24 minute read
A Dedication to Black Storytellers
A CONVERSATION WITH JAMIL JUDE, WOODIE KING JR. + KENNY LEON
Influence flows through generations. For this special issue of SDC Journal, we invited three generations of Black theatre leaders—Woodie King Jr., Kenny Leon, and Jamil Jude—to come together (from New York, Los Angeles, and Atlanta, respectively) for a Zoom conversation. We are pleased to share their wide-ranging discussion, in which they talk about their craft and creative processes, giving back, institution building, and their own inspirations.
ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS
JAMIL JUDE is Artistic Director of Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theatre Company in Atlanta.
WOODIE KING JR. is the Founder and Producing Director of Woodie King Jr.’s New Federal Theatre in New York City.
KENNY LEON is the Founder and Artistic Director Emeritus of Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theatre Company, and Senior Resident Director of New York’s Roundabout Theatre Company.
KENNY LEON | I am grateful to be in this conversation with the two of you. Both of you hold a special place in my heart. It seems as though I’ve known Woodie King, personally and professionally, my entire life. Certainly, all of my professional life. I give Woodie—not just because he’s here—the responsibility for a lot of my personal success. He’s had so much success in his life. When I first started out, I had to go and read about who were the Black legends out there. For me, it was Woodie King and Lloyd Richards and Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. I’ve been lucky enough to really get to know those people and more.
Woodie was one of the first examples to me of the power of the Black story or the place of the Black story in the broader community. Everything in my career has always been about how do we present Black stories to Black people, and also to white people?
Woodie and Douglas Turner Ward and Lloyd and all those people were doing it. So that’s who I had to call up and inquire about and learn from. Woodie seems like he’s always been in my life as an expert inspiration. He continues to be in my life as an inspiration, in terms of, how do you combine activism with being the best artist that you can be?
I had the fortune of working with him as a director. Long before I did A RAISIN IN THE SUN on Broadway, he directed me in A RAISIN IN THE SUN at Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre. So I’ve known him as a director, as a friend, and as a leader. If you remove Woodie King from the American theatre, then there’s a huge hole in the American theatre. I think none of us would be talking about doing what we do if it weren’t for the work of Woodie. So I love him. I love you, Woodie King, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Woodie was also probably the first person I knew who was an artist and an administrator. Even at the Alliance Theatre, when they named me as Artistic Director, there are things that come with it that are administrative that I didn’t know anything about. But I can look at Woodie King and think, “Well, he knows something about it, he’s figuring it out. It can be done.”
So I’ll just start off to say that he’s one of my mentors, whether he knows it or not. He’s an inspiration for me. I continue to be curious about what he’s going to do next.
Kenny Leon on the set of AMEND: THE FIGHT FOR AMERICA (Netflix)
WOODIE KING JR. | I felt in Kenny Leon, from first working with him and meeting him, a vibe that is Atlanta. It’s an Atlanta vibe. There’s the way you walk, the way you talk, the way you listen, the way you talk to people. That’s very much what I look for, and I find it in Kenny Leon. Whether he directs A RAISIN IN THE SUN on Broadway, directs at the Public or around the United States, he is going to direct a piece that has that vibe, that movement. That way of walking, talking, grooving. That is the language that we look for in African Americans.
You’re not going to find it in drama school— especially, where you have white drama teachers. You are not going to find it in where you are being taught in a university, in a theatre department where everybody’s white and you say, well, maybe I got something. You go for what you’ve got but you hold on to what you know. If you walk down the streets of Atlanta and go into a convenience store, you see it, you hear it. Now you hold on to it as an artist and Kenny has been able to do that.
So I am grateful. I just hope you make a lot of money and are directing what white people need. There’s nothing wrong with that. The people we knew at the beginning of their careers—the Samuel L. Jacksons, the LaTanya Richardson Jacksons—you see now how it manifests itself into $5 million to do a commercial, $25 to $30 million doing a picture. Okay. If I direct this, I’m going to get at least $5 or $6 million if I’m at the top of my game. That’s what I’m working toward. That’s all fine. But what are you going to do with the $5 or $6 million other than buy a palatial mansion? What are you going to do with it? Are you going to put it back in a theatre? Are you going to put it back into a Spelman College? Are you going to put it back into the small theatre in Detroit or the small theatres in New York? That’s what interests me.
