Kenny Leon says his actors need flexibility and truthfulness. "They have to be able to stand in the truth, not beside it, not next to it, but in it. A great production has three things: faith and trust in the director, faith and trust in the performer, and faith and trust in the words. Say the words specifically as written to hear the poetry. August has a song. I want actors who can honor that specificity."
Denzel Washington says his biggest challenge is that, "The language and rhythms are familiar. But the line structure and the sentence structure are specific." Once you think you know Wilson, you're in danger of missing the subtleties, he adds, commenting that Shakespeare is in many ways easier than Wilson.Viola Davis says her challenge is "to leave myself alone and just speak the lines and try to be open to what others give me. Audiences come to the theater for a slice of life, to have the kind of experience they wish they had in church, an experience that's divine. And you can only have a divine experience if you're moved, and you can only be moved if something familiar and honest is happening." She feels an added responsibility because "Wilson, like Arthur Miller, created the everyday tragic hero in those simple lives that we often dismiss," she says. "And he's elevated them and given their lives grandeur."
Mykelti Williamson adds it's easy to "get lost in the words and rhythms and think it's so cool to speak his language and forget to tell the truth. We can lose sight of the fact that the characters are real and you have to identify with these characters and find them in yourself."
McKinley Henderson says playing a character in a Wilson play is not all that different from any other character. "It's like cooking greens," he says. "You cut them up into smaller pieces. But first you read the story and understand that your character is there to serve the story. You ask yourself what's his purpose in the story. The character will be there if you give yourself to the story. And then something else takes over, and if I could explain it all, I don't think it would be art."
