A Soldier’s Play (Play)

Subterms

    Latest story

    138 Shares99 Views

    How These Sign Language Experts Are Bringing More Diversity to Theater

    by

    As productions increasingly include characters and perspectives from a variety of backgrounds, deaf and hearing people who translate the shows for deaf audiences are trying to keep up.Zavier Sabio didn’t have much exposure to theater growing up. But when he was asked to join the Roundabout Theater Company’s production of “A Soldier’s Play” and help make the show — about race relations in the military in the segregated South — accessible to deaf theatergoers, he decided to give it a shot.“I really wanted to present this story, as well as the interpretation, through a Black lens,” Sabio, who is Deaf and Black, said through an interpreter. To do that, he also relied on his knowledge of Black American Sign Language (a variation of American Sign Language) and Black Deaf culture.Sabio joined the 2020 production as a co-director of artistic sign language, or DASL, a position that some shows fill in order to create a more cohesive theater experience for deaf audiences. DASLs collaborate with American Sign Language interpreters who specialize in theater, translating the script into ASL and establishing how to perform the signing — while staying true to the spirit of a show. That also entails accounting for representations of race in source material and casting.Amid a racial reckoning in theater, the work of DASLs and theatrical interpreters from a variety of backgrounds has become increasingly sought after in the past few years — both by deaf audiences and theatrical productions. But while there have been efforts to recruit more diverse interpreters, the push for better representation is not without challenges.That became evident in November, when Keith Wann, who is white, filed a lawsuit against the Theater Development Fund and its director, Lisa Carling, accusing them of discrimination. In the suit, Wann charged that a job offer from TDF — for theatrical interpreting for “The Lion King” on Broadway — had been retracted because of his race. A spokesperson for TDF, a nonprofit organization focused on making theater more affordable and accessible, declined to comment. The show, which has a racially mixed cast, draws on African imagery.Some deaf people took to social media when news of the lawsuit (which was eventually settled) broke, calling for more alignment along racial lines between productions and those providing interpreting services.“The interpreting field itself is very white-dominated,” said Kailyn Aaron-Lozano, who has worked as a DASL for “My Onliness” at the New Ohio Theater and “Sweeney Todd” at IRT Theater, speaking through an interpreter.Aaron-Lozano, who is Deaf and Afro-Latina, explained that having theatrical interpreters and DASLs who are BIPOC (an acronym that stands for Black, Indigenous and people of color) can have a big impact on the audiences of the productions that focus on those groups. “We are screaming for more BIPOC individuals to be in these positions,” she said. “There are not enough BIPOC interpreters who can fit the roles — and to better understand those nuances and those cultural pieces.”Jina Porter, a hearing theatrical interpreter and a person of color, said that when there is a mismatch between the interpreting team and what is happening onstage, it can be jarring for deaf viewers. “I feel like you should look at the team and then look at the show and feel like they would all kind of be in the same place together,” she said.Porter said that ensuring more diversity in theatrical interpreting is also a matter of providing equal access and opportunity. “That’s just the way the world should be,” she said.Patrice Creamer, a Black and Deaf theater artist who also works as a DASL, says that not every show requires a perfect racial match of actors and those making the show accessible. (She is currently a DASL for “The Lion King” but was not named in Wann’s lawsuit.)But having that alignment, Creamer said through an interpreter, can help the viewer form a more immediate connection with a show. That was the case, she added, with her work in the 2000 Broadway revival of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” where she interpreted for the role of Mary Magdalene, played by Maya Days, who is Black.“I played that character so that the Deaf audience could really take everything in with their eyes,” she said, “since their focus isn’t as much on what is happening on the stage, but on what’s happening with the interpreter.”Having deaf people whose first language is ASL working in artistic sign language direction brings a whole other perspective — a deaf one — to a production, Michelle Banks, a Black actress, director and writer who is Deaf, said through an interpreter. DASLs can also have a say in hiring, and can choose interpreters who are a better fit for the characters, the culture represented and the chosen signing style, Banks added.Banks has served as a DASL on shows including Camille A. Brown’s Broadway revival of “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf,” which starred Alexandria Wailes, a deaf and mixed race actress, and incorporated ASL into the fabric of the show.“I worked with Deaf actors, but I also worked with hearing actors,” Banks said of “For Colored Girls.” “So it’s not just Deaf culture that I brought to the production, but also the Black Deaf culture. And I did that with signing that showed that specific culture that is specific to the Black Deaf community.”She described one scene, for example, in which Wailes signs in Black American Sign Language, or BASL, which relies in a unique way on body language and rhythm. Onstage, Wailes’s signing became almost sensual, she said. “It was totally different from everyday conversational ASL.”“It became a lot more emotive,” Banks added. “There was a lot more feeling in that.”Sabio, who also incorporated BASL in the interpreting for “A Soldier’s Play,” said that for authenticity, he also researched and used signs from the historical period in which the play is set.Monique Holt, a professor in the theater and dance program at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., who also works as a director, actor and DASL, said that although more diversity exists in theater these days, there are not enough interpreters from diverse backgrounds — especially those who, like her, are Asian and Deaf.Offering more training opportunities and scholarships for those hoping to have a career in the field could make a difference, added Holt, who also mentors people interested in becoming artistic directors for sign language.Banks believes that theatrical interpreters can also be more thoughtful when booking interpreting roles and “really do some self-assessment: Am I the right person for this role? Am I the right interpreter for this job?”Theaters that provide interpreting should be part of the solution, too, Creamer said, adding that some of them tend to rely on a narrow group of established interpreters who are predominantly white. “They don’t have people of color on their list,” she said. “And there are excuses: ‘We can’t find them. We don’t know where they are.’ But how hard are those people really looking?” More

