A Slave Ship in Manhattan?

By Keith Boykin, in theater
Wednesday, November 15 2006, 2:20AM

An Interview With Daniel Beaty

What would happen if an old slave ship rose up from New York Harbor next to the Statue of Liberty? That's sort of the premise behind Daniel Beaty's new play Emergence-SEE, now in its final week at New York's famed Public Theater.

Daniel Beaty is an actor, playwright, singer, orator and thinker, who brings all these talents together in a show that features 43 characters on stage. But there's a catch. Beaty plays all 43 characters. I had a chance to see the show last week and I spoke to Daniel Beaty this week for this special interview. I talked to him about his life, his family, his plays, and what inspires him to do the work he does.

INTERVIEW WITH DANIEL BEATY

Keith Boykin: Hi, thanks for doing the interview. Congratulations on the show. What’s the reaction been?

Daniel Beaty: We’ve had a really amazing reaction to the show. We sold out our initial run-through before we even opened. And we’ve had really enthusiastic audiences every night.

Keith Boykin: What made you decide to do a one-man play?

Daniel Beaty: I was really interested in the concept of freedom. Freedom to be fully expressed, to be who we truly are, the ability to be free from things in our lives that may cause us to feel bound.

Keith Boykin: The play is set in New York. Where are you from?

Daniel Beaty: I’m from Dayton, Ohio.

Keith Boykin: How long have you been in New York?

Daniel Beaty: I came to New York about two weeks before September 11.

Keith Boykin: You moved here around the same time I did.

Daniel Beaty: I had completed my graduate studies in San Francisco at American Conservatory Theater, and I had an option to be either in New York or LA and I chose New York. And I really wanted to be in New York to pursue my career.

Keith Boykin: Emergence-SEE talks a lot about a relationship between two brothers and their father. Is that similar to your own family?

Daniel Beaty: I always say that my work is emotionally autobiographical, not literally. So that story of the two brothers is not particular to my personal story but the idea of an absent father is particular to my life. In Emergence-SEE the father is absent because of mental illness.

Keith Boykin: And in your own life?

Daniel Beaty: In my own life, my father dealt with heroin addiction and was a career criminal.

Keith Boykin: Really. I had no idea.

Daniel Beaty: I grew up in the trenches in my own way.... I grew up in the ghetto in Dayton, Ohio. In addition to the things my father was dealing with, my brother was a crack addict….But I always had a strong sense that God was looking out for me, that there was a purpose in my life…I remember growing up in the chaos of my home life thinking there has to be a better life than this.

Keith Boykin: Did you go to public school?

Daniel Beaty: I went to public schools through eighth grade. I used to be a motivational speaker. I guess I still am…One of the things I discovered is that I had to find role models to emulate. And I just thought that Martin Luther King Jr. and what he stood for was amazing. So from as early as third grade, I was writing speeches, and by the time I was in middle school I was traveling two weekends out of the month speaking at various service organizations, churches, and cultural events. And when I think back, I latched onto achievement as a way to break through the chaos.

Keith Boykin: How many siblings do you have?

Daniel Beaty: I have two older brothers and two older sisters. The nearest sibling is 8 years older.

Keith Boykin: How many characters do you play in the show?

Daniel Beaty: Forty-three.

Keith Boykin: How did you learn to play so many different characters?

Daniel Beaty: I’ve had so much training. I did my undergraduate at Yale. And then I went to a graduate acting program. So part of it has been my training. And it’s also an intuitive gift. I observe people a lot. How people hold their bodies, rates of speech, inflexions. But the primary way I create characters is by clarifying the person’s perspective on the world.

Keith Boykin: You wrote the play, star in it and you sing in it too. Do you consider yourself a singer, a playwright, an actor, or some combination of the above?

Daniel Beaty: I definitely say I’m an actor, singer, writer and composer. I was on the path for a career in opera. I sang classical musical professionally in Europe. But I realize that the things that I cared about in the world were more immediate than I could justify for myself by having a career in opera.

Keith Boykin: What does that mean?

Daniel Beaty: I care about the state of what’s going on in the world right now….But opera, most of what you sing, are stories from the past. The audience for opera is 99.9 percent of the time old white people with a lot of money. They are absolutely welcome to come to my work…[but] there’s a much broader audience than that that I’m interested in speaking too.

Keith Boykin: The night I went to see your show, I think the audience was mostly white too.

Daniel Beaty: Exactly. That’s a really interesting comment. I spent the past five years doing this show, particularly the last two, traveling around the country, performing for mainly black audiences. So it’s been an interesting challenge to get a more diverse audience.

Keith Boykin: Well if your objective was to get more white people, you succeeded. [Laugher]

Daniel Beaty: When I was performing around the country I was performing for mostly black audiences…The demographics of Off Broadway and Broadway audiences traditionally is the exact same as the world of opera. So when I accepted the contract at the Public, I requested they hire someone to help diversify the audience. I’ve gone to churches. I spoke at community events, starting in July throughout Harlem and Brooklyn. I’ve reached out to people like you and other people I know who have a web-based community to try to garner support. And as we move forward with the future of the show, marketing to the black audience is a huge part of my focus.

