By Linda L. Simeone

Where is a more appropriate place to conduct an interview with Gene and Toni Bua than at Cindy’s Corner, a homespun, old-fashioned coffee shop on Magnolia Boulevard across from Gene Bua’s Acting For Life Theatre in Burbank? Complete with cozy red leather booths and a running off-white formica and chrome counter with red-topped stools, Cindy’s Corner is a unique coffee shop where you can easily order a vegetarian egg roll alongside your corned beef hash and scrambled eggs, or get a double cheeseburger with a side of chop suey.

Across From Cindy’s Corner is an inspirational one-man-show chronicling Gene Bua’s legacy and dedication to his career and craft as a performer. Directed and produced by Toni Bull Bua, Gene’s wife, it also addresses his first love — singing.

Gene Bua has been working his craft as singer, actor, teacher, and coach for a long time, with some remarkable accomplishments and successes along the way, including a solid ten-year run on a popular daytime soap opera and an even longer run of successful marriage and partnership to Toni Bull Bua.

Toni is Gene’s wife, soul mate, lyri-cist, career partner and best friend.

Their story is an amazing one. A creative journey of ups and downs, pitfalls and promises, dreams and nightmares that are closely examined in the Buas’ latest theatrical venture, Across From Cindy’s Corner, which ran weekends through August 1, and will resume in September at the Acting For Life Theatre, located at 3435 W. Magnolia Boulevard in Burbank.

Gene Bua first began teaching and directing in New York City. He received his training at New York’s Neighborhood Playhouse, and while performing in an off-Broadway production of The Prince and the Pauper, he was “discovered” by the renowned American composer, Richard Rogers, who invited Gene to star in the Broadway revival of The Boys from Svracuse. He then went on to star in Children of Adorn and Hell bent for Heaven.

But Gene’s true and initial passion for singing and musicals was temporarily put on hold when he was given the opportunity to play the role of Bill Prentiss on CBS-TVs popular and very long-running (1951-1980) soap opera Love Of Life, taped in Manhattan in the early ’70s.

This is where Gene met Toni, by then an accomplished actress who was also cast in the TV show as Tess Krakauer. “We were the original Luke and Laura of our day,” Gene explains.

“Whenever we did personal appearances, we had to be escorted by police. The fans were intense.” adds Toni. “Some of our fans would track us down in restaurants, just sit right down and join us. They felt they knew us so intimately from the program, of course.”

While playing Bill and Tess, husband and wife, their on-camera romance became the real thing and they married shortly after meeting on Love of Life. They have been together ever since.

After Love of Life Gene also starred in Somerset, another popular Procter & Gamble soap opera on NBC, playing Steve Slade. Toni followed soon after in a small but recurring role. While on the set, other actors would often approach Gene and ask him about his technique and special hits of business that allowed him to be so spontaneous and powerful in the moment, take after take after take.

This inspired Gene to invite several of his co-stars — actors like Jo Beth Williams and Ted Danson — into his New York apartment to begin what he then referred to as the “actor’s experiment” — an experiment which eventually paved the way for Acting For Life.

Acting For Life, reads a pink flyer, is “Transformational acting for those who dare to become more powerful and spontaneous in their work and in their life.”

Bua’s premise is “Although our past experience has brought us to the present, the ‘point of power’ is always in the ‘now.’ The merging of the experience coming from the written word and the energy of the present moment triggers the artist’s talent into a natural selection of the deepest emotional-behavioral response… the material is experienced fully, specifically, universally.” Bua believes that using certain exercises and techniques designed to combine body, mind. and spirit, excellence and healing will be promoted on stage, screen — and in life.

“Acting, like life, is part of the game. In it there’s both joy and both pain,” sings Gene in an emotional moment in Across From Cindy’s Corner, where he sometimes talks and sings about the angst and fears that torment most performers. He explores the dark and haunting recriminations of “my-life-didn’t-turn-out-the-way-it-should-be” — or, more to the point, the demons that drive not only performers, but most human beings: “This is the one (part, car, wife, job, house) that will make me happy… This is the thing that will make me whole.”

Toni expresses this idea perfectly in her lyrics from their production, Second Wind: “On the way to the top of the mountain, the gold is in the moment, the thrill is in the climb.”

That’s what the Buas’ Acting For Life Theatre is centered on.

Across From Cindy’s Corner was derived from very old dragons that Gene was reluctant to face, mixed with a heavy dose of mid-life crisis. He explains, “I was with my friend Shelly — I guess you might call her a therapist. She doesn’t call herself that, but we meet and we often talk for long periods of time. We meet on and off after classes at the theatre, or over coffee, when there’s time, and often have the most interesting sessions, and while it’s not ‘formalized’ therapy — although God knows I have had that as well — it’s definitely intense therapy of a kind.

“Well, one day we got to talking about the success a Pepper Street,” (The Perfect People of Pepper Street, written and produced by Toni and Gene). “I had not only a lovely part in it, but I directed it and wrote all of the music! It ran for five years [1985-1990] and people raved about it.” says Gene with pride. “Mayor Tom Bradley proclaimeed a Pepper Street Day in Los Angeles and it was wonderful fun, but then Shelly said to me, ‘Gene, when you talk about music you light up, and I know you’re a teacher and you love to do that as well, but why don’t you just sing sometime. That’s what you really want to do, isn’t it?'”

“Well, talk about denial. I said, ‘Where would I do it and who would come to see me?’ And she said, ‘Well, you’re the only man I know who has his own theatre”

“‘Oh yeah, sure, but who would come?’ I argued and she said, ‘I would come. And in fact, everyone who knows you would come,’ and it was then that it hit me, that at the half-century mark in my life, that I just might be able to begin again just for myself and no one else. It was bringing back something very important from my past because I felt that I really lost it along the way.”

“Sure, I know I sang in Pepper Street and I wrote the music but as a per-former, I fell off the path.”

“And in a sense, I wasn’t being fulfilled completely by teaching anymore and I found that the more I taught and helped other people break through their barriers, the more secure I would become with things, but only on an ‘intellectual’ level.”

“By using a percentage of myself emotionally to get my students through, rationalizing to myself, ‘Well I’m working so hard and I’ve done two classes today and God, I’m so burnt out.’ I quickly realized that helping other people face their dragons wasn’t making me face mine!”

“Only when I walked out on the stage with Across From Cindy’s Corner and felt the sheer terror of the expectations that I put on myself, the expectations that other people put on me, all of the bullshit, did I finally realize that certainly this is the one format allowing me to face my dragons. Only then did I realize that that’s what Shelly was saying to me — that going out there and doing it on my own was important to me. That it’s about moving forward, it’s about going for it and following your dreams for once and for all.”

Gene’s Acting For Life methods search for that crack in the door which one feels has been slammed shut, whether it pertains to acting or real life. His creed is that when you’re feeling scared about anything, the only thing to do is to dive in, face it, commit to it, thus overcoming your fear. In his classes, he achieves this.

There’s a poignant and truthful line in the last part of Across From Cindy’s Corner that probably best sums up what Gene Bua does best: “Cindy’s Corner — she sell’s Chop Suey and I sell… hope.”