André De Shields

Michael Kantor: So tell me, you know, growing up in Baltimore as a child, what was your sort of take on Broadway? Was it even in your universe, or was it a dream that you, you now, tell me about that.

Andre De Shields: Growing up in Baltimore, Broadway was my universe. As a matter of fact, it was Saturdays, every Saturday. I think my allowance was 25 cents. But when I was growing up in the Baltimore, the spine, the cultural spine of Baltimore was Pennsylvania Avenue. And then of course in the 60s, along came urban renewal, so that cultural spine is now gone. However, there was a theater called the Royal Theater. It’s where I saw the first Motown Review, it’s where saw It’s where I saw Pygmy Markham, it was my window onto the world. And I knew from a very early age that I somehow was going to use my visits, my Saturday visits to the Royal Theater as my launching pad into a career that all of my ten siblings and all of friends in the community thought I was just out of my mind. Thinking I was going to escape those high, dense, and impenetrable walls of racism and poverty and that sort of thing in Baltimore. It was on one of those Saturdays at the movies where I got the epiphany, the dream that has carried me and still carries me through now what, 33 years as a professional performer.

Michael Kantor: From a large, relatively poor family, or I don’t know, you didn’t say that, but from a large family, you mentioned the Waltz, family in Baltimore, I had this dream, and then just take it from there and tie Broadway into that.

Andre De Shields: I shared my dream about being a performer on Broadway with my 10 siblings and my mom and my dad, which is where I got that original dream. My mom wanted to be a dancer. My dad wanted to a singer, but they were busy rearing these 11 children. So one Saturday, I’m in the Royal Theater. I’m watching Hopalong Cassidy. I’m watch Gene Autry. I’m watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. And then all of a sudden, Vincent Minnelli’s Cabin in the Sky is playing. Of course, growing up, my introduction to all of the media was a question of reflection. Where am I? Cabin in the sky is featuring what at the time was every major black entertainer, Lena Horne, Eddie Rochester Anderson at the Waters, Louis Armstrong, Bill Bailey. Butterfly McQueen, and others, there comes a scene when John Bubbles comes through the tavern doors and he’s resplendent in white from head to toe and he does this dance and he slides across the bar and he dances up a flight of stairs and the way I remember it is that he was consumed into these glittering clouds. And I knew right then, that’s… What I want to do. Forget want to, do that’s what I’m going to do so that was the epiphany, that was the dream, that’s the dream I continue to carry with me. I was able before he died to meet John Bubbles. I even pay tribute to him in one of my nightclub performances and it is John Bubbels, the pioneer or one of the pioneers of black males in this entertainment industry that has been my inspiration right to today.

Michael Kantor: Great. We feature, not Buck and Bubbles, but John Bubbles with Apple Water. That’s a, that’s an awesome thing. When you were starting out, what did you think of a typical Broadway show to be, and where could you fit in?

Andre De Shields: Starting out, I saw this homogenous palette. I didn’t see myself fitting in at all. It’s a question of reflection. I knew that somehow I was going to make some kind of impression. I didn’t know exactly what kind of an impression I was going to made, but I did know that I had to fight the good fight because I had looked back over my shoulder. I had seen where my predecessors had come from. I had seen the decades of exile that we had to experience. Before we could make any inroads. As a matter of fact, I think we’re in a decade of exile right now. We look at Broadway, and you can count on none of your fingers, the black musicals that are playing on Broadway right now, so I knew what my charge would be. I knew that my work was cut out for me. I knew I was on a mission. I knew, although I didn’t articulate it then, the way I’m about to say it now, I knew that what was missing was this. Canon of musical literature, so that the people who followed me, the young black boys who followed me would have something not only to dream about, but something to achieve in real, material, substantial, what is this, tactile, tangible ways.

Michael Kantor: Tell me about your experience with hair.

Andre De Shields: Now, Hare was directed by Tom O’Horgan. Tom O.Horgan is probably the most under-sung hero of the musical theater. We’re talking about 1969. This is my first professional show. We were referred to as the American Tribal Love Rock Musical. Now, this is what’s going to happen. Nearly 32, 33 years later. And Broadway is finally embracing these doctrines of inclusion, non-traditional casting, multiculturalism, ethnic diversity. Tom Horgan was doing that in here decades ago with all of his hippies singing about the dawning of the age of Aquarius, which I might remind you is only 47 years from now. I’m gonna live to the threshold of the age of Aquarius. I’m very happy about that.

