John Earl Jelks and James Williams of Radio Golf
By: Michael Gilboe Jun. 05, 2007
Tony Nominee John Earl Jelks, and James Williams discuss Radio Golf, and their long relationship with the project, having worked on it since it's inception at Yale. They also discuss working with August Wilson.
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You can listen to this interview and many other great features for free on Broadway Bullet vol. 117. Subscribe for free so you don't miss an episode.
Broadway Bullet Interview: Tony Nominee John Earl Jelks and James Williams of Radio Golf
Broadway Bullet: August Wilson has always been known for his playwriting that actors can really dig their chops into. And his tenth, and final work, proved no different, with the show receiving two Tony Award acting nominations – we have Tony nominee John Earl Jelks and we also have James Williams here with us, who should have been nominated! How are you guys doing?
John Earl Jelks: We're doing good.James Williams: Doing well, doing well. No, it went where it was supposed to go – Tony [ Anthony Chisholm, also nominated for a Tony] and John have a long history with August, and both of them went through some amazing journeys to get here. So I am just pleased to be a part of it, and I support my fellow cast members in any way I can.JW: I think I figured it out that in 2007, I've been at home in Minneapolis for two days.
JEJ: Yeah.JW: And over the period of time, over the last two years, I think I've – we've been in -- New York is the eighth city, and it's just been a marvelous journey. JEJ: Yeah, it's been long, it's been long. But very rewarding because we needed those stops to really dig into the material, and be able to get everything out of it because it's so rich, the material's so rich, and there's so much in it – you have all the nine plays inside of this one play – it's either a line here, or a gesture or something, but it's all in this play. BB: For the listeners who, for some reason may have been in a cave and don't know, [August Wilson] wrote a play for each decade chronicling the Black experience in America and this is the [one] for 1997. In a lot of ways, it really kind of ties a lot of threads from all around all the different plays – Aunt Ester, you finally find out who she is in the whole thing. And I know that, John, you've done some stuff of August Wilson's -- JEJ: Yeah, I was in Gem of the Ocean, where you actually see Aunt Ester physically. I played the character of Citizen Barlow; they went on a – to the city of bones. That's the same Aunt Ester they basically speak about in Radio Golf. No, she actually passed it on to Black Mary, who is actually Barlow's and Citizen -- Citizen Barlow'and Black Mary's child, Old Joe. Yeah, I had to get that all tied up, but you know – but Gem of the Ocean, like I said before, this time you actually got a chance to see what Aunt Ester looked like, and hear her, and to hear her stories. BB: James, is this your first August Wilson show?JW: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, this is my sixth of the ten, and then I had the pleasure of being in Mr. Wilson's first professional production at Penumbra Theater in St Paul, Minnesota – we did the August Wilson Musical: Black Bart and the Sacred Hills. BB: So if you were in his first production, how did it take you so long to make your Broadway debut? -- Because you are making your debut with this.JW: Yes it is, it's my debut, and I thank Mr. Wilson for that. Family situations – I'm a proud father. My son is thirty-five years old; I was a father when I was seventeen. When I first came to New York to do an Off Broadway show, I made him a promise that I would be back for him to graduate from high school, and as much as I wanted to stay with [Wilson's shows] at that time, I went back and honored that [promise]. The second time I came, I got brought in to do the last three months of the run of Jitney down at Union Square Theater, again family obligations took me back home. And this time I – Mr. Wilson blessed me to say, "Okay, I want you to go." JEJ: This time, he said, "You can't go back, you're coming this time – all the way!"BB: Well Radio Golf really centers around a lot of: do we hold onto tradition and values; moral right and wrongs vs. the grey areas in the thing, and in those battles, your characters definitely stand at opposite ends of the spectrum, and you get to face-off pretty well there, at the end --[laughter]
JEJ: Yeah, the face-off, the big face-off! August wrote that, I believe, so that we could start having dialogue about the word -- I'm not going to say the word -- but you know. We needed to start having dialogue about how we truly feel, the negroes vs. the others. And inside of that, these two characters go at it. It's not like he hates this guy, it's just a word that he uses. It's a word; those words are words that, if they were in private, outside of a stage situation, they would be saying this to each other so that they can make sure that they get it. You have to get what I'm saying here because I feel this way, and the same thing about the Roosevelt character, he feels that way. But it's not like he said, "I hate you, I hate you all" -- those type of people; it's just like, "At this time this is how I see that group."
