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Turning The Page

American Moor at ArtsEmerson in Boston Ushers in the Newest Chapter in The Performance Life of an American Play

Photo: Nina Wurtzel

Photo: Nina Wurtzel

 

The first public performance of American Moor was at Westchester Community College on November 20, 2013.  The first drafts of the play were set to paper approximately a year prior to that.  So the ArtsEmerson production of American Moor on the Robert J. Orchard Stage at the Paramount Center for the Arts in Boston, MA marked six and a half years of development and performance.  It was the culmination of the good faith and intention of a small group of theatre makers and top-shelf designers who brought to the stage in April the play as we had never seen it, never experienced it…  It was perhaps the play that we were never completely sure we were looking for until we all found it together.  The thrill of those revelations we shared with audiences experiencing the play for the first time.  They had never seen anything like it either…

January, 2019 through the closing date in Boston on Easter Sunday had been a whirlwind of travel, multiple stages, diverse audiences, and a last dash towards something definitive.  The photos below are a montage of the DC, LA, London, and Boston.

Washington, DC

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Los Angeles, CA

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London, England

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                         Boston, Massachusetts

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Set, sound and lighting designers, Wilson Chin, Christian Frederickson, and Alan C. Edwards.IMG_7846

 

This will be the last of the entries on this page.

 

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Photo: Nina WurtzelAM1_7446  AM1_7452-Edit

A new phase starts now, and we, the creatives, are all eagerly looking forward to where it goes…

Join us in New York City at Cherry Lane Theatre this Fall, September, 2019 for American Moor off-Broadway and beyond.  We’re thrilled to have you with us.

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Washington, DC Return Engagement

Moor in Anacostia – Again…

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The January production of American Moor at Anacostia Playhouse was another triumph if you listen to the local press.  What I should have done was captured photos and video of audience and audience reactions the way they do to advertise a project heading to New York.  As per usual, however, we were always short staffed.  Theatre on a shoestring is like that, no matter how good it is, no matter how many people turn out and are moved by it.  There are just too many tasks to undertake, and too few sufficiently remunerated people to get it all done efficiently.  I should be used to it by now.  American Moor has been evolving into the piece of art that it is for over six years in collaboration with little theatres, and underfunded theatre makers.  And at the end of the day, what slips through the cracks is most often the documentation that suggests just what a wonderful project we’re pushing…  So I don’t have a lot of imagery here of audience, but only a few that speak of our time there.

Like this…

Rehearsal Day 1... A black box in disarray, and director, Kim Weild in conference with lighting designer, John "Juba" Alexander.

Rehearsal Day 1… A black box in disarray, and director, Kim Weild in conference with lighting designer, John “Juba” Alexander.

And these…

Set designer for upcoming 4/19 Arts Emerson production, Wilson Chin, director, Kim Weild, Actor, Josh Tyson

Set designer for upcoming 4/19 Arts Emerson production, Wilson Chin, director, Kim Weild, Actor, Josh Tyson

With lighting designer, John "Juba" Alexander

With lighting designer, John “Juba” Alexander

With Kojo Nnamdi, host of The Kojo Nnamdi Show on WAMU Radio

With Kojo Nnamdi, host of The Kojo Nnamdi Show on WAMU Radio

Artistic director of Anacostia Playhouse, Adele Robey, director, KIm Weild, assistant to the director, Sisi Reid, lighting designer, John, "Juba" Alexander, actor Josh Tyson

Artistic director of Anacostia Playhouse, Adele Robey, director, KIm Weild, assistant to the director, Sisi Reid, lighting designer, John, “Juba” Alexander, actor Josh Tyson

This was an important stop in our 5 Destinations/5 Presentations that started back in New Jersey at Luna Stage Theatre last August, and will culminate at ArtsEmerson in Boston in April — not only because we had a good run, but because it was a return to a theatre that has believed in this playwright and this piece of theatre from the beginning.  And belief is what it takes, not just belief in me and my creative team, but belief that theatre can save our lives, and teach our hemorrhaging culture to heal.  It meant everything in the world to all of us to be able to collaborate once again, make new friends and colleagues, engage with new audiences, and grow together.

With gratitude, we are all looking forward to Fall of 2019.  Seven years of work is coming to fruition.  Stay tuned.

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FIVE DESTINATIONS / FIVE PRESENTATIONS

#MakingTheMoor Embarking on Nine Months
of American Moor in The NorthEast and London

I write this just a week or two away from returning to the stage with this theatre work of mine that has been silent for nearly a year.  After garnering major honors for our 2017 Boston production, we are back at it, creatively insatiable and chronically dissatisfied.  The play in Boston said everything that the play should say, if indeed it should “say” anything.  It’s not about sending messages, but about presenting truths, I think, and sharing them with audiences who may not have ever considered those same facts in the way that you do.  I think we did that to great success.  It might not quite have looked exactly how we, the creative team would most have liked it to look.  But we’re never quite sure.  It is the audiences that have come out to experience the play in every city, their responses, their emotional engagement that continue to shape the look of this play, a piece of theatre so much about all of us, and what we are living right now.AM2018 Icon_2

FIVE DESTINATIONS / FIVE PRESENTATION

AUGUST 7TH AND 8TH:  Luna Stage Theatre, West Orange, NJ
Tickets Available Now!!

AUGUST 12TH:  Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, London, UK
Tickets Available Now!!

