September 5-11, 1996
News and Arts Weekly

Life 101

By: Amy Beth Arkawy

Leave it to The Schoolhouse to kick off September with a crash course in Life 101. Liza Vann brings her lively one-woman show, The Top of the Bottom Half: An Evening With the Keeper of All Knowledge, to the Croton Falls Theater for three nights only, Sept. 6-8.

The show, which had a successful run at Seven Angels in Connecticut, doles out pithy and practical rules. Like pick your battles. Appreciate it when you get it right. Acknowledge it when you get it wrong. And my fave: You don't have to jump out of the car if you can't make a pig noise.

Hey, this is stuff to live by. It promises to be one of those amusing, enlightening evenings that would actually change your perspective. My recent chat with Vann certainly gave me a swift inspirational kick in the pants.

A North Carolina native, Vann is an actress and independent film producer(The Radicals and an adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's The Magician, currently in development). She also happens to be the seventh of 12 kids. Hence the title of her show (even my creative math skills could calculate that equation.) Vann has been compared to Erma Bombeck, Deepak Chopra and Will Rogers. Now there's a morph for the record books.

Vann comes from a colorful clan. Her dad was a prominent criminal attorney. "So whenever any of the kids found themselves in a bind, it was big headlines," she muses. Among her siblings are "two lawyers, a probation officer, two have gone to prison, one jail." She quickly adds that only one lawyer wound up behind bars.

Coming from such a large, interesting brood has enabled Vann to negotiate life with greater ease than most of us mere mortals. "I just seem to get to the bottom line faster than most."

And with her fast-talking witty Southern storytelling talents, she sets out to teach us a few things. The show is really a journey through her family's travails, triumphs and tragedies. "It's amazing to realize that my parents raised kids through four decades, the '40s through the '80s. They had kids in World War II and the Vietnam War."

Every family's got stories. But imagine 12 times the pleasure, 12 times the pain.

"I cover everything: dating, marriage, murder." And it sounds like she's covering it in the proper order.

Vann is forthright about the substance abuse that plagued a few of her sibs. "Like so many people, my parents were blind-sided. Here they were living a Beaver Cleaver '50s life, when the '60s and '70s hit. A couple of my brothers got involved with drugs and had to go to prison," she recounts matter-of-factly. "It was horrible. But they got through it and moved on."
She's as nonchalant about surviving a bout of breast cancer a few years ago. "I had cancer but it wasn't an enormous event in my life," she calmly states. "People would be amazed; they'd say 'God, you even get the good cancer.' But I just asked the right questions, went to the right doctors. You do what you have to do. It's just common sense." Vann is the most serene funny person I've ever encountered.

"I think a lot of people have lost perspective. They don't have a grasp on what life really means, how to go on. They just seem to have trouble with a lot of little things that I don't seem to have a problem with." By the way, Vann, who's married to the same guy for over 10 years (yeah, she could teach Barbara De Angelis a few tricks) doesn't have any kids. Guess she thought the earth is populated with enough Vanns. "But with all these nieces and nephews, I feel like I have millions."

The stories and ideas may all be Vann's, but she co-wrote the show with Katherine Griffith. "I'd rather eat dirt than write." she confesses. Hey, there are days when a muddy little lunch sounds delectable to me, too.

You might want to pick up a shiny new spiral notebook before sitting by the feet of this oracle of all knowing. There might be a few things to jot down. Just remember: you can't get it right if you don't even try. But then again, you don't have to make the mistake to learn the lesson.

And yes, kids, there will be a question-and-answer session following each performance. "After listening to me talk non-stop for an hour, people always want more. I have to wonder, are these people all there?" Vann says.

The Top of the Bottom Half (An Evening With the Keeper of All Knowledge) at The Schoolhouse, Owens Road, Croton Falls, N.Y., Sept. 6-8. Call (914) 277-8477 for tickets.