Day 2: I'm a Featured Playwright at Playwrights Playground, 6/6!

Because I'm determined to create work that I want to see, I'm a 2016 Playwright in Residence at Liberation Theater Company, working on a ton of new ideas.  A scene from my latest full length play currently in utero -- a serio-comic romp about white fragility -- will be read at the Classical Theater of Harlem's Playwright's Playground Cold Reading Series on Monday, June 6th at the Dwyer Cultural Center.

For more information and/or to reserve your spot, click here.

And now, back to rewrite purgatory.

What I Do For A Living, Part 2: "Didn't I see you on TV?"

when i was a kid, singing was something that i did in church.  eventually, it was something that i studied formally, in a performing arts high school.  the singing that was respected there meant having range and power and lots and lots of melisma, for the most part. everyone could sing way better than i could. singing that way meant sounding exactly like stephanie mills. or miki howard. it definitely meant sounding exactly like somebody.  i didn't sound like anybody, except myself. clearly, i wasn't doing it right.  undaunted, i moved on to other things.

i never imagined that i would ever sing professionally.  i thought that singing was the kind of thing that would come in handy if i ever did a musical or a play with music, or perhaps some light opera. i certainly didn't want to be an actress. that sounded like someone that wasn't to be taken seriously.   i didn't want to be a movie star because i didn't think i was pretty enough to be on camera.  television looked like fun -- especially the commercials  -- but i wasn't really gunning for that, either.  i wanted to be a theater actor.  i knew that i had that undefinable something that compels someone to look at someone else and i knew that this something had absolutely nothing to do with what i looked like and i knew that this something was absolutely necessary if i wanted to do anything onstage. other people were tall. other people were handsome or beautiful. other people dyed their hair blonde. other people would say or do things to "pull focus" and draw attention to themselves. i didn't do any of those things.  when i was onstage, people were compelled to look at me.  otherwise, i was roundly ignored.

you can work on your skill set until the cows come home but contrary to popular belief, that indefinable something called stage presence can't be taught.  your talent, your excellent comic timing and no, not even how attractive you are can make people want to look at you onstage.  their eye will inevitably wander to that seemingly insignificant someone the director has conveniently located in the back, on the side -- the one who is perched at the edge of the scene who is simply standing there. who are they? what are they doing?  all that nothing is really something, isn't it.

i persisted with theater and musical theater and solo performance because i was determined to do all i could with the talent that God gave me.  i didn't want to sin against my talent. i didn't want to squander it.  i'm transitioning to film and tv because a. most theater productions in new york city don't pay a living wage; b. i'm priced out of nyc, for the most part; c. the pay is cray-cray. 

here i am in a prego commercial, getting paid.



a tv producer. a screenwriter. a song doctor. a concert pianist. a filmmaker. who knows where i'll end up in this business or what i'll be doing. what i know for sure is the theater is where i started. i stepped onstage when i was a kid, curious and unafraid, i looked out into that dark sea of people and i knew and i knew and i knew and i knew and i knew. 

next up? what i do for a living, part 3: "you didn't write that -- did you?"

The Billie Holiday Project 3.0 - a few thoughts...

although brad learmonth of harlem stages instigated all of this with an invitation for me to fuse billie holiday and zora neale hurston and perform at lenox lounge for the very first harlem jazz shrines, i felt compelled to take it further when i read zora's newly discovered harlem based short stories. i think farrah griffin knew what she was sparking up when she gave them to me. they didn't just speak to me -- they felt like some other part of me that i didn't know was there. i knew those people, i recognized them. all of me fell into those pages and got lost, wandering in and out of their lives.

it was a beautiful moment of discovery, to glimpse more of zora -- someone whose work is so fresh and unexpected and new with every read. these newly discovered stories haven't seen the light of day in more than 70 years. all of a sudden, the literary world shifts and realizes that perhaps they didn't really know her as well as they thought they did. if they are ever published and widely distributed, the rest of the world will, too.

i began toying with the idea of doing an album of billie holiday's rare sides when i started collecting various box sets of her work awhile ago and unhinging her earlier material. there was a ton of it. i already read and researched enough to know that she was more than the torchy, brooding victim in a gown at the mercy of a heroin needle with a heavily scented flower in her hair. everyone seems to recognize that image instantly and cling to it in this sometimes really insufferable way. like she couldn't possibly be anything else. in those box sets, i heard everything else -- ambivalence about love, so much hope and yearning, a good time girl and yes, sometimes even a sunshiny disposition that positively bounced with joy. great tunes, too. where was the tragic victim? why hadn't i ever met this billie holiday before?

to tell you the truth, i don't really listen to jazz vocalists. what i mean is, i certainly know who they are and what they sound like. i've done my homework, extensively. however -- when it comes to growing and refining my sound and my style, i listen to horn players because frankly, that's what those jazz vocalists did. and then i reach for my own ideas in the moment. louis armstrong sounds like a horn when he sings. he's not imititating another singer that's imitating a horn. he's not imitating anyone. but i digress.

i created the billie holiday project because i wanted to make the kind of art that i'd like to see in the world. i want my blackgrrl stories to be told -- and judging by the sold out run at the apollo theater this weekend, there's someone out there that would like to see them, too.

i hope that this will be the first of many performance moments -- for this idea and others. please stay tuned.

stuff that happens before a legit audition

in today's audition, i must use my legit (otherwise known as legitimate) voice -- something that traditional musical theater requires. this voice is operatic, open and full.