NOVEMBER 8TH – 10TH:  Alice Withington Rooke Theatre, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA

JANUARY 3 – FEBRUARY 3:  The Anacostia Playhouse, Washington, DC

APRIL 10 – 21:  Arts Emerson, Robert J. Orchard Theatre, Paramount Center, Boston, MA
Tickets Available Now!!

Our presentation on the set of Susan-Lori Parks’ Fucking A at the Signature Theatre Center in Manhattan last October made us hungry for a set.  We had been doing American Moor on bare stages everywhere we went.  That’s more or less how the show was written to be played.  IMG_9976But in order to be granted the opportunity to present the work to a Manhattan audience at a central venue, we had to agree to put it up in a single afternoon, and to work on the set that existed in the space at the time we occupied it.  We had to get in, light, stage, rehearse, and perform the show for audience twice in a single day.  The process, as processes under pressure often do, lead to some remarkable discovery.  The set, that was altogether foreign to the play we were presenting, focused the work in ways that we had not expected, for us, and we think for our audiences as well.  We have been on the hunt for our definitive set and lighting design ever since, and hoping to discover it somewhere among these many dates ahead.  But again, it was the audience response that indicated most strongly to us that something had shifted.  They experienced the performance as if the set had been our intention all along.  Those who had seen the show before expressed how it made a particular new sort of sense played there.

We start with nothing again.  At Luna Stage in New Jersey, we put the play on its feet again and prepare it for the London engagement.  We are on another bare stage, with our audience who will inform us with their reactions and interactions what’s still working… and what needs work…  In London, at Shakespeare’s Globe as part of the Shakespeare and Race Festival, the unadorned stage of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse will again give rise to innovation.  American Moor by candlelight in a Jacobean Indoor Theatre??!!  AR-701209951.jpg&updated=201401201732&MaxW=800&maxH=800&noborderWhat an odyssey that promises to be!!  And this, a totally new audience, with perhaps a different set of sensibilities altogether, experiencing the matters of the play through their British perspective of Shakespeare, race, and America.  They are bound to have something to say, and we are eager to hear it.

Back in The States all bets are off.  We do a two-week residency and five performances on the campus of Mount Holyoke College, engaging with the students there and on the sister campuses of UMass and Amherst.  The college engagement is a thing unto itself, unlike anywhere else we perform, or any other work we engage in. While we are moving more and more into the commercial arena, the communion and communication with students in and around this play has always been, and will continue to be vibrant, revelatory, and rewarding.

A return to Washington DC follows.  The Anacostia Playhouse was the venue in the summer of 2015, where the play first came to the attention of the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the library has been a staunch supporter of the development and exposure of the work ever since.  So this will be something of a homecoming in the new year.  Much to celebrate, and all of the DC audience that missed the experience the first time around.

The spring of 2019 brings us back to Boston.  We really need to call that a second homecoming, because it is returning to the city that embraced the work with passion in the summer of 2017, bestowing upon us two IRNE Awards and an Elliot Norton Award.  In the hands of our hosts Arts Emerson in the beautiful Robert Orchard Theatre of the Paramount Center, we will most certainly have arrived somewhere, perhaps with all the pieces in place that we have been searching for, perhaps not, but again, letting the wider Boston audience come and take part in the conversation that so many are having with us.  What is the role of a lifetime?  What is the role of a life?



One Night in Manhattan for any Interested Parties

We did two shows on Monday, October 2nd, 2017
at the Signature Theatre Center
on the set of Susan-Lori Parks’ play, Fucking A.

I haven’t got a lot to say about it except perhaps that the shows were astounding, for me if not for anyone else.  We were in at 10am, were performing by 2, and played  two houses before 8 that night.  That seat-of-the-pants thing can be magical sometimes. Not knowing what’s going to happen usually means anything is about to happen. Maybe it’s a little like that adrenaline thing that type-T people talk about experiencing when they jump off of cliffs and crazy shit like that…

This was a by-invitation-only event.  It looked something like this:

American-Moor-Invitation-#11Performing on the set for another show was new.  A bare stage is what we were used to. And yet, the premise of the play is that an actor walks into an audition…  The audition could be anywhere.IMG_9976  He will have to adapt, use what’s there.  So the performance that day in the Linney Courtyard Theatre was like the play. Actually, everything in life is like the play…  At least that’s my experience.

upper right from left to right:  Keith Boykin, CNN Musa Jackson, model and Harlem ambassador Gordon Chambers, Grammy award winning songwriter/singer Mark Forrest, entertainment agent

Upper right from left to right: Keith Boykin, CNN, Musa Jackson, model and Harlem ambassador, Kevin E. Taylor, Author Minister Activist, Gordon Chambers, Grammy award winning songwriter/singer, Mark Forrest, entertainment agent

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Lt. Actor, Craig Alan Edwards, Rt. Actor Michael Eaddy

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Keith Boykin

 

 

 



American Moor in Boston

A Turning Point
The Boston Production,
Summer 2017

Photo: Chris Lang

Photo: Chris Lang

The production of American Moor that ran at The Boston Center for the Arts Plaza Theatre from July 20th through August 12, 2017 was the longest run of the play in performance since its inception nearly five years ago. It was a joint production by a small company in residence at the Boston Center for the Arts, OWI (Bureau of Theatre), and New York based Phoenix Theatre Ensemble. The house was a 150 seat black box, and Boston… was Boston…

The last time I’d played this city was 1992. It was with The Huntington Theatre Company playing Arviragus in the Larry Carpenter production of Shakespeare’s Cymbeline.