    More stories

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Theater

      Charles Fuller, Pulitzer Winner for ‘A Soldier’s Play,’ Dies at 83

      by

      He was the second Black playwright to win the award and later adapted the play into an Oscar-nominated film, “A Soldier’s Story.”Charles Fuller, who won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1982 for “A Soldier’s Play,” which finally made it to Broadway 38 years later, in a production that earned two Tony Awards, died on Monday in Toronto. He was 83.His wife, Claire Prieto-Fuller, confirmed the death.Mr. Fuller was only the second Black playwright to win the Pulitzer for drama. (Charles Edward Gordone won in 1970 for “No Place to Be Somebody.”) His plays often examined racism and sometimes drew on his background as an Army veteran. Both of those elements were evident in “A Soldier’s Play,” which was Mr. Fuller’s reimagining of Herman Melville’s “Billy Budd” and centered on the murder of a Black Army sergeant and the search for the culprit.The play was first staged in 1981 by the Negro Ensemble Company with a cast that included Denzel Washington. Frank Rich, in his review in The New York Times, called it “a relentless investigation into the complex, sometimes cryptic pathology of hate” and praised Mr. Fuller’s delineation of both the Black and the white characters.“Mr. Fuller demands that his Black characters find the courage to break out of their suicidal, fratricidal cycle,” Mr. Rich wrote, “just as he demands that whites end the injustices that have locked his Black characters into the nightmare.”Hollywood came calling. A 1984 film version, retitled “A Soldier’s Story” and directed by Norman Jewison, had a cast that included Mr. Washington, Howard E. Rollins Jr., David Alan Grier, Wings Hauser, Adolph Caesar and Patti LaBelle. It received three Oscar nominations, including one for Mr. Fuller’s screenplay.Denzel Washington, left, and Charles Brown in 1981 in Mr. Fuller’s acclaimed play “A Soldier’s Play,” staged by the Negro Ensemble Company in New York.Bert AndrewsIn “A Soldier’s Play” and his other works, Mr. Fuller strove to serve up not idealized Black characters but ones who reflected reality.“In the ’60s and early ’70s, Black plays were directed at whites,” Mr. Fuller told The San Diego Union-Tribune in 1984, when the Negro Ensemble Company’s production of “A Soldier’s Play” was staged in San Diego. “They were primarily confrontational pieces, whose major concern was to address racism and white-Black relationships in this country. Now we are much more concerned with examining ourselves, with looking at our own situations — historically in many instances. We are seeing characters who are more complex, ones who have bad qualities as well as good ones.”“A Soldier’s Play,” he told The Times in 2020, drew in part on his upbringing in a tough neighborhood of North Philadelphia.“I grew up in a project in a neighborhood where people shot each other, where gangs fought each other,” he said. “Not white people — Black people, where the idea of who was the best, toughest, was part of life. We have a history that’s different than a lot of people, but it doesn’t mean that we don’t cheat on each other, kill each other, love each other, marry each other, do all that, things that, really, people anywhere in the world do.”Kenny Leon (with microphone), who directed a 2020 revival of “A Soldier’s Play” on Broadway, addressed Mr. Fuller, third from left, onstage after a performance.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesCharles H. Fuller Jr. was born on March 5, 1939, in Philadelphia. His father was a printer, and his mother, Lillian Teresa Fuller, was a homemaker and foster mother. He was a student at Roman Catholic High School in Philadelphia when he attended his first play, a production performed in Yiddish at the Walnut Theater.“I didn’t understand a word,” he told The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1977, but somehow it sparked his interest in becoming a playwright.He studied for two years at Villanova University and then joined the Army, where his postings included Japan and South Korea. After four years, he returned to Philadelphia, taking night classes at LaSalle College (now University) while working as a city housing inspector.In 1968, he and some friends founded the Afro-American Arts Theater in Philadelphia, but they had no playwrights, so Mr. Fuller gave it a try.One result was his first staged play, “The Village: A Party,” about a racially mixed utopia, which was produced in 1968 at the McCarter Theater in Princeton, N.J.“What the evening proves,” Ernest Albrecht wrote in a review in The Home News of New Brunswick, N.J., “is that the theater is not Fuller’s bag.”But Mr. Fuller kept at it. In the 1970s he relocated to New York, where the Negro Ensemble Company in 1974 staged his drama “In the Deepest Part of Sleep” and opened its 10th-anniversary season in 1976 with another of his plays, “The Brownsville Raid,” based on a 1906 incident in Texas in which Black soldiers were accused of a shooting. Walter Kerr, writing in The Times, praised Mr. Fuller for not making the play a simple story of racial injustice.“Mr. Fuller is interested in human slipperiness, and his skill with self‐serving, only slightly shady evasions of duty helps turn the play into the interesting conundrum it is,” Mr. Kerr wrote.Although he set out as a playwright to examine difficult questions, Mr. Fuller did so with a certain degree of optimism about the future of the United States.“America has an opportunity, with all its technology, to develop the first sensible society in history,” he said in the 1977 interview with The Inquirer. “It could provide all its people with some rational way to live together while still glorying in their cultural diversity.”By the late 1980s, though, he had tired of New York and moved to Toronto, where he was living at his death. In addition to his wife, he is survived by a son, David; four grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.“A Soldier’s Play” was finally produced on Broadway in 2020 by the Roundabout Theater with a cast that included Mr. Grier and Blair Underwood. It was eligible to win the best-revival Tony even though it had never been produced on Broadway previously — the more familiar prerequisite for the category — because, under Tony rules, it was by 2020 considered “a classic.” Mr. Grier himself won a Tony for best actor in a featured role in a play.“It has been my greatest honor to perform his words on both stage and screen,” Mr. Grier said of Mr. Fuller on Twitter, adding that “his genius will be missed.” More