that's a little sticky for me today because i've got some mucus rattling around in my throat, and it won't leave. maybe it's the cheese i had yesterday. maybe it's the milk in my tea. maybe it's the fact that i left the bedroom window open the other night when the temperature dropped so abrubtly. i don't want to wait for an agent submission for this one. i want to make sure my hat is in the ring, now.

according to aea audition rules, this is an open call. that's cool. no one (that i know of, anyway) is born with an equity card. we were all non-union once upon a time. they start seeing women at 10am. that means they call names and numbers from the sign-in sheet by 9:30am. that means i should leave home by 8:30am to be sure that i get there by 9:30am. that means i should get up by 7:30am to give me and my voice time to wake up and warm up before i leave the house.



it's gray, damp and raining, and it's so early, it's still dark outside. i've already put the kettle on. i'm starting to vocalize and move around to loosen up physically. i give myself an hour to sink into things and let my voice wake up. i showered and shaved last night, so i can have this gigantic cup of tea and not think about anything. unfortunately, i can't stop thinking. i've laid out what i'm going to wear but i don't like it anymore. momentary panic ensues. all of a sudden, i have no clothes.

if it weren't so soggy outside, i'd go for a quick run in riverbank state park. nothing gets rid of that nervous edgy feeling like physical exhaustion. after a few miles, i'm quite literally too tired to care. but that can't happen today. there's no time for a quick pit-stop at the gym, either. i have to pack a bag. usually it's a small suitcase. it's basically as many outfits that i need for all of my auditions. this is all that's happening for today, so i pack heels, wear flats and dress appropriately. i also pack sheet music (sometimes that means bringing my book), headshot, makeup and whatever else i can think of. like breath mints.

i get out by 9am and somehow magically, i get there before 10am. and that's where the rubber hits the road...

GREAT news!

i just booked a performance workshop series at dixon place on thursday september 29 for a “musical” i’m assembling called the billie holiday project. this is an idea that i performed at the historic lenox lounge at the first annual harlem jazz shrines in may of this year. i wanted to grow it and i wasn’t sure how or if i could even pull it off in new york city because i hadn’t developed anything here through conventional means in awhile and i didn’t know the lay of the land. i still don’t, but i’m feeling my way along and i’m enjoying the process.

this is the way you do something new. i’ve originated work before. i know the trajectory very well. one step at a time, one moment at a time, one idea at a time – getting all of it up on its legs every season, getting a run where you can and shaping it as it goes along.

but that’s not the kicker.

the kicker is that i just confirmed with the apollo theater’s sound stage for their monthly music cafe series for may 11 and 12, 2012. i’ll also be performing there for harlem jazz shrines for those dates.

yeah, i’m over the moon. once i land, mpb and i will celebrate.

still submitting this idea for workshop opportunities all over the place. and yeah, i’m still waiting to find out if i’ve been chosen as a librettist for the bmi musical theater workshop. let’s see what develops. when anything gets confirmed, you will be the first one i tell.

happy summer!

the second uptown/downtown performance: harlem

after a disco nap and a bowl of mexican hot chocolate, i put on a very elegant black vintage fur coat -- kangaroo! my favorite! -- and walked in the late afternoon sun through what was essentially my first new york city environs to the dance theater of harlem. those were heady times, i suppose. i was full of ideas and swimming in fearlessness. i didn't know anyone. i had no idea where anything was, or how to get anywhere. and as far as anyone was concerned, i was some new kind of idiot. every day when i left my humble abode, i would stride forth triumphantly past crackheads and drug dealers and the flotsam and jetsam that populated my uptown street life on a daily basis, and they would routinely laugh at how green i was.

good times.

it felt good to not have to take the train to where i was going. i was on time for a tech rehearsal that wasn't really a tech rehearsal at all. it was more like a "this is what the deal is" rehearsal. chen dance center was a small black box theater with a lighting grid and everything. this was a large room with brick walls and garish flosphorescent lighting, replete with a floor to ceiling mirror on one side of it all and a wooden dance barre that framed the whole thing, just in case you might forget exactly where you physically are in the course of the evening. not that there was anything wrong with this space or anything in it -- it was just so not like the space we'd just worked in. that mirror was especially daunting. so was being able to see the audience. and the sound in that room, how cavernous it seemed and the way the sound continued to echo in this endless way when anyone would so much as cough. in a way, it felt like, wow -- now this is a workshop performance (whatever that is)!

and i guess that's a good thing. it was beyond naked. it was even more bare than bare bones, if that's possible. there were no theatrical touches to get in the way of the work, or to get in between us and the audience. it made for a much more immediate, more present experience. there was something unexpectedly visceral about a lot of it, something especially intimate. like it was all happening much closer than right in front of you. it wasn't quite in your face but it was definitely in your lap.

so tech was basically figuring out when someone would flick the light switch on and off and who would press play on the cd player, and where i could put my stuff.

we all met up pre-show, asked questions and drifted around in the room like we were lost in space. everyone at dth were nice. there was seating for about 100 people. nice, wide open space, folding chairs, very basic. there was no backstage area, per se. a hallway next to an exit door from the room had been sectioned off with a curtain, and most of us piled our things there. there was a locker room but that was two floors down -- too far from the action to know what was up. if we weren't careful, we would unwittingly find ourselves amongst the audience. there was no real way of knowing what was happening onstage, unless you drifted towards an open door, the entryway.

daniel carlton (my partner in crime) and i spoke sotto voce as we drifted around the open area after the audience went inside, ran lines and cracked many an inside joke until our time was up, and then just like that our time was up.

afterwards, he stuck around for the q & a, took pictures and had mint tea with a few of us at a moroccan spot called my marrakesh on amsterdam (that i happen to love a lot) and that was decompression enough, to sit and laugh and talk about what had just happened, to begin to piece things together and such. and yet there was more.

