Daniel Beaty brings a vision of Resurrection to Hartford Stage.

Last season Beaty was the Aetna New Voices Fellow at Hartford Stage, where he workshopped Resurrection. His first album of spoken word and music, Introducing Daniel Beaty, has just been released. And he is one of the most energetic and individual theatre artists around. If you have never heard of Daniel Beaty, just wait; this poet, playwright, singer, composer and actor is one of the reasons the future of the American theatre looks so exciting. “I love the immediacy and vibrancy of human interaction that the theater affords. My writing is very intentional. I am interested in bringing urgent issues into people’s hearts and minds in a manner that is entertaining and challenging.”

Challenges and Hope

In 2006, Beaty’s solo play Emergence-SEE! ran off-Broadway in a sold-out, extended run at The Public Theater. In it, Beaty plays forty-three diverse New Yorkers, including a homeless man, a scientist, the ghost of an African tribal chief, a conservative black Ivy Leaguer, a street vendor, and an eleven-year-old boy, who all witness an amazing phenomenon; a slave ship rising up out of the Hudson River in front of the Statue of Liberty. Emergence-SEE!, like all of Beaty’s work, takes on many issues—AIDS, racial profiling, homosexuality—in a blend of poetry, monologue and song that explores American history through the legacy of slavery. “There are so many residual feelings and emotions and issues from the experience of slavery,” Beaty said in an interview on NPR. “You can be wealthy, working in corporate America, or you could be living in the projects, and still have some of those issues haunting you.”

The play and Beaty’s virtuoso performance drew critical praise and many awards, including an Obie, a New York Magazine Culture Award, and nominations for Outer Critics Circle, Drama League and Barrymore Awards. On tour across the county and abroad Beaty has won a Denver Post Ovation Award, the Cincinnati Enquirer Acclaim Award and a Scotsman Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Festival, among others. Despite this success, Beaty remains circumspect. “I don’t think in terms of awards or reviews. I actually don’t read them. I keep a small circle of people around me whom I trust to give me artistic feedback. I try to focus on my purpose of transforming pain into power. I can feel when an audience is receiving the work during a performance, and that is very gratifying.”

Beaty’s life has been filled with the play between challenges and encouragement that he writes about. Growing up in Dayton, Ohio, his father was an addict and often in prison, and it fell to his mother to raise him, provide for the family and keep Beaty in school. His talent for public speaking got him noticed by teachers at an early age. After attending the private Miami Valley School on scholarship, he studied at Yale University, earning a BA with Honors in English and Music, and then the American Conservatory Theatre, where he was awarded an MFA in acting. He came to the attention of the legendary Ruby Dee, who saw Emergence-SEE! in one of its early incarnations. She became an advocate for Beaty, encouraging theatres to produce his work. “Somehow this artist touched something so deep in me, “said Dee. “By the end, I was on my feet shouting like someone in church.”

History Lessons

Both Emergence-SEE! and Resurrection have a kind of poetic-historical sensibility—using history as metaphor and metaphor as a way to elucidate history, a method that runs through many of his pieces. “Much of my work explores how history impacts our present reality. Particularly in the case of the African in America, I find it essential to place present-day issues in a historical context. I also use metaphor and magic in my work because I believe that ‘make believe’ allows us to examine what seems to be unbearable.”

In Resurrection, Beaty uses this technique to explore the links between the lives of six African American men, age ten to sixty, in a series of interconnected sequences of poetry and music. The characters include Eric, a budding child scientist, The Bishop, a leader of a mega-church, and his son Isaac, a corporate executive. The culmination of Resurrection is an unexpected and life-changing event, a magical “resurrection” of hope.

As one of his influences for Resurrection, Beaty cites Ntozake Shange’s 1974 for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, a series of dramatic poems examining the lives and choices of seven black women. Another inspiration was the Urban League’s 2007 report, The State of Black America: Portrait of the Black Male, which says, among other things, that one in three black males born in 2010 will spend time in prison. “The story of black men in America is one that is historically and presently too often one of challenge and difficulty, from the experience of slavery to the current statistics,” says Beaty. “The issues facing black men in America are extremely urgent, and I wanted to write a play that would address these issues in a way that would be thought provoking, moving, and entertaining.”

Creation

“When I create a character, I create it from the inside out,” Beaty explained to interviewer Tavis Smiley about Emergence-SEE!, which Beaty has recently re-titled, simply, Emergency. “I find out what the character’s heart is, what they’re really passionate about, what they really care about, and then it creates a voice and it creates a body. I have what I call a truth meter, so once the character is living inside of me authentically, it’s there and I just sort of trust and surrender and I play.” Unlike Emergency, Resurrection was written for an ensemble. The first reading took place in July 2007 in Washington D.C. at Bus Boys and Poets with an ensemble of six actors. Working with director Oz Scott, who staged for colored girls on Broadway, and renowned composer/performer Daniel Bernard Roumain, the play was workshopped at Hartford Stage in January 2008, and then in New York in June.

A co-production with Arena Stage in Washington DC, Resurrection will begin in the nation’s capital before moving to Hartford. Playing in the middle of an historic election, Beaty’s reflection on African American men and the hope for the future, will resonate with the political frenzy of those months. “Barak Obama actually wrote the forward for The State of Black America,” says Beaty. “That a bi-racial man who has a clear awareness of the issues facing black men in America is the Democratic nominee will have obvious implications.” Though Beaty is quick to point out that Resurrection was not inspired or influenced by the election, he notes that the candidate will certainly “have the opportunity to bring those issues to the forefront.” He also believes the play will help keep urgent issues in people’s minds. “When a segment of the community is soaring,” Beaty says, “it is important to remember those who are deeply disenfranchised.”

Not afraid of tackling difficult issues, Beaty’s faith in the power of transformation makes him hopeful. “I am interested in questions of sacrifice, healing and redemption. How do we bring something that seems to be dead or dying back to vital life? I firmly believe that no matter how hopeless something seems there is always a possibility of resurrection.” Uncynically, Beaty believes in the potency of theatre. “In a world of e-mail and cell phones, live performance is essential. It is a rare and beautiful experience to have people gathered in one space with their minds and hearts open to a new experience. I certainly believe art has the power to change lives—it continually transforms mine.”

— Christopher Baker