Longevity isn’t a word that gets tossed around Hollywood very often, especially not when discussing theater. For a play to surpass the six-month mark in this town, it practically belongs in the annals of history alongside “Cats” on Broadway. But for over two years “Point Break Live!” has been whipping audiences into a frenzy.

Every Friday and Saturday night at the Dragonfly in Hollywood, the 1991 Keanu Reeves/Patrick Swayze epic is performed live on stage and, yes, it is 100 percent pure adrenaline. Taking a campy cue from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the show is all about immersion and interactivity, whether it’s Super Soakers blasting the audience to replicate the climactic tsunami scene or the rotating star of the show. The lynchpin of “Point Break Live!” rests squarely on the shoulders of whichever unrehearsed volunteer is chosen by applause-o-meter to play Johnny Utah nightly guided by only a stage hand and cue cards.

Everyone knows Point Break is all about Johnny and Bodhi, but anyone whose had the pleasure of getting splattered with fake blood or sprayed with beer in the “Point Break Live!” audience knows that the star of this show is Thomas Blake filling James LeGros’ shoes as Roach. Also serving as one of the show’s producers, Blake has been with the production for three years, ever since its run in New York. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s been surfing since his youth in Wrightsville Beach, N.C., maybe it’s because he stayed with the show as it moved from coast to coast, maybe it’s because of his long flaxen locks and exceptional pronunciation of “Dude,” but Blake is a wonder to behold as he flings himself around the Dragonfly every weekend.

Sitting down with him at a small café near the theater one weekday afternoon, the iced coffee he’s sipping seems to have little effect on the perpetual cool calm he exudes. Blake is a constant contradiction who keeps you guessing. Both approachable and enigmatic, confident but initially shy, he sounds and looks like a stoner surfer, yet during his tenure with “PBL!” he and his producing partners, Eve Hars and George Spielvogel (who also plays Angelo Pappas, the Gary Busey role), launched the show in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and San Francisco. Like Optimus Prime, Blake is more than meets the eye.

Blake explains that the show first came West thanks to “an offer from Quiksilver to do a one-up thing. That got us in the works of coming to L.A., and we decided to just see what happens.”

Blake ended up driving cross country with Hars, Spielvogel and a car filled with “PBL!” props. Soon, they were preparing to put the show up at Charlie O’s, a downtown dive bar in the drug-infested Alexandria Hotel.

Getting the show on its feet is “always an interesting thing,” Blake says with a sly smile. “When you go to set it up, actors don’t get it. They’re like, ‘What? Wait. What do you want me to do? You want me to hump who?’”

Despite uncertain actors and a venue where the lights where jury-rigged to hang off pipes, bricks fell from the ceiling and the sewer line once broke, flooding their “theater” with a literal shitstorm, the show began to gain intense momentum and soon found a new home at the Dragonfly, though Blake doesn’t really seem to care where he performs as long as the show goes on.

“The most important thing is to have a blast,” Blake decrees. “We just go out there and have fun. There’s nothing better than getting the masks on, getting the guns out and saying, ‘Alright, let’s do this.’ That’s my favorite thing no matter what’s going on. The best part of my week is when the show starts.”

An essential ingredient to the raucous fun of “PBL!” is involving the audience, who are shoved to the floor during bank robberies, drenched with any number of liquids and tossed into the center of the melee.

“I think we pushed the envelope a lot on audience interactivity,” Blake grins. “It was always interactive, but we definitely stepped it up [in Los Angeles] because we didn’t really have a choice. In Manhattan, we were in a black box theater. In L.A., we didn’t have any room on the stage so [we’d go out] into the audience.”

When asked if he ever wonders if they’re pushing patrons too far, Blake shakes his head as a Cheshire Cat smirk creeps across his face.

“People come because they want to be part of the fun. I think they feel a little cheated if they don’t get abused a little.”



The Dragonfly is located at 6510 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles. Showtimes are Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. For more information, visit myspace.com/pointbreaklive.