in those first final moments, i had no objectivity whatsoever. getting through the 10 week program was overwhelming enough and finally finishing it successfully with a rough draft of the script in my hands -- way more than i was figuring on, to tell you the truth -- left something in me dazed, yet focused. i was grateful to have something to show for my time, grateful that this program dislodged something important in me creatively that would have me writing theater again, the way i used to when i first came to new york city and lived in that neighborhood and thought, i want to do solo performance art, i want to do a cheesy cabaret act, and then i would actually go downtown and do it. maybe i had to go and live and breathe and lose myself in another direction before i could come up with anything interesting. i don't know. all i really know is, i've got my mojo back. i have ideas -- i've always had ideas -- but now i want to do solo performance again, and i want to take this alberta hunter idea as far as i possibly can.

what's especially cool is that i don't have to be a lone wolf about this anymore. the downtown alternative theater scene isn't necessarily dead creatively. there are still agencies hard at work that are in place and ready and willing to help develop an idea. i just never tapped into them before. that's the sad part. i never had to be alone -- development and production-wise, at least -- in the first place.

the problem isn't that there isn't any money in this town to develop an idea. the problem is that most artists can't afford to live in new york city.

more on that later.

the first uptown/downtown performance: chinatown

last night was some kind of wunderbar.

zipped to chen dance center, for the first night of uptown/downtown in no time at all: fully made up, fully dressed up and ready to rip it up. i looked like a drum magazine pin-up girl -- actually, i look like an african pin-up girl no matter what i wear. i stopped fighting that one a long time ago. i made a pitstop in a chinese bakery for tea and a sticky bun of some sort. while i was in there, i watched a bunch of ultra black folk who were shopping for a ton of fortune cookies explode with glee as they recognized some pastry from a jackie chan/chris tucker flick. is it true that most people seem to learn about other people and other cultures from movies and television? from behind the counter, the chinese baker's puzzled but somewhat bemused expression seemed to mirror my thoughts.

chen is a hoot. lean and strong and really up and interesting and kind of a prankster. he's one of those dancer/artists that's seen and done everything. some rock n' roller's name will come up and he'll go on about how he stood in the mud and saw them at woodstock and someone will go, you were at woodstock and then we're off to the races. it was nice, watching him walk through the place, greeting people, making suggestions, hanging out.

we had a brief meeting at 6:30pm and somewhere in there, my permanent boyfriend shows up along with daniel carlton, who gives him a digital camera to shoot our segment. (yes, they're shooting everything -- but i'm paranoid.) i'm bobbing in and out of the holding room that's filled with everyone's personal effects, actors chatting sotto voce, someone putting on makeup here, setting props up over there -- and of course, dancers in varying stages of dress, warming up.

it's a small black box situation and i had a short tech rehearsal earlier in the day so everything is well-lit and mood inducing. amazing, the way lights can create a set. daniel and i were in the second half of the evening, so we could take it easy sort of, run lines, whisper. once the audience is seated, the 40 inch plasma screen in the vestibule comes to life, and everyone gathers around it quietly and watches and observes, occasionally nodding at each other and smiling with these knowing looks. it's all very relaxed and serious and fun, with a high degree of that flying by the seat of your pants sensation buzzing in the air.

and then all of a sudden, it was over. (and coming soon to my youtube channel!) daniel and i are a real gang of two -- and he is the king of props.

there was a talkback afterwards that felt awkward because we couldn't say anything while the audience shouted all this stuff off the cuff. we seemed to glide out of the place, lost in thought. one of the coolest things about being married to an artist that's also an intellectual (why he won't cop to that last part, i'll never know) is that i can talk to him in depth about what i do. as we walk along, we unhinge all of it from the inside out and share ideas. he has a lot of insight.

of course, all of that is predicated on the fact that he is a safe place. but that's a whole other conversation.

and so, as my permanent boyfriend and i noshed on vietnamese food afterwards and traipsed westward through the narrow streets in the dead of night, we held hands like lost toddlers and somehow managed to simultaneously float down a sun drenched memory lane that was flooded with sweet loving moments from our earliest days as a twosome.

happy days.

The Uptown/Downtown Works-In-Progress Performances -- 11/10 & 11/11

for the past 10 weeks or so, i've been concentrating on an idea i call the alberta hunter project through the uptown/downtown series, sponsored by the lower manhattan cultural council, harlem arts alliance and the field. the piece has become a pretty cool melange, really -- part cabaret act, part performance art piece, part musical -- and i'm happy to say that i'm just about done with that pesky first draft and have moved on to wringing out specifics as i eagerly apply for more workshops and development opportunities. it's growing and changing with every rewrite. i can't wait to see what this becomes.

a ten minute section will be performed on the days outlined below. (yeah, i know -- ten artists, ten weeks, ten minutes.) space is limited so reserve your seats now. hope to see you there.

another tv star starts his theater career on broadway

the latest famous person to join the "i-don't-do-theater-but-i'm-going-to-be-on-broadway" category is mario lopez, star of saved by the bell. he's also known for guest stints on soap operas and tv shows like nip/tuck that allow him to show off that rock-solid backside of his, and of course dancing with the stars. most recently, he hosted last season's randy jackson presents america's best dance crew on vh-1 and the entertainment news magazine extra. busy guy.

they're picking him up today in a chorus line. he'll be there all summer -- just in time for the tourist season. i saw a chorus line when it was in previews and i thought it was so cool that there weren't any famous people in it -- just really talented musical theater performers. oh, well. when ticket sales sag, getting a name in there that middle america recognizes (because seemingly enough, that's who goes to see broadway shows in this town) is what raises revenue. and sometimes, it's getting that name in there when the show is cast initially is what allows it to open in the first place.