In the 1992 production of Cymbeline at The Huntington Theatre Company w/ Jack Aronson (center) and Matthew Loney (right)

In the 1992 production of Cymbeline at The Huntington Theatre Company, Boston, w/ Jack Aronson (center) and Matthew Loney (right)

It was a different city then… That that I was able to see of it this time around – so much of my time was spent cranking out the one-man performance every night – had changed drastically.  I’m sure that is the dynamic with all major American cities. There always seems to be more high end housing, which would lead one to believe that there are more and more people with a ton of money. And yet, somehow, theatre continues to struggle. At least my theatre did. Not that we were not a success in Boston, the responses were glowing. But no one made any money, and this is the glaring irony of the American Theatre. It can’t be about money.  Well… I mean, it can be, but when it is, it most often isn’t very good, or very important.  Money, the larger sums of it, generally gets spent on things that are somewhat assured to make even greater sums of it.  Taking care of one another is not a for-profit venture.  Subsidizing things that are for the general health of the populace at large is considered a bad bet.  But more on that later.

W/ the creative team, actor, stage manager, dramaturg, sound designer.

w/ the creative team, actor, stage manager, dramaturg, sound designer

Regardless, this was a huge step in the development of this work. We were, for the first time, able to more fully (though not fully enough) explore aspects of set, and lighting, and within that exploration discover moments of on-stage life and text that we had not known were there. When I say “we” I mean my director, Kim Weild and I.  She has been guiding the development of this piece of theatre for the past two years.

And American Moor is a play about so many things. I don’t doubt we will still be discovering new things a year from now. In the post-performance discussions that we held twice a week, there were always new insights to be mined. No two people respond to this play in the same way. It is always a deeply personal journey for every individual, which speaks, I think, to a universality of theme.

w/ assistant director, Miranda Haymon

w/ assistant director, Miranda Haymon

Through the interactions with audience we have found that this play about race is not a play about race at all if one is inclined to see beyond the obvious.  I find myself saying more and more often to anyone who will listen that the internal problems America is faced with are not a lot of different things.  It’s one big thing with all the little things being manifestations of it.  The unchanging fundamental nature of the human animal is at the root of all our cultural dysfunction.  All of it, no matter what form it takes.  The behaviors to which we all, to one extent or another, succumb are inherent to the species.  Someone called the play “self-indulgent…”  But how does one express the self without indulging the self?  And further, in making such a comment, isn’t one, in essence, saying, I want to indulge myself by telling you that you are indulging yourself…”???  That which perpetually percolates in the minds of men/women, the primitive animals, above all is ego and fear, the one is the definer, the other is the arbiter of ALL that is defined.  I challenge anyone to show me that this is not so.  And all of our cultural dysfunction arises from this simple truth.  Those who are aware of this within themselves tend to find empathy with the characters in the play, and with others outside of their own societal situation.  Those who are not tend to identify, as ego does, with one side or the other of the surface argument, and with any that see it as they do, while ignoring, or missing altogether, the myriad manifestations of their fear-based culture that lie beneath it.  They, ironically, literally become the embodiment of the issue being portrayed on stage; the inability to interact beyond personal perspective…  To understand this, however, you’ll have to see it.

Here we are again. From left: Andrew Duncan Will, Sound Designer, Kim Weild, Director, Matt Arnold, Actor, Shaoul Rick Chason, Dramaturg, Me, and Caleb Spivey, Stage Manager

Here we are again. From left: Andrew Duncan Will, Sound Designer, Kim Weild, Director, Matt Arnold, Actor, Shaoul Rick Chason, Dramaturg, Me, and Caleb Spivey, Stage Manager

If you had seen the Boston production from where I stood, you would have experienced not only the struggle of the actor as portrayed on-stage, but as the actor himself, in calorie deficit, lacking sleep, body-misalignment, and big fat rats in my dressing room. I don’t suppose I’m looking for sympathy. I am however hoping for empathy, just like the character in the play…  I would like people to understand the sheer magnitude of the gap between a stack of stellar reviews and all that needs to be done, dealt with, and endured to get them because of the culture’s general fear-driven inability to care for the arts. I’d like people to know that making theatre is very hard, and that there is no reason for anyone who does it to submit to that level of self-abuse except for an unflagging belief in humanity and the desire to nourish and nurture it, even while having to perpetually experience and acknowledge that humanity generally sucks…

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Clockwise from top left: director, Kim Weild, stage manager, Caleb Spivey, actor, Matt Arnold outside The Plaza Theatre — Kim Weild and I with NY producers, Craig Smith and Elise Stone — our production poster — in front of our lobby display created by our dramaturg, Shaoul Rick Chason



We Are All Shit…

The Myth of Moral Superiority

Searching for nuance where it has never served our most immediate, individual ends… and why it is most necessary…

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“…the national election of November 1876 recognized white supremacy in the South and gave us our state.”  So said the now removed Battle of Liberty Place Monument that stood until April 24, 2017 in the city of New Orleans.  So, let’s start at the beginning.  Are we talking about “white supremacy” in the sense that white people are better than everyone who is not white, or are we talking about “white supremacy” in the sense that white people had control over everything?  Regarding American governments, or I should perhaps say regarding that which governs America, the latter has always been true, to a large extent, from the moment of the country’s founding right on until now.  The former, as a pesky point of scientific fact, has never been true in any form ever.  A monument attesting to the facts of white control may be distasteful but, given the context wherein it was erected, it is difficult to call it inaccurate, or incorrect.  From the time the white man arrived on the continent with a propensity for either exploiting or exterminating anybody who wasn’t he himself, he has been as in control as anyone ever was anywhere, and arguably, more or less, still is…  To call it “wrong,” or “right” is a moral judgment that has to do with the pollution of facts by opinion, and the pollution of opinion by need; our problem in a nutshell.  On the other hand,  however, a monument that stands as a means of assuring the citizenry of a city in an American democracy, the majority of that citizenry being black, that white people were at some point  somehow factually established as superior beings, or that they remain so, is not only specious in the extreme, but there isn’t a tenable argument that can be raised against such a monument’s removal. Read More →