    • 125 Shares139 Views

      in Theater

      'A Soldier's Play' Wins for Best Revival of a Play

      by

      “A Soldier’s Play,” Charles Fuller’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1981 drama about racism in the American military, won the Tony Award for best revival of a play.The play starred Blair Underwood, an Army captain who investigates the murder of a Black sergeant near an Army base in Louisiana in 1944. The play, which opened in January 2020, received seven Tony nominations, the most of any play revival.Accepting the award, the play’s director Kenny Leon said the names of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, two Black people killed by the police last year, saying, “We will never, ever forget you.” He went on to speak about the lack of diversity among the most decorated playwrights.“No diss to Shakespeare, no diss to Ibsen, to Chekhov, to Shaw — they’re all at the table,” Leon said. “But the table’s got to be bigger.”“We need to hear all of the stories,” he went on. “When we hear all of the stories, we are better.”Earlier in the night, David Alan Grier, who plays the murdered sergeant, won a Tony for best featured actor in a play. After he accepted his award, Grier spoke to reporters about the devastation of the past 18 months and his relief to see Broadway returning.“I lost faith, I gained faith, I lost faith, I gained faith,” he said. “Finally there was a path forward, and I’m just happy for everyone.”Deadline reported earlier this week that “A Soldier’s Play” will get a television adaptation centered on Grier’s character.This award was the only top category for revival of a show this year; there were no musical revivals that qualified. More

