Courtesy ‘Trippin’ to Momma’s’ will open Friday, June 13 at the Jump-Start Performance Co.

Twenty years ago, Chuck Squier began taking road trips in his ’74 blue Volkswagen from San Antonio to the Rio Grand Valley to visit his mother on weekends after her health began declining.

Squier’s travels are the foundation for his play, “Trippin’ to Momma’s,” which will open at the Jump-Start Performance Co. Friday, June 13, as a part of the Electric Performance Lab.
“It’s based on my life and my story,” said Squier, a Jump-Start company member and one of the organization’s founding members. “In those trips, it was like here we are on the same road, yet this time it’s different.”

There are only two characters in the play: Henry, a mama’s boy who has not revealed his homosexuality to those around him, and Gary, a hitchhiker who has come out of the closet.
“What’s interesting about Henry is that he is closeted, and by the end, he and Gary almost switch personalities,” said Billy Muñoz, who plays Henry and works at Jump-Start as an assistant technical director.

By the second act of the play, Henry smokes marijuana and has told his mother that he’s gay, Muñoz said. The character Henry is somewhat reminiscent of an earlier Squier, who said he was closeted for many years and very close to his mother. Jump-Start actor Daniel Jackson plays Gary, who is somewhat of a composite of people Squier has known.
 
In the play, Henry and Gary start out as strangers, become lovers and then ultimately end up as close friends with a genuine affection for each other, even though they are no longer boyfriends.

“It reflects on the concepts of gradual changes,” said Robert Rehm, the play’s director and designer.

The characters spend 95 percent of their time in the car, Squier said. The two also drink beer, smoke pot and have a heavy case of the munchies, but it’s not dwelled on.
“In the writing, I thought, ‘I don’t want to get trapped into a love story for drugs’,” Squier said.

But “Trippin’.” definitely doesn’t shy away from sex, love and relationships.

“I think the show is sex-positive,” Squier said.

It also covers some of the issues in gay culture, as well as relationships in general.
“This play ‘Trippin’ to Momma’s’ helps add to the dialogue about what it means to be gay,” Squier said.

For Rehm, this is the first full-length play he has directed in three years, since an accident left him paralyzed from the neck down and wheelchair-bound.

Rehm was directing a University Interscholastic League play as a Jefferson High School teacher when he fell offstage and into an orchestra pit and broke his neck.

Now, Rehm uses “sip-and-puff” technology to create his images on a computer. Through a mouth-controlled straw, Rehm can tint the colors of a video backdrop or design a graphic.
“It’s a real challenge for me to direct with just a wheelchair without being able to move,” he said.

But Rehm has maintained a positive outlook.

“It’s an obstacle to overcome, a challenge that I meet with as much enthusiasm as I can,” Rehm said.

Emily Messer | 210SA contributor