Michael Kantor: Did it seem, when you were in it, place us, you know, did it seem like the first racially inclusive show? I mean, you looked around and there’s Hello Dolly, there’s Fiddler on the Roof, etc. In terms of Broadway, speak to that a little bit more.

Andre De Shields: It certainly seemed to me that this was a precedent setting, a history making show in terms of not only bringing the races together, but bringing the genders together and exploding this 50s political head that we had all grown up with, Father Knows Best, et cetera. The kind of trap that a black artist falls into so often is this beautiful era in our history called the Harlem Renaissance. Once we achieved the peak of black cultural expression in the Harlem renaissance, the doors shut again. The walls went up again. We were sent back into that exile. That I was talking about, as if there was no history of black people before the Harlem Renaissance, and as if they would be no history of black people after the Harlem renaissance. So it was shows like Hair. Burst that bubble of comfort, and that’s what’s important about Hair. It disturbed everybody’s comfort zone, and at the same time, it made us young people who were, and not everybody from Hair continued to be a performer. Only a few of us had dreams about a life in the theater. I was one of them, obviously. But it was hair that gave me the courage and the insight and the fortitude and the perseverance and the tenacity to continue that dream that started with John Bubbles that said, I can make a difference.

Michael Kantor: 60S, turbulent times, civil rights.

Andre De Shields: It’s so curious that we associate civil rights and turbulent times with the 60s because the essence of the 60’s was tradition. Not non-tradition, but tradition. A time when. Male actor was dominant, and theater was the exclusive domain of him. As a matter of fact, I never did any theater in high school. Why? Because the only thing that was offered to me were Aaron Boyce in The Admirable Crichton or You Can’t Take It With You. The first theater I did, although the dream, the epiphany was inside of me, the first theater I was in college. The first theater I did was in College. Sir Thomas Cromwell in A Man for All Seasons, playing a villain. I do them well. I’m dark, not only on the outside, but on the inside. So when I came to New York thinking that, ah, the Negro Ensemble Company, that’s where I’m going to be reborn as this actor. But even there was tradition in the Negro ensemble company. Oh, you’re a musical performer? We don’t have anything for you. So it isn’t just the tradition of the white dominance.

Michael Kantor: Talk about the genesis of The Wiz, you know, in its time. Did you have trouble mounting that show?

Andre De Shields: The Wiz was my first opportunity at achieving national acclaim. It wasn’t something that I knew was going to happen. The Wiz is one of those musicals that happens. Remember, I was talking about Exile. The Wiz one of the musicals that happens after long periods of exile. It was not well received initially. It wasn’t embraced. White audiences, initially, and it certainly wasn’t embraced by critics. Why? First of all, because the Wiz dared to take white mythology, white genius, white brilliance, Judy Garland. Can you improve upon her? Can you prove upon the Wizard of Oz? Well, yeah, if you want to take it from another point of view. Again, it has to do with that exclusive domain. How can you have these kinds of beautiful mythologies and exclude an entire subculture of people? So this is what the Whiz did. The Whiz said, this belongs to us, too. This whole concept of there’s no place like home, this whole concept depending on the magic inside your heart to achieve personal success. We claim. What else was unique about The Wiz? An Afrocentric sensibility, an Afro-centric point of view. Not every show that has an entirely black cast is a black show. The Wiz was a black Show. Why? Because its creators were black. Its producer was black. And of course, the company of performers. This had never happened from what I know about Broadway. This hadn’t happened on Broadway since the 1920s. We had to go all the way back to Shuffle Along with Noble Sissel and Ubi Blake and Bob Cole and the Rosamond Brothers. We had go all way back to the Harlem Renaissance again where we had been trapped before we could find a show that on Broadway was marketing the Afrocentric sensibility. Point of view. That’s what the whiz did. Now what else did it do? It brought black audiences to a part of town, and I’m speaking geographically now, that we had historically seen as inhospitable.

Michael Kantor: It’s so great. It’s like another three home runs, but tell me, you know clearly mounting the show Again be brief if you would but there had to have been really trying time you talked about all the critics in regular way But I mean Broadway is a business art if you don’t get the the fannies in the seats There’s no show. So just speak if you wanted what?