JW: And I think it's also a lot about responsibility. Once you become -- once you get on that upwardly mobile path, what is your responsibility to your community that you come up out of? You can't leave that behind – that's the responsibility that we have, I mean, as actors, being somewhat successful – I know John has a big heart for reaching out to school children, so do I, just to give them the opportunity to be in the room with somebody who's been successful at their field – to let them know that it is possible that all the things you hear in the classroom and all the people who tell you [that] you can make it if you try, it's really true. And it's our responsibility to bring our skill sets back to the neighborhood. I mean, imagine if Wall Street stock brokers came back, and did one day a year in the community center in the neighborhood, teaching people how to invest their money. That doesn't take a lot, that doesn't take the putting-on-of-the paint or anything like -- it doesn't take all of that, it just takes being able to give 1 day out of 365 back to the community.
JEJ: It doesn't really matter what color you are. You know, we are all going through these issues, trying to hold on.
JW: And in the inner city neighborhood, it's about gentrification. In rural neighborhoods, in small town America --JEJ: About losing a farm, probably --
JW: Yeah. Or Walmart-inization, where businesses go to the wayside because corporate Walmarts come in, and stores that have existed, that have been building blocks of the community, suddenly disappear.
JEJ: Yeah, an average Mom-and-Pop store.BB: You guys started on this show in the beginning with Yale, so what was it like building a play from the ground up with August Wilson? Unfortunately, you're the last ones that will find out. JEJ: Oh wow, well I'd say this: as he'd write it, you'd better get the lines right.JW: Yes sir, that's the first and foremost thing. Quick learning lines.
JEJ: Quick learning lines. I mean, they could put a page in that day. I've been in the rehearsal where I've seen the panic in everyone's eyes, like: We're not going to get this, this is not going to happen. This scene is not going -- but the magic of it, the way he writes, he writes specifically for your character, so once you just look at it and you go, "Well, my character is saying this, so great, so I can just take it in really quickly." But if you forget the lines, you throw off the whole --
JW: Rhythm --
JEJ: --Rhythm, yes. The whole poetry of it. Because every line counts, he doesn't write any throwaway lines; there's not a line you can just throw away.
BB: Yeah he really is a poet; he doesn't write for realism, he's more like a Shakespeare of his time, where he really packs each line very densely, with so much meaning. How challenging is it -- because his writing isn't really naturalistic writing style; it is, like, very poetic and deep and layered -- how tough is that to dig into?JW: I gotta take issue with you on that. It is very realistic. I realized one day when I was preparing to do <i>Two Trains Running</i>, because I looked at the text and went, "Oh my God, this is just so dense!" And then my stepmother owns a bar in St. Louis ,Missouri, and my father is the bartender there, and so I went and sat in that bar and listened: the people in the bar spoke exactly like the repetitions, the -- it's really a poetic way of speaking. What August did is: August saw the beauty in the speech of the average African American person, who you drive past on the corner, or he's standing out giving out flyers to the gym, or something like that, and he realized the beauty in that, and didn't try to shape it or change it, but added what he felt to that, and so it becomes that way, and that's the thing that I found out. I found out if you're trying to memorize these lines, and you're trying to go word for word for word for word – JEJ: You're in trouble.JW: You'll be lost. But what you gotta memorize is the thoughts, and you relax and let go and understand that the things that I learned growing up, combined with the things that I learned studying theatre, if I just let go and be who I really am -- that me that people tried to like change while I was in theater training programs --JEJ: Like, "You can't...", "You not supposed to talk like that," "It's not supposed to go like that."
JW: Right, you know, "You ain't supposed to talk like that," "You ain't supposed to do this," "You ain't supposed to do that." I get the opportunity to use the --JEJ: Other language.