    • 150 Shares139 Views

      in Theater

      David Alan Grier on Navigating the Art World as a Black Collector

      by

      The Tony-nominated actor and comedian discusses his love for overalls, citrus trees and trying to sell his teenage daughter on Frank Sinatra.David Alan Grier is riveted by jack rabbits.“I saw one the other day in a grocery store parking lot,” he said in a recent phone conversation from Calgary, Canada, where he was wrapping up filming for the Spectrum TV mystery series “Joe Pickett.” “All the Canadians were like, ‘God, jack rabbits are everywhere, they’re like pigeons. But I took pictures and posted video, I was so excited — this thing was enormous!”After five months north of the border playing a larger-than-life Wyoming game warden alongside Michael Dorman, Grier was looking forward to getting back to New York for the Tony Awards this week, where he’ll be up for his fourth nomination — and, he hopes, first win — for his role as a tyrannical technical sergeant in the 2020 Broadway production of “A Soldier’s Play.”“But there’s no Barneys anymore!” said Grier, who admitted he was craving a shopping trip to the defunct department store. “I’m still adjusting.”When we spoke, he discussed how his backyard grove of citrus trees got him through the pandemic, the comforts of all day Sunday cooking and the roots of his love of Black art. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. Citrus Trees During the pandemic, I planted about 14 citrus trees in my yard, and they became my obsession. I have kumquats, Valencia oranges, Ruby Red grapefruit, Cara Cara oranges that are deep red — they’re so sweet, they’re amazing. Whenever [expletive] got too crazy, I’d go water my trees. In fact, when the pomegranate one gave fruit last year, it was all split open, and I looked online and it said it was because I was overwatering the tree. My water bill was like $8,000 per month — it was like I was trying to wash Covid away.2. Vintage DenimWith my hours of free time during the pandemic, I’d go through every item of clothing on eBay and started going deeper into denim — Lee, Levi’s Deadstock, All American stuff. People were much littler in the ’50s, so to get something vintage that actually fits is such a joy. I own about 40 pairs of overalls, 27 denim jackets. My teenage daughter will be like “Oh my God, you’re wearing overalls again?”I went out to tea with my daughter in L.A. last year — she loves anime, so she was dressed as her favorite character, this Japanese fairy — and I had on these faded, vintage overalls. And this woman came up to us and goes, “I love your costumes — who are you supposed to be, a farmer?” My daughter was dying — she was like “No, that’s just what he wears.” Now I’ve weathered the tide, so I get compliments from young hipster people wherever I go. GQ called me a style god. For me, that’s bigger than a Tony.3. My Dogs I’m a lifelong dog lover, and I have two: Mr. Pickles is a Bluetick Coonhound, which is a hunting dog, and he is the loudest dog I’ve ever owned. He bays so loud — like this: [BAYS] — and does it all the time. He’s a problem child but we love him. Buttercup is a big-boned gal — body positive! — just trying to live in her truth.4. Playing the Guitar I’ve been playing — badly — since I was 12 years old. It’s a release and escape from politics, the virus, all that stuff. I wrote a list of tunes I wanted to learn — mostly blues, Rob Johnson, slide guitar. I used to write more songs, but now I mostly listen to old timey stuff — rhythm and blues, some musical theater. I used to always listen to Frank Sinatra in the car, and finally my daughter goes, “Oh, God, please don’t play that, I [expletive] hate it.” I was like, “What?” I was crushed.5. Conversations With His Late Father My father was the smartest person I knew — he went to college at 16, then went to medical school and became a psychiatrist. He’s been dead for six years, and I miss being able to use him as an intellectual and spiritual sounding board. I find myself talking, or posing questions, trying to talk to my brother about what my dad would have thought about this or that. I wish I could still get on the phone and talk to him, or just have him call me up and say “Can we vent? Can I rant?” It’s not like we had this great relationship when I was younger, but we had this détente when he got older. That’s how life goes.6. Being a Tourist in New York City I was living in an apartment in Times Square when I was doing “A Soldier’s Play,” and I can’t imagine how I’d have lived if I’d stayed in Manhattan during the pandemic. But I’m looking forward to getting back for the Tonys. I love walking around Central Park, going downtown and doing some shopping, getting dressed up and getting some fancy food. I really love the Armory Art Show and wish I could’ve been there for that. It’s all the super-touristy things I’ve been missing.7. Slow and Low Sunday Meals I’m by myself now while I’m up here working, but still, on Sundays, it’s in my veins to put on a pot, low and slow. I do a seafood soup or stew, or chicken soup from scratch — it takes all day, just kind of gurgling on the stove. It fills the house with that smell that’s just like, oh my God. My nephew, when he was really little, came over to my house for Christmas and I remember he got up early in the morning and said, “Uncle Dave, your house smells good.” [Laughs] If I were at home, it’d be short ribs, or oxtail and cheesy polenta, anything that takes all day.8. The Sermons of C.L. Franklin When Aretha Franklin came to see me on Broadway in “Porgy & Bess,” I remember telling her that I would listen to sermons that her dad gave in the 1950s. The cadence and rhythm of a Black preacher is in my bones, it’s in my soul — I love all of it. It’s just like being in church. He goes first to the announcements, like “We need this; we need that” or “We’re trying to raise more money here and there.” Then comes the sermon, the religious part. And he’d end with a story — usually a biblical story — that was perfectly crafted and choreographed so by the time he left the pulpit, it was a rock concert.9. Stetson Silverbelly Open Road Cowboy Hat That’s my favorite hat, man! The profile of this hat is an old white guy from the South in the 1960s. I never thought I’d be wearing that, but I love it. It’s an off-white, almost bone color because there’s no dye — they don’t treat the felt or the fur, so it really shows its wear, all the blemishes and sweat marks. I wear it as much as I can, and it’s broken in enough now that it feels just like an old pair of shoes.10. Collecting Black Artists I’ve been collecting for more than 20 years now. I really wanted to collect because I didn’t think I was able to — to even walk into a gallery and say, “I’m interested in that painting.” It’s like the art world does everything it can to repel you.I started collecting vintage movie posters, of all-Black cast movies, and from there I slowly moved into art — mostly emerging and midcareer Black American artists. Those were the artists I could afford, and they were the artists that represented and were painting the world in which I lived right now. I love finding new young artists. I’ve been collecting Walter Price for the past two years. When I saw his images, I immediately loved them — the crude figures, his use of color. Usually, I buy a couple of pieces, and then that person gets hot and famous, and I can’t afford them anymore. More

    • 150 Shares109 Views

      in Theater

      Douglas Turner Ward: A Lens on ‘Questions That the Country Wasn’t Asking’