Andre De Shields: At the very beginning, we weren’t getting fannies in these. First of all, it was 1974 that we did the pre-Broadway triumph. It was a dream for me because the first performance of The Wiz was done at the Morris Mechanic Theater in Baltimore, Maryland. I’m from Baltimore. Opening night. A very small representation of my family was there, 70 people. That’s small. We get together on Thanksgiving, there are 200 people. But when we started out on the road, Gilbert Moses was the director of The Wiz. Bill Duke was his assistant director. And there was this idea that The Wiz was going to have this political agitprop theater point of view. It wasn’t working. Manny Eisenberg was the general manager. The Schubert’s were the machine behind the whiz. Jeffrey Holder was the costume designer. George Faison was the choreographer. So we hit Baltimore and then we went to Detroit and the magic wasn’t happening. All of the elements was there. So finally Gilbert Moses bid adieu and Jeffrey Holde stepped in. And then the broad strokes, the eloquence. The elegance, the master. The master director, the magician, came in. And The Wiz all of a sudden came together in terms of its artistic perspective. We still weren’t getting those reviews.

Michael Kantor: Speak to what they would respond to, speak to its effect on the whole town, and did in the way that, you know, a porceline kicked open the door, things come along later in the 70s. Would you attribute those to the Whiz, or is that?

Andre De Shields: So we finally come home with The Wiz. We’re in New York. The black audience haven’t started to come yet. So here’s that other innovative part of The Wiz, so what does Ken Hopper do? Ken Hoper goes to television. Now perhaps other shows had taken the marketing perspective to television, but it was really The Wiz that spent money on live action. Advertisements on television to get, because that’s where people were, sitting on their couches watching television. And it was that action on the TV, those black, energetic people with that syncopated rhythm and with that sense of we’re going to do whatever it takes to entertain you, come out of your homes, come to the theater. And that’s the marketing technique that got the black audience to come to Broadway, as I said before. Geographical area where we had always thought, well they don’t want us there, so we’re not going to take our money there. But now here’s a reason to save our pennies and go to Broadway, because finally we are being reflected. Now this is 1975, January 5th, when The Wiz opens. This is the peak of the Motown. So soul reigns, soul is ruling, you know, with the big hair, with the platform shoes, with a bell bottoms. Everybody was a Mac Daddy. You know, we were cool. We were setting the standard for shows to come for a long time after The Wiz.

Michael Kantor: What about the fact that, you know, this wasn’t, again, in the mold of by now Broadway’s sort of embracing popular music in a new way. It’s not, you Broadway used to have the ballads that were popular music and now just it’s basically, I’m riffing off your last idea. The show itself has got music that’s in tune with the.

Andre De Shields: Yeah, it’s been a long time since the music that’s in a show on Broadway is also the music that you want to turn your radio on and listen to, or the music you want go to a dance hall and dance to. And all of this is possible because at the heart of The Wiz is this idea, Charlie Smalls, I’m going to mention Charlie Small because he was the composer. The only show he ever wrote, he dropped dead right after doing The Wiz. Which is another reason why there hasn’t been a show like The Wiz since then. Because our talent is gone. We kill ourselves in creating ourselves. But at the heart of The Wiz, and the character that I play, the title role, Mr. Wiz is talking to you right now. At the heart that show was this ballad. If you believe within your heart, you know that no one can change. The path that you must go. Believe there’s a reason to be. Believe in the magic in your heart. That was at the essence of that song. That was the essence that show. And that is the battle cry that every one of us saluted each time we went on stage. So that marketing effort on television finally brought the black audiences to Broadway and we finally decided, oh, there is a place for us here. Even again if it’s only going to last for a decade and then we have to go back into exile again and sort of recruit new talent and start all over again. You must go. Believe there’s a reason to be. Believe you can make time stand still.

Andre De Shields: And sort of like that.

Michael Kantor: So what did you play in the Wiz and how did what you sing speak to the audience? Just one second, just bringing it up.

Andre De Shields: I was honored to create the title role in The Wiz, as a matter of fact, and I’m so happy to be able to relate this to you. On the street today, someone will come up to me and say, Mr. Wiz? And then they’ll start to apologize. I’ll say, no, no. I am so happy that I have been able to create something that’s indelible. Not that I’m ready to die and go to heaven yet. But there was a mantra that I got to sing as a song in the show, which still is important to me. The song is called If You Believe.

Speaker 3 Believe in yourself right from the start. Believe in the magic inside your heart. Believe all these things, not because I told you to. But believe in yourself as I believe in you.

Michael Kantor: Great. Tell us about, I’m going to just, I mean, ain’t misbehaving.