Woodie King Jr. + playwright Ed Bullins
PHOTO c/o New Federal Theatre
JAMIL JUDE | One thing I’ve always loved about both of you is that you give back. As you mentioned, Mr. King, I went to a predominantly white institution. I didn’t really even know about the theatre. I was in theatre just because I got hurt playing football my freshman year; I probably would have never gotten into the arts had I stayed healthy. But that freshman year, I was in Urban Theatre, which was a student-led Black and brown arts organization in upstate New York. I never really got that formal white theatre education until my junior or senior year. In my first foray into the professional world, the first director I ever saw work was Kenny. So I didn’t actually get all the ways in which you get taught out of your natural instincts. But I also realized I didn’t get what I would come to learn from watching Kenny, from watching Charles Randolph-Wright, watching Marion McClinton, watching Valerie Curtis-Newton.
It took me probably about five, six, seven years as a professional theatremaker to learn that, okay, this is how you take what it is that you already know inside you, just being a Black person in America, and share it as an artist and director and leader of a room. Once I saw that, and people were giving back while practicing their craft, the shift happened pretty quickly. Now people look to me as if to say, what is it that you can teach me and and give back at the same time? I’m always interested in listening to the people that I’ve learned from—how do I show up and be a better practitioner in the moment? But also, not be so consumed with making that I don’t do the job that was done for me—and that’s giving back.
Jamil Jude in rehearsal for THE FIRST NOEL at True Colors Theatre Company
PHOTO Lelund Durond Thompson
KENNY | It’s interesting to me. Woodie, I don’t know how well you know Jamil. But one thing I learned from what you were doing, what you’ve always done at New Federal Theatre, is to really focus on institution building. To build a Black institution in America is really hard, and the rules are not the same. When I ran the Alliance Theatre, I could go to a corporation for X amount of dollars for production. When I started True Colors Theatre Company, I got the same actors, the same quality of work, but they would give me a lot less money to do it. One of the things for Black folks is we have to sustain our institutions, because even though it’s unfair, it gives us a shot, it gives us a place to do the work, it gives people a place to go.
A lot of times, you’re trying to teach young folks, and sometimes they don’t want to hear you. But one of the things about Jamil—I’m not taking credit for his career—but when he was working for me as an associate, I was like, “This guy has something.” I went to him early on and said, “Come play around with us in Atlanta at True Colors.” He said, “No, I’m going to Minnesota.” [In St. Paul, Jude worked for Mixed Blood Theatre Company and Park Square Theatre.] I said, “Okay.”
Then a few years later, True Colors was doing really poorly in terms of money in the bank. It was paycheck-to-paycheck, and some people said, “Kenny, you need to protect your brand. It’s time to leave the institution and just go on and do your Broadway or your film stuff.” I was like, no, it’s not time to go, and I stayed there and kept raising money, with a wonderful staff and board. When we had money back in the bank, I said, “If Black institutions are going to survive in America, they’ve got to survive past the Kenny Leons and the Woodie Kings and the founders. They’ve got to have other people around that believe in them.”
I was able to go back to Jamil and say, “Hey, man, it’s time for you to run this theatre if that’s what you want to do.” It timed out that it was, but I don’t know any other person that I could have gone to. I think the theatre would have died. We were able to hand it off, and he’s been there three or four years now. I guess what I’m getting to is that sometimes we talk about the white folks and the funders—yeah, we know that America is racist, we know that. But then the next part is, how do we maintain our institutions? How do we keep fighting for equal justice, equal financial justice? How do we keep encouraging our own people to believe in our institutions? We have to keep giving back to our institutions until white folks can catch up with why they should support our institutions as well.
Eddie Bradley, Tonia Jackson + Tiffany Denise Hobbs in KING HEDLEY II at True Colors Theatre Company, directed by Jamil Jude
PHOTO Greg Mooney
WOODIE | Jamil has to put his stamp on True Colors. He has to say, these are the plays I want to do, and he must in his own sense argue with you, Kenny. He needs someone to argue off of.
KENNY | It’s a beautiful thing with Jamil and I in the last four years. We’ve been able to keep a close relationship and a respect. He’s putting his stamp on the theatre, he’s doing plays certainly that I would not do. But he’s also able to bounce things off me. At True Colors, we developed a set of core values that will always guide us: boldness, laughter, respect, abundance. And a dedication to Black storytellers. Within those parameters, the leadership of the theatre can create whatever they need to create.
That’s one thing about Jamil, he’s bold. He stood on the ceiling of what I did for 16 years and is building from that, whereas sometimes people don’t want to build on the ceiling of the person who came before them.
