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Monday, Dec. 28, 2009

Jonestown Revisited: Evolving play looks at how Modestan turned to cult, suicide

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While reading an exposé about San Francisco preacher and cult leader Jim Jones in 1977, Ken White was surprised to see mention of an old friend from Modesto.

Michael Prokes, who had attended Davis High School with White, was a spokesman for Jones' People's Temple and praised its work with the poor.

On Nov. 18, 1978, more than 900 followers of Jones died in a mass suicide in their compound in the South American country of Guyana. Prokes, who wasn't there at the time, killed himself a few months after that in a news conference at a Modesto motel. He was 31.

White, who lives in Modesto, never forgot the story and has turned it into a play, "My Father's House," which he hopes to stage locally next fall. Set in Modesto, the drama focuses on the last days of Prokes' life.

In the play, Prokes visits his parents and his friends to talk about what happened with Jones. The play ends with Prokes' suicide.

While White did a lot of research on the subject, including talking with people who knew Prokes and reading several books on Jonestown, the playwright is clear that his work is not a documentary and that much of it is inspired by his imagination. He doesn't know who Prokes talked with when he returned from Jonestown, but imagines what he might have said.

Some of the characters are composites based on several people. But others are real and still living, such as Jim Enochs, who was Prokes' high school government teacher and a former Modesto City Schools District superintendent.

The title comes from the Bible verse John 14:2: "In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you."

"I thought at the time, this would make an interesting screenplay or novel," said White, 61. "Here's a Modesto kid involved in all this interesting stuff. I sort of tucked it away and didn't do anything with it until now."

White, who began writing the play in 2007, has produced and directed video projects for such corporations as Bechtel, Levi Strauss & Co. and E.&J. Gallo Winery. He has taught a mass communications and film appreciation class at MJC and has written screenplays, novels, a play and a sitcom pilot that were never produced.

He has bachelor's degrees in English history and Russian literature from the University of California at Davis and a master's degree in educational technology from San Francisco State University.

Friends consulted

White has enlisted support for his play from some of Prokes' friends, local theater groups and faculty members from Modesto Junior College and California State University, Stanislaus. Many participated in a private staged reading of the play at MJC in July.

"It works as a historical drama that connects really close to home and it also serves as a warning about blindly following a charismatic leader and a cult," said Jim John- son, a professor emeritus and former MJC dean of the Arts, Humanities and Communications Division, who directed the staging. "That's all still with us today."

While Johnson believes the play has many flaws that need to be fixed, he said MJC is definitely interested in staging a production and is considering entering it eventually in the San Francisco Fringe Festival.

White is in the process of rewriting the play based on comments he got from the summer reading.

Neither White nor The Bee has been able to reach any of Prokes' family members for a comment on the play.

Prokes was born in Modesto in 1947 and graduated in 1965 from Davis High School, where he was a four-year honor student and member of the football team. He attended MJC, then earned a bachelor of science degree in communications from California State University, Fullerton, in 1969. Friends said he was a member of the Second Church of Christ, Scientist, in Modesto.