American Moor at University of Pittsburgh-Bradford 1/30-2/3/2017

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The week in Northern Pennsylvania was short; five working days really.  The University of Pittsburg-Bradford is a small, beautiful campus, and the week saw it covered in snow.  My host, Professor Kevin Ewert, who teaches theatre at the college, packed a great deal of interaction into that five days.  I met with theatre students, students from the African American Student Union,

At dinner with students of the African American Student Union.

At dinner with students of the African American Student Union.

and a highlight of the trip, I met with Professor Ewert’s Modern Black theatre class at FCI McKean Federal Correctional Facility, where his students share a session once a week with a class of incarcerated men, all of whom had read American Moor.  The feedback from this group was profound for me.  This was the first time that the play had been presented to any group, not as performance, but as literature.  The responses of the inmates were unique and immediate.  Of course they would see in the play what has always been there, but see it in the starkest of terms, particularly the elements focusing on social justice.

The theatre students were most interested in inquiring about what possibilities there were for an actual life in the theatre.  How does one pursue such a life and be reasonably comfortable in the belief that life will be livable.  Of course I’ve no answers for such concerns.  What young aspiring theatre people need to hear most, it seems to me, is that there isn’t much choice in the matter if you are innately driven to manifest your being through the arts.  You may be miserable attempting to eek out a living, but you’ll be equally miserable, if not more so, attempting to live a life in an albeit “safer” way, yet one that does not honor your soul-labeling.  In our interaction I did not get the sense that these students get to express much regarding their needs in art, or their fears born of those needs.  I was happy to have the time just to engage the discussion.  Communication is everything…

The students of the African American Student Union and I got to sit down to dinner, where I listened to them speak on the issues of Blackness and campus life that most concerned them.  They were also helpful in generating an audience for the Thursday night performance of American Moor.

One last group that I was given the opportunity to speak with was an Art Appreciation class.  This was a discussion that fed directly into many of the themes present in American Moor, most particularly ideas about who gets to make art, and who is to say what art is good, relevant, and/or worthy of attention.

Except for the inmates from McKean, of course, many from all of these groups were present for the performance.  I played to a house of about 75 people in a playing space uniquely configured for our production.  It was extremely intimate, with very little distance between me and the audience.  This always allows me the ability to truly include them in the journey happening on-stage.  Most often they seem happy to come along.  The post-performance discussion was, as always, alive with audience expressions of the experience.

Students prepare the intimate playing space for the performance.

Students prepare the intimate playing space for the performance.

UPitt-Bradford, unlike FAMU and Southern Shakespeare Company, did not have the wherewithal to bring in the community beyond the college in the same way.  The performance there was largely for students and faculty.  I always feel as though one week, though better than the one-off nature of a couple of days, is still sort of a one-off in itself.  I’m left wanting to do more, to explore more deeply, to ask and answer further questions, which are endless.  The first performance is always rough.  There needs to be at least two…  When the production finds a home of its own for an extended run, that problem will ostensibly be alleviated.  But there is stuff in the academic setting that I won’t find out in the world of the professional theatre.   I suppose it’s nothing for me to dwell on, but just to take each new endeavor as it comes and for what it presents.  I think lives were affected by the work of the week in Bradford, none the least of which was mine.



Post-Performance Video of American Moor in Tallahassee

Just a few brief clips of the work in Tallahassee.

This post performance discussion was particularly informative for me, as I saw that the work is beginning to expose levels of itself that only audience experience can reveal.  Post-performance participants express connections to the play that are unique to them and to their experiences in life.  I respond to their questions, but mostly I want to just sit back and listen to their immediate responses to the play.  I learn so much just by hearing them talk.



A Southland Premiere

Southern Shakespeare Company and Florida A&M University Collaborate to Host Actor and Director and American Moor for a Week: 1/9-1/13/17

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This experiment in community engagement was a first for American Moor AND for my director, Kim Weild and me.  Southern Shakespeare Company is a small Shakespeare Company in Tallahassee, Florida with a focus on education.  Not so small it seems, however, to stop them from taking an interest in American Moor, and rallying the resources to bring us to Florida for a week of work.

With the FAMU Essential Theatre students

With the FAMU Essential Theatre students

Their partners in this endeavor were several.  Most prominently Florida A&M University played host to our rehearsals and performances in their Lee Hall Auditorium.  While there we met and worked with college students from FAMU’s Essential Theatre Program, as well as with eleven-, twelve-, and thirteen-year-olds from Southern Shakespeare’s youth company called The Bardlings.  We also met some wonderful people in the greater Tallahassee community when we attended an event hosted by Village Square, a non-partisan public educational forum.  Their event was called “Created Equal,” and sought to stimulate constructive dialogue around matters of race and race relations.  We were busy…

The production team: (from left) director Kim Weild; stage tech - Felix, Anitra, and Nile, and publicist Pamela Daniels in front.

