Barbara Bain busts boundaries with ‘Gruesome Playground Injuries’

Barbara Bain breaks more than skin and bone in her latest stage production, Gruesome Playground Injuries. 

Bain — the star of TV’s original Mission: Impossible, now a director at the Actors Studio — has gone rogue this time, leading a skeleton crew troupe in crafting a maverick show that breaks with tradition beyond the walls of their home base and rehearsal space in West Hollywood.

The play by Rajiv Joseph tells the darkly comic, emotionally intense story of the relationship between two characters, Kayleen and Doug (played by Sofia Vassilieva and Curtis Belz), over the span of 30 years. It explores the connection between physical and emotional pain as the two characters repeatedly find themselves drawn back to one another through injuries, both literal and metaphorical.

The production is thriving thanks to a lack of shackles, Bain said. She describes how her small, tight-knit team created a full-fledged show without relying on rigid traditional theater roles — or rules. 

“There are five of us in this room right now, and we have done it all together,” Bain said. “It’s very unusual not to bring in a set designer, a music person, or a sound designer. We did it together like a bunch of kids saying, ‘Let’s put on a play.’”

Co-director Katelyn Ann Clark says everyone was given room to develop their ideas freely, allowing the production to flourish organically.

“This play now has parts of all of us in it,” said star Vassilieva, reflecting back on the production’s origins, when she and Belz first explored the material during the pandemic.

“It was like this stew that just kept cooking, and we weren’t sure what we were going to end up with — definitely not what we thought when we first started reading it,” Belz said. “But it turned out better than we could have imagined.”

He noted the special bond he shares with Vassilieva. 

“We just get each other,” Belz said. “I know what she’s thinking, she knows what I’m thinking. There’s like a level of trust that I’m not sure if I’ve ever had with anyone else, honestly.”

That type of trust — in one another, in the power of the play and in themselves — has made this a transformative experience, they say.

“This process has changed the way that I go out and talk to and deal with people in the world,” Vassilieva said. “It’s given me a trust in myself and a confidence to make a decision and know that that’s the decision I need to stand by.”

“It’s one of the most rewarding pieces of work that I’ve done,” Bain said. “The joy that I’ve found in this room with these folks—I cannot possibly put a price or value on it.”

Gruesome Playground Injuries premieres at 8 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 19, at the Davidson/Valentini Theatre at The LGBT Center, 1125 N. McCadden Place. The show runs at 8 p.m. Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays and 2 p.m. Sundays through Sept. 29. Tickets are $22 and can be purchased here: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/gruesome.