Andre De Shields: Ain’t misbehavin’. I gotta talk about my detractors in order to get to ain’t misbehavin’ because As popular as The Wiz was, my colleagues worried about me because I only did the show for a year on Broadway. Well, Andre, you’re leaving The Wiz. What are you going to do? As if you can only do one show for the rest of your career. I had no idea that Ain’t Misbehavin’ was on the horizon for me. But I did understand, even as early as 1975, If I wanted to do a single show for the rest of my life. I should have gone into corporate America. I wanted to grow. I wanted change. I wanted stand up to the challenge of this industry where I had said I’m going to make a difference. You can’t make a different if you are pushing that automatic button going to work. I left The Wiz in August of 1977, not knowing what I was going to do. In December of 1977 Richard Maltby calls and says, we have this idea of doing a musical tribute to Fats Waller. How would you like to come in and play with us? He didn’t even use the term audition. How would like to coming and play us? And one day I went over to the Manhattan Theater Club, which was in the Ukraine Social Club. In 1977, on East 73rd Street, it seemed like the end of the world at that time to get to East 73th Street and 1st Avenue. In this cabaret that only seated 64 people, and I walk into the room and there’s Ken Page, there’s Amelia McQueen, there is Nell Carter, there was Andre Deshiels, and there is, I know you think I’m going to say Shaulene Woodard, but no. Irene Cara, we were the five original performers of Ain’t Misbehaving when we were off Broadway. Charlene Woodard became our colleague on Broadway. All of a sudden, I’m in a precedent setting, history-making show again. Very different from The Wiz, which had, what, 25 people in the cast and 25 people in the orchestra. Ain’t Misbehavin’ has an ensemble of five. And the sensibilities, the artistic, the creative sensibilities behind Ain’t Misbehvin’ are not black, are not Afrocentric. They’re very much white and very much Yale. However, the art itself that we are treating is black. Couldn’t be blacker. It’s jazz. It’s the American classical music that has now changed music across the globe forever. And it’s one of the greatest of the jazz icons. It’s Fats Waller. It’s this huge, literally larger-than-life clown who had these big… Meaty fingers that if you measured from the thumb to the pinky finger, 10 inches which is one of the reasons why he was one of the masters of stride piano. My mom used to sing Ain’t Misbehavin’ to me or around the house at least. And here I am now getting an opportunity to essay the discography of this man. It couldn’t be any sweeter. Than that, although it got sweeter. Why? Because we’re in the cabaret doing Ain’t Misbehavin’ on the main stage is an Arthur Fugard play, right? Limousines are pulling up to the Manhattan Theater Club. They’re not going to see Arthur Fuggard. They’re coming to see Ain’t Misbehavin’. And then Manny Eisenberg, who was the general manager for The Wiz. Is sitting in the audience. So all of a sudden, you know, everyone’s, it’s all a titter, why is Manny Asenberg here? The next thing, Gerald Schoenfeld is sitting on the audience, well, we started in 1977, December, in four magical months, May 8th, 1978, we were opening on Broadway. That’s a miracle.

Michael Kantor: What did the audience on Broadway know about Fats Waller when they came into the show? And what did the show do to sort of invest them with that 20s?

Andre De Shields: Did the audiences for Ain’t Misbehavin’ on Broadway know anything about Fats Waller? I don’t think so. They may have known the tunes that he popularized, that he wrote, but they didn’t necessarily associate it with Fats waller. So they come to this show, which is so exhilarating, which is infectious. And then they discover that what they’ve gone away with is a lesson. In jazz and a lesson in black culture. Because if you investigate the life of Fats Waller, which we don’t really do biographically in the show, which is another one of the miracles of Ain’t Misbehavin’, it is a concise show. It is a succinct show. It is laconic. Critics tried to dismiss it as a review, but it was so well executed that in 1978, it won the Tony as the best musical. Another bar being raised by black art, because after that, then review after review pulled out of the Harlem Renaissance again, came along. Ain’t Misbehavin’ still exists as… Be best as the standard. So what you came away from Ain’t Misbehavin’ With was not just a good time in the theater. A very valuable history lesson about the contribution to the American musical, about the irrefutable contribution to the America musical by Afrocentric personalities and events. Remember, that’s the mission I’m on. It couldn’t have been better than that.

Michael Kantor: Did you have a favorite moment in the show or was there a moment that sort of stopped the show?

Andre De Shields: I got to tell you the show, there were five members in the ensemble. The show got stopped five times nightly by each one of us. Of course, Nell Carter stopped the show. She was one of the sexiest women on the planet at the time, but she was an ample woman. She was zofty. There was a lot of flesh. Nell Carter, which played right into Fats Waller, who was always titillating you about the possibility of sexual encounter. Nobody did that better than Nell Cotter. I had my opportunity to stop the show, too. Now remember, this is 1978. It’s still in that decade of permissiveness. People in 1978, when they were making a date to go to the theater, would still get together have a glass of red wine, smoke a joint, before coming to the theater. Well, in the show, I got to do the Viper’s Drag, which was all about busting your conch on marijuana. We can now decode it for the folks, right? And I got very, what’s the word? Lagubriously. I got to luxuriate into the song. I got another hero of mine, Snake Hips Tucker. I got emulate a dance that he made popular on the cabaret stages back in the Harlem Renaissance and it’s called the Snake Hicks. So I got wiggle and I got gyrate and I’ve got to get the audience to scream and get I’m hot. I dreamed about a reefer, five feet long, a might immense but not too strong. You’ll be high but not for long if you’re a viper. Ha ha ha ha!