JAMIL | I think there was some nervousness in Atlanta at the beginning, because we announced that I was going to transition into the Artistic Director position a year before it actually happened. So people were wondering, “What does it mean if Kenny leaves? Is Kenny leaving Atlanta? Can we still trust the organization?” It was in those first couple of years that we were able to show people the work is still going to be good. We’re still going to put out good stories, and we are still being led by those values that Kenny mentioned: boldness, laughter, abundance, and respect. We are putting the focus on Black storytelling— that’s what we do. We are in a Black neighborhood in Black-ass Atlanta, and we’re going to tell Black stories. That’s what we’re going to put up on front. We’re not going to apologize for it, we’re not going to beat around the bush about it.
I still remember my first day at True Colors: Kenny brought me on stage to introduce me to the audience after a performance of HOLLER IF YA YEAR ME. There were 300-plus Black people in the audience. Up until that point in my career, only working in predominately white institutions, I had been told that Black people don’t want to come to the theatre like that—that you can’t program seasons or plays around Black people showing up in those kind of numbers. Immediately when I walked out on stage, I was like, “This has been a lie the entire time. You all just been lying. You just didn’t know how to tell a story in that kind of way.” That moment right there made me feel like, all right, if this is my audience, then the American theatre has to respond to this now. Whatever you’ve all been lying to me and lying to others about what the American theatre is, at True Colors we know that this is different.
One thing that I’ve been really advocating for is that in a city like Atlanta, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be the ones who commission and world premiere new Black plays. As opposed to what I feel like has been happening over the last 20 years, which is that Black writers are going to Yale and they’re going to Columbia or what have you, and then they’re getting commissioned by these predominantly white theatres to write a play. The plays sometimes feel watered down or not really representative of the Black experience. But in our city and at our theatre, with the legacy and tradition that we have, we should be able to launch these careers and produce these plays. I’ve been really focused on that.
WOODIE | You’ve got to find the playwrights who are speaking to those 300 people or more. Once you find the playwrights, you will do great productions, whether Kenny Leon directs them, or you bring in directors from somewhere else, or you direct them. That’s what’s going to define the longevity of True Colors. That’s what Kenny Leon did, that’s what we all do. It is the play, it is always the play. It is not the readings, it is not the open mic; you can do all of that, but it is third or fourth down the ladder. The play is first, the production of the play.
JAMIL | Woodie, you’ve talked about this before, but what inspired you to start New Federal? What was the fire that burned, that said, here’s how we’re going to gather artists together and administer a theatre that now has gone on for 50-plus years?
WOODIE | I was very, very much enamored with the Federal Theatre Project, which was run by Hallie Flanagan from 1935 to 1939 with money from the federal government. John Houseman and Orson Welles were part of that, and they did a production of something called VOODOO MACBETH [an all- Black version of Shakespeare’s play, set in Haiti] in 1936. And then out of the Federal Theatre Project’s Negro Unit came the American Negro Theater in 1940.
I didn’t want to call the theatre the Negro Theatre Project; I said it should be called the New Federal Theatre—a new version of what John Houseman and Orson Welles and Hallie Flanagan did in the 1930s. We would have these confabs and discussions and talks. I got in tight with the founders of the American Negro Theater, Fred O’Neal [the first African American head of Actors’ Equity Association] and Abram Hill. Those conversations were more than just hey, youngblood this and this and this; they got kind of deep. You must be able to read what is not being said. The American Negro Theater lasted nine years; the Federal Theatre Project ran from 1935 to 1939. So why did they fail? They counted on somebody, they counted on something. The American Negro Theater counted on Harlem’s Schomburg Center, which was part of the New York Public Library, for space. They couldn’t pay actors anything. So the first thing I learned, of course, was you’ve got to make a deal with the unions to use African Americans, and to pay people.
KNOCK ME A KISS at New Federal Theatre, directed by Chuck Smith
PHOTO Lia Chang
KENNY | Once I left the Alliance Theatre— which is a big LORT theatre, with mostly white leadership and white patrons—and started True Colors, I decided that I needed somebody who loves raising money as much as I like producing the plays. I felt like if I was going to start a Black theatre company, I wanted a managing director partner who really understood how to raise money and who loved it. That’s why I went out and got Jane Bishop, who used to be General Manager at the Alliance Theatre. Jane Bishop said, “Okay, Kenny, we’re going to have a healthy tension between the money and the art.” I think the biggest reason True Colors is still there is because we started with an artist and a business person.