JW: The other language, the long curse word that makes you throw it off of everything. People keep coming up to me and going, "How do you say that like that?' JEJ: You make it sound so nasty!JW: You make it sound so nasty, you can make it sound however you want. It's like: Guys, I grew up --that's straight from my childhood. That's straight from my upbringing. That's straight from being on the streets of St Louis, Missouri. And I get to pull on all those things. And that's in the beauty, it's really of the people, for the people, by the people, by Mr. Wilson. And you look at it, and it's a joy. It's a joy to get up there and perform.BB: Most people, I think, hear of August Wilson as the revered artist, the Pulitzer prize winner, the Tony winner, the hard task master, the -- very serious things, but I'm sure he had some lighter sides too, and I'm wondering if you have any favorite, more humorous moments that you spent with Mr. Wilson.JEJ: Well, it goes back to writing the play when we were working at Yale. The last really big one is: he put this scene in, like, a day before, and it was right before our first preview, right?JW: Yeah, yeah.JEJ: And I had all these lines I had to learn – Sterling had to tell Harmond how he was wrong about how it was Mr. Barlow's house, and it don't make sense for you to tear down this house, that big scene. But when it got to that scene, I went blank. I didn't remember not one line. I could have made up something, but then that probably would have put me in a more, you know, deeper hole. So I just simply said, "You're wrong, Harmond. You're wrong, and you know you're wrong!" And I figured: Okay, you know, that's a cue for you guys to turn the lights off, or go to dark or black, or something, and I'm thinking, Mr. Wilson is in the audience, he going to really get on me, man. I'm probably going to lose the job because of this, this is what I'm thinking. So I see him earlier, I mean after the show's over, and he's walking towards me, and he's got this big smile on his face, and he stops in front of me and he goes: "You're wrong, Harmond, you're wrong, man, you're wrong!" And then he said, "Learn your lines, Jelkes!"JW: For me, I was in the elevator at Yale housing and he came to me -- this is podcast, right? I can talk?BB: You can talk.(laughter)
JW: So he says to me, he says: "When are you gonna get that line right?" And it's like, Oh my God -- okay, what line am I screwing up so bad that August Wilson looks at me and says "When are you gonna get that line right?" I said: "What line?" And he said, "I felt like I had my dick in my hand, and was waving it around like a club." And he, acted it out and, like, grabbed his crotch, and he looked at me and he said: "You gonna thank me, man. You get a chance to say that onstage in front of women every night."
BB: One thing for the audience member is the Broadway experience of this play -- I mean, this is a play that definitely lives and dies by the powerhouse of the acting force, but on Broadway there's an amazing set that really kind of illustrates the delapidation of the city around, as the offices cleaned the buildings up --JEJ: David Gallo is just brilliant.
JW: Yes he is.
JEJ: That's why he's been nominated for a Tony more than once; he's so brilliant. He knew what August wanted, and he put it in there. There's a little bit of all ten plays on that one set. If you come see this play ten times you're going to always see something new, you're gonna go, "Aaaah, that's from…"BB: The detailed of the surrounding, on the proscenium of the set itself is so detailed that you, you almost wish you'd have more time to be able to just study everything that's over there.JEJ: Yeah, they actually printed out a chart in the Chicago Tribune, right? JW: Yeah, it was the Chicago Tribune.JEJ: -- About everything that was actually on that set, and it was like a treasure hunt, right?JW: Yeah. And it was funny because out of everything that they pointed out, somebody looked -- I had a kid look up, and there's a plant on the set that I hadn't never seen.JEJ: I didn't see the horses one time, but go ahead.JW: And the kid looked up and said, "The plant. That's…" It reminded him of <i>Ma Rainey's Black Bottom</i> for some reason, and you can just go in, and you can find things. And the genius of David Gallo comes through. Remember when we started at Yale, nobody had a script – out first day of rehearsal, nobody had a script. David designed that set just having had conversations with August. And it was just amazing. Because you sat and looked and your mouth dropped open, it was like: Oh my God, I gotta out-act that set.(laughter)
BB: You do, and you did! How are you feeling, approaching the Tonys here?
JEJ: I'm trying not to be too nervous about it. I mean, the Tonys is about the best of the best. I'm happy because I've been recognized as being one of the best of the best of this year. So I'll always be a class of something. I'm class of 2007. I'm going to go, and have some fun. I'm going to relax, and I'm going to clap a lot, and probably cry some, and just have a really good time. BB: Everybody does a great job in this show, but I tell you, the supporting, the three "supporting" actors, you guys got so much to dig your teeth into in this show.JEJ: Thank you, man, I really appreciate that because, you know, it's been a long road, you know what I mean? [August] trusted us to really take from the page and put it on the stage. I mean, that's what I've been saying from the beginning, we get together in a circle, and I always say, "Well, from the page to the stage," that's what August Wilson wanted. I'm hoping that we're doing it every night, saying what he wrote with feeling, with truth. It's not just a job - I would have done this for free.JW: Yeah. But let's not tell nobody.(laughter)
BB: Well, I must say, it seems like the show's quietly snuck onto Broadway stages, but there's a lion's roar happening on stage, and I hope audiences rush down to catch it.JEJ: Thank you, man.BB: And thanks so much for coming down and sharing your experiences with us because you gotta get right over there and perform tonight.JEJ: Yes yes, we're on our way now.JW: Yes sir.JEJ: Thank you so much.BB: Thank you.JW: With pleasure.###
You can listen to this interview and many other great features for free on Broadway Bullet vol. 117. Subscribe for free so you don't miss an episode.
Radio Golf production photos by Carol Rosegg
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