Lia Chang
Alfred Preisser © Lia Chang
Alfred Preisser is not one to let grass grow under his feet.
At the beginning of November, the award-winning director, who is also an accomplished playwright and painter, sent me an email which said, “I’m moving on from my position as Founding Artistic Director of The Classical Theatre of Harlem. Starting and leading our company has been a life changing experience for me. It’s been a unique privilege to be a part of CTH and to have had the opportunity to work with the great artists and audience that have made it that rare entity, a theatre that matters.”
In less than 24 hours, news that “The Classical Theatre of Harlem Founders Alfred Preisser, Christopher McElroen to Depart Company” spread, appearing in the online daily columns of playbill.com, artsbeatblogs.nytimes.com, Theatremania.com, backstage.com and Variety.com. His schedule has been a flurry of activity since then.
Preisser agreed to sit down and discuss his first love – the theater, and what’s on the horizon for the next phase of his life.
Preisser shared, “Ten years is a long time to work at any one thing. I know that this present moment is the time for me to create something new, to continue working for something truly great with the artists and audience I’ve met while directing CTH. I’m going to continue working with the same artistic core that developed around me at CTH. There were some key people like Tracy Jack, Kelvyn Bell, Chris and also some of the actors for whom CTH was not just a theatre, but their life’s work. I’d put the musician Shayshaun MacPhearson in the family too, he’s worked with us so often and his music is always really special. Zainab Jah, who’s played everything from Death to Helen of Troy, is the kind of actor that’s perfect in our theatre. Our greatest achievement was building a home where artists worked together over a period of years, on dozens of shows. We created a real body of work, we lived in our theatre, so to speak. It was a place where we were able to share our essential selves easily with one another, and it was obvious in the work. That is extremely rare. You can’t understand it if you haven’t lived it from the inside. It’s important to me to keep working forward with people who understand that and are capable of creating on that level. Our new company will continue to focus on great texts from world theatre, continue to blow them up or “vivisect” them, as André De Shields puts it. But we’ll also do more original stuff, and we’ll consider the world our stage.”
What has your life been like since you made the announcement?
Preisser: Since making the announcement life’s been better than good, but things have been hectic. The announcement created a lot more ripples (and interest) in the theatre community than I expected. I find myself doing a lot of planning and foundation work for new projects that will be kicking off in 2010.
THE CLASSICAL THEATRE OF HARLEM
For the last decade, he has lived, slept and breathed The Classical Theatre of Harlem, a theater company presenting world classics that he co-founded with Christopher McElroen, based in Harlem.
That journey began in 1999, when he was offered a full time job as the Director of the Theater Department at The Harlem School of the Arts.
Employed at the school since 1994 as an adjunct instructor and director, he recalled, “I’d never had a real job. Like all actors or directors, you go from job to job, in and out of different cities; your life is not the regular 9-5 life. They were going to give me a salary and health care benefits and an office. My initial reaction was that’s not really me, that is not what I do. But then it seemed like an opportunity. It seemed like the time in my life to do something different. I asked the leadership there if they would allow me to start a professional theater company in the building that they ran the theater program out of. It was basically an abandoned garage, no heat, no air conditioning. I saw it as a potentially great place. They agreed, and we started. The theater was always very close to my students, close to the staff that was employed there. Creatively, it was always very successful.”
Over that ten year period, he and McElroen staged forty-one productions, with Preisser directing Melvin Van Peebles’ Ain’t Supposed To Die A Natural Death (seven Audelco Awards including Best Director), and critically acclaimed original adaptations of Medea, Electra, The Trojan Women. His productions starring theater legend André de Shields include Caligula, Nobel-prize winner Derek Walcott’s Dream on Monkey Mountain, Black Nativity at The Duke on 42nd Street Theater, Archbishop Supreme Tartuffe at The Clurman on Theater Row and King Lear, which went on to open the 75th Anniversary Season of The Folger Shakespeare Theatre in Washington D.C.
The Classical Theatre of Harlem has garnered numerous awards including 13 AUDELCO Awards, six OBIE Awards, two Lucille Lortel Awards, a Drama Desk Award, and an Edwin Booth Award for Outstanding Contribution to New York Theatre, among other honors. Preisser’s productions are noted for their physicality, originality, and use of music and dance.
This summer’s sold-out Off-Broadway production of Archbishop Supreme Tartuffe, co-written by Preisser and Randy Weiner, and starring De Shields in the title role as a con artist preacher who is the ultimate entertainer at The Clurman in New York, was no exception.
AUDELCO nominee André De Shields (center) flanked by Tyrone Davis, Charletta Rozzell and Reji Woods in the Classical Theatre of Harlem's Archbishop Supreme Tartuffe at The Clurman in July, 2009. © Lia Chang
Director Alfred Preisser is flanked by Ted Lange and Andre De Shields, who star in the Classical Theatre of Harlem's production of Archbishop Supreme Tartuffe, which Preisser co-wrote with Randy Weiner. © Lia Chang
What was your inspiration for doing Archbishop Supreme Tartuffe?