The production team: (from left) director Kim Weild; stage tech – Felix Anitra, and Nile; (front) publicist Pamela Daniels.

We had not had a concerted period of rehearsal for quite some time.  Most of the recent outings for American Moor have been of the one-off model, where we quickly mount the show in a venue, do it, and go home.  This was an experiment in residence, where we had several days to work, eat, drink, acquaint ourselves, and communicate with smart, engaging, theatre-loving people who believed in the work of this play as much as we did and do.

We played two performances to houses of about 500 people each night.  Even this many years in, the post-performance responses from always diverse audience members astound me.
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Reception at Meek-Eaton Black Archives

Reception at Meek-Eaton Black Archives

There is always some perspective or thought that someone will share that I’ve never heard before.  Each new endeavor brings discovery.

Here are as many pictures from the week as it makes any kind of sense to stuff into a single blog post.  There really isn’t a whole lot else to say but “Thank you.”

From left, Southern Shakespeare Company Executive Director, Laura Johnson, me, and director Kim Weild at Village Square's "Created Equal" event.

At Village Square’s “Created Equal” event: (from left) Southern Shakespeare Company Executive Director Laura Johnson, me, and director Kim Weild.

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With noted writer and attorney, Chuck Hobbs, on stage at “Created Equal,” the Village Square event in Tallahassee.

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Integrity in the Time of Post-Truth

An Actor Wonders How to Be in a Culture Devoid of Honest Self-Assessment

It’s Tuesday, November 15th, so how long is that after the presidential election?  And that’s how long it’s taken for me to realize this most absurd of things has actually occurred.  In fact, the level of absurdity is such that it cannot bear rational commentary.  The only truth to be gleaned from the morass of sound that generated it, and that it is generating, is that it HAS occurred.  We can try to put our brains around that fact if we like—it’s taken me a week—and take action from there.  But I can leave the talking to the pundits of the entertainment news networks, who are wholly culpable in helping to bring this absurdity about.  While I haven’t watched any television news since election night, I’m quite sure they are readily embarked upon the lucrative endeavors of talking about the absurdity that their talking about promulgated in the first place.  They got you comin’ and goin’…  It’s a helluva business…  But I don’t have to invest.  I don’t think any of it was my fault, and know that I wouldn’t be able to fix it if I tried.   That doesn’t mean I won’t try.  There’s much to do, but I don’t think there’s much to say at this point unless you’re selling something.  It’s fucked in numberless ways, but there it is.  And here we are…

If I’m going to talk, I want to talk about theatre.  This is something I know.  I’m an actor.  I can impact this, a little bit with my talent, but that’s the cheapest of commodities.  I can impact it more, much more, with something far more scarce, integrity, and the simple, but not easy act of showing up with all 110% of the artist in me ready to play, or fight, however you wanna bring it.  Discussions of American theatre are important to me.  We must have them because Read More →



Just A Whole Lot to Talk About…

I decided I’d leave this here because it really doesn’t fit in any other category.  This was a gab session done in LA for a podcast with Hilliard Guess and his co-host, Lisa Bolekaja.  Hill is a screenwriter and producer.  His company is Hilldog Productions, and his podcast heard in several countries, is called The Screenwriters Rant Room.  So…  When we talk about things that one has just got to say…  Ranting is cathartic.  I must have left the rant room a couple of pounds lighter at least.

 



The Ignorance is Astounding, but Far From Surprising Anymore

It’s not always Brits…  Sometimes, in fact quite often, it’s Americans who have a boner for Britannia that just won’t die.  Back in July, The Guardian magazine printed a piece wherein Michael Douglas was speaking on the hiring of British and Australian actors over American ones to people American films, citing American actors’ image-consciousness, lack of machismo, and asexuality.  In his defense, I believe he was more concerned for what he called the “crisis” of the American industry, than expressing the fascination with English talent that the rest of the industry seems to be obsessed with to the point of fetish.  Still, what seems to be missing in his musings is the fact that he, like many in the successful Hollywood acting class, is the product of nepotism.  He is a celebrity who is, to my mind, while an absolutely serviceable actor whose work I have enjoyed, not particularly diverse, nor exceptionally compelling.  And I contend that no one would know his name if he were not the son of an iconic movie star who did, in fact, achieve prominence all on his own along with the likes of Lancaster and Mitchum, macho-men of the first order, who held the camera’s gaze in a way that he never could.  While he, in his tabloid exploits, has been sure to make it quite clear that he is anything but asexual, I contend further that he is not now, nor ever has been a macho-man himself, that Hollywood makes heroes out of those it chooses, and it has, of late, been choosing Englishmen, because of America’s age-old sense of arousal induced by all things British.

What Douglas has in common with successful British actors is the oblivious notion that they are who they are and what they are by naturally occurring selective processes that have nothing to do with the unevenness of the playing field, and everything to do with their own superior talent.  You can hear it in the ignorant, dismissive comments of Charlotte Rampling and Michael Caine concerning the lack of African American representation at this past year’s Academy Awards.  And you can hear it in the comments of British stage actor, Simon Callow, in the article below from the periodical, The Stage.  The Stage is a British entertainment industry magazine, thus the views expressed therein, depending of course upon who’s reading them, will naturally tend to bend, not towards highlighting the problem of diversity and bias in the business – where inclusion cognizance is concerned, the English, for the most part, seem to regard themselves as lightyears ahead of their American cousins – but rather towards illustrating the staggering lack of awareness among white, and in this case British, successful industry professionals that the problem actually exists at all.  Like Michael Douglas, they will generally speak from their position on third base where they stand self-assuredly thinking they hit a triple.  I may be conflating a couple of different issues here, but I only seek to illustrate that life on the inside is pretty fucking good, and it’s extremely difficult for one encased therein to see accurately what’s beyond it.  If you are incapable of conceiving of the very idea of white privilege because you have been blinded your entire life by its benefits, as far as you are concerned, there will never be a problem to address.  This situation creates a dire circumstance, because only those outside the circle of privilege will ever understand that it is there.  Perhaps, tragically, it is, in that case, insurmountable…

