Quick Q&A: Andre Holland

Andre Holland is making his Broadway debut at The Belasco in the acclaimed revival of Joe Turner’s Come And Gone by August Wilson, the playwright whose work inspired him to become an actor.

Has making your Broadway debut been what you expected?

In a lot of ways it has been. I always dreamt that it would feel like being a part of an amazing community of artists and that certainly has been the case, I’ve gotten to work with some really talented people and it feels wonderful to be included in that way. It’s definitely a lot of work and not nearly as glamorous as I imagined; eight shows a week is a hard schedule particularly with a play like this that demands so much physically and emotionally. But it’s a wonderful ride.

How would you describe Jeremy, the character you play?

He has an enormous appetite for life. He’s moved from a small town in the South to the North looking for a better life for himself, full of hope. As August writes in the play, his heart is pounding in his chest with a song worth singing. He just has so much inside him, and hasn’t found a way to get that out yet. To me, he has an undefeatable spirit and if he were alive today he might end up being Barack Obama.

Why do you think the audience likes him despite his bad behavior?

His intentions are pure. I don’t think he sets out to do the wrong thing. It’s interesting, in the play Selig says his Daddy used to be a people finder and Seth says his Daddy taught him how to make pots and pans and Bynum talks about walking down the road and seeing his Daddy standing there. Everybody in the play talks about their fathers except for Jeremy. He’s a kid with a lot of heart and a lot of spirit but he hasn’t had any guidance, he hasn’t had anyone in his life to show him how to treat women. He’s trying to do the right thing. It just hasn’t worked out for him.

Did you know this play before you took the job?

Yes, I did a scene from this play for my showcase when I graduated from NYU. August Wilson is what attracted to me to the theatre in the first place. I read Fences in high school and I couldn’t put it down – it was the first time I had read characters in a play who sounded like people I knew. As I got to undergraduate and grad school I used it as my touchstone as proof that I belonged, that there is a place for me in the American theatre. I was in my second year of grad school when he passed away. One of my most vivid and deeply moving experiences was going to Pittsburgh to the funeral services and being in the room with all these people who had worked with him for so long. Even though I had never met him, I felt like he had given me so much: the license to be an artist, the license to be an actor.

photo: T. Charles Erickson

What unique demands do August Wilson plays make on an actor?

First of all the images that he has put in his plays are so much bigger than the images we tend to use or even think about in today’s world; it just requires a greater sensitivity to the size of the experience of what these characters are going through. Just last night I was reminded after the show that there are several layers of this play, there’s so much there. I think also that he wrote about a place, his plays take place in single area; I don’t think there are a lot of playwrights who use that. I come from a very small town in Alabama and I know what that’s like, to come from a small community of people. It’s not so modern, and it requires a sensitivity to what it meant to be tied to a community of people. Nowadays we have Facebook and Myspace and cellphones but in those days there really wasn’t anything else to do but sit around a table and talk to each other, tell stories and relate. It’s because people were forced to deal with each other in that way that images like the ones August Wilson writes were able to exist.

Why do you think the members of this cast work so well together as an ensemble?

It’s an interesting ensemble in that there are a lot of different types of actors and different types of people, but we have a shared history and a shared memory of the blood and that what helps us work together. There are people like Roger and LaTanya and Ernie who come from a different kind of training, to listen to them talk it seems to have been more on the job. They worked all the time, worked with the best people and they learned innately whereas me, Marsha, Aunjanue and Danai came from undergraduate programs. Before a show you’ll often see the four of us lying on the floor doing vocal exercises but you look around and see Roger and everyone else standing around having a cup of tea, being in themselves until the lights come on. I often find myself watching Roger and thinking “Man he is so good, and I didn’t see him rolling around on the ground doing vocal exercises!”

Can you give an example of some direction that Bartlett Sher gave you or to the company?

One thing he said that I think about a lot is that none of our characters have the luxury of starting this play in the place that they want to be. It’s a principle of acting but in this play in particular it’s an important thing to remember, not to rob the characters of the journey that August Wilson gave them. We all have to go on that journey together every single night.

I’d like to know your thoughts about the opportunities for African-American actors in theatre today.

The way I feel about is… I went to NYU for grad school. The training was amazing; we got to work on the best plays ever written. But I often found myself not feeling quite at home in Ibsen and Shaw and Chekhov and I always wondered what kind of opportunities there were going to be for me when I got out of school. And so far, most of what I have gone in for has been African-American roles with a few exceptions, Shakespeare being the major one. My personal feeling is that we should all be able to play all roles almost without exception unless the play is exclusively about race., which most good plays are not. I think an all black Cat On A Hot Tin Roof or an all black Death of A Salesman – it doesn’t have to be like that. You can have a mixed family in a play; I think that is actually what the theatre is asking, is begging, us to do. If we make it too literal all the time then we rob the great power of theatre. So I’m hopeful there will be more opportunities for me and other African American actors to be in Ibsen, Shaw, Williams, everything, without it being a production about a black person playing Lapoktin in The Cherry Orchard.