Preisser: Actually, it was André De Shields. We were doing Black Nativity at the Duke on 42nd St. and his interpretation of that role I thought was very genuine and enjoyable. It made me think of people like Rev Ike. I’m really attracted to preachers that blur the line between spirituality and entertainment. Reverend Ike in particular is an amazing figure to me. I thought that the work that André was doing in Black Nativity would actually be more effective in the kind of piece where the guy was that type of figure. I wanted to do Tartuffe. After reading Tartuffe, I just didn’t feel it in any modern idiom or interpretation. I love religion, the costumes, the props, the architecture, the way religious leaders use theater to communicate.
“André’s one of my favorite actors for obvious reasons. I believe in a certain kind of theater,” said Preisser.
Which is?
Preisser: My theater. It’s a mix of rhetoric, dance and music, physicality and violence. It dissolves the fourth wall and goes right at its audience. It actually includes its audience as a character in the play. It is non-linear. It is about creating a direct connection between the actor, the story and the audience all the time. When it works it can be beautiful, ridiculous, tragic and funny almost at the same time, like life. It’s not necessarily a theater of literature, which is an odd thing to say about theatre that proceeds from the so-called classics. It’s a theater of the human body and imagination. André understands that because I feel that is also his core aesthetic. The kind of theater I imagine possible, he’s always been able to understand fully and intuitively. We’ve done projects together that wouldn’t even have been possible without the kind of performance he can craft. Archbishop was certainly one of them.
When did he first come to your attention?
Preisser: I knew André from his career, but I didn’t know him personally. He showed up to the theater to see a production of The Blacks, a Jean Genet play we were doing. I noticed him in the house one night. Just seeing him sitting there made me think of a play that I had on my mind. Dream on Monkey Mountain. Just looking him at sitting in the theater, I thought he could be that guy in Dream on Monkey Mountain-a very complex and beautiful role,a kind of Caribbean King Lear. Not a lot of roles like that. Not a lot of people that can play them the way I imagine them being played. The next year, I put Dream on Monkey Mountain in my season. When I did, I looked him up to see whether or not he might be interested. I gave him the script, and he was interested. We’ve been working together ever since.
Musical director Kelvyn Bell and choreographer Tracy Jack are among Preisser’s collaborators that he considers family. © Lia Chang
Can you elaborate on your collaboration process?
Preisser: With Tartuffe, Open-ended. A certain level of organized chaos. In the case of Archbishop I bring in a script that is clearly unfinished, oftentimes without ending or beginning, oftentimes with a structure that will be completely altered over the course of four weeks of rehearsal. In this case, there were two open sections that had to do with the service, they weren’t written at all, just described as events. These scenes, which were central to the entire theatrical event, were created organically in rehearsal and never really “finished”, even in performance. This kind of process, which would strike many as chaotic, is fairly normal in my shows. It’s my process. Tracy Jack, Kelvyn Bell, and André have helped me refine this process over the years, and they all work extraordinarily well within it. They are all creative forces.
Our theatre, again, is less a theatre of literature than it is a theatre of physicality, fun, the unexpected. We go into rehearsal with scripts that are unfinished and imperfect, and create within what I consider to be the imaginary landscape that connects performer to audience. It’s unknown territory and always changing, its life. It’s not dead scripts, stale theories, opposing views on acting technique. It’s life, the unknown, hopes and desires, fantasies. André is comfortable going into unknown territory. He’s not only comfortable there, he has the capacity to create great things there. He has the physical and intellectual imagination to impose himself on the shape of the story. He’s not fussy, he’s not afraid, he doesn’t play. The result is often something more like a “happening” than a conventional play. This is risky, but also great fun. It also unusual in this age of institutionalized “play development”. Whether we’re working on Shakespeare, the work of a Nobel Laureate, or my own ragged and idiosyncratic scripts, the same “anything is possible” atmosphere presides. I think it usually results in theatre that is extremely personal and alive.
Who inspires you?
Preisser: My favorite person is Muhammad Ali. One of my first memories is him losing to Joe Frazier. His win over George Foreman was a work of genius. He’s transcended sport, he’s one of the most historically significant Americans of my time. My favorite actor is Klaus Kinski; those films that he did with Werner Herzog, particularly Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre, der Zorn des Gottes. The theater of Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater, their brief but remarkable achievements in radio and film. I like reading about The Berliner Ensemble, The Negro Ensemble Company and The Group Theatre. Those would have to be the three greatest theatres of the 20th century. I like LeBron James. Eiko & Koma, the Butoh dancers, are two of the most amazing performers I’ve ever seen, I go see all of their performances.
Do you miss being on stage?
Preisser: I can’t say I do, because I’ve been busy. I can say that I’m going to act again, and soon. It will be part of this change, starting a new company and a new phase of my life. There was a time in my life when I lived to act, and I couldn’t imagine not being an actor. But I was ghost directing every play I was ever cast in, in my mind. I wasn’t a real joy for director’s to work with, in my arrogance they always lacked imagination and flair and I usually made myself difficult. But that’s how I taught myself to direct I guess. When I started to direct one job led to another, and it became the focus of my creative life. And I’d always wanted my own company, so the work with Harlem School of the Arts and Classical Theatre of Harlem just took over everything, literally every waking moment.