Michael Kantor: I’m gonna talk about nail cart a little bit more. I saw a clip of her doing honeysuckle row. What was it that she sort of brought to the work and was she, in a way, a throwback to the kind of performer who would have done it originally?

Andre De Shields: Nell Carter was a contemporary, embodied in her contemporariness, those giants, obviously Dinah Washington, obviously Billie Holiday, obviously Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, but I think there was a connection, there was an umbilical cord. Nell Carter all the way back to the mother country because she performed in the way. She would place her feet on the stage, you know, she’d get grounded and then she’d go somewhere deep inside of her and she’d bring out these colors which are uniquely black, which are uniquely African-American, these colors which are responsible for that genre of music we call the blues. They lived inside of her. And Nell Cotter had this brass band in her throat, which is what convinced me that she was God touched in the way that Michael Jackson is God touched, in the ways that those pioneer performers long before we had technology to be able to keep them with us forever were God touched. I don’t suppose anyone really goes the way of the gods before their time, so I can’t say that her death was premature, but certainly, even before she died, when she gave up the legitimate stage for television, because the riches are so immediate in Hollywood, no one has come along to fill that void that Nalkada left.

Michael Kantor: That’s great. Let me throw one quick broad question at you, because you just talked about it. Isn’t Broadway the spot for that sort of, you said, God-touch talent, the sort of talent that you can feel, I mean, in Hollywood and TV, you can sort of get away with other stuff. So my question is, how is Broadway, what is Broadway’s, what’s special about Broadway in terms of being able to spot?

Andre De Shields: The patient that we call Broadway has been dying for thousands of years, right? Or at least the theater has been dying for thousands years. It’s never ever gonna breathe its last. Why? Because it is the only medium that is as large. Television, no matter how much plasma is in the screen, no matter flat it gets, no manner how much of your living room wall it takes up, television is small screen. Film can be very artistic, but at its best, it is an imitation of life. The theater is life. The theater is church. The theater a temple. The theater worship. The theater community. The theater totally different experience than any other medium. The theater culture. The theater literacy. And no other place can you go for that kind of enlightenment, for that education, for that entertainment. It’s real. Therefore, we make mistakes. Therefore, fall on our faces, and we pick ourselves up again. And we never have to apologize for it, because we never pretend that we’re offering you perfection. We’re going to grow old right in front of your eyes. We’re going to cry right in front of your eyes. We’re gonna break down, right? We’re go crazy. We’re goin’ to get fat, we’re goin to get skinny, we’re going get sick. We’re gon’ to do. Whatever it takes to lighten your burden, to solve that problem that you brought to the theater, to resolve that crisis, to make sure that you go home lighter than you did when you arrived, happier than you, exhilarated.

Michael Kantor: What about the musical is different from any other theater or any other experience?

Andre De Shields: The Broadway musical is unique because at its heart, at its core, it makes this promise. You’re gonna be happier when you leave the theater than you were when you arrived. Your load is gonna be lighter when you leave the theater than it was when you arrive. Diversion is a religion to us. Divertissement is our mantra. We will do whatever it takes to make you feel good. We want to distract you from that daily, mundane routine that you go through. You get up every morning. Oh God, how am I gonna get through this day? I know how I’m gonna get to this day. I’m going to see a Broadway musical tonight. That’s how I am gonna get this day.” That’s the magic, not only of theater, not only the live stage. That’s the magic of the Broadway musical. And I don’t care where you see it on this planet, nobody does it better than we do right here in the Big Apple, the center of the universe.