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyDouglas Turner Ward: A Lens on ‘Questions That the Country Wasn’t Asking’Samuel L. Jackson, David Alan Grier, Phylicia Rashad and others remember the Negro Ensemble Company founder.Douglas Turner Ward waiting to go onstage after the opening night performance of “A Soldier’s Play” in January 2020. Kenny Leon, who led the production, called Ward’s presence and smile up there that night “the greatest experience for me as an American director.” Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesFeb. 23, 2021Updated 5:20 p.m. ETDouglas Turner Ward, who died at 90 on Saturday, left a legacy of extraordinary reach.By the time he founded the Negro Ensemble Company in 1967 with Robert Hooks and Gerald Krone, he had already been on Broadway in the original 1959 cast of “A Raisin in the Sun,” playing a tiny role while understudying Sidney Poitier.In the mid-’60s, Ward made a splash with his short satire “Day of Absence” — in which Black actors in whiteface makeup played white characters — and with an essay in The New York Times titled “American Theater: For Whites Only?” He dedicated his career to making sure that the answer was no.Nurturing the talents of Black artists through his company, he watched a remarkable number go on to fame — not least those from his acclaimed 1981 original production of Charles Fuller’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “A Soldier’s Play,” whose cast included Denzel Washington, Samuel L. Jackson and David Alan Grier.This week, company alumni and other colleagues reminisced about Ward and how he shaped the field. These are edited excerpts from the conversations.Samuel L. Jackson and LaTanya Richardson JacksonNegro Ensemble Company alums; in a joint interviewLATANYA RICHARDSON JACKSON He wanted the work of great African-American and Black artists to be as important to the world and to the artists themselves as the dominant culture. And his love of that original Negro Ensemble Company was always first in his conversation about art, because he so respected all of those actors and felt that they represented the best of the best inside the business, period.SAMUEL L. JACKSON He carried, like, four newspapers around with him. Every day. And when we were in rehearsal, he would sit in the back of the theater reading the paper. He would be in the back left corner reading the paper, and then, you know, you’d look up, and by the time you’d finished the first act, he’d be in the middle of the theater reading the paper, and then he’d be in another corner reading the paper, or in the balcony reading the paper. And at the end of rehearsal, he’d come down and give you notes! And we’d be like, “You’ve been reading the paper!” And then we started to find out that he only looked up from reading the paper when there was a bad line reading, or something sounded off.From left, Sophie Okonedo, Denzel Washington, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Bryce Clyde Jenkins and Anika Noni Rose in a 2014 performance of “A Raisin in the Sun” at the Ethel Barrymore Theater.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesLATANYA RICHARDSON JACKSON We stayed in touch with Doug. When I was doing “Raisin,” he was one of the first persons I saw when we came off the stage.SAMUEL L. JACKSON I remember when I was doing “Shaft,” he just walked into my trailer one night.LATANYA RICHARDSON JACKSON Yeah, he kept up with his people now. He would find you.SAMUEL L. JACKSON Sometimes when people pass, you can actually feel the hole in the universe. This is one of those.Robert HooksA founder of the Negro Ensemble CompanyWe bonded on the road with “A Raisin in the Sun.” Douglas got to play the Sidney Poitier role, Walter Lee [Younger], which was a role he had understudied from the very beginning.He was a highly intellectual man. Read all the time about everything. I was not into politics at all. But by the time we closed “Raisin in the Sun,” I was a politico. We talked politics all the time. We talked about Black art.His whole sense of humor as it relates to his writing was classic. He proves it, of course, in “Day of Absence,” when all the Black people disappear from this Southern town. It’s just hilarious. But the white folks that were laughing, their heads would roll down the aisle because that’s the kind of humor Douglas wrote: scathing, scathing stuff.Of all the men that I’ve ever met in my life, he was the greatest influence. My father died when I was 2. But when I met Douglas Turner Ward, I had a father and a brother.Phylicia RashadNegro Ensemble Company alum; in a written statementDouglas Turner Ward was a “salt of the Earth” person who brought those sensibilities to the art of theater. He was daring. He was bold. He was honest. He was kind. He made room for many theater artists. He even created space.Phylicia Rashad in the play “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” at the Broadhurst Theater in 2008. She said of Ward: “He was daring. He was bold. He was honest. He was kind.”Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWoodie King Jr.Producing director and founder of New Federal TheaterHe was touring in “A Raisin in the Sun,” and they came to the Cass Theater in Detroit, and I went down to see the play and waited around. Then I walked them back to the hotel, and we talked. I showed up the next night and the next night. Finally they said, “When you get to New York, man, we can talk all the time.” I said, “Well, while you’re in Detroit for these two weeks, can I come back tomorrow?” So that was my first encounter with Douglas Turner Ward.Two weeks later, I saw Sidney Poitier in “The Defiant Ones.” These two dark-skinned actors sort of like put a stamp on the acting profession. That’s what I wanted to be. It seemed possible. Absolutely possible.Sade LythcottChief executive of National Black Theater, founded by her mother, Barbara Ann TeerDouglas and my mom grew up together, artistically. It was such a seminal moment in our country, the mid-1960s. It was the birth of Black consciousness. And “Day of Absence” was such a seminal work. My mom was in it. And that was such a metaphor for so much of their relationship: the support onstage and behind the stage to do something that felt revolutionary and felt accurate in the telling of our stories, and that that could be the revolution — Black stories in the way that Douglas wrote that. From our lens, the questions that the country wasn’t asking.David Alan Grier, second from left, facing Nnamdi Asomugha in “A Soldier’s Play,” in 2020. Grier was also in the original 1981 production of the Charles Fuller play, with Denzel Washington and Samuel L. Jackson.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesDavid Alan GrierNegro Ensemble Company alum Growing up in Detroit, I read about the Negro Ensemble. My parents took me to see a road company of “The River Niger.” These were artistic heroes to me, and specifically Douglas Turner Ward. When I went into the company of “A Soldier’s Play” [in the original production], I auditioned for him. I was really nervous, and he directed and put me in.I was in town to do “Race” back in 2009, and I ran into Doug in a restaurant we used to hang out in. He came over and he said, “I really want to congratulate you on all of your success on television and in film. But please, you guys” — meaning me, Denzel, Sam Jackson, not to put myself on their level, but we were all in the play together, that was our connection — he said, “Don’t forget the theater, man. Always come back. We need you here, and the theater needs you here.”Sometimes those words, those moments of mentorship, mean and resonate so much and so deeply.Kenny Leon, with the microphone, thanked Douglas Turner Ward, second from left, and Charles Fuller, third from the left, on opening night of “A Soldier’s Play” last year.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesKenny LeonDirector of the Broadway production of “A Soldier’s Play,” in 2020The greatest experience for me as an American director was when the curtain went down that opening night, for me to call Douglas Turner Ward and Charles Fuller on that stage. To have Doug come up there and have him smile like that.Hattie WinstonA founding member of the Negro Ensemble CompanyDouglas Turner Ward is responsible for — and I say this without hesitation — the careers of not only Sam and LaTanya and Denzel and myself, but Phylicia Rashad, Debbie Allen, Charles Weldon, Adolph Caesar came through there. Not just actors, but costume designers, set designers, directors.Michael Schultz directed our very first production at the company, a play called “The Song of the Lusitanian Bogey” that was written by Peter Weiss, who was a German playwright who was a friend of Doug’s. It was all about colonialism in Africa. With that play, N.E.C. was chosen to represent the United States of America in the international theater festival in London. That was monumental.So Douglas Turner Ward, he’s in my heart, and he will always be in my heart. He’s responsible for me being who I am. It all came from Doug. We’re his children.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Theater

