‘White Chip’ uses humor to relate director’s efforts toward recovery at FST

His play “The White Chip” may detail some of the most difficult moments of Sean Daniels’ life, but he lived to write about them and experience unexpected opportunities.

Now associate director of Florida Studio Theatre, Daniels describes himself as a high-functioning alcoholic who managed to direct plays and run a theater as his life was swirling down a drain.

The autobiographical play that closes FST’s Stage III series “kind of charts from my first drink up through the birth of my daughter and trying to explain how does it happen? How does it sneak into your life and what are the steps that you take to be able to turn it around?”

His path to recovery started in October 2011. He had been fired from his job as interim artistic director of Actors Theater of Louisville, his wife had left him and he had crashed his car.

“I decided I was going to take my own life,” he recalled. Instead, he called his mother, who now lives in Bradenton. Their relationship at the time was rocky, but the call came on the day that marked her first anniversary of sobriety.

“I didn’t know she was sober when I called,” he said. “She was walking home from a meeting where she got her one-year chip. She saved my life in that moment.”

The play includes a monologue “that I wrote on the fourth day of rehab, trying to make sense of how I had gotten there and what had gone on.”

He decided to expand that monologue into a play when he realized there was no other theatrical story dealing with the issues he faced. Daniels said he grew up on after-school specials and “special episodes” of sitcoms where alcoholics “were never portrayed as being part of the fabric of life.” Daniels decided that he wanted to “write the thing I couldn’t find, that addiction looks really different to a lot of people.”

That includes telling the story with humor so it wouldn’t sound preachy or reach only a limited audience of people on similar paths.

“I had to give enough pills to enough dogs to know you have to wrap them in enough treats so the dog will take them,” he said. “So I thought, how do you have a conversation with the audience without them feeling you’re preaching to them?”

The result was “The White Chip,” which he also describes as a love letter to his mother.

The play had its premiere in 2016 at the Merrimack Repertory Theater in Lowell, Massachusetts, where he was artistic director from 2014-19.

The FST production will be the play’s sixth, and Daniels initially intended to direct it for the first time. But a new production of the play in New York, where it was first produced in 2019 (and expected to return before COVID shut down theaters), led him to turn over the staging reins to good friend and colleague Aaron Munoz, who was in Daniels’ summer production of “Comedy of Tenors” in Sarasota.

The New York production, which has received glowing reviews, was supported by a number of celebrity producers, including Annaleigh Ashford, Jason Biggs, John Larroquette and Hank Azaria. The run, which opened in January, is sold out, and Daniels said he has been traveling frequently to New York to meet with other producers who may be interested in moving it to a commercial run.

Of the 2019 production, The New York Times said the director and cast “achieve a delicate equilibrium between laugh-out-loud comedy and gasp-inducing, self-inflicted tragedy. What’s most remarkable though is the utter absence of bravado.”

The play’s main character, Daniels’ stand-in, is named Steven, played by Saxon Palmer, who makes his FST debut in the play. He has appeared on Broadway in “Three Sisters,” “Design for Living” and “You Can Never Tell.” Mike Flood and Julia Brothers, also making their FST debuts, play multiple characters who weave in and out of Steven’s life.

Developing new recovery programs in Sarasota

Daniels came to FST as associate director in 2022 after four years as artistic director of the Arizona Theatre Company. His Sarasota job also makes him director of The Recovery Project, a new effort that is still getting underway but is designed to use theater and the arts to destigmatize addiction issues and help drive conversations on how to address the problems.

“The idea is how do we change national narratives? Unless you’re a bum living under an overpass, you’ve got it under control,” he said. “That’s what TV has told us. The elevator doesn’t have to go all the way to the bottom for you to get off.”

The conversation needs to deal with addiction as a disease or illness like skin cancer or diabetes, “something to be aware of. There are solutions to help you. We don’t want to wait until you have Stage 4 cancer before we start talking about it. This is anti-stigma work early on.”

Daniels said he jokes that everyone in his family has skin cancer and alcoholism “We talk about skin cancer and everyone knows you have to have a dermatologist. You have to go to the doctor, but we still go to the beach. Yet there’s this other disease in our family that’s whispered about. Even if you’re functioning at work, it’s not like you can’t get help, that you can’t get it under control, that you can’t stop before you crash your car.”

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He also has gotten involved as anti-stigma director for Live Tampa Bay, which is focused on reducing overdoses by 50 percent over the next five years. It has won support from major business, faith and philanthropic leaders in the Tampa Bay area, he said.

After the run of “The White Chip” in Sarasota, Daniels expects a version of the production to be presented in the Sarasota jail and in rehab centers.

“It’s bigger than just a show,” he said. “For all the work we do in the Tampa Bay area, I want this to be a tool in the area.”

Such a venture would bring FST back to its roots 50 years ago when it began as a touring theater presenting shows in prisons, nursing homes and migrant farms, anywhere that people could not get out to attend a play in a theater.

‘The White Chip’

By Sean Daniels. Directed by Aaron Munoz. Runs March 20-April 12, Florida Studio Theatre Bowne’s Lab, 1265 First St., Sarasota. $25-$46. 941-366-9000; floridastudiotheatre.org

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This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Director tackles recovery with humor in ‘White Chip’ at Sarasota’s FST