Keith Boykin: I’ve been to a few Broadway shows and off-Broadway shows, and the audiences almost always tend to be white, even when the subject matter is black. The only exceptions I can think of are Sean "Diddy" Combs in "A Raisin in the Sun" and Oprah Winfrey's "The Color Purple." But it's not like black folk don't go to plays. If Tyler Perry puts on a show at the Beacon Theater, there's a line around the block at 74th and Broadway. What’s that about?

Daniel Beaty: I was on a BET show called “The Chop Shop” and they compared my work to Tyler Perry’s directly and they said “elegance” and the showed a clip of my work versus “ignorance” and they showed a clip of Tyler Perry’s work. I was deeply offended that they made a comparison like that. I don’t agree, but what I feel it highlights is this issue of accessibility. I think there is a perception, and in my own opinion there’s truth to the perception, that a lot of what’s presented on Broadway or Off Broadway is not really for us. By for us, I mean it does not really reflect the interests of the masses in a way that excites us or that popular black culture finds interesting.

Keith Boykin: Do you think it has something to do with ticket costs?

Daniel Beaty: Those Tyler Perry shows aren’t cheap. And you can get a ticket for my play for the same price [or less] as one of those plays. And I know another part of it is the resources to advertise on black radio…The same producers that produce the urban theater plays also produce concerts in those same venues and they’ll buy with the radio stations blocks of advertising time. And they’ll buy with the radio stations in a way that black theater or theater cannot afford to advertise.

Keith Boykin: And yet I have seen ads in mainstream newspapers, radio and TV? Is it just that they don’t take black media seriously.

Daniel Beaty: And you get the mainstream white listeners to the theater. That’s exactly it. They don’t take black radio seriously. And then you know those plays also have the pull of celebrity, which is a model these Broadway shows now try to use. A lot of times the gospels, the urban musical plays will have some kind of B celebrity that people are familiar with to help draw the audience.

Keith Boykin: I would say your play is a modern day look at the vestiges of slavery and slave mentality. What message do you hope to communicate?

Daniel Beaty: That’s exactly how I would describe the play. There are many messages but the primary message is a call to come home to the truth of who we are, which is limitless, powerful, beautiful and connected. And I feel urgency about that message, particularly because of the state of so many of our young people.

Keith Boykin: You also have male roles, female roles, and even LGBT roles in the play. Is that part of the interconnection?

Daniel Beaty: Absolutely, we are everything in our community, and it was important to me that one of the primary characters be this gay brother because homosexuality is something we don’t talk about in our community or that we want to sweep under the rug. In the same way it was important that someone who is transgendered be a part of the community, as well as the right-wing Republican. We are everything as a community.

Keith Boykin: Has there been any negative or positive reaction to the LGBT characters in the show?

Daniel Beaty: I went back to my home town and my mother is a Pentecostal minister. I grew up about 35 minutes from where Central State is. So I read about your experiences, and my mother was very nervous for me about bringing this story to my home town, and at the end of the performance people were on their feet cheering. And I have to tell you, whether I have been in West Virginia, Colorado, San Francisco or New York, there’s been the same response.

One of the things I do also is that I try to make sure characters are three-dimensional and that the characters humanity is forefront. So if the audience is laughing with the character, not at but with, because they feel the truth of what the character is communicating, there’s an immediate openness that takes place. So particularly with the LGBT characters in my play, I try to make sure that the audience is on their side before I delve deeper into the issue of their sexuality. I often use humor as a common ground. And the root of it all…is that every character is fundamentally longing to be free. And that’s something we all can relate to across gender, class, race, sexuality.

Keith Boykin: How old are you?

Daniel Beaty: Thirty.

Keith Boykin: What’s next for you?

Daniel Beaty: I’m going to be doing some touring with Emergence-SEE. I’m going to be in Atlanta and DC. And I’m also going to be opening up the Tavis Smiley State of the Union in Jamestown, Virginia in February. And then I’m also working on a musical that uses magical realism to address the issue of HIV/AIDS both in America and in Africa.

Keith Boykin: A musical about AIDS?

Daniel Beaty: Yep. It’s actually a derivative work of EMERGENCE-SEE. It’s centered around two young people who live in a housing project in Harlem that cross back over the Middle Passage.

Keith Boykin: Are you single or in a relationship?

Daniel Beaty: I’m single.

Keith Boykin: Anything else you want to add?

Daniel Beaty: I just really appreciate you taking the time to do this and to support the work. I’m a true fan…and supporter, and I’m grateful for you taking the time.

Keith Boykin: I do a series on my web site where I ask prominent people to tell me five of their favorite things. Can you tell me five of your favorite things?

Daniel Beaty:

1. Nina Simone.
2. The ocean.
3. Dancing.
4. Lasagna.
5. Laughter.

Keith Boykin: So if somebody wanted to take you out on a date, they should take you to a beachfront restaurant where you could dance to the music of Nina Simone and eat some good lasagna and laugh. :

Daniel Beaty: That would be incredible.

Keith Boykin: Well, thank you very much Daniel. And good luck.

Daniel Beaty: Thank you.

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