      Douglas Turner Ward, Pioneer in Black Theater, Dies at 90

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyDouglas Turner Ward, Pioneer in Black Theater, Dies at 90A founder of the Negro Ensemble Company in New York in the 1960s, he was outspoken about limited opportunities for fellow Black actors and directors.Douglas Turner Ward, right, in 1971 with the director and producer Michael Schultz on the set of the play “The Sty of the Blind Pig.”Credit…Edward Hausner/The New York TimesFeb. 22, 2021Douglas Turner Ward, an actor, playwright and director who co-founded the celebrated Negro Ensemble Company, a New York theater group that supported Black writers and actors at a time when there were few opportunities for them, died on Saturday at his home in Manhattan. He was 90.The death was confirmed by his wife, Diana Ward.Mr. Ward was establishing his own career as an actor in 1966 when he wrote an opinion article in The New York Times with the headline “American Theater: For Whites Only?”“If any hope, outside of chance individual fortune, exists for Negro playwrights as a group — or, for that matter, Negro actors and other theater craftsman — the most immediate, pressing, practical, absolutely minimally essential active first step is the development of a permanent Negro repertory company of at least Off-Broadway size and dimension,” he wrote. “Not in the future … but now!”The article got the attention of W. McNeil Lowry, the Ford Foundation’s vice president of humanities and the arts, who arranged a $434,000 grant to create precisely the kind of company that Mr. Ward was proposing. Thus the Negro Ensemble Company was born, in 1967, with Mr. Ward as artistic director, Robert Hooks as executive director and Gerald S. Krone as administrative director.The company went on to produce critically acclaimed productions, among them Joseph A. Walker’s “The River Niger” (1972), which won the Tony Award for best play in 1974 and was adapted for film in 1976. Mr. Ward not only directed the play but also acted in it, earning a Tony nomination for best featured actor in a play.Other notable productions by the company included Samm-Art Williams’s “Home” (1979) and Charles Fuller’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama “A Soldier’s Play” (1981), about a Black officer investigating the murder of a Black sergeant at a Louisiana Army base during World War II, when the armed forces were segregated. The cast included Denzel Washington and Samuel L. Jackson. (It, too, was adapted for film, as “A Soldier’s Story,” in 1984.)Frank Rich of The Times called the production, directed by Mr. Ward, “superlative.” (The play was revived last January on Broadway, starring Blair Underwood, before being forced to close because of the pandemic.)The Negro Ensemble Company became — and continues to be — a training ground for Black actors, playwrights, directors, designers and technicians. Many of the troupe’s actors over the years went on to become stars, among them, in addition to Mr. Washington and Mr. Jackson, Angela Bassett, Louis Gossett Jr. and Phylicia Rashad.Mr. Ward, right, in 1967 with the ensemble company co-founder Robert Hooks. They started the troupe that year with a grant from the Ford Foundation, setting up headquarters at St. Mark’s Playhouse in the East Village.Credit…Don Hogan Charles/The New York TimesThe company, and Ford’s contribution, won immediate praise after its founding. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said the grant represented “a magnificent step toward the creation of new and greater artists in the community,” and Roy Wilkins, the executive director of the N.A.A.C.P. at the time, said the foundation had “recognized the potential in the Negro theater” and the talent of “hundreds of actors and entertainers who have struggled individually.”The company began racking up Obie, Tony and Drama Desk awards and recording firsts. In 1975, the Times critic John J. O’Connor acknowledged the historical significance of a “superb” television production of Lonne Elder III’s play “Ceremonies in Dark Old Men,” set in 1950s Harlem. “The event marks the debut of a major Black theater organization, the Negro Ensemble Company, on American network television,” he wrote.Mr. Ward starred with Rosalind Cash in 1975 in the well-received ABC television movie adaptation of the play “Ceremonies in Dark Old Men.” Credit…Bert Andrews/ABC, via Getty ImagesThe company enabled Mr. Ward to solidify his own career as an actor and director.“I love acting for the communal thing — you know, working with people,” he said in an interview with The Times in 1975. But directing, he added, “sort of happened to me.”