Michael Kantor: Let’s jump to… Al Jolson. Here’s a question. I have no idea what you’re going to say, but when you see Al Jollson perform in a blackface clip now, how does it make you feel? Do you enjoy his talent? Do

Andre De Shields: I think of Al Josen, I think burnt cork. I think blackface. I think of Thomas Daddy Rice. 1732, maybe my date is wrong. But this is the birth of minstrelsy when Daddy Rice jumps Jim Crow for the first time. This is the example of how for centuries, the dominant white culture has appropriated black invention, claimed it as their own. Repackaged it and sold it back to us. I’m happy for Al Josen, because he is a reminder. I’m for Eddie Cantor. I’m Happy for Sophie Tucker. I’m I’m, happy for M&M. I’m happy for any performer. In his art offers evidence that I am the heartbeat, I am the rhythm. The music. I am the story of America. You want to know the truth about this country? You want get to the heart of the greatness of the United States of America? Then you must look to the people who swept, who bled, who suffered. And in spite of all of that, laughed in the face of adversity, forgave their oppressor, and then spread the joy. Of all of that indigenous stuff that came with us during the Middle Passage on those slave ships from Africa.

Michael Kantor: Speak to how, if you would, Blackface is sort of central to the development of the musical and how an instrucci, I know these are huge questions, but how, you know, Broadway musical is unfathomable without that.

Andre De Shields: The Broadway musical is unfathomable without the history of vaudeville, without the story of music hall, without the the history of minstrelsy. It’s a bugaboo. It’s skeleton in the closet. It’s, it’s a source of shame and guilt, but we have to deal with it. We have to embrace it because If we do not know where we are coming from, to put it in a popular vernacular, how the hell are we going to know where are we’re going? If we are hostile about our past, how are we gonna be optimistic? I’m not trying to excoriate or denigrate any of the contributions made by our great statesmen, especially during the Reconstruction after the Civil War. Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington. The great civilization of Black America would be nothing without them. However, after Abraham Lincoln, with a stroke of a pen, signed the Emancipation Proclamation, we were free to do what? The only thing we knew how to do was to pick cotton to till the soil for 18 hours the day from sunup to. Sundown. We didn’t politic ourselves. We didn’t legislate ourselves. We didn t statesmanship ourselves off the plantation. We shuffled off the plantation. We sang off the plantations. We danced off the Plantation. And that opportunity came to us because America loved to be entertained by white performers who put on burnt corks. As a parody of the civilization of people that they necessarily had to dehumanize in order to treat as disparagingly as they did. Maybe all of this doesn’t sound like a Broadway song and dance man, but you got to understand that to realize that even now in the 21st century in this third millennium, I am still having to deal with the image of myself through the lens of how white people parodied me hundreds of years ago. One of the questions I ask myself frequently, not on a daily basis, but frequently, is Broadway racist? I cannot kid myself because I’ve done my research, I’ve my history. Broadway used to be racist. We can still find the evidence where, first of all, blacks couldn’t attend a show on Broadway. And then after we proved that we could indeed create for Broadway, we were allowed to come to the theaters, but that’s where we get the term [Unrecognized] heaven. Because whites could sit in the orchestra, but blacks could only sit up in the balcony. And then once the orchestra was integrated, blacks could sit only in the back third. Then there was a time, and not too long ago, Once the theater itself was integrated, you could not have an integration of the actors on the stage. Big Ballyhoo’s were made about all of the attempts by Eugene O’Neill, for instance, to get blacks on the stages, especially if there was going to be an integrated cast. Burt Williams, one of my heroes and one of the greatest performers at the turn of the century on Broadway, the first black performer to integrate Broadway by way of Florence Ziegfeld and the Ziegfel Follies had in his contract that while he was on stage, a white woman could not be present. Broadway is a cultural institution, and cultural institutions do not exist in vacuums. They are continuums. They change. They evolve. Broadway is no longer racist, but because it reflects America. There is still a sense of what I would call racial elitism on Broadway, which is why we have these doctrines, these legislations, these guidelines concerning non-traditional casting, inclusion, multiculturalism, ethnic diversity. Look at the city of New York. How is it possible to live in New York? In its great melting pot of cultures, and then go to the theater and see only one culture, regardless of what the culture is, and see one culture represented. We in the theater are masters of illusion, but that’s a lie. We were talking about minstrelsy earlier. Hundreds of years later, I’m still looking for an honest reflection of me. Beyond civil rights. The right I wanna exercise is the right to a true history of me in my entertainment.

Michael Kantor: You were in a show, and tell us, you know, the show thing in Full Monty recently, and do you feel in a show like that, and you talked earlier that, you know, it was sort of in this period where that kind of 70s explosion of black talent and energy has kind of disappeared, and do you feel like amidst non-traditional casting and so on. There’s tokenism or how do you feel about where we’re at?

