Where the Actor is a Liberator
Kangalee Arts Ensemble, Inc.
MY DYING CITY VOL. II PLAYED AT THE AMERICAN THEATRE OF ACTORS IN NYC IN JANUARY 2026 TO GREAT ACCLAIM! WE HOPE TO REVIVE THE PRODUCTION FOR A LONGER RUN IN THE FALL!
“A MASTERPIECE that looks at profound grief both cultural and personal…” -
- JIM CATAPANO, NYC ARTS INDYPENDENT
Our current play “MY DYING CITY VOL. II (The Social Justice Suicide Hour”) is about the modern radical Left’s grief, torment and disillusionment in America, 2026. Starring Che Ayende, Melissa Roth, Shannon Mastel, Brandon Geer, and Ward Nixon (not pictured) The Kangalee Arts’ latest tragedy is a “dark night of the soul” drama that nods to traditions established by by Edward Albee, Eugene O’Neill, August Wilson, and Amiri Baraka. [Photo: Tessa Blythe Young]
Dennis Leroy Kangalee directing his oldest theatrical collaborator Ward Nixon. (2023, The Bowery, NYC)
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). We seek to make dangerous art in these dangerous times.
Actors are liberators. Artists liberate emotions, feelings, ideas, sounds, colors, movement…Once we remember this, a new revolution in Drama and Life can take place.
“My Dying City Vol. II is…a riveting, thought-provoking play for these complicated times… in America’s current dilemma…The Kangalee Arts Ensemble responds to James Baldwin’s belief that consciousness breeds constant rage, drawing inspiration from socially engaged ensembles like the Group Theater, Living Theater, and the Black Arts Movement.
— Ronal E. Scott, The Amsterdam News
Who We Are
We are a repertory company made up of actors, writers, and designers committed to the fusion of radical politics and classical theater techniques.
We work hard to achieve that delicate balance in theater between poetry, bold characterizations, provocative dialogue, agitprop, the avant-garde and the leap towards transcendence.
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
HENRY MILLER, SAMUEL BECKETT & THE THEATER OF SILENCE
FINDING RESISTANCE IN THE CLOWN
‘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.
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.
The Kangalee Arts Ensemble’s adaptation of Henry Miller’s beloved short story WAS THE FIRST commissioned adaptation in North America; the first time an actor had ever professionally adapted & performed Miller’s work in the United States.
“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.