“I never had any intention of functioning as a director,” he continued, “but as the artistic director of the company, I choose the plays, and if I can’t find someone to direct them for us, I do it myself.”One of the first plays he directed was Richard Wright and Louis Sapin’s “Daddy Goodness” (1968), about a town drunk in the rural South who falls into such a stupor that his friends think he is dead.In an interview, Mr. Fuller said, “Doug is the only director I have worked with that could read any play and know whether its story line and characters would ‘work’ onstage.”The Negro Ensemble Company was not immune to criticism, however. The founders were criticized early on for setting up their headquarters at the St. Mark’s Playhouse in Manhattan’s East Village rather than at a theater in Harlem, and for appointing a white administrator, Mr. Krone. (He died last year at 86.)Mr. Ward, front left, on opening night of a revival of “A Soldier’s Play” in New York last January. He shook hands with the play’s author, Charles Fuller. Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesRoosevelt Ward Jr. was born on May 5, 1930, in Burnside, La., to Roosevelt and Dorothy (Short) Ward, impoverished farmers who owned their own tailoring business. His family moved to New Orleans when he was 8, and he attended Xavier University Preparatory School, a historically Black Roman Catholic institution.Mr. Ward was admitted to Wilberforce University in Ohio in 1946, then transferred to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where he studied politics and theater. He quit college at 19 and moved to New York City, where he met and befriended the playwrights Lorraine Hansberry and Mr. Elder.In the late 1940s, Mr. Ward joined the Progressive Party and took to left-wing politics. He was arrested and convicted on charges of draft evasion and spent time in prison in New Orleans while his case was under appeal. After his conviction was overturned, he moved back to New York and became a journalist for the Communist Party newspaper The Daily Worker.He also began studying theater, joining the Paul Mann Actors Workshop and choosing the stage name Douglas Turner Ward, in homage to two men he admired: the abolitionist Frederick Douglass and Nat Turner, who led a revolt against slavery.One of Mr. Ward’s first acting roles was in Eugene O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh” in 1956 at Circle in the Square in Manhattan; another was as an understudy in Ms. Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” on Broadway in 1959, with Sidney Poitier and Claudia McNeil in the lead roles.He also began developing as a playwright. In 1965, an Off-Broadway double-bill production of his satirical one-act comedies “Happy Ending” and “Day of Absence” became a hit, bringing him a Drama Desk Award for outstanding new playwright. Surviving a transit strike, the production ran for 15 months.Mr. Ward had lead roles in many plays, including “Ceremonies in Dark Old Men,” for which he won the Drama Desk Award, and “The Brownsville Raid,” about an incident of military racial injustice in a Texas town. Clive Barnes, reviewing “Brownsville” for The Times, wrote “Ward, who, to be frank, I usually admire more as a director than an actor, has never been better.”Among his many awards and honors, Mr. Ward received the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Award. In 1996, he was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame.He continued to write into his later years. Last March, he published “The Haitian Chronicles,” a series of three plays that he had been working on since the 1970s, all centered on the Haitian Revolution, which threw off colonial rule in the early 1800s. His wife said that he had considered the project his magnum opus and that she and others were hoping to have the plays staged in New York with alumni from the Negro Ensemble Company.In addition to Ms. Ward, whom he married in 1966, he is survived by their two children, Elizabeth Ward-Cuprill and Douglas Powell Ward, and three grandchildren.At the Negro Ensemble Company, Mr. Ward often played matchmaker in connecting actors to roles, seeking out opportunities for people whom he knew had not been getting much work.“Doug never saw N.E.C. as a place to feature himself,” the playwright Steve Carter, who was a production coordinator for the company, said in a phone interview for this obituary in 2017. “He was always looking for new people.”Mr. Carter, who died last year, said Mr. Ward had been known for his willingness to step into any role in which he was needed. He recalled in particular a 1972 production of “A Ballet Behind the Bridge,” by the Trinidadian playwright Lennox Brown. With the actor Gilbert Lewis unable to appear one evening, Mr. Ward was hastily summoned to fill in.“Doug went on with script in hand,” Mr. Carter said. Then Mr. Ward actually injured his hand on the set and began bleeding profusely, but he refused to go to the hospital until he had finished the show.“He would always do what was necessary for N.E.C.,” Mr. Carter said.Alex Traub contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      For His Second Act, Nnamdi Asomugha Made Preparation His Byword

