Bo Eason Injects Danger into ACT Theatre

I need Bo Eason to tell me it's okay to watch football.

After seeing Eason's engrossing one-man show at ACT on Thursday, I don't know if I can do so guilt-free again. Watching the former NFL player act out the injury that helped end his career actually made me physically ill. No joke: Sweat pouring out of me, I excused myself down my row, and hustled to the bathroom to splash water on my face. I thought about the real scars on Eason's actor knees, about seeing him inject himself there on stage, as he did before games during his playing days.

And I thought about Curtis Williams, who in 2000 absorbed a fatal hit playing in a football game for the University of Washington. "He fell to his back and went into convulsions," teammate Anthony Kelley relates in Derek Johnson's The Dawgs of War , which I'd read earlier that week . "He was mouthing the words 'I can't breathe .' ... Then Curtis began spitting up and shaking, and his eyes rolled up in the back of his head." Williams died of his injuries 18 months later.

This weekend, a 17-year-old Spokane kid died playing football. Today, the NFL announced a study showing that former players are 19 times more likely to get dementia than me.

"There's always a price to pay," Eason tells me over the phone, hours before Tuesday night's performance of Runt of the Litter . "I watch [football players] and I go 'Wow...the one part that's invisible is the blood, body parts, surgery after surgery and the committment to the training.' All we see is these young guys that look like Superman. We're not thinking about the years off their life that they take."

Bo Eason as Jack Henry in "Runt of the Litter" (Photo: Chris Bennion)

Eason's largely autobiographical show stars him as Jack Henry, an undersized Houston Oilers safety who, overshadowed by his star quarterback brother, made it to the NFL by training harder and tackling more violently than anyone else. Henry is in the locker room 45 minutes before he is to meet his brother's team for the AFC Championship.

The autobiographical parts: Bo Eason was an undersized Houston Oilers safety who, overshadowed by his star quarterback brother Tony , made it to the NFL by training harder and tackling more violently than anyone else. The non-autobiographical parts: the two Easons never played against each other.

Runt of the Litter is in part about the price we pay for success. And it's not just football players who pay it: The Yale kid taking adderall to fuel an all-night study sessions gets erectile dysfuction. The executive working stress-filled 80-hour weeks has a heart attack.

But I didn't derive entertainment from the impotent student and the dead businessperson, like I did from the paralyzed football player. Eason's shown me that I can't bear to watch the physical aftermath of a football game; yet I'm happy to cheer on the young men who play. Am I a disgusting person?

Eason says no--that athletics are part of human nature. And that they serve a valuable purpose.

"I think men have a lot of aggression inside of them and if there's nowhere to put that, it's a dangerous thing." Eason contends that football, and now acting, have saved him from far worse pursuits. "I put all this TNT inside of me on the field. Now I put it on the stage. If I don't have an outlet, I'm going to be in trouble. I found the two professions where it's okay."

Lest I give the wrong impression: Eason's show is not a jeremiad against modern athletics. It celebrates them. Eason relates hilarious stories of unforgettable teammates, of locker room hijinks. Partly, I suspect, to recapture the camaraderie he says he's missed since retiring from the NFL because of injury in 1987. It's a compelling 90 minutes of theater that's paced well and doesn't get dull. The ending is one you'll be thinking about the next day--at least that was true for my companion and I. (Also, Eason mentions former Seahawk Kenny Easley as one of his heroes, which earns him major points with me.)

Football fan or not, you should check it out.

And, with Eason's approval, I'll watch football this weekend. Guilt-free? Talk to me next time there's another Curtis Williams.

Runt of the Litter plays every day except Monday through October 11 at ACT Theatre.