By Jackie Demaline
Enquirer staff writer

Bekka Eaton spent much of her young adult years as a nomad. She left hometown Fairfield for Chicago where she performed on Windy City stages and even was part of the famed Second City improv troupe.

She moved east and was part of performance art band the Daves. Then along came daughter Jordan, now 5, and Eaton moved home to take a faculty post as professor of theater at Miami University-Hamilton.

Along with teaching and being a mom to a toddler, she found herself pulled into a small group of like-minded people: Susan Moser, dancer/choreographer who operates Tanze Performing Arts Studio (1044 Symmes Road); Dan and Ruth Britt, who founded the African-American Theatre Company of Butler County two years ago.

What they would talk about was their longing for "a meeting place of the mind."

"We shared a feeling about doing things, about not censoring ideas," says Britt.

What they needed, they thought, and what they'd be, would be Creative Asylum.

The loosely (but not too loosely) organized new arts endeavor makes its debut Friday with Eaton and Dan Britt starring in Terrence McNally's popular Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, a bittersweet romance for grown-ups about a waitress and a short-order cook doubtful but willing to be convinced that happiness may be possible.

They put the warning front and center: sexual situations, adult language and brief nudity. It's not what you typically find off the retail strip that is Route 4.

Frankie and Johnny will play for two weekends in the 60-seat Tanze Studio.

They love the cozy space.

"There will be eggs cooking on stage," beams Britt.

"There will be spitting actors," laughs Eaton.

"It's less than passive," offers Britt.

Eaton will be making her first stage appearance "since becoming a mom." She laughs some more.

And then it will be autumn and Eaton will head back to school and the Britts will oversee the African-American Theatre Company with the expectation of producing A Lesson Before Dying in Fairfield and Master Harold . . . and the Boys in Oxford.

They promise that Creative Asylum will live on.

Moser has a new movement piece. Eaton is working on a one-woman show, which will have "techno-punky" music and will be structured like a game, with the audience playing a big role - they get to choose the order of the action and even some outcomes.

You can tell her background is performance art.

Ideas bubble and the asylum mates insist that nurturing ideas into being is what will keep them committed.

For reservations, information and directions, call 939-3004. You can avoid traffic by exiting Interstate 75 at Union Centre Boulevard and heading west. Tanze Studio is on the right a block beyond Route 4.