Ned Beatty sums it up...

not to put too fine a point on it, but i think ned beatty rather succinctly sums up the state of broadway shows and the hollywood/fame star power deemed necessary to run them effectively in this new york times article.

it's more than a notion that there's a movie star-studded all black revival of cat on a hot tin roof that's up and running right now with terrence howard making his broadway debut as brick, the male lead. the reviews have been interesting, to say the least.

now that puffy has had his moment in a raisin in the sun on broadway (his first play and consequently, his broadway debut -- but of course you already guessed that, if you didn't know) and on television and india. arie is slated to appear this summer in for colored girls, who's the next star to grace the broadway stage to hone those acting chops and "stretch out in another direction"? 50 cent?

hm...he did make several movies recently...

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Movie Stars Onstage: Big Daddy Speaks Out

By ROBIN POGREBIN

Published: November 25, 2003

They say you need sexy young movie stars to sell Broadway shows these days, particularly when it comes to long, literate plays like Tennessee Williams's ''Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.'' The current revival of ''Cat'' meets this requirement with Jason Patric, in silk pajamas that reveal his hairy chest, and Ashley Judd in a form-fitting slip.

But it is a slightly rotund, largely nondescript, highly experienced 66-year-old actor who critics say makes this ''Cat'' worth seeing. Ned Beatty is a movie star himself, though not the big box-office kind. And he says Broadway has come to rely too heavily on celebrities, thrusting them into challenging roles they do not have the acting chops to handle.

Tucking into a plate of shrimp scampi after a recent matinee -- hold the angel-hair pasta, per the Atkins diet, please -- Mr. Beatty engaged in a candid assessment of his co-stars. He said he very much liked his glamorous colleagues personally: Mr. Patric, best known for the film ''After Dark, My Sweet,'' and Ms. Judd, who starred in ''Ruby in Paradise.'' He simply thinks, he said, that they are ill equipped for their parts: Brick, a brooding, boozing former athlete mourning his friend's death, and Maggie, his long-suffering wife who craves his attention.

Mr. Beatty said of Ms. Judd: ''She is a sweetie, and yet she doesn't have a whole lot of tools. But she works very hard.''

And of Mr. Patric: ''He's gotten better all the time, but his is a different journey.''

Mr. Beatty had no similar criticisms for Margo Martindale, a veteran stage actress who was also praised by critics in her role as Big Mama. When asked whether she agreed with Mr. Beatty's perspective on their co-stars, Ms. Martindale said, ''These are lovely people, and I don't share his view.''

Ms. Judd and Mr. Patric did not return calls seeking comment. Mr. Beatty says Broadway is wasting the talent of better-trained anonymous actors all over the country. ''It's interesting to have people from film and television who can bring people into theater,'' he said. ''But the reality is, we have a lot of actors out there doing theater.

''In theater you want to go from here to there, you want it to be about something,'' he continued. ''Stage actors learn how to do that. Film actors often don't even think about it. They do what the director wants them to do, and they never inform their performance with -- call it what you wish -- through-line, objective.

''I think we've got those actors out there, and I think Broadway could be richer if it exploited that.''

Mr. Beatty seemed nostalgic for the cast of the revival's original London production. He was nominated for an Oliver Award there for his performance as Big Daddy, the bullying yet tender Southern plantation owner. ''I lucked out because I drew Brendan Fraser the first time,'' he said, speaking of the actor who played Brick. (Frances O'Connor played Maggie.) ''He's great at stagecraft, knows how to go from the beginning to the middle to the end.''

''I must tell you, that can be lacking in what we're doing.''

At the same time, Mr. Beatty said, his two young colleagues were giving him as good as they had. ''Nobody goes out onstage in front of people and does anything but their very best,'' he said. ''You just use it. That's what's there.''

Critics have hailed Mr. Beatty's performance as a high-water mark. ''What Mr. Beatty does better than any other Big Daddy I've seen is to convey without caricature the monstrous, exhilarated egotism of a man who believes he has outrun death,'' Ben Brantley said in his review in The New York Times.

Mr. Brantley also said: ''From the moment Mr. Beatty first shows up in the play's second act, he brings with him the invigorating breeze of passionate, scrupulously detailed acting.''

By contrast Mr. Brantley called Ms. Judd's performance that ''of a self-conscious pupil in an elocution class'' and said Mr. Patric ''appears to have spent many hours watching Marlon Brando and James Dean movies'' and ''takes Brick's self-anesthetized state to sometimes exasperating extremes.'' Similarly Entertainment Weekly called Ms. Judd's Maggie ''more of a fashion lynx than an alley feline'' and said Mr. Patric ''compacts Brick into cement.'' Even critics who liked their performances put Mr. Beatty's in a different category.

Anthony Page, who directed ''Cat'' in London and then New York, also suggested his own disappointment, saying that had he not had to leave for London to direct another play, he might have improved the performances of Ms. Judd and Mr. Patric. ''I think they're growing just by playing it,'' Mr. Page said. ''I wish I could have stayed in New York longer.

''I've been very happy with it certain nights,'' he added. ''It's not always completely consistent.''

Asked whether he agreed with critics who said that the production seemed lopsided because of Mr. Beatty's strong performance, Mr. Page said: ''It's been very helpful to have someone who's very much at home on the stage -- which Ned is -- to be in the center of the production.''

