TENNESSEE:

Earle uses his celebrity again, this time in theater -- Except when they're singing or acting, we tend to expect our celebrities to keep their mouths shut.

It's Pavlovian, almost, the eye-rolling you see when Susan Sarandon or Richard Gere or Alec Baldwin - or, heaven forbid, Barbra Streisand - comment on topics other than Hollywood, pop music or fashion. What does Bono know about AIDS policy? Who cares? Martin Sheen thinks we need to go slowly on Iraq? Oh, please.

And yet the truth is that in this fame-obsessed world we live in, we do listen to what celebrities have to say. Like it or not, they have the power to draw attention to issues we might otherwise ignore. And they have constituencies whose opinions they can shape, just as politicians do.

That's one of the reasons we are devoting a considerable amount of space in this issue to Nashville singer-songwriter (and anti-death-penalty activist) Steve Earle and his new play, Karla, opening Friday in its premiere by BroadAxe Theatre.

In the play about Texas death row inmate Karla Faye Tucker - who was put to death in 1998 after an unsuccessful campaign to stop the execution by evangelical Christians who believed she had experienced a genuine religious conversion - Earle puts his thinking on the issue of the death penalty into dramatic form.

Whether theatergoers support the death penalty or oppose it, many of them will head to the show because they're interested in Earle - his music, his colorful history (which includes a much-publicized bout with drug addiction in the early 1990s) and his tendency to get involved in controversies such as the recent flap about his song John Walker's Blues, written in the voice of "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh.

Earle is not above exploiting his fame on behalf of the cause; indeed, he understands its use better than most. Trying to draw crowds at anti-death- penalty rallies, he told me wistfully, "is the only time I've wished I was a bigger celebrity."

Still, if the only reason to go see Karla - or, for that matter, to buy Earle's records or go to his concerts - was because he's famous (at least as famous as alternative-country rockers get these days), I'd be able to take it or leave it.

But that's not the case. Earle is no abolitionist-come-lately; he has devoted much effort to the issue as an activist during the past decade. He has thought long and deeply about it, and he's gotten far closer to the reality of state-sponsored killing than most of us would ever dream of. He has developed friendships with men on death row and, in one case, watched a man die.

Intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, Earle has done his homework.

"Steve's done his research," says activist Abe Bonowitz, who's been on the front lines with Earle at several anti-death-penalty events. "He's not a guy who just gets on a bandwagon; he's been there. If you look at his credentials, you realize that he knows what he's talking about."

Despite the fact that it's Earle's 1st play, then, Karla can reasonably be expected to have a certain depth. If it proves to be a piece of left-wing agitprop, it's likely to be subtle, well-argued, emotionally charged agitprop.

"Actually, I think he really transcended the initial idea, which was to write a play about Karla Faye Tucker and the death penalty," says fellow activist Sara Sharpe, Earle's partner, who is playing the lead role. "He went far beyond that, or was led past that, toward writing about forgiveness. Karla is certainly not going to be up there preaching about whether or not the death penalty is justifiable."

Another reason to take Karla seriously is that it seems to be of a piece with Earle's body of work as a songwriter, which most listeners agree is unusually substantive, artful and moving. Earle has been working in the grand tradition of Woodie Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan; now, perhaps, he is taking up the mantle of Clifford Odets, Arthur Miller, Tony Kushner and other socially committed dramatists.

We'll see. And as theatergoers, we'll hope that Earle, having piqued our interest because of his name, holds it with something more.

(source: Kevin Nance covers theater, dance and film for The Tennessean, Oct. 20)