During a revealing tech rehearsal, the veteran actor discovers that the most powerful special effect may be the storyteller himself, once he makes peace with his demons.
By John Lavitt
Sherman Oaks, CA (The Hollywood Times) 11/09/2026
Sometimes the most revealing moments in theater occur before the audience arrives. At a technical rehearsal for Brian Delate’s Guardian Angels: Unplugged at the Whitefire Theatre, a question hung over the stage: Can a story that has traveled from theater to film retain its mystery when almost all the theatrical embellishments disappear?
Based on what I witnessed, the answer is an emphatic and celebratory yes.
Delate, a decorated Vietnam veteran, recounts his destructive homecoming, the real-life guardian angels who helped restore his purpose, and a mysterious 1973 dream that transformed his understanding of existence. Was it a spiritual visitation, an extraterrestrial encounter, or something beyond explanation? He leaves that mystery for the audience.
National Book Award-winning novelist and fellow Vietnam veteran Tim O’Brien offered a succinct response to Delate’s work: “I was blown away.” Praise from the author of The Things They Carried carries particular weight, given his understanding of the challenges of turning wartime trauma into art.
I reviewed Guardian Angels at the Whitefire in 2023 and followed its transition to the screen in 2025. Academy Award, Tony Award, and two-time Primetime Emmy Award-winning Ellen Burstyn, among the few performers to achieve acting’s Triple Crown, called the project “a kiss from the Universe.”
Yet this latest incarnation moves in the opposite direction of cinematic expansion.
Working with director Robert Duncan, who previously directed him in Memorial Day at the Road Theatre, Delate has removed the projections and added sound. During the rehearsal, Whitefire production manager and lighting technician Mitch Rosander worked through the remaining lighting cues, with videographer Michael Carano also on hand.
Without projected imagery or music to heighten emotion, Delate must convey every shift in atmosphere through his voice, physical presence, and memory. The challenge was palpable. There were difficult moments as he searched for his footing in the production’s new flow. Technical work sometimes interrupted his momentum, and the unfamiliar spareness exposed places where the performance had not yet settled.
But that struggle was precisely what made the rehearsal revealing. Delate was doing vulnerable work in real time, discovering how to carry the piece without the protective architecture of sound and images. An experienced actor was confronting the uncomfortable spaces in his own story rather than hiding them behind theatrical effects.
By Wednesday night, when he performs before a packed house, I expect that struggle to become one of his strengths. After confronting some of his deepest vulnerabilities in the tech rehearsal, Delate seemed increasingly able to make peace with them.
Ultimately, Guardian Angels is less about proving what happened in a dream than about what Delate chose to do afterward. Its enduring lesson is that life remains precious, even when despair makes surrender tempting. Without the fireworks, there is nowhere for the man or his story to hide. That is precisely the point.