Mr. Beatty is, indeed, at home onstage. Although certainly best known for his career-defining performance in the 1972 film ''Deliverance,'' he spent much of his early professional life in regional theater, including eight years at the Arena Stage in Washington.

''I was probably averaging through a lot of my younger days 13 to 15 shows a year onstage,'' he said. ''And one time I figured out I was onstage more than 300 days most years.''

A poor student and weak athlete from Louisville, Ky., the young Mr. Beatty thought he was going to be a singer. But when he couldn't get cast in musicals, he started doing plays. ''I got lucky,'' he said. ''Theater was always lucky for me.''

He said he was never that picky about roles. ''Shoot, somebody offered me a job,'' Mr. Beatty said, ''I took it.''

Mr. Beatty made his Broadway debut in ''The Great White Hope'' with Jane Alexander and James Earl Jones, which originated at Arena Stage and moved to New York in 1968. Mr. Beatty rejoined the cast a few months into the run. He had not been back to Broadway until now, and said he was not particularly excited about it.

''I've done better theater other places,'' he said.

Mr. Beatty isn't crazy about New York. ''New York is what it is, a haven for millions of people,'' he said. ''My game plan for the rest of my life is not to live my life with that many people.''

He's been busy in his career making more than 100 movies, among them ''Network,'' for which he received an Oscar nomination; ''Nashville''; the first two ''Superman'' movies; ''All the President's Men''; and many for television. He also spent three seasons on the series ''Homicide,'' had a recurring role on ''Roseanne'' and has starred in various television specials.

It is Mr. Beatty's natural quality that made Mr. Page decide to cast him as Big Daddy.

''Not being highly educated or bred, Big Daddy came to the plantation in the Depression with no money or background,'' Mr. Page said. ''Ned himself has this terrific instinctive wisdom that makes him salt of the earth.''

Squinting through thick glasses to read his menu, Mr. Beatty did seem as human as the other imperfect souls twirling pasta in his midst, a regular guy with thinning hair who regrets his third divorce though he is happy in his fourth marriage; who says he does not see his eight children enough; who hasn't quite managed, despite the best of intentions, to stop working.

The role scuttled his plans for retirement, to spend more time cooking in front of ''Emeril Live'' on the Food Network in the new house he designed himself in the Sierra Nevada in California. Mr. Beatty had played Big Daddy in a summer stock production when he was 21. He liked the idea of going back at it.

Now, Mr. Beatty said, he plans to revive those retirement plans. For an actor who has done everything from Shakespeare to ''Showboat,'' enough is enough.

''Anthony keeps asking me about doing 'Lear,' '' he said. ''But I've done it. I've played The Fool.''

random sightings from the gym

i ran into cameron at NYSC in harlem yesterday. we were working out next to each other on those machines that are like long distance ice skating. when he heard my name he balked and reached out to grab me. how sweet!

cameron and i did a production of the wiz in the round at the arena theater in houston, texas some time ago. i was addapearle. i was in the show for probably all of 15 minutes -- the beginning and the end, really, with one hot number to make me really happy. i heard that it might go to broadway, so i did the part because i wanted to be a serious consideration if that happened. george faison choreographed/directed this one. i'd heard the stories about him and how crazy he is, and somehow instinctively i knew that if i was funny, he'd leave me alone. and he did. we had something outrageous like 3 weeks to rehearse and that he got the whole thing choreographed and up on its feet in 9 days.

when cameron told me that he was still doing theater, i told him to stop. on-camera work pays so well, i'm not so sure i'll ever do theater again -- unless it's something that i'm writing/developing, or something that i can originate. we talked about our options on broadway and otherwise. cameron told me that india.arie is going to star in the broadway revival of for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf as the woman in purple, with whoopi goldberg producing it. i had no idea she knew how to act. if you are a musician with little or no theater experience, is broadway really the place to learn? especially if you're doing an iconic black feminist play? hm...

i remember when molly ringwald did her star turn on broadway. and christine applegate. and john stamos. and deborah cox. and toni braxton. and p diddy. these people don't originate work. they guarantee ticket sales, bolster sagging box office reciepts and give themselves a little credibility. but at what price for the rest of us? at what price for broadway?

and therein lies the irony: for actors like cameron and i who want to originate work, it's a bleak scenario for us because we haven't done lots of film/tv. we're not famous musicians. not yet, anyway. as far as the acting stuff is concerned, all we can do is keep auditioning. all we can do is stay in a constant state of readiness. all we can do is wait our turn.

well. this isn't a waiting room situation for me. i don't like to wait for the phone to ring, so i'm doing all this other stuff -- like writing another one person show or making another CD -- while all of that acting stuff does whatever it's going to do.

of course, none of this has anything to do with being talented or being good enough. go figure.

chasing kismet

some time ago, i got a phone call from shell white. it seems that her ft. greene neighborhood was plastered with posters for a movie that she'd never heard of. none of the other white people she knew had ever heard of it, either. all of the black people were talking about it everywhere she went -- so she called me for an explanation.