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFor His Second Act, Nnamdi Asomugha Made Preparation His BywordThe former pro football player has pushed himself in acting classes, onstage and in films. His latest drama, “Sylvie’s Love,” also meant returning to an early passion: music.Nnamdi Asomugha gave up piano for football early in his life. Now he’s playing a jazz saxophonist in a new movie.Credit…Erik Carter for The New York TimesDec. 28, 2020The lead in a romance may seem like a prize for most actors, but the star of the new drama “Sylvie’s Love” had reservations.“There was no way that I was going to do a romantic film until I read the script and saw that there were Black people falling in love in the ’50s and ’60s,” Nnamdi Asomugha, 39, said. “And then immediately I was like, OK, I think people need to see this film.”“Sylvie’s Love,” which made its Amazon premiere on Dec. 23, is set largely in midcentury New York and explores the ebbs and flows of the relationship between Robert (Asomugha), a charismatic jazz saxophonist, and Sylvie (Tessa Thompson), a determined television producer.Asomugha is considered a rising star in Hollywood: In 2017, his breakout performance in the drama “Crown Heights” earned Indie Spirit and NAACP Image Award nominations. Earlier this year, he made what the Hollywood Reporter called “a promising Broadway debut” in a new staging of “A Soldier’s Play” by Charles Fuller. Behind the scenes, he has helped produce projects through his production company, iAm21 Entertainment, including “Sylvie’s Love,” “Crown Heights” and “Harriet,” as well as the Broadway play “American Son” (2018), which starred his wife, the actress Kerry Washington.Asomugha opposite Tessa Thompson in “Sylvie’s Love.”Credit…Amazon StudiosBut before acting and producing, Asomugha was considered one of the best cornerbacks in the National Football League, playing 11 seasons for the Oakland Raiders and other teams before retiring in 2013.It’s “mind-boggling that I would even want to go from one career where you’re under such a microscope in an extreme way to another career where the microscope might even be bigger,” Asomugha said. “You can’t help what you fall in love with, and I fell in love with acting.”He spoke recently via video about making the transition from football to acting, preparing for “Sylvie’s Love” (directed by Eugene Ashe) and the unexpected experience of appearing on Broadway. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.You’ve gone from a successful N.F.L. career to an acting career. What was the timeline for you?I was just obsessed with movies and television growing up. When I finished playing, the advice I kept getting from former players was find something to do that you are absolutely in love with. Because the love you have for it is what will sustain and lead you. And I knew that this was an avenue. I didn’t know that it was necessarily going to be producing, but I knew I wanted to go into acting.Were you still an N.F.L. player when you got bit by that bug, or was this after your career?While I was still in the N.F.L., but I didn’t make the decision until probably a year after [retiring]. You go through this period of soul-searching when you finish doing something that you’ve done for the last 20-something years of your life. It’s an identity crisis, like, do I have any more things to look forward to in life? All the traumatic things you tell yourself.On top of that, I knew that I wasn’t 20. I wasn’t just coming out of Yale or Juilliard. The window felt so much shorter to me. So I didn’t want to wait. I wanted to just start creating the projects so people can say, oh, OK, he does know what he’s doing.Do you often take lessons and experience from your football career and apply them to your acting career?I advise people all the time, get your kids into sports because sports shaped my life — from discipline and patience and hard work and falling down and needing to get back up and not complaining. But the No. 1 thing I think is the preparation. The same preparation I need to get ready for a football game or football season, I’ve brought that to acting.Asomugha, right, in 2008 when he was playing for the Raiders.Credit…Paul Buck/European Pressphoto AgencyWhen did you start playing football?I was 12. The first year I played football was the last year I played the piano. One day, I was late for practice and my coach said, where were you? I said I’m sorry, I had a recital. And he laughed so hard. It was this big thing and I had to run laps. That was the last time I ever played the piano. And that was the start of my football career. It was both devastating and also affirming. Like, OK, I need to focus on this. This is going to be what I do now.You found your way back to an instrument.I did!Did you have to learn how to play the tenor saxophone for “Sylvie’s Love”?I didn’t have to, but I chose to because I love preparation. I love the process more than anything, sometimes even more than the actual moment. I got a saxophone coach who was also in the film and we played for just over a year. And I learned that I was really good at playing the saxophone. I say “was” because I haven’t played it in a while, so I’ve lost a lot of that. But I wanted it to look authentic.The film is set during the civil rights movement in America. But with these two Black characters and an almost entirely Black cast, the backdrop isn’t politics, it’s jazz. We see some of those elements play out but that wasn’t the focus. Can you explain the intent behind that?It was important for us to make those elements nuanced and not in your face. We wanted to focus on the love. We’ve been so defined by that period as Black people. We know about marches and protests and water hoses and dogs and struggle. But we were also falling in love. We were having families, getting married, going to the dance. My father-in-law says we used to go to “the dance,” we didn’t call it the club. We had that as a part of our culture of Black people and to not celebrate that is a crime. It robs us of our humanity and just an entire aspect of our lives that really helped us get through those difficult moments. So for us, the thought was, why not show that? Why not illuminate the love that we had for each other during this time period?And it also was a reason some people passed on making the film because they felt like it should have been rooted in the civil rights movement. But that wasn’t the film we wanted to make. We felt that there was an audience for not just Black love, but love in general.What are some moments from the film you hope resonate with viewers?I think it was really important for us to show a level of vulnerability in men, especially Black men.I hope that it will further the conversation of it being OK for men to be expressive, to tell how they feel. The important thing for us was showing men doing that in front of their women.Asomugha went toe to toe with David Alan Grier in “A Soldier’s Play” on Broadway.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesYou’ve produced a few films, some of which you starred in. Why did you go the producer route?The projects that I was seeing, not only did they not interest me, I wasn’t getting them. It’s not like the projects are there and they were like, “Here’s your job!”I was so serious about this that I didn’t want to use football to get in the door. So it meant having to stand up [in classes] in front of a bunch of people that know who you are because they know football and you have to be doing a scene in front of them.It’s just to say that there was a level of discipline that I had to have because I do want it to be something that’s sustaining.How do you and Kerry Washington support each other as actors? Are there plans to collaborate with each other in a film?I produced “American Son,” but as actors, there’s no plan as of now for that collaboration. We’re very supportive of each other’s journeys, but we’ve always been that way. We always want the best for each other in whatever we’re doing. And so it’s not in the detail of specific things; It’s just an overall appreciation for the hard work.Do you hope to do more plays on Broadway?I had no dream or aspiration of being on Broadway. I didn’t know that doing plays was going to be in my cards at all until I did an Off Broadway play and I fell in love with being on the stage. And then the next year, for me to be on Broadway in “A Soldier’s Play” and to be in a role originated by Denzel — I was just like, what is happening?AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More