Where Stanislavski Meets Fanon.
Kangalee Arts Ensemble, Inc.
Our Work
“Our artistic ancestry informs who we are as much as our radical politics. Since the 1990’s I have sought to create a body of work with a group that could develop a personal style and imbue ideas about racism and oppression - just like an individual author. Whether monologue or ensemble piece, the question was always: ‘How to build upon the Black Arts Movement or learn from Bread & Puppet Theater and make our actors do what their puppets do?’ And through it all I have sought to impact those whom we often do plays about write about: the outsiders, the radicals, the romantics, the justice seekers, the dispossessed, the unemployed, the lonely, the broken, the empathic. Neighborhood was always the goal. Not Hollywood. You know you have reached a modicum of success when people on the street appreciate your work as much as an artist you have grown to admire. That is a healthy tonic. And that gives us the confidence to move forward with our work and be proud of our independence, despite how hard and difficult it is. To share our humanity creatively and have it reflected back to us by audiences is a powerful thing.”
- Dennis Leroy Kangalee
BACKGROUND & HISTORY
The pandemic of 2020 inspired a reassessment of what live performance and theater was. While Dennis Leroy Kangalee’s (DLK) critical voice developed a shape and rancor of its own in the years he focused on his non-fiction writings, his entire approach to acting changed, deepened and brought a state of grace he had longed for when he returned to the stage after a decade. With the Kangalee Arts Ensemble’s November 2022 revival of KRAPP'S LAST TAPE by Samuel Beckett, everything changed. An intriguing extension of his ongoing ceaseless investigations into solo performance, monologues, the absurd and the clown, it had been a kind of chimera for DLK’s since 1995, when he first performed it at Juilliard. Years later, it was in the midst of the Covid pandemic that he understood how to play it. This reignited his interest in theater and a year long workshop began, first in his Jackson Heights living room and then eventually onto the public stage at Studio 111 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Before the formation of The Kangalee Arts Ensemble, the year-long tour of the punk-monologue “Gentrified Minds” which premiered at the Downtown Urban Arts Festival in NYC in 2011 - was the last time Dennis Leroy Kangalee performed or created for the theater. Aesthetics developed here informed his later solo works…
[Photo: Jessica Friedman]
2022’s “Krapp’s Last Tape” saw Dennis Leroy Kangalee return to the stage in a whole new way and it inspired the formal creation of theater company that would merge different ideas about performing that had developed throughout the years.
[Photo: Edwin Pagan]
The seismic shift from solo minimalism to group collaboration came about in 2023 when actor Che Ayende (As an Act of Protest, Macbeth on Broadway with Daniel Craig, etc) suggested reuniting and collaborating on a radical production of Hamlet. The idea was to pick up where they left of twenty years earlier in their first collaboration, the 2001 independent theatrical feature film
As an Act of Protest.
A gritty, lo-fi political docudrama about the psychological effects of racism and eventual armed resistance, the film crystallized a lot of their beliefs. Although a film, it has been a central force in the revolutionary theater as it acts as conscience bearer for “protest artists,” “revolutionary artists” and those claiming to be revolutionary. The movie also crystallizes Kangalee’s notion of the Actor holding the most revolutionary promise of all artists, of all people. The film passionately presents and debates this idea. Blacklisted by the Giuliani administration and rediscovered years later, the film is a cult classic.
Rarely seen and out of circulation, the film better reception, ironically, outside of NYC — particularly in the Southern part of the country like North Carolina and overseas in Europe. The original trailer to the movie and the re-release from 2014 can be found below.
As An Act of Protest
Hamlet
While Hamlet was a rehearsal exploration of Shakespeares’s tragedy, it was also a period of reclamation for many of the Black actors returning to classical theater and conscientiously forging new ways of making Shakespeare their own, going beyond the mere identification and rendering of the text: asking what it meant to do Shakespeare in the 21st century amidst catastrophes in our world and what the implications were for actors of color if identity and personal politics are inseparable from acting. This generated a new “Anti-Conservatory Approach” to Shakespeare. The workshop continued for nearly half a year and the deep exploration of tragedy gave way to the company’s first original work for the public, The Life & Death of Art.
Understanding they had a responsibility now as mature artists who were concerned about the state of the arts, its lack of political engagement and receding nurturing as far as new American theater was concerned, they knew a repertory company had to be formed. They called upon the best actors they knew. An ensemble was formed!
Like musicians vamping, the play began as a series of organized improvisations and quickly grew into a formal script when DLK decided to write for specific members of the ensemble. Upon writing, he knew it would be the role of a lifetime for Ward Nixon, who was both muse and collaborator of DLK’s ideas since their first production in 1999, a revival of James Baldwin’s Blues for Mister Charlie at the National Black Theater. To this day it is still one of the most beloved independent theater productions Harlem' ever saw. DLK was committed to to enabling Ward Nixon play a new type of “hero” (anti-hero?) as the fictitious radical painter, Carver Carmelo. This grew into feverishly creating roles for other members of the company such as the brilliant Tessa Martin, best known for her own solo works in NYC and the fiery Justine Stock, co-founder of the west coast New Canon Theater. Stock and DLK had wanted to work together for over 20 years.
Those who appreciated 2022’s Krapp's Last Tape showed great support and solidarity for this recent controversial work, which resulted in sold out workshop performances.
“Truthful and powerful, the most honest play happening in the theater right now!”
- Tony Vozzo, Playwright/Actor
Carver Carmelo (Ward Nixon) paints in The Life & Death of Art
Tessa Martin as Maris in the closing sequence of The Life & Death of Art.
Luca (Dennis Leroy Kangalee) & Maris (Tessa Martin) —The cosmic and deranged couple on opposite sides of a war.
The Kangalee Arts Ensemble's first original production was - one student from the Stella Adler Conservatory wrote - “a dynamic expression of actor's freedom" and “the liberation of radical ideas that need to be given voice in a climate of apathy and genocide.”
The play is a combustible character driven ensemble piece that avails itself to the impact of both revolutionary politics and the new wave fascism that has run amok. A Brechtian excursion into the underbelly of the race and class war and the casualties of broken alliances under capitalism, The Life & Death of Art is one of the the very first American plays to engage with what is happening in both Gaza and the art world itself.
Elena (Justine Stock) Carver (Ward Nixon) and Solly (