"that's tyler perry," i yawned. "it's his first movie, diary of a mad black woman. i'm sure it'll be huge." that's when i tried to change the subject. but shell wouldn't let me.

one of his big splashy theater piece/gospel musical DVDs was always running in the background at somebody's momma's house, somebody's bbq, somebody's backyard get-together, somebody's weekend social: a big black man (6'7") in a dress playing a big black woman, shooting guns off onstage, smoking pot and cussin' people out and carrying on, while some high drama unfolds that usually involves some long suffering black woman, her ne'er do well black man and of course, a slut. all of their extended families are involved as well, so there's a lot to laugh at, evidently. and because tyler is a southerner, there's redemption for someone and a big gospel send-up at the end.

i can recall conversations that i'd had with many a blactress after i joined the union who were seriously considering renouncing their Equity affiliation to do theater on the chitlin circuit -- or at least work illegally under another name -- and they encouraged me to do so, too. in a way, it made sense. for the kind of money a broadway star like nathan lane gets, you could have a supporting role in one of tyler perry's shows. with a $100 million in revenue, he could certainly afford to pay you. everybody knows that broadway has been in the red and hemmoraging money for years. the urban theater circuit, on the other hand, is swimming in cash and is totally -- pardon the pun -- in the black.

on the other hand, those shows were craptastic spectacles of lowbrow minstrelsy in the highest order: bawdy, trashy and -- i have to admit it -- fun. don't get me wrong: i'm especially pleased to see one of us make it in the entertainment industry on our own terms. when he went to hollywood and vyed for a production deal, they told him that his audience didn't go to the movies. so he made his own, for less than $5 million. over $50 million gross later, every white anybody in hollywood is wondering who he is. so yes. that's a lot to be glad about. as black folk in atlanta are quick to tell you, tyler perry's house is bigger than oprah's.

but i'm not about to make him out to be something that he isn't. tyler perry getting over makes him a great businessman, maybe -- but it doesn't make him a genius. no one is mistaking jackie collins for joyce carol oates, so why should i ever mistake him for august wilson? i can go to his shows and laugh like everybody else. why not? it's fun stuff.

the more i told shell, the more intrigued she became. all of her questions seemed to be leading to, what's behind all this?

"this is what you need, queen esther," shell said. "you need that grass roots explosion." and i'm thinking, sure. i mean, don't we all? but you can't manufacture that. what she saw out her front window with those posters was years in the making. she could walk down the street and feel the electricity of it all from the black people in the neighborhood and she wanted to examine the anatomy of their excitement close up. i wasn't sure if she could.

now that i stand on the verge of going into the studio, i've given that conversation with shell a lot of thought. i know myself well enough to know that if i record/mix/master it with no outside financial backing, i'm not going to just listen to it around the house -- i'm going to have to release it, too. and that really freaks me out because i actually know what it takes to do it the right way this time. i was flying by the seat of my pants with the last one -- my first effort -- so mistakes were made and thankfully, i learned from them. but if i knew then what i know now, i probably wouldn't have done it at all. it's when you come out of the studio that the work begins. but work and kismet are two completely different things. chasing kismet can age you, blind you to the basics in some instances, and for the most part, make you appear to be more than just a little desperate. chasing kismet can wear you out.

as far as i can tell, it's like being a part of a champion tag-team partnership: the work is on me, but kismet? that's God's job.

sure, tyler perry created his own genre, film-wise -- a black Christian romantic revenge comedy -- but it's kismet is what shell was alluding to, when she saw that sea of movie posters on her block. i am fairly convinced that kismet is the one thing that no one has any control of. someone told me once that if i got closer to God, i'd get closer to my kismet. hm.

"we have to see this movie," shell blurted. i agreed -- but only if we saw it at the magic johnson theater in harlem. i knew that she wouldn't get the gist of the movie unless she were surrounded by a bunch of black folk, and harlem did not disappoint me. as you can well imagine, it was quite a hoot. in spite of the fact that the place was fairly empty, sisters were present and they were on. heh.

at the end of the day, i'm left knowing that God will give me whatever i'm supposed to have -- and i won't ever have to chase what's mine.

what are you going to do, shoot me? - alt-theater blackgrrl makes good on camera, part one

a few years ago, it seemed that i couldn't sit through a movie preview without seeing someone that i knew onscreen. i'd think back and remember which off-off broadway play or musical we'd done and when, and in my head i'd feel a strange sense of pride and glee for them, that they'd gone hollywood and "made it"-- not fame, really. just steady work. and to my way of thinking, that was making it. mazeltov.

but then one day i turned on the television and they were there, too. almost every commercial break meant having to sit and watch someone i knew hawking cookies or room sanitizer or God knows what all -- which was hysterical, if you really stop to think about it. i even recognized a few here and there with roles on sit coms and tv series. eventually, a passing conversation with an actor-acquaintance who gave me a ball park idea as to how much they were probably making made my jaw drop. was i missing the boat here?

when i had this epiphany, i had been doing theater in nyc professionally for about 10 years. i don't dance, so i knew that the broadway chorus wasn't anything for me to consider. once i understood that the great white way tends to favor heavy-set black female performers, i began to lean towards a much less conventional approach. eventually the breakthrough happened when i made the original cast in the national tour of RENT on a cattle call -- no representation, no manager, no lawyer, no nothing. but for several years before that happened, when i got here from down south and everyone pretty much ignored me, there was no work. so i developed my own ideas -- in alt-music and alt-theater. with the two one person shows that i wrote and performed, i proved that i was an originator. with the various roles in george c wolfe's "harlem song," i proved that not only could i could carry the lead in a broadway caliber musical but that i could originate work on a grander scale.

after one evening's performance, my mentor the director jeff cohen met me at the stage door. somewhere in the conversation that ensued, he said, "you'd better enjoy this moment, because this probably won't happen again for you for another 10 years." he was right, of course. downtown rags described me as an "alt-diva." casting directors said that i was "quirky." the general vibe was that i was "unconventional" -- simply put, that i wasn't the black girl that they thought i should be, the black girl that they could easily recognize from their deepest imaginings or the most innocuous media saturation or even around the way. the fact of the matter was, i was unlike anything they'd ever seen. or heard.

