Where the Actor is a Liberator
Kangalee Arts Ensemble, Inc.
“…Kangalee’s vision of a theater company is like a culmination of American Theater’s past 100 years. From Ira Aldridge to the Group Theater to the passionate agitprop of the Black Arts Movement and the The Living Theater. His dramatic works are chock-full of ideas, overwhelmingly so…but the best cocktail of the personal and political.”
— Kam Williams, Village Voice
The KANGALEE ARTS ENSEMBLE, INC. is a 501-C3 BIPOC non-profit theater company devoted to the collision of radical politics, classical theater aesthetics, & the liberation of the actor (which instigates liberation in real life).
Our playwrights write specifically for certain actors in the company or work out ideas collectively before retreating to isolation to organize the chaos and return with a script that is challenging in content and style. Language and structure are major components being forgotten in so-called “political drama” and simply in theater in general. Each play we do, whether it is new or old, stems from a need from at least one member of the company who feels they have something they must get off their chest. Like a singer finding the right song, we seek to merge the writer performer with the right dialogue, the right playwright with the perfect actor to deliver their uncontainable message to the world.
Dennis Leroy Kangalee directing his oldest theatrical collaborator Ward Nixon. (2023, The Bowery, NYC)
A conceptual and ever-changing group of actors, writers, and designers — (there are 8 permanent members) Kangalee Arts works hard to achieve that delicate balance in theater between poetry, bold characterizations, provocative dialogue, agitprop, the avant-garde and the leap towards transcendence. Never forsaking one for the other.
Original poster for the May workshop by Brian Alessandro
“My Dying City Vol.II is the Ensemble’s latest original work. A result of the Action Lab’s Artist-in-Action Fellowship and the Venturous Theater Fund’s generous grant, this new tragedy about a disillusioned radical Left-wing couple, the impact of genocide, and the consequence of their rogue radio show - shall premiere at American Theatre of Actors in January 2026. Stay tuned for more details.
THEATER OF SILENCE:
Henry Miller & Samuel Becket
Hassan’s incredible analysis of Henry Miller and Samuel Beckett was a primary influence on the Ensemble’s fourth season.
Kangalee’s clown was both romantic and neurotic. Seizing the edge of Rimbaud and the sadness of one Chaplin’s tramps. Photo: Susan Kingsland. Design by Sean Atten. October 15, 2025
‘SMILE: A CLOWN’S ASCENSION’ opened on west coast in October 2025 at the Asilomar Chapel before playing in Monterey and The Henry Miller Memorial Library. A tour de force performance, it was a bold adaptation-performance piece; a menagerie of sentiment, desire, triumph, and failure. A love poem to both the romantic and those who challenge the status quo.
The Kangalee Arts Ensemble’s adaptation of Henry Miller’s beloved short story is the first authorized theatrical adaptation in North America; the first time an actor had ever professionally adapted & performed Miller’s work in the United States.
Like all saints who suffer, Miller’s Auguste - a circus clown who wants to do more than just make audiences laugh - is the penultimate Miller character: the ambitious outsider who is crucified for his desire to give man everlasting joy.
“Krapp’s Last Tape and Rockaby are startling plays about more than failure or regret or memories, their characters signify the end of an era...for themselves...the audience...our society.”
Manny Espinoza’s tills for the Beckett Monodramas: Justine Stock in “Rockaby” and Dennis Leroy Kangalee in “Krapp’s Last Tape” - from the Carl Cherry Center premiere of the revival in Carmel, CA January 23, 2025.
Beckett’s plays are not foretelling doom - they are expressions of doom.
And all that surrounds it. Two of his greatest short works, the monodramas Krapp’s Last Tape and Rockaby are blues monologues on death, aging, loneliness…and the
terror of memory. But with sublime regret and incredible humor. The Kangalee Arts Ensemble’s renditions of both works began as a 2021 workshop, then a lone run at Studio 111 in Brooklyn in 2022, a sold-out run in Monterey’s Carl Cherry Theater and a final performance at the Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur.
“Kangalee as Krapp and Stock in Rockaby were tragic and funny...Both plays portrayed people who many of us will become someday, asking bold questions about aging.”
FROM STANISLAVSKI TO FRANTZ FANON
With their provocative 2024 drama, The Life & Death of Art, the group’s first original work which openly equated the repression of artists with the oppression against Blacks and Palestinians, experiences and ideas from corners of the arts and trenches of revolutionary activism were applied. From idealism and righteous resistance to betrayal and treachery, this epic play told through six characters representing either a hawk or a dove — expressed the confusion, angst and shock of an age immersed in capitalist brutality, ethnic cleansing, rabid racism and very grave hopelessness…
Premiering in April 2024, at JACK ARTS in Brooklyn, NY — the play exemplified the group’s aim of blending the personal with the political. And by doing this, galvanizing both the idea of the dramatic written word and the role of the performing artist.
For revolutions come - not just as thieves in the night - but on the backs of actors…
Shades of Willy Loman and Walter Lee Younger: Ward Nixon’s performance as the tragic hero, Carver Carmelo, the artist with a conscience — gave audiences a new tragic figure to identify with….
The original cast of the NYC premiere of The Life & Death of Art in April 2024.