"Kung-Fu" at Signature Theatre: A Post-Mortem Pt. 2

Please see Part One here.  I dare you.

...

So.

I was in my dressing room one night in late October, wondering how on earth I ended up at the Public Theatre doing a Brecht play.  Meanwhile, I was in hot contention for the Broadway revival of Les Miserables. (The classic actor joke is "it's between me and the guy who's gonna get it". The other guy got it. And that, in a nutshell, has been the story of my 2013.  Twenty-Thirteen will go down as The Year of The Other Guy Getting the Big Job.  That's just how it goes sometimes. Fuck.)

During this existential pseudo-crisis I did what most young'uns do these days when life becomes too strange and unbearable to cope with: I checked my smart phone.  I mean it had been like 113 seconds since I last checked it.  I was dying.

Lo and behold, there's this offer for Kung Fu sitting in my inbox, for the role of "James Coburn".  No, I didn't audition again--mofos was just like "yo, here's a job".

Honestly, I didn't even know who Jimmy Coburn was. Real talk.

Onward.

So, two days after my time as an attractive and animate prop at The Public ended, I was in a small studio, sweating profusely under the glare of Sonya Tayeh, who I'm sure wondered the same thing that I did: what the hell is this guy doing in a show that requires DANCERS???  To make matters worse, I easily stood at about 4 to 6 inches taller than anyone else that would ever be on stage with me in this show, EVER.  Add to that my horrible inflexibility and diminished agility, from previous injuries as well as doing too much weight-lifting and having too much mass, and it was pretty much pre-ordained that I'd be placed at or near the very back in every single dance sequence I was involved in.  There was just no getting around my Big-Slowiness.  It was a force to be reckoned with.

More real talk, I was also bitter as hell that I had to have three days of intense PRE-rehearsals in early December before we started rehearsals proper in January.  I was tired and drained, it was cold as hell outside (though the worst was yet to come...I need to move out west), and I figured I had almost 4 weeks to whip myself into something resembling an agile, fit, fighting machine, but NOPE!!!!  Just spent hours and hours watching fuckin' incredible 5'7" ACROBATS do a bunch of crazy shit and then have to somehow repeat whatever the fuck they just did.  

Yeah. I was pissed.  I mean I was stoked to be working on the show--and I'd dreamed about the possibility of going from one high-profile gig to another...but...yo...a negro was TIRED.

I will say that since I live with two gorgeous and extraordinary dancers, and watching them in varying degrees of physical pain, I've learned to not complain when dealing with fatigue and bodily stress.  Dancers are warriors, man.  Nothing but respect for them.

Anyways...I managed to make it through those three days of feeling like a loser because it took me forever to learn the choreography and even when I learned it it didn't look too hot wonderfully challenging pre-rehearsal.  Sonya and I exchanged about a sentence apiece over that time.  I think it was when we greeted each other on the first day.  When I was late.  Fuck.

I still didn't know why Leigh offered me this job.  Much later on, I'd find my stride, but it took a long damn time.  And as I said...Leigh is very, very smart.  Maybe a LITTLE smarter than myself.

Rehearsals proper would begin in the new year, which at this point was several weeks away.  I had no idea how I'd make it through the whole process.

Next: Rehearsals, Or The Story of How Sonya Tayeh Learned to Tolerate My Inability to Do Most of What She Asked of Me

"Kung Fu" at Signature Theatre--A Postmortem, PT. 1

KUNG FU, written by David Henry Hwang, received its world premiere at New York's Signature Theatre Company in the winter of 2014, opening on February 24, and closing on April 6. It was directed by Leigh Silverman, with fight choreography by Emmanuel Brown, Chinese Opera choreography by Jamie Guan, and dance choreography by Sonya Tayeh. The cast featured Emmanuel Brown, Bradley Fong, Cole Horibe, Francis Jue, Peter Kim, Ari Loeb, Reed Luplau, Kristin Oei, Jon Rua, Phoebe Strole,  Christopher Vo, and myself.

In summary, it is a piece concerning the internal and external struggles of the iconic Bruce Lee on his way to stardom and inner peace, using language, and movement.

I worked with an actor who once said "I'm a mover, not a dancer; when the dancing starts, I move the hell outta the way!"

There's no interesting beginning to this story; I got involved with this project because I auditioned for it and, for some reason, was hired. I'm not a dancer, not a martial artist, but I am a fucking highly-trained, solid actor and have a lot of stage combat experience.