more often than not, my uniqueness was percieved of as a threat. why? because i wasn't behaving like a stereotype. because for some, the unfamiliar and the unknown are things to be afraid of, especially where black people are concerned -- and especially with black women. because i wasn't sitting around trying to figure out which black girl to turn myself into, to get the job. i wasn't desperate -- and to be honest, that must have made me look like an uppity negress. but because i actually am an uppity negress, i really didn't care. and i still don't.

i was just being myself. was that so wrong?

dream, girls

i do believe that it was my brother Damon who gave me a rather contrite explanation for the way things worked in new york city's theater world if you happened to be black. I recall that there was an amen corner of performers present: hard-working industry professionals who had achieved a measure of success and who knew exactly what they were talking about. A few of them were real triple threats, not the fake ones that they churn out in the media to give the illusion of an abundance of talent. At that time, I had just arrived in metropolis and I didn’t know anything about the way things worked – so when they collectively spoke, I listened.

“Pay attention and you’ll see for yourself," he intoned. "when it comes to broadway, they give us one great big splashy musical and one serious play at a time and that’s pretty much it." The amen corner agreed wholeheartedly. "You won't ever see a half-dozen or so black plays and musicals at once," someone else said flatly. "We don't have a shortage of talent," this one dancer said. "or material," said another.

the stats certainly supported everything they said but frankly, i didn't want to believe it. I thought that if someone was genuinely talented and if they did a great audition for a role that was right for them, they'd get the part. That’s how naïve I was. *sigh*

My unwavering belief that talent was what you needed first and foremost extended to every genre except film, in part because I’d seen way too many people get way too much for having little more than relatively natural good looks and/or a great set of (handcrafted) tits. Theater, I reasoned, was where the rubber hit the road. Unless, of course, you are famous. (question: why do film stars do theater?)

The more work i got, the more theater i saw, the more real those words became. it was insidious, really: the invisible (white) powers-that-be, tentacles outstretched in every genre, forever deciding what gets produced, who gets the part, what gets the public attention, what won't see the light of day. The message was clear: If you can make yourself into what they think you should be (whatever that is), you’ll work all the time. Being at the mercy of such inner workings is one thing but having to subjugate oneself to a system that denigrates you at almost every turn – and carries an ugly historical precedent of vilifying you – is something else. Any step in the right direction seems almost radical – which is a part of the reason why it’s so politically incorrect to say that you don’t like the movie Dreamgirls.

Well. You know what? I didn’t like it.

Yes, the costumes were fabulous. Yes, Beyonce looked beautiful. (They all did, really.) Yes, Jennifer Hudson sang. Yes, it was genuinely entertaining. Yes, it was wonderful to get a glimpse of the system in the music business that makes or breaks stars. Yes, the whole cast was strong. But you know what? I thought it was one cliché after another after another. I thought the songs were good but they weren’t up to (Motown) scratch. I thought that Eddie Murphy’s dramatic turn was a serious version of Velvet Jones (with a little of his James Brown impersonation on the side), a character he brought to life in the 80’s on Saturday Night Live when he was 19 – and that his Oscar nomination is for his past work on that show (which was nothing short of astonishing for a teenager), his reputation in Hollywood (his movies have grossed something like 3 billion dollars) and the fact that he’s attempting to do something “different.” I thought that almost every time Beyonce sang, she was singing at me and not to me. it's all about melisma with her. Stop hollering and screaming and just sing, i thought. maybe she doesn't know how.

I thought that it was a shame that everyone thinks that this is a thinly-veiled retelling of the rise and fall of The Supremes and Diana Ross in particular. It’s history, this one exceedingly effeminate latino (with bad skin and a Marlo Thomas flip-up ‘do, of all things) told me as I stood in line with my “admit one only” SAG pass (because you know I was saving my pennies to see Pan’s Labyrinth). It’s poetic license, I thought. Florence Ballard died broke and alone in the ghetto at 32. Payola will probably always be alive and well.

Mostly though, I kept wondering what Dreamgirls would have been if it had been written by black women instead of gay white men.

At one point, i looked around the theater and realized that it was mostly black women. clearly, the one that was seated next to me was as excited to see something of ourselves on the big screen as i was. how often does it happen in a major release that a black woman has the lead role? how many major releases are black films?

The underlying message is that back in the day, you had to accommodate white people and make them feel comfortable with your muted down blackness before they would accept you and buy your music. Crossover appeal. The real point for me is that nothing has changed – but they don’t really get into that. Too bad.

I couldn’t stop thinking about Jennifer Hudson’s performance. It was very good overall but her version of “And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going” is something of a revelation. It’s so much more than a wonderful voice, singing. This is an iconic song that absolutely everyone – from the diva that’s doing yet another regional production of the musical to the tired drag queen lip-synching it up with campy spasmodic gusto for that weekend crowd at the cabaret – knows a little too well and loves a little too much. Except me. Call me nutty, but I was never completely comfortable with a black woman singing, “I don’t want to be free,” no matter what the context. Hm.

It takes a powerhouse to sing it, but a strong voice doesn’t ever guarantee a moving performance. Believe me, there are plenty of black women out there who have the vocal chops to nail it to the wall. (Try any sanctified black church on any given Sunday morning. i mean, really.) Too many people worldwide are personally invested in that song at this point because Jennifer Holiday gave such an emotionally blistering Tony award-winning performance. In theory, it seemed an insurmountable task: an American Idol reject with no film experience, no successful recordings under her belt and no real name recognition to speak of not only stars in a movie version of a beloved black musical alongside bona fide system-built box office black stars, she sings the song that everyone showed up to hear. And she nails it.