Andre De Shields: Most recently, I was on Broadway in the Full Monty, as recent as 2001. The Full Monaty is a very unique situation because it is the kind of show that never could have happened if it weren’t for the efforts of non-traditional casting and integration. That had been going on for years on Broadway. As a matter of fact, today we learned that hairspray got 13 Tony nominations more Tony nominations than the producers did I don’t think hairsprays could exist if it hadn’t been for the full Monty this new and different trend in Broadway theater that says ah we’re gonna tell the story of the ordinary man and woman we’re going to tell the story of The Fat Chick, we’re going to tell the story of The Ugly Guy. We’re gonna tell the story of the relationships that almost end in divorce, because that’s real. And those are the problems that people are having today, and that’s what we can deal with. And that’s definitely a guarantee that we can make it better two and a half hours later. We can definitely make that better. But what happens when we when we find solutions to racism, when we actually achieve integration, what happens is the dominant culture still retains its original power. And the subculture has achieved this kind of interplay, this kind mix, this kind of integration. But by doing that, what we do is give up our empowerment. So that we must be satisfied for what I think can. Accurately be described as tokenism. I had a ball in the full, Monty. Two excellent years that changed my life. But the character I played, Noah Horse T. Simmons, in his head and in his heart, knew that growing up he was in a world that was ruled by old white men. And today, in the today of Before Monty, 2001, he was in a world that was ruled by young white men. It’s different. It’s not the same. The power has changed. But the politics that I have to go through, the masks that I had to wear in order to get through a day in this world are essentially unchanged.

Michael Kantor: I realized I jumped over a couple of big things I want to go back to. You mentioned you’re from Baltimore. One of the shows we’re talking about in the 20s, which kicked open the door for the, like Langston Hughes said, it’s sort of precursor to the whole Harlem Renaissance, shuffle along. Mm hmm. Can you tell us anything about, you know, Noble Sistels from Baltimore, there’s a song, Baltimore Buzz. Just what it is, apparently, that’s the legacy of that show, how it changed everything on Broadway in 21, like all of a sudden. You know, Robert Kimball, our advisor, says the Gershwin’s fascinating rhythm would be unthinkable without Shuffle. They all saw it. It was Shuffle on, like it.

Andre De Shields: Shovel Along is very important in a major way, not only because of where it sits in history. 1921. It straddles the two centuries. It borrows the best kind of entertainment that minstrelsy offered us. And it combines it with the best kind of production value that Broadway could offer us. You put those together. Every new trend, every new on the radar screen of culture comes from a subculture, and it starts to bubble up. So, what are these elements, what do these blips and shuffle along that are bubbling up? Ragtime, as a musical genre, jazz, the two comedic stars of the show, Flournoy Miller and Aubrey. Miles are two of the greatest comedians to perform on the stage, and they’re still wearing the black face of minstrelsy. Two of the, well, there’s a trio there of creators, Noble Sissel, Ubi Blake, two of, two the greatest composers. I’m Just Wild About Harry is still around from that. And there’s a song, if I can remember correctly, from Shuffle Along called Love Will Find a Way. I think that’s the title of it, Love Will find a Way for the first time in the way blacks are represented in musical entertainment, gives a sentiment of romance, something soft, something dream-like, something not grotesque. Yeah, right. I liked Alec Lynn about Shuffle Along, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t all easy. It wasn’t all gravy. This was a revolution happening. And I think it was a revolutionary happening that Noble Sissel and Ubi Blake were aware of at the time. And I might add as a sidebar, Ubi Blakes a Baltimore boy, just like I am. But shuffle along, 1921, they’re introducing great comedic talent, great songwriting, and they’re introduce a kind of romantic quality about black performers that had never before been seen on stage. Forget being seen, hadn’t been allowed. There’s a ballot that’s introduced in the show, Love Will Find A Way, and there was great consternation, there was a great question about whether or not this song should be included in the Show, because how would our white audiences respond to the idea. That we are no longer grotesque, that we can speak with a human heart, that there is gentility as part of our makeup, that we tread softly, that we be eloquent. The day was won, however, by including that song, because not only did Shuffle Along prove that, first of all, whites would go to see blacks perform on Broadway, but we’re talking about a time before Broadway theaters were air-conditioned, and we’re not talking about the geographic center of Broadway. Shuffle along opened in a theater on 63rd Street off Columbus Circle, which had been closed because it was the What do they call it? The dog days of summer. And white performers weren’t going to perform in there. But it was the only chance that Nova Sissel and Ubi Blake had. So they took the theater. And people came to the theater in the dead heat of the summer to watch this show because the entertainment was so expansive, was so real, was so guaranteed, was unique. It also broke. Or set box office standards in terms of how much money could be charged for a ticket. And it was also the first black show that integrated the audience. Now, not integrated in the sense that a black would sit next to a white, but that a section of the orchestra was set aside, where blacks… Shuffle Along also launched the careers of Josephine Baker, these are people in the chorus. Paul Robeson, Adelaide Hall. Florence Mills. These are the people we now revere as pioneers in. So Shuffle Along deserves its position as the catalyst, as the linchpin between the 19th and 20th century evolution of musical theater in terms of participation by

Michael Kantor: What about the dancing? I mean, in a way, for Lansing, it’s a pre-Charleston kick to the jazz age.