A group called British Black and Asian Shakespeare @BBAShakespeare works to raise awareness regarding the conditions of and around diversity and inclusion in the UK industry, and pushes back at some of the uninformed ideas expressed by Simon Callow below.  I can only hope there are others.  Meanwhile, the italics superimposed upon the article are mine, as if there were any confusion…

@KeithHamCobb

#MoorToThisStory

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KEYNOTE PERFORMANCE

AMERICAN MOOR Opens and Closes

The Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival Region 7

Denver, CO, February 15-19, 2016

Rehearsal Rawls Courtyard Theatre, Denver 2/19/16

Rehearsal Rawls Courtyard Theatre, Denver 2/19/16

The Kennedy Center Festival consists of 8 regions.  Colleges from Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Northern California, Idaho, Northern Nevada, Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado make up Region 7, and students from theatre programs throughout these states converged on downtown Denver for a week of workshops, performances, competitions, and discussion on aspects of theatre from acting to scenic design, lighting design, and other elements of stagecraft.

IMG_9826A performance of American Moor opened the festival on Monday, 2/15, and concluded it on the following Friday.  Students who had attended the performance in the Eugenia Rawls Courtyard Theatre of The King Center on The University of Denver’s Auraria Campus were compelled to talk it up throughout the week.  By Friday, the play had become the prevalent buzz of the Festival.  Friday’s performance was huge and powerful to the full house, and revelatory to actor and audience alike.

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Rehearsing in the space with director, Kim Weild

This was the first performance under the direction of Kim Weild, who had introduced some minor changes in tone.  There was no time before Denver to dig deeply, but we were looking forward to deeper explorations when we returned to New York.  We were also new to the space, a stadium like theatre in style that was still very intimate, and demanded a performance the delivery of which was much more “up and out” than what I had grown used to in smaller houses.3P4A4462

For students of theatre, while the social justice aspect of the play was not lost upon them, just as many seemed to be particularly taken with the idea that powerful theatre could be so simple, i.e., a bare stage, a body, some chairs, and a truth.  Many voiced their realization that their theatre was waiting to be made just as simply, without the support, the permission, or approval of anything beyond themselves.

For me, Denver is as far away from home as I have taken the play in its performance life.  20160219_145326Each new audience seems to embrace it, no matter where they are, no matter how diverse or homogenous, American Moor seems to speak to something human in all of us.

This was a week of youthful, creative energy that I surfed back to New York, where plans for the next engagement for American Moor were already underway.

Post-Performance discussion with playwright and educator, Idris Goodwin

Post-Performance discussion with playwright and educator, Idris Goodwin

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American Moor’s 2015

The Things We Did, The People We Saw, And What They Had To Say…

Luna Stage Company

Phoenix Theatre Ensemble

Anacostia Playhouse

Rider University

The Brickerati Group

Kevin E. Taylor

Bobby Razak

The Folger Shakespeare Library

AUDELCO (Audience Development Committee, Inc.)

It all looked something like this…

 

 

2016 is going to be astounding!!!  We’ll see you there…



HONORED

American Moor is Recognized for Outstanding Solo Performance at the 2015 AUDELCO Awards.

Having come into existence in 1973 for the purpose of developing African American theatre and generating African American audiences, I suspect that the “Audience Development Committee,” AUDELCO, knows a little something about excellence in the arts.  Regardless of that, I have been focused solely on evolving the performance life of American Moor, the play.  The result of that focus has been a growing performance history, and a continuing schedule of engagements for the piece with the intention of returning it to Manhattan.  But there hasn’t been any time or attention given to contemplating its “excellence.”  In fact, that is always an endeavor better off left to others.  And so, no nomination by the AUDELCO committee was expected.  And the idea of actually being honored with an award was way off the radar.  But here we were, among greats of black American theatre, who came out to Symphony Space on November 16th to take part in the 43rd Annual AUDELCO Award ceremony.

Audelco-AwardI haven’t a great deal to say about this night, other than my sense of gratitude that people have noticed this work…  Audelco-Acceptance

 

…and to list it here as just another moment in the history of the life of this play.  It’s not good to dwell on accolades, especially when there is still so much more work to be done in continuing the discussion, perhaps not of the play itself, although I hope that happens too, but of the issues that the play raises.

 

 

Paul Kwame Johnson, director, Phoenix Theatre Ensemble production

Paul Kwame Johnson, director, Phoenix Theatre Ensemble production

Elise Stone and Craig Smith, producing artistic directors, Phoenix Theatre Ensemble

Elise Stone and Craig Smith, producing artistic directors, Phoenix Theatre Ensemble

There is MOOR to this story…

Stay tuned, or you might miss something wonderful.

