Jack London comes to life in play 'The House that Jack Built' at 6th Street Playhouse

A century after his death, Jack London continues to fire the imaginations of fans, fellow writers and scholars.

But while the dashing Glen Ellen author is the subject of a number of biographies, his adventure-packed life - marked by early hardship, wild success and complicated relationships - has rarely been dramatized. The last attempt was a 1943 Hollywood biopic based on a book by Jack's widow, Charmian.

But Jack London scholar Cecelia Tichi has taken on the task of bringing London to life on stage. A professor of American Literature at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, Tichi has written “The House that Jack Built,” a play that takes an unvarnished look at the all-too-human side of London in his last years,

The new play, delving into the real life man behind the larger-than-life persona, premiered this month at Santa Rosa's 6th Street Playhouse. The final performances are Thursday through Sunday, Sept. 22-25. They will also present a one-man dramatic performance based on London's “Call of the Wild,” with professional actor Charlie Bethel who specializes is adapting epic novels into one-man shows. That show has its last two performances at 11 a.m. Saturday and 7 p.m. Sunday. Sept. 24 and Sept. 25. Both plays are being presented as a “Jack London Festival,” marking the centennial of the writer's death in 1916.

The public saw London as highly-paid celebrity writer, a handsome colossus straddling two lives - one traveling the world as an action hero, the other living the dream on a California mountaintop where he built a mansion as rugged and invincible as himself out of redwood and rock.

The truth is, London, for all his riches and accomplishments, struggled with debt, relationships and declining health that led to his premature death at 40 in November 1916.

The play comes at a time of renewed focus on Jack London during the centennial year of his death. The city of Oakland, where London grew up, and Jack London State Historic Park in Glen Ellen have marked the centennial with programs and activities. On Sept. 17, the Glen Ellen historic park hosts “Call of the Wild -- A Jack London Celebration,” with dinner, entertainment and optional period dress.

While “The House That Jack Built” is set around the tragedies and difficulties in London's personal life, it carries a larger message about his enduring legacy as a powerful voice for the common man, which continues to resonate, according to Tichi. She is the author of “Jack London: A Writer's Fight for a Better America,” which examines the author as a force for social, economic and political change.

Tichi talked recently about London the writer and reformer and “The House That Jack Built.”

Q: What drew you to Jack London as a subject for scholarly research?

A: Anybody who teaches American Literature, as I do, snags at least a few quotes from London along the way. But what got me to London seriously is that he lived through The Gilded Age, and he helped America get past it. And now we're in a new Gilded Age.

Q: How was he different from other social reformers?

A: Other reformers were solidly middle class. London was a child laborer. He knew that he typified hundreds of thousands of workers in the U.S. who were toiling in mines, factories and textile mills. He worked not as an underground journalist but as a day laborer trying to help his family.

He called himself a “work beast.” He knew in his muscle memory what it meant to labor under conditions that would have ended his life, as it had ended many lives by age 50. The person with financial capital increases his or her wealth so that by 50 that person is richer.

But the capital of a laborer is muscle, and when that muscle is exerted and exerted and cannot recover, that personal capital is depleted like an old horse ready for the glue factory.

Q: What prompted you to tackle London fictionally, a form so different than scholarly nonfiction?

A: I also have written a cluster of mystery novels in the 1990s, published by Warner Books and the New American Library. You write a lot of dialogue if you're doing mystery fiction. That gave me a leg up in writing a book on Jack London, on seeing how extraordinary he was: an adventurer, a photographer, a sailor, war correspondent, sports writer.

My first thought was that for decades Mark Twain had been featured in a one-person stage presentation by Hal Holbrook. I thought maybe there should be a Jack London solo evening. Q: But “The House That Jack Built” did not end up as a one-man show. Why?

A: It occurred to me that apart from being in an audience at plays, I had never thought of writing a play or even being behind the scenes. I asked a colleague of mine in the theater department, Phillip Frank, if I could sit in on his evening course in theater. Every Tuesday night i would sit in that class, and Phillip would help us understand what theater was about. In that class I realized that solo Jack London wouldn't be nearly as effective as a play with a characters.

Q: What makes his story ripe for dramatization?

A: He and his second wife had a very well matched decade together, but they had their troubles. While I was doing research on their relationship, I saw her diaries in the Huntington Library. They lost a baby, and then she had a miscarriage. I saw that in her secret diary, a little, tiny, leather bound book.

She would write, “My daughter would be two months old now.” “My daughter would be walking.” I saw how haunted she was.

One of Jack London's books is “The Valley of the Moon.” In that novel, the woman loses a baby. I saw it as an opportunity to put in the tensions. She loses the baby and he exploits that in a novel. Along with their love, there is anger.

Q: Any surprising revelations about London in the play?

A: Conflicts with close friends from his past will surface. And the issue of Jack London and race and ethnic identity, He gets dismissed as a racist a lot of times. That issue and his troubled conscience come up.

Q: Is it a play about The Wolf House burning, or is that a metaphor?

A: The house burning is not about brick and mortar, redwood and rock. It's about the larger meaning of London's life and his legacy.

There is a chiming on an anvil as Jack and Charmian hold hands and leave the stage. I want that chiming to go into the mournful toll of a bell. It's not to be an ending that is happily ever after, but a tone with a certain ambiguity.

The play is about his hopes, his dreams, his real legacy. It's about the message he put forward for America.

Q: What is that message?

A: It's based on his socialist principal. We're social beings. We deserve to arrange our national life on more favorable terms for everybody.