Andre De Shields: The dancing in Shuffle Along was part of the revolution. Again, 1921, these are the roaring 20s. And why did the 20s roar? Well, for many reasons. But one of the reasons that the 20’s roared was the way people approached dancing as if it were, and it was, liberating. Again, but this is that gift of rhythm. This is that. Gift of syncopation. This is a gift of abandon. This is that gift of tasting freedom for the first time that comes. Emancipation, not only a political emancipation but a cultural emancipatio, an artistic emancipati. This is the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance, if not the peak of the Harlem Renaissance. Since I started in the early 70s working on Broadway, it’s changed a great deal. And because it’s changed a great deal, in many ways… It stayed the same. First of all, we now have installations on Broadway, shows that run for 15, 18 years. We also now have what I think is an honest, Commitment. Reflecting the society of the audience that’s going to come and put down, and remember Broadway They’re going now for a hundred dollars. And these are smart people who are putting their money down. So although we’re in the business of distracting them, we cannot lie to them. If we’re going to take your $100, we better damn make sure that you are represented on that stage. So now when you go to Broadway, I think there’s a much more real, actually what I should say is a much less eerie representation of society. And that’s one of the basic tenets of the theater. You’ve got to reflect the society that you are entertaining. That’s happening on Broadway more often. But because of that change, we now no longer have… A canon or an encampment, if you will, of black shows because the shows are so integrated now. So we’ve almost returned to an era where blacks, in terms of spending money on Broadway, have again found it an inhospitable place with the exception every two, well, or two and a half years When August Wilson comes around with a new play, not a musical. And musical is the wallet. The musical is that bank of Broadway. Broadway is a tourist industry. Broadway is the nut of the tourist industry in New York in that obviously all of the associated mercantilism that’s associated with going to a Broadway show, Hotels, etc. Being African-American and being 12% of the population, we only represent 3% of the audiences that attend a Broadway show. And that’s because of inhospitability. That’s because a lack of reflection of who we think we are. That is because of exclusion as opposed to inclusion. It’s that we’re in exile again.

Speaker 3 Because you’ll be back.

Andre De Shields: Oh, we’re definitely coming back. Bigger and stronger and badder than ever. To quote George C. Wolfe from his gorgeous play, help me out, George C Wolfe, his gorgeous plays. The Colored Museum. He says, God created black people and black people created style. And that’s what we’re bringing back to Broadway, Byrd Williams. Egbert Austin Williams. I think his name was. Egbert got shortened to Bert. The quintessential coon. The majesty of Kuhn, I might say. His comedy was permeated with humanity. He was a light-skinned man. He performed in burnt cork, not by choice, but because that’s the only way white America would allow a man of color to perform on stage. His genius, his… His gift from God was that he was able to take his inner light, the light in his heart, and shine it like a laser beam through all of that burnt cork, through all that cooning, to all of those accoutrement of the minstrelsy genre and touch your heart and make you understand that under all of this disguise was not a black man, but a human being.

Michael Kantor: So is Burt Williams the story of a triumph or a tragedy? And how do you, how can, what is his signature song?

Andre De Shields: The story of Burt Williams is an example of triumph and tragedy. Triumph because he was able to set a standard and raise the bar, not only for black performers in a predominantly white setting, but for the whole art of comedy. Eddie Murphy owes his career to Burt William. Tragedy because the human being Burt Williams knew that he was different than, larger than, better than the character he was forced to play in Blackface for his entire life. I’m sure one of the reasons he died at such an early age was because the burnt cork broke his heart. Also, Burt Williams considered himself not a tragedian, but a serious actor. And he wanted to essay the roles that later in history, Paul Robeson got to essay and Charles Gilpin got to play. Othello, just to name one of them. He had no children. And I think one of the reasons that he had no children is because he didn’t want them to experience or he didn’t want them have to master the art of self-deprecation. But we continue to learn from Burt Williams. He didn’t have a crystal ball. How could he have known that he was going to be the touchstone for every performer of color after him? So, it may have been a personal tragedy for Burt, but it is a cultural triumph for the civilization of African Americans.