I went to a lot of theatre schools, got a lot of training, did a lot of repertory where you do a different play every night. I took a lot of voice, movement, and acting classes.
It was a better time to be a young actor when I started out. There was a repertory system where you could go and practise.
My grandparents - both of my mother's parents - were actors, and they ran the Reading Repertory Theatre Company, through the town of Reading, where I come from.
When I was about 6, my cousin was very active in a Filipino repertory company, doing musicals and plays. Her aunt was one of the founders of the company, and she told my mom that there were these auditions for 'The King and I,' and that they needed kids. I auditioned, got in and the love affair started from there and just kept going.
I'm beginning to see that just knowing the piece is not enough. Having a clear technique is not enough. Having a broad repertory is not enough. I want desperately to get past all those things.
I started at Howard in the drama department. At the same time, I was a fledgling member of the Black Repertory Company in Washington, D.C. When I graduated, I had the great fortune of being in the Los Angeles production of 'For Colored Girls'... And all these years since, I've done stage work.
I realized that after years of studying Shakespeare and Chekhov and regional repertory theater, what I really wanted to do was bust in and rob a bank and jump in the screaming getaway car and tear through the city and get in a shootout.
The sage belongs to the same obsolete repertory as the virtuous maiden and the enlightened monarch.
But a large symphony orchestra basically is a repertory company and it has a very enormous repertoire and it is important for the performers to be able to know how to shift focus so that they instantly become part of the sound world that a particular repertoire demands.
This is an age of specialization, and in such an age the repertory theater is an anachronism, a ludicrous anachronism.
