“When I was bringing in heritage [to my all-white high-school], like plays like One Monkey [Don't Stop No Show], The Fredrick Douglass Journals, George C. Wolfe’s The Colored Museum, and my one-man The Wiz, it was always about doing black work and not trying to be something I wasn’t.”
We talk with Michael Benjamin Washington about transitioning from Texas to New York City, preserving black and queer history through his writing, and finding specificity for the 28 characters he plays in the revival of Anna Deavere Smith’s Fires in the Mirror, currently playing at Signature Theatre.
Recommendation: James Baldwin's work (specifically Notes of a Native Son), Alvin Ailey's "Revelations"
Shout out: Tarell Alvin McCraney