I took Shotokan Karate briefly as a senior in high school, inspired by Ryu and Ken in Street Fighter (when I was a ten-year-old, waiting for Mom to come home in our small apartment on a military base in Belgium, I would scream "SONIC BOOM!" at the top of my lungs and clap my hands together, hoping some kind of vaguely sperm-shaped, revolving projectile would fly out of my arms. I also tried using the Force after I saw the Star Wars trilogy, around that same time, because I'm awesome). I took a few Karate classes as a kid, too. That, my friends, is the extent of my martial arts training.

My dance background is being a black kid steeped in American pop culture in the 80's and 90's. Michael and Janet Jackson, Bel Biv Devoe, The Fly Girls, MC Hammer, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze. You know you loved that Vanilla Ice cameo in that joint. Don't lie.

Surely this would qualify me to share the stage with experienced acrobats, martial arts exponents, gymnasts, and Juilliard-trained dancers, right?

I guess Leigh Silverman thought so...bless her heart.

Anyway, back in early 2013 the piece was very, VERY different, and I auditioned for a WORKSHOP in a track that would become radically altered in later drafts of the play. I went in, did my read, and I was pretty funny. Then I heard nothing for like 2 weeks. Then there was a movement call. It was one of those things where there were a bunch of Asian men, a bunch of Asian woman, a bunch of white girls, and then like 4 black dudes--there was NO question as to what role we were up for.

Movement calls tend to be the bane of my existence, so I focused intensely and spoke to no one, even my one friend that was there (yeah...it was one of the black dudes. His name is Clifton, too. He's pretty awesome--in fact, he's playing the lead in the Motown tour right now). There was some martial arts/dance choreo, and a fight sequence. I remember feeling pretty good about what I did. So, yeah, it made perfect sense that I heard nothing for a month after that.

(Breif note: in that call I saw why this thing must have been a BITCH to cast. Lots of dancers in NYC, but can they fight aggressively and convincingly? Lots of people with stage combat training in NYC, but can they handle dance choreography? And can any of these people do these things AND say words at the same time AND etch out multiple characters that seem like reasonable facsimiles of human beings??? Holy crap.)

Eventually I got an email saying I got an offer. Of course, being the depressive I am, my first thought was "I wonder who dropped out at the last minute so that I could do this???" Actors. Ugh.

I should note that I fought pretty hard to stay in contention for this workshop; other projects that may potentially have conflicted, I either turned down or didn't audition for--I knew it was important to be on the "ground floor" of something like Kung Fu, because people who do workshops tend to get used in later iterations--if their work is banging. Actually, sometimes they DON'T get used again, no matter what. Anyway, I kept a laser-focus on this project, even not knowing that much about it.

Bruce-Fucking-LEEEEEEEEEEEEE, Son!

I was not prepared for Cole Horibe.

I mean what the hell. This guy was on So You Think You Can Dance and then magically wound up here. How on earth does a person like this exist, who has extensive martial arts AND dance training, and who has always wanted to be an actor?? David Henry Hwang wrote this play right at the time Cole is in his physical prime. You couldn't ask for better circumstances. Is he lucky? Of course he is. But he's also been training for like almost a quarter-century. I think the time had come.

The initial two-week workshop at Signature Theatre in the Spring of 2013 was a blast. I got to do a lot of fighting, and just a little bit of goofing off (when the play opened almost a year later, I got to do a little bit of fighting and whole lot of goofing off).

Almost immediately in the room, I felt an atmosphere receptive to the energy and work I brought into it, which was a refreshing shift from what I was used to. It was an amiable group of people, down for just about whatever; the fight and dance sequences were awesome, and I was happy just to WATCH some of them (dem Kato sequences...gat damn!). We performed a heavily-abridged version of that draft as a presentation, but I think the important thing was getting an idea of what was possible physically; that workshop began to give a rough definition of just how the hell a play about Bruce Lee--a man who was a kinesthetic genius--could work in a space with live performers doing it. I'd say it was a success, and I was noticeably happy to be there.

Then a few weeks later I got an email from Leigh that there was to be another workshop and that Emmanuel Brown, our fight guy, would be doing my track (I should note here that he's a black dude...we be takin' each others' jobs). I was disappointed, but didn't take it to heart because I knew they wanted a better "mover" than myself for that role--a character based on a guy named Jesse Glover, one of Bruce's first students in Seattle, who apparently could kick ass. But I appreciated Leigh's gesture--she's a savvy mama.

I told her that I couldn't wait to see the production; because I figured I'd run my course with the project. Oh well...onto something else.

However, Leigh is smarter than I am (...just a little bit, though)--and I was wrong.

NEXT: How I Found Myself in the Company of Dancers; or How I Was Hired to Play a Couple Chinese Dudes, a Black Dude, and a Famous White Dude