You mentioned that you were interested in working in Asia. Can you elaborate?
Preisser: Asia and elsewhere. I’d like to do things internationally. I have a sense that’s where the world is headed; the emerging cultural and economic engines of the world are older countries like China and India, and that whole part of the world I think that they are going to become new again. There is great energy there. Things are starting there. People are being creative there. There’s a lot of stuff being created-business, technology, language, popular art forms. All of the things that are present when civilizations are on the ascendant exist there. I think that India or China would be a great place to start a world theater and interface with people that are interested in the West, interested in the English language, world classics and how they relate to their own cultural history.
What are your favorite shows that you have directed for The Classical Theatre of Harlem?
Preisser: I thought Caligula was a great accomplishment because it was a completely invented show. The idea was that Caligula would do a show within a show. I felt that at the 1st reading, the ideas in the script were apparent to almost no one. There was a silence after the reading but it evolved well. It ultimately was an exceptional piece of theater.
I really liked the production of King Lear that CTH did. It was a crazy Lear. People either loved it or they felt we had somehow violated Lear. We hadn’t violated Lear. We’d done an even more ancient concept of Lear than most. We took it to the Hammurabi’s ancient Middle East, and Kelvyn and Shayshaun MacPhearson scored the whole thing like a movie. To me it all worked. We found great humor in it. It was a Lear that audiences loved. We opened the play in October. That was a time when a lot of high schools and colleges had program money. They came out to see it. A lot of schools study Lear. The play was so effective for young people, who clearly came thinking this was a chore that they would have to endure. Their school was forcing them to go and see King Lear. They had certain expectations, i.e., that they would be bored stiff. Instead, they were really turned on by it. People cheered and laughed at our Lear. Our fool was really funny. Mr. De Shields performance went from being a kind of Cecil B De Mille old testament performance, to being really crazy, to being very quiet, and very heartbreaking. Christina Sajous, the actor playing Cordelia, was making her professional debut. I’d known her since she was a 14 year old girl in my classes at H.S.A. Watching her perform on that level was an unforgettable experience for me. That was a production that I felt very close to. I went to see every single show that I could. Even when it moved to The Folger in Washington DC. I was commuting to DC to see as many shows as I could because I didn’t want to miss anything.
We had a great time doing Black Nativity on 42nd St. Melvin’s play, Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death, is very close to my heart. I think it’s a great piece of American theater. The poetry is off the charts, the music, the period, I feel very close to. I’ve been lucky. The last ten years I’ve only worked on exactly what I want to work on, exactly the way I want to work. I’m really lucky.
How do you feel?
Preisser: I feel excited to continue creating great things with the family of artists I came to know at CTH. It’s essential to reinvent yourself and take on new challenges. Also I reject the concept of “institutional theatre”. It is not and never was me.
A theatre should be something that is vibrant and alive and personal, it needs to reflect specific creative forces. When those forces run their course or change, then that theatre’s life and energy have come to an end. And that’s as it should be.
A NEW BEGINNING
Andre De Shields in Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: From Douglass to Deliverance. © Lia Chang
In January, he’ll direct André De Shields in The Working Theater’s Off-Broadway production of Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: From Douglass to Deliverance, a one-man show, written and conceived by De Shields. A black history travelogue which traverses the stories of African-American leaders from Frederick Douglass to President Barack Obama, Mine Eyes will have performances at The Abington Theatre in February 2010. Click on the arrow below for an excerpt of Andre as Frederick Douglass.
Mid-February, he’s off to Paris to work with Melvin Van Peebles and the great musical ensemble Burnt Sugar on a stage version of Mr. Van Peebles’ seminal film Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, which premieres in Paris that month.
“My life is extremely simple,” said Preisser. “I live for theater and when I‘m working, I’m happy, or at least fully engaged in life and working at something that is meaningful to me. My life is about the work I do in theater. My best experiences are all due to the fact that got I involved in theater.”
Related Articles:
Related Articles:
AUDELCO 2009 “The VIV” Nominees for the 2008-2009 Theatre Season
Classical Theatre of Harlem Scores 12 AUDELCO Nods for Archbishop Supreme Tartuffe and The Three Sisters
Andre De Shields stars in Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: From Douglass to Deliverance at The YARD
Photo Call: Archbishop Supreme Tartuffe Opening Night Party Photos
Photo Call: Archbishop Supreme Tartuffe
Playbill.com: Photo Call: De Shields and Lange Star in Off Broadway’s Archbishop Supreme Tartuffe
André De Shields Stars in Archbishop Supreme Tartuffe
André De Shields in Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory from Douglass to Deliverance
Classical Theatre of Harlem’s Archbishop Supreme Tartuffe Reviews
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Playbill.com: Deshields, Lange and Brockington Star in Gospel Filled Archibishop Supreme Tartuffe Opening in NYC