Jamil, what was the biggest challenge for you in taking over the theatre post-2000?
JAMIL | I think that funding is always going to be an issue. Like you mentioned earlier, Kenny, the way in which corporations or individuals give to white theatres, and the way those same individuals turn around and give to Black theatres—it’s a small percentage. So having to deal with funding, and also ticket prices—how we have to continue to do a better job of getting our audience—there’s a divide between what is accessible versus what is actually paying rate for the type of work that we do. One thing I pride ourselves on at True Colors is that we give audiences amazing production values. You’re going to get great actors, you’re going to get great scenic design, costume design, great lighting design. So how do we get people to pay the same money they’re paying at the Alliance because we’re getting the same caliber of artists? We’re working with the same people, we’re putting shows up in the same type of way, we’re not shortchanging you in any kind of way. So how do we get people to pay that way and also make sure that anyone who wants to see our work can see it? That’s a challenge.
But I don’t really feel that challenge right now. I can’t wait to get back on live stage, because I think our programming is tight. I think we’ve got something really strong, and we can’t wait to show people what we’ve been doing during the pandemic.
Woodie, you talk about the play being the thing. What was it like working alongside Ntozake Shange and Ed Bullins and other playwrights of the middle and later part of the 20th century, when they were creating these new works? Can you talk a little bit about the craft of bringing these young writers of their time to the stage and working alongside them and helping them develop their craft?
Elizabeth Van Dyke, Queenie Cavette, Linda Thomas Wright + Denise Marcia in the London production of FOR COLORED GIRLS WHO HAVE CONSIDERED SUICIDE / WHEN THE RAINBOW IS ENUF, directed by Avery Brooks + choreographed by Paula Moss
PHOTO c/o New Federal Theatre
WOODIE | So, working with Ed Bullins is totally different than working with Ntozake Shange; it’s totally different working with Ron Milner and with J. E. Franklin, who wrote BLACK GIRL. You’ve got to be able to adjust and modulate your voice. I had to do a lot of stuff to sit in a room with Ron Milner, to sit in a room with Samm-Art Williams, to sit in a room with these people and modulate. I think it’s for the good of the people walking in the door. When they have not spent time in the community you are working in like you have, they don’t know those people. I know—I know those people.
If you go back when Jimmy Baldwin was alive, you got to argue with Jimmy Baldwin to do it. “Man, come on,” you got to say. “No, no, no, this is the theatre, this is not the church you preached in as a boy and you’ve forgotten it. I know you’ve forgotten it.” Okay, so if you’ve been living in Paris, you’ve got to say it a certain way. I’ve read THE FIRE NEXT TIME, I’ve read GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN. So if he jumps to that, I’ll just jump to another paragraph in that same thing and say, “But you said in so and so, and so...Well, I’m not directing, Jimmy, Vinnette Carroll is directing it, and she was a girl preacher.”
Okay, now. He’ll say, “Okay, you’ve got it.” So that way he can keep his dignity and still feel like he’s told me. Then, when the audience comes in and loves it, and there’s a standing ovation and all those things, he will tell the press and everybody, “Yes, I worked with Woodie, I told him what to do.” He won’t meet with Vinnette, the director, but the director made that happen.
JAMIL | Woodie, I’m looking at the archives of New Federal Theatre, and I’m seeing that you did SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER in your first season. I’m imagining that you cast it fully with people of color?
WOODIE | Yes. We did SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER in a carriage house in Detroit [before producing it in New York in St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church, with the church transformed into a garden]. Tennessee Williams came down and saw that whole parish hall was flowers and foliage and growths and that garden. That’s what I think most impressed him, and the thrill of having done it in Detroit to success and then doing it in New York, and Tennessee Williams coming down to see it. I can’t tell you what it means when an author of that stature endorses something you’re doing.
I’m not saying this because Kenny Leon is here. But if I could get Kenny Leon to direct Phylicia Rashad as Mrs. Venable, it would be one of the outstanding productions of the year, whether you do it with me or with True Colors or somebody else.
KENNY | Sounds like a good idea!
JAMIL | I haven’t read that play in a long time. Kenny, who are the artists that inspire you right now?