 

 

 

 

 



Now Available

In Print, eBook, and Downloadable Audio

The Odd Purgatory of My Personal Perception: Little Portraits by Keith Hamilton CobbThese short pieces were a long time in coming.  Many of them were around three laptops ago…  But now they’re here, and that’s about all I’ve got to say about them…  Except perhaps that, over the many years that I’ve picked them apart, put them back together, slapped them around, and let them sit, they were fun to write.  Perhaps they’ll be fun to read as well.  Perhaps you’ll have a look, or a listen… and let me know.

Bless’d be.

 

Audio Excerpt from the story, God’s Children

 

 



One Night Only

September 30, 2015.  We do an evening hosted by the students at Rider University

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In the business, they’re called “one-offs.”  It means you’re gonna do the show once… no next night… no re-do…  If you’re lucky, you get to come into the space the day before and set things up with some competent professionals, focus lights, configure speakers for sound…  But one way or the other, come the evening of performance, you’re going to go out there and do a show.  Don’t trip over the furniture, and you’ll be alright.  It may not be your best performance.  How could it be, when half of your attention is on whether or not the voiced over sound of the second character is going to play on cue?  Regardless, people asked to be shown this play.  And, for all the downside to one-night-only road shows, honoring the growing interest in this work is far more important.  Besides, American Moor has no furniture…

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The Student Entertainment Council of Rider University hosted this evening’s event.  As such, I don’t know whether they reached out to the theatre, English, and diversity departments specifically, or just billed the evening as a general entertainment to anyone who might be interested.  I mention these three departments above, because to date, while engaging with universities, they have been the areas of discipline most immediately interested in what American Moor is.

In any case, there was a sizable house.  The event was free to the public, and so there were quite a few attendees from off-campus as well.

In performance, Rider University, September 30, 2015

In performance, Rider University, September 30, 2015

I never know how this thing is received in a one-off…  I am far too distracted to be that in-touch with the audience’s energy.  And it was the first collegiate audience since the very first public performance of the play at Westchester Community College back in November of 2013.  The feedback has been positive, and, as is often the case, I got some immediate post-performance responses from people who I would have never thought would be in the room.  This is all good.   The play continues to surprise me.

As per usual, we did a post-performance discussion facilitated by the assistant director of campus activities, Nicholas Barbati.  It was a small but diverse group that stayed behind to take part.  And it’s the unusual make-up of these groups that always gets me.  They range widely in age, ethnicity, and gender.  And while I was busy wondering if I gave a credible performance, I end up being reminded that the text itself is really doing most of the work.  They get it, and perhaps I need to take it easier on myself, and thus everyone else.

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I’ve been saying that the show needs a venue all its own for a few months… To settle into a rehearsal process replete with all the bells and whistles, all the production elements that will allow us to find whatever it is in this piece that we haven’t found yet.  I’m not sure, therefore, how this college circuit one-off thing will work.  But I can’t deny that connecting with the young men and women on their home turf is a thrill unto itself…  It’s just so nerve-racking as a performer…

It wasn’t a Shakespeare crowd, by and large…  Most of the classical references registered no energy of recognition.  Even the most common of them, like Juliet’s “Gallop apace” left the room silent.  Of course, it could have been my shitty performance, no doubt.  But I just think that the students today, unless English is their discipline, are not nearly as read in Shakespeare as I was at their age…  Or was I, even??  Who can remember?  And is that a problem?  How much better to see theatre, any theatre than to read it…

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In this case, it really didn’t seem to matter, and this is the more relevant point.  Even though Shakespeare, his plays, and the playing of them is a predominant theme that is laced throughout American Moor, it is becoming more and more obvious that one need not be versed in any of it in order to be impacted by this work. There seem to be myriad themes and ideas that recur in the arc of the play such that anyone with a reasonably open mind will, if he/she just listens, find something with which they identify.  I can’t lie and say that I planned it all that way.  But how remarkable, and for me delightful, to watch audience members sound off in unpredictable ways because they were struck by some aspect of the character’s journey that had occurred to no one else!

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As I began this post, I was saying that the interaction with the intellectually acute youth trumps my discomfort at the rough-shod vicissitudes of theatre on the fly.  Sometimes, it may not trump it by much.  But this experience at Rider, I think, was extraordinary, giving me to understand that I may just need to get used to taking the play to where the people are.



July and August, 2015, American Moor in The Nation’s Capitol

In performance:  Anacostia Playhouse

In performance: Anacostia Playhouse

I am very late getting started here.Anacostia-Playhouseweb  At the time of this posting it will have already been seven weeks since the close of the five-week run in the nation’s capitol.  The production of American Moor at the Anacostia Playhouse in Anacostia, Washington D.C. was no easy task.  But the engagement and responses of the audiences that attended were well worth the effort.  We stirred many energies in and around Washington, and it has been a full-time job since then to navigate them all, and to continue to nourish the performance life of this still evolving work of theatre.

The production in Anacostia was different than any of the other productions of the play that we had done to date.  The black box theatre was configured for audience on three sides.  I was in amongst them from the beginning of the play until the end, which created an energy and a level of intimacy that was completely new to me in this  particular work.  (My apologies to any audience member who got spit on, cried on, sweated on, or bled on.  I’m sure there were many…)

In all other venues thus far the audiences have been gathered in front of me.  My movement about the playing space for this latest production was redirected towards including those on the left and right, and this talking to various people from sometimes no more than two feet away opened up some channels of discovery.   Ultimately, American Moor will need to play to houses of 300 and 400 people,  but I do think that it is important not to lose the ability to get close to them, and to allow them to feel like they are on this difficult journey as well, because they are…

Paul Kwame Johnson (left), the director of the first five productions of American Moor, and Craig Wallace, director of the Anacostia Playhouse production.

