Being Buddy Holly

Growing up in Coeur d’Alene, Dalen Gunn had no idea a long-dead American rock 'n' roll icon would have a profound influence on his life.

The partially deaf son of a successful flooring industry innovator, Gunn, 30, knows Buddy Holly in a most intimate way.

More than 300 times, Gunn has performed as Holly in “Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story” in front of audiences in theaters throughout the U.S.

He is reprising the role in Spokane Valley Summer Theatre’s current production of the show. The final performances are this weekend. 

“You never want to try to impersonate someone, because it just comes across as disingenuous, but you do your best at fusing all your connections, and I don’t have to go very far to make those connections with Buddy,” Gunn said.

The first time he was cast in the role, Gunn didn’t know the difference between Buddy Holly and Billy Holiday.

But he researched the 1950s rocker who rose to fame with hits like “That’ll Be The Day” and “Peggy Sue,” and was amazed to find some “crazy similarities” between himself and Holly.

Both Gunn and Holly were born the youngest in their families. They both come from families in the flooring business. Gunn’s family owns Bullet Tools, a Hayden company that develops and manufactures tools for flooring tradesmen.

They each played the violin as a first instrument, but it was with the guitar that their careers took off.

And they were both born with disabilities.

Gunn has his deafness, and for Holly, it was his eyesight, hence the big black frames that back in the day, were considered neither sexy nor cool.

Holly tried to sidestep his inability to see without the glasses, Gunn said, until he dropped his guitar pick while performing on stage and found himself stumbling around trying to find it in front of the crowd. At that point, Holly stopped caring about his image and focused on the music.

“The same as he embraced it, I’ve learned to embrace it,” Gunn said.

Gunn has learned it’s his responsibility to communicate that he might need assistance, or need to handle things a certain way, because of his deafness.

“If a person doesn’t know, then when they don’t understand me, that’s not their fault. That’s my fault,” Gunn said. “Understand there are gracious people out there, but understanding that, you must take responsibility for your own disability.”

While offstage, he said, he may have to rely on his fellow cast members to make sure he doesn’t miss a cue line.

With music, he said he enjoys playing instruments barefoot when he can. He said he often plays at Heart of the City Church, and they “graciously allow me to play without shoes.”

“It’s a combination of being able to hear the sound in the floor, and it’s a funny security blanket I picked up as a kid,” Gunn said. “I believe it has to do with picking up vibrations in the ground.”

Gunn’s path to the theater was heavily influenced by his sister, Elisha Gunn. She would take her brother along as she dove into various performance-related projects and plays.

Eventually, he began acting at Lake City Playhouse which led him to performing in shows at Civic Theatre in Spokane.

Then in 2010, when the lead actor in an upcoming performance of "The Buddy Holly Story" was unable to fulfill the role, director Yvonne A.K. Johnson, suggested Gunn audition for the part. He learned to play the guitar in six weeks and won the role. The production was a smash, breaking all sales records in Spokane Civic Theatre’s 64-year history.

Gunn then went to New York City and attended Circle in the Square Theatre School. It is the only acting school in a Broadway theater.

Gunn is now director of the newly formed Spokane Valley Summer Theatre. "The Buddy Holly Story" is the new, nonprofit theater company’s inaugural show of its inaugural season.

Performances are held at Central Valley High School’s Performing Arts Center, 821 S. Sullivan Road, Spokane Valley.

The new summer theater group also offers a conservatory for aspiring young performers.

Gunn said he hopes to inspire others with disabilities to pursue their dreams.

He was inspired himself by a little girl who attended one of his performances of Buddy Holly. She had the same type of hearing disability Gunn does.

“I think for her, she was just so enamored with the idea, that here’s this kid, from small-town Idaho who is now the lead in the show and is on his way to New York, in spite of his hearing loss,” Gunn said. “It was one of those really critical, almost life-transforming moments.”

He said that brings him back to the magic of live theater.

“It becomes a world where I get to sort of suspend my own hearing loss, because eventually you memorize the lines so well that I may not hear what the other actors are saying, but it doesn’t matter,” Gunn said. “I get to live, every night, for two hours and 15 minutes, as a normal hearing person, because we’ve constructed this rehearsed world that we get to live in, and it becomes a freeing moment.”

Spokane Valley Summer Theatre’s final performances of “Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story” will be held tonight and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. with a matinee performance at 2 p.m. Sunday.

For tickets and information, visit svsummertheatre.com or call (509) 368-7897.