KENNY | I like Donald Glover, I like Joaquina Kalukango, who was in SLAVE PLAY. I like Rob Demery, who plays MLK in the Mahalia Jackson film I just shot. And Danielle Brooks is a beast, man. She played Beatrice in MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING in Central Park, and she’s playing Mahalia Jackson, and she kills that. She was on ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK. So I like that whole generation of people. I like Denzel [Washington]. Denzel’s daughter actually is maturing into a very good actor. Denzel has his son, John David, but he also has a daughter, Olivia Washington, who was into theatre long before John David thought about theatre. I’m curious to see what she does next.
The generation of people who are in that 27-40 range is a wonderful group of artists and they’re getting a lot of opportunities, like you saw John David and Zendaya do MALCOLM & MARIE. Now, people can have all kinds of opinions about that film, but they had an opportunity; two Black actors had the opportunity to do a film of that magnitude with Sam Levinson. It was just great. I want to see what they do five years from now, because in terms of actors who are working on craft and discipline—that’s why I love actors who’ve been trained on the stage. If you train for the stage—and I don’t mean you have to go to Juilliard; Sam Jackson didn’t go to Juilliard, but he came from that stage way of putting a story together and being somebody different every time out, and that’s why he loves to work all the time. His wife came from that tradition. I’m excited about those actors who want to learn how their bodies are different as they get older. Phylicia Rashad still takes acting and singing lessons at 70 years old. I want to work with those artists.
So when I find young people like that, like Danielle Brooks and Joaquina Kalukango, they’re learning and training themselves to understand what they’re doing with their bodies and their voices so that Hollywood won’t just use them up. They’re also very particular about what they do, and they have the courage to say no. “No, I don’t want to do that, even though you’re paying me this kind of money. I don’t want to do that, I want to do this.” I understand there’s a need to make money, but you’ve got to balance that with your craft and serving your community with your art.
Greatness can come at any age and any ZIP code. I look for great actors who are young, who are old, who are dark, who are light. I think we are best the more diverse we are, when we mix it up. I like actors who do a little bit of television, a little bit of film, and a little bit of stage. I like those multitalented actors.
Tinashe Kajese-Bolden, Denise Burse + Gilbert Glenn Brown in DOT at True Colors Theatre Company, directed by Kenny Leon
PHOTO Greg Mooney
JAMIL | What about you, Woodie? Who has inspired you, who are the artists that are standing out to you right now?
WOODIE | Well, DeWanda Wise, Orlando Miller, Michael Elsie. Those are young artists. The middle-range artists are Denise Burse Fernandez. You know her?
JAMIL | Yeah, Denise, she’s going to be doing a virtual workshop with us on Tuesday. Kenny most recently directed her in a production we did here in Atlanta called DOT. Then he also worked with her on the THE UNDERLYING CHRIS at Second Stage.
WOODIE | I just love her work. Kim Yancey.
KENNY | Also, you look at the wonderful writers we have. Dominique Morriseau and Katori Hall, the mind of Jeremy O. Harris, the way he thinks and formulates things. There’s a whole generation of writers coming up that I’m excited about. I’m also excited about a lot of the older writers out there, Colman Domingo and people like that.
JAMIL | Woodie, you spoke earlier about the play being the most important thing. And I know you’ve talked a lot about the importance of reading.
WOODIE | Read, read, read. Read novels, short stories; it will tell you how to develop characters. I started reading everything, especially our major American writers— Langston Hughes, Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison, Jimmy Baldwin. You’ve got to read, read, read, read everything. I know people say, ”I don’t have time, I don’t have time.” You don’t have to read a book in one night.
JAMIL | One of my inspirations is Jonathan McCrory, who runs the National Black Theatre. He was just saying, “Man, we spent so much time thinking about something that we want to do, as opposed to just doing the thing when we think about it.” I’ve been really thankful for Jonathan saying that. And, of course, Kenny has been in my ear; he said to me once, “You take you wherever you go,” and it makes more sense all the time. I have lost so much time in trying to be the leader other people want me to be or trying to show up in this room as a certain thing to try to sell something.
KENNY | If you take yourself wherever you go, that’s the greatest gift to the world. You’ve got to be your authentic self. When I think about Woodie, I don’t know anybody like Woodie. When I say Jamil, I want to see something very specific. When I think of August Wilson, I see something very specific. You think of Aretha Franklin, Prince, all the great ones. They dug deep into being their true authentic selves. I think that as directors and as leaders in our artistic communities, we should keep striving to be our true, authentic selves because that would be a gift to the world.
Javon Johnson, Tangela Large, Keith Arthur Bolden + Enoch A. King in PARADISE BLUE at True Colors Theatre Company, directed by Jamil Jude
PHOTO Greg Mooney