What’s bizarre is that the arc of her performance of that song is basically the five stages of grief. She moves through each moment with so much conviction that i was compelled to move through them with her and as i did, i completely forgot about the original version and got lost in what was unfolding before me. I don't know if she deserves an Oscar. She definitely earned a nomination.

It's hysterial that Beyonce believes that the only thing that stood in the way of her having Jennifer Hudson's part was weight gain. She's got 9 Grammies and she can sing and she's beautiful -- but she's not an artist. she's a product. she may not know it but her parents do. especially her father.

things aren't anywhere near as bad as they used to be for us in this business. i know that i'm a product when i present myself as an artist but real change happens when we -- as artists, not products -- write and produce our own work. in other words, don't think beyonce -- think dave chapelle.

can't. shouldn't. won't.

my manager called me last night and asked me if i wanted to go to japan for six months. We have an ironclad agreement that he is not to call me for three basic things: cruise ships, regional/stock theater and disneyworld -- or any combination therein -- but he feels obligated to let me know what's out there. and evidently, mickey mouse is hiring in Tokyo.

But there was more: several months on a cruise ship and a philly production of caroline or change were waiting in the wings. how odd that in one phone call, he would tell me about all three things that I categorically refused to consider.

as he went on about the disney thing, i remember thinking, wow -- i've always wanted to live in a foreign country. but to tell you the truth, it was strange, listening to all the details: pay rates, per diem, LORT agreements. it felt like he was talking to someone else. Those are the kinds of opportunities I would have followed when I first came to the city. Until I began to develop my own ideas, I was at the mercy of this business, forever wondering what I was or wasn’t doing to make the phone ring and waiting around until it did. My strategy was to throw myself into the fray and say yes to everything. I was a roman candle, exploding in every direction, sure, I was exhausted and broke. but it felt so good to run after my dreams at full tilt that I really didn’t care. My successes shaped my goals and priorities. When the ideas I came up with were more interesting than the opportunities that were being presented to me, I began to say no more and more often until I hardly said yes at all.

Suddenly, here I was, going no-no-no all over again, without hesitation.

I know that I’m not a negative person but when the moment presents itself, I genuinely enjoy saying no – and I honestly don’t mind hearing it. I think it’s a freeing thing to say and to accept, as long as you’re objective about it. The word no has to find its way through a situation that the word yes never seems to know of. Yes gives it to me. No compels me to shift gears and find another way. And work harder.

it's not that i can't go to tokyo and do a show in disneyworld if someone offered me the part, or that I don’t want to take the gig. it's just that, at this juncture in my career, i would rather do commercials/tv/film, so I probably shouldn't. and that means i won't.

What it really boils down to is this: Say yes to what you really want. Say no to everything else.

another day, another (commercial) callback

i had a 1pm appointment at HOUSE for the ocean spray commercial callback. they wanted me to do lines and they were prepared to put me on camera, upload my takes online and have a decision for me before the end of the day. i went in with the usual joie de vivre: crazy mad starving (i hadn't eaten all day) with no make-up on and, like always, i gave the assistants at the front desk my usual hello as i breezed past them to prep for my close-up. i've been in and out of there so much for auditions/callbacks in the past 2 years, they actually know me. one of them, rebecca, knows me no matter what my hair is doing. needless to say, she's my favorite.

i like to put my make-up on when i get there because their floor-to-ceiling windows means strong daylight even on a cloudy day, so i can't overapply it. i usually don't have much time to hang around so i'm also quick about it. and my eyebrows are always finished, which helps tremendously. the result is a natural, well-rested look. i know it sounds like no big deal but it took me forever to figure out how to put make-up on for the camera, to get this result. it was a constant learning process: what make-up to use, how to angle my face, how to relax the muscles in my face and smile slightly, so i didn't look deranged or constipated. i ended up experimenting by using my digital camera to make readjustments. i would put on make-up and take pictures of myself in natural light until i looked unmade-up. sounds oxymoronic, i know -- but that's the effect i knew i had to have. too much make-up can make you look a lot older than you really are on camera. it also looks amateurish -- a major no-no.

and you don't want to get into clothes and how you have to dress to pull all this off. you don't even want to know.

it took long enough to learn how to do the make-up/preparation/clothes right for stage but the camera is a strange animal. i had to learn how to audition well, how to prepare for it, all of it. is there a class for that? i seriously doubt it. if there were, i'd still have to go through the process of doing it, and that has its own learning curve. i couldn't have afforded to take them. i simply didn't have the money for those things. all i had was my creativity and my determination and my nerve. i was never afraid of showing up and doing a bad audition or looking stupid. i was afraid of missing an opportunity, even if i didn't get the gig, because i knew that the chance to be in front of that camera was school, and i had to take advantage of that.

so by the time i walked into that callback, i had it all down to a science. as i casually applied make-up and readjusted my look, i chatted with miryam, a blactress that was there for a k-mart commercial. she was on her way out the door, so she was readjusting in the other direction. somewhere in there, they brought out a massively huge platter of sandwiches for the staff. i involuntarily winced as i watched everyone dive in, thought about taking one, changed my mind and went to the front desk to sign in.

as it turns out, i was the only person there to read for the role.

as divine providence would have it, my favorite assistant rebecca was the one to put me on camera. this was important because i like her and she likes me, so i instantly feel comfortable in her presence and all of this translates to what i do on camera. the lines were quirky and fun. i actually enjoyed myself. like always, i was in and out -- and on the way out, rebecca let me have her sandwich because she was wheat-gluten intolerant. is she cool or what?

i find out either way later on this afternoon. in the immortal words of tom petty, the waiting is the hardest part.