For the love of Janis

Janis, far right, spent Thanksgiving Day 1969 in Port Arthur, Texas, with parents Seth and Dorothy, sister Laura and brother Michael.

Michael Joplin Review * "Love, Janis" is playing at the Village Theater, 158 Bleecker St., in Greenwich Village. Tickets are available through Ticketmaster, 321-1000.

This Tucsonan knew the real Janis Joplin. He's her brother, and the new play based on her letters tells the side of the '60s icon he knew.

By Kathleen Allen
Arizona Daily Star

Michael Joplin doesn't see his sister Janis as an outrageous superstar who lived hard and died young.

The Tucsonan sees her as the one who showed him how to draw. And, as a sister who laughed easily, was smart, fun and talented.

And that's the sister he wants the world to know.

Joplin is a consultant on the play "Love, Janis," which just opened in New York City.

The story is adapted from his sister Laura Joplin's 1992 book of the same title (Acid Test, $16). The book is a collection of letters Janis wrote to her family in Port Arthur, Texas, while she was trying to make it as a singer in San Francisco with Big Brother and the Holding Company.

"Janis the icon is not my sister," Michael Joplin said recently while sipping java in a Midtown coffee shop, fresh from a trip to the show's opening late last month. There's a family resemblance, especially around the eyes.

"The play is our chance to make it the personal Janis, rather than the icon. Janis' career was four or five years long, but it's been a 30-year career since her death, so the two are different things."

Joplin, 48, remembers tender moments while growing up with his sister.

"What I remember the most was Janis drawing and painting, and I wanted to be that," he said. "So she sat with me lots of times to help me learn how to do that. When I draw today, I still use a lot of what I learned from her."

He also remembers the many activities the whole family did together - the elder Joplins and the three siblings all played a variety of instruments and would put little orchestras together and play for their own amusement.

Jump-rope in hand, Janis spent Father's Day 1949 with dad Seth and newborn sister Laura.

They would read together; listen to music, from classical and opera to contemporary; and pursue a variety of arts.

"It was a close family," Joplin said. "That it wasn't was a press thing. That Janis was thrown out of the house - all these things that have been said - totally aren't true. But Janis would say stuff (in interviews), they'd write it down, and now it's history."

Michael Joplin was 17 when his sister died of a heroin overdose in 1970. She was 27. She had just two albums out, and was working on her third, but superstar status was hers.

"It was terrible," he recalled. "It was a horrible time. It was very public, so that was even harder. I don't think any of us knew how public it was until I was sitting at the house and Dan Rather called. I'm 17 and he wants an interview from me. We were all kind of stunned."

Because of the singer's high-profile life and death, the family had a hard time dealing with the tragedy.

"I don't think Laura and I were ever able to grieve in private until about 10 years ago."

That's when Laura Joplin put the book together. And, about the time that Michael

Joplin, then a glass artist, began to handle the Joplin estate and the merchandising of the singer's image and materials, which he now does full-time.

"When we took over the business, we realized we could do this," said Joplin, who followed a girlfriend to Tucson in 1981 and settled here. "We weren't working for Janis; we were working for the icon."

Reading over the book, Laura and Michael thought they had something that could be more.

"We realized how good it was," he said.

They decided it might work as a play, and began poring over scripts to see if they could find a writer with a voice they liked.

They came across "Lost Highway," a play about Hank Williams written by Randy Myler, who at the time was at the Denver Center Theatre Company. Laura happened to live in Denver, as she still does.

"He was totally against doing the Janis play," Michael Joplin said. "And Laura said, 'Well, I've got these letters. Do you want to read them?' "

Myler, who lived in San Francisco and had seen Janis in concert, read them and was hooked. He agreed to write the play, but on one condition: The two Joplin siblings take a hands-off approach.

They agreed.

"He didn't want us as consultants, and rightfully so," said Michael Joplin. "He was pretty standoffish at first, trying to figure out what he wanted to do."

Michael Joplin and his sister were fine with that.

"We didn't have an agenda," he explained.

It wasn't until after the script was written, and the play was in rehearsals at the Denver Center, that Myler let them look at it. The two began to act as consultants when Myler, who was also directing, requested it, and to help raise money for the production.

The play opened in Denver, and played in Texas' Austin, Chicago, Cleveland and Sag Harbor on Long Island before it opened in New York's Greenwich Village. Good reviews have followed the production across the country.

Joplin's got mixed feelings about its success. He's happy that the Janis he knew is being brought to people. But it also means a higher profile for him.

"I've been cautious about having people know who I am," he said. "I thought for a long time about if I wanted to (talk to the media). But the play is becoming more important. It's becoming a real thing. This is for the play."

And it's worth it, he said. "Love, Janis" does what Michael Joplin and his sister hoped it would: It shows the personal Janis.

"It's like getting to revisit family every time I see it," he said.