Paul Kwame Johnson (left), the director of the first five productions of American Moor, and Craig Wallace, director of the Anacostia Playhouse production.

A new director on this production altered the play in other ways as well.  Actually, I should say, that what was becoming standard practice in performance was interrupted and rethought, and this is always a good thing if it’s not done for its own sake, but rather to make sure that there is a real reason for each moment, and each beat in the arc of the play.  Craig Wallace, a highly respected actor in the D.C. theatre community lent himself to this remounting of American Moor with thought and focus and patience, and the work is better for it.

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The Anacostia Playhouse is in Anacostia, a neighborhood east of the Anacostia River that has been a predominantly African-American community since the early 1960’s.  Like many African-American communities throughout the country it is underfunded and underserved, and its residents are generally low-income.  However, Anacostia is spoken of as an “emerging” community, which would suggest it is evolving, and inventing itself anew.  This is exciting, though there can be a very fine line to walk between the re-invigoration driven by black empowerment, and the snowball gentrification that has run rampant through the greater District of Columbia. While much of the theatre that The Playhouse presents strives to be relevant to the life and times of the community, and certainly American Moor was this, it remains difficult to get the community into the theatre in large numbers short of giving the tickets away.  It is also difficult to get the greater D.C. community to come across the Anacostia River and into “the hood.”  So, therein lie a number of problems.  The houses for performances of “Moor” were small for the first three weeks while word of mouth was spread.  But even though small in number, the audiences were completely engrossed in the work, and effusive with their comments.  By the fourth and fifth week, the houses had begun to fill, and we were playing to overflow crowds when we closed on the 17th of August.  And this is not unique to them.  Such is the dilemma of small, underfunded American theaters everywhere.

IMG_6325webThe DC engagement of American Moor offered up a number of opportunities.  The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts was hosting its annual directing intensive for college directing students as part of their American College Theatre Festival.  I was invited to speak to the students about the dynamic between actor and director, and how we can perhaps more effectively speak to one another in the audition and rehearsal process, something that the play treats on heavily.  Having that conversation with people who truly want to engage, who ask questions, and listen intently to responses, and who will be making the next generation of theatre that might just lift us out of our entrenched entertainment paradigms and compel us to think and to grow was the highlight of my two months in The District.

With students at The Kennedy Center

With students at The Kennedy Center

 

With teaching artist/directors Michael Rau (left) and Will Davis

With teaching artist/directors Michael Rau (left) and Will Davis

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Kennedy Center Summer Directing Intensive

We had eight post-show discussions over the five-week run.  They made for very late evenings, because we never wanted to let the discussion end, and people were always moved to speak.  The most validating of these for me were the two that we got to do with noted scholars, Michael Witmore, the director of The Folger Shakespeare Library, and Ayanna Thompson, a professor of English at George Washington University.  Professor Thompson has written extensively on people of color in Shakespeare.  And Mr. Witmore is presiding over the largest collection of Renaissance literature in the world.  Their approval of the work, and their agreeing to take part in the discussions it engendered has been a hugely encouraging moment in the performance life of this piece.

Post_performance discussion with Michael Witmore, director of The Folger Shakespeare Library

Post_performance discussion with Michael Witmore, director of The Folger Shakespeare Library

The discussions were facilitated by a local teaching artist, Thembi Duncan.  She was also responsible for bringing out a large portion of the African American performing arts community of DC.  Sooner or later, this custom we have developed of staying long after the performance to assure that the conversation continues will need to stop.  American Moor will soon need a venue that can give it a definitive polish only gotten with an abundance of resources.  It needs that time and space.  Until then, however, given the intimacy of these small venues, it only makes sense to stay and engage that audience, as it feels like they are already in my living room.

Late night with some of the actors and theatre professionals from Galvanize

Late night with some of the actors and theatre professionals from Galvanize DC

Thembi Duncan, DC teaching artist

Thembi Duncan, DC teaching artist

It is never a simple endeavor for a small theatre to pick up and run with a project like Moor. It’s a brave choice because it does not come with the promise of being easy in any way.  In fact, the easiest way to avoid controversy would be to run like hell in the other direction.  It seeks to make people uncomfortable, to holler truths that the public is most often desperately attempting to ignore, and that’s no way to sell tickets. The Anacostia Playhouse certainly did me a service by getting behind the project.  I don’t believe that we have yet felt all the positive fallout to result from the energies we’ve stirred.



A Power Outage at University of Maryland!

Our performance of “American Moor” at the Nyumburu Cultural Center on the campus of the University of Maryland sponsored by The Office of Diversity and Inclusion on Tuesday evening 4/7 was cancelled due to a massive power failure in large part of the state that took out power on the entire UMD campus!  Needless to say we were all extremely disappointed, and we are already talking about a rescheduling of the event for the beginning of the fall semester.

I was particularly disappointed because the post-show discussion that was slated to be facilitated by Dr. Faedra Carpenter would not happen.

However, sights are now set on the DC area production at The Anacostia Playhouse this summer, and towards another chance to play to the student population at UMD in the fall.



ONE NIGHT ONLY at The University of Maryland

A Special Event!!

Sponsored by the Office of Diversity and Inclusion at The University of Maryland.

UMD Flyer

 

 

So much of my time is currently being spent focused on the 11 dates of “Moor” in Manhattan.  But this promises to be a truly intimate, one-time, event with the students of UMD and a post-show discussion with Dr. Faedra Carpenter.  The event is open to all.

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