there’s this piece of music that’s playing, and I’m the dancer. I’m the body for what’s happening in this piece of music.”

“Dana H.” premiered in 2019 with Los Angeles’ Center Theatre Group and went to Chicago’s Goodman Theatre and New York’s Vineyard Theatre before a successful Broadway run in 2021.

“It’s a huge exercise in listening at a really deep level, and not just for me,” Baker says. “There’s this really deep silence in the house. It’s a silence that is so thick, because the story is compelling and heartbreaking and shocking, and very funny at times. The audience is listening really hard. If there’s a laugh in there, they laugh, and then they very quickly as a group pull themselves together. Because Dana keeps talking. She doesn’t hold for laughs.”

The play has been nominated for three Tony Awards, for director Les Waters, original star Deidre O’Connell and sound designer Mikhail Fiksel. Winners will be announced at the ceremony on June 12.

Acclaimed director Waters is the former associate artistic director of Berkeley Rep who went on to become artistic director of Actors Theatre of Louisville for six years. A new book called “The Theatre of Les Waters” was published by Routledge this year.

Playwright Hnath (pronounced “Nayth”) made a splash in the Bay Area in 2017 with the double whammy of “The Christians” at San Francisco Playhouse and “Isaac’s Eye” with Custom Made Theatre Co., and again the following year with “Red Speedo” with Center Repertory Company and “A Doll’s House, Part 2” at Berkeley Rep.

Although this is her first time performing in a Hnath play, Baker has been familiar with his work for some time. In fact, her husband, Kevin Kilner, starred in “The Christians” at the Denver Center.

Best known for originating the role of “C” in Edward Albee’s “Three Tall Women” in 1994, Baker served as standby for the Broadway production of “Dana H.”

“I prayed to God I would never have to go on, because it’s really complicated,” she recalls. “It’s like rubbing your head and your belly at the same time. I was so stunned by what I was looking at.”

The only other time Baker understudied a role on Broadway was in 2011 for “The Normal Heart,” which she also wound up performing in the Bay Area, at American Conservatory Theater. Her actual onstage Broadway debut was in 1995 in Tennessee Williams’ “Suddenly Last Summer.”

Although she didn’t have to go onstage in “Dana H.” on Broadway, she recalls, “I got a call and they said, ‘You want to go to Berkeley Rep?’ I said, yes, I do. They said, ‘You’re the only other person who knows how to do it.’ I said, yes, I would like to do it now. I’ve had some time to sit with it. I’m also going to go do it at the Guthrie next spring. But Deirdre and I are the only two people who know how to do it. I do have an understudy here, so I think there will be a third person.”

“It’s a fascinating experience, like nothing you’ll ever see,” Baker adds. “And as far as I know the play will never be published. You will only see this.”

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

‘DANA H.’

By Lucas Hnath, presented by Berkeley Repertory Theatre

When: In previews through June 7, main run is June 8-July 10

Where: Berkeley Rep’s Roda Theatre, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley

Tickets: $22-$115; www.berkeleyrep.org