Where Stanislavski Meets Fanon
Kangalee Arts Ensemble, Inc.
“My Dying City is a MASTERPIECE that looks at profound grief both cultural and personal…” -
- JIM CATAPANO, NYC ARTS INDYPENDENT
“MY DYING CITY VOL. II (The Social Justice Suicide Hour”) is a “dark night of the soul” tragedy about the modern radical Left’s grief, torment and disillusionment in America, 2026. [Photo: Tessa Blythe Young]
“…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.
— Ronald E. Scott, The Amsterdam News
A radical actor-driven repertory theatre preserving the art of performance while confronting the political and moral crises of contemporary society. The world as we knew it has changed; we are no longer remnants of the 20th century, the 21st century’s madness is of a new epoch. The world around and within us is burning and it should behoove us to create theater that expresses some of this madness, the barbed angst of our times amidst genocide, overwhelming violence transmitted throughout the world, threats of annihilation, imminent imperialism, new wave racism, fascistic technocracy, etc. We are the ONLY independent theater company in NYC embraces the ideas of decolonialist theorist Frantz Fanon as much as the traditional acting ideas of Constantin Stanislavksi, reclaiming dangerous theater for dangerous times.
Conflict is not abuse: The Harm expresses the angst of the weaponization of language & the State’s authority to mandate words, morality and truth.
How does misunderstanding become memory?
In the war for the soul, for the heartbeat of culture—the battlefield takes place within the language itself.
How does testimony become institutional truth? And truth become punishment?
“THE HARM” is epistemology disguised as a political thriller. A play about what happens after certainty replaces curiosity. [Photo: Erin Hyatt as Adrienne, Rommell Sermons as Prof. Vic Hale in the 19th Midtown International Theatre Festival, July 2026 [Photo: Ashlyn Bree]
Who We Are
The KANGALEE ARTS ENSEMBLE, INC.(est. 2022) is a 501-C3 BIPOC led non-profit theater company devoted to the fusion of radical politics & classical theater aesthetics.
Erin Hyatt, in The Harm, as Adrienne, the disturbed, mysterious and vicious college student who struggles to understand her professor’s media lecture and accuses him of abusive behavior. [Photo: Ashlyn Bree]
The Harm is an absurdist nightmare about the horrifying intersection of words, propaganda, race, gender, class and perception.
HENRY MILLER, SAMUEL BECKETT & THE THEATER OF SILENCE
‘SMILE: A CLOWN’S ASCENSION’ was the first-ever North American commission of a Henry Miller work - for the stage. It opened October 15, 2025 at the Asilomar Chapel and closed at the The Henry Miller Memorial Library.
A tour de force performance piece; a love poem to the romantic who challenges the status quo…
FINDING RESISTANCE IN THE CLOWN: Dennis Leroy Kangalee’s performance as “Auguste, The 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
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.
“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.”
FUSING KONSTANTIN STANISLAVSKI AND FRANTZ FANON
With their provocative 2024 drama, The Life & Death of Art, the group’s first original work which openly equated the suppression 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…
Shades of Willy Loman and Walter Lee Younger: Ward Nixon’s performance as Carver Carmelo, the artist with a conscience — gave audiences a new tragic figure to identify with….
Dennis Leroy Kangalee as Luca, the deranged ‘identity politic terrorist’ in The Life & Death of Art. Luca’s spirit would metamorphose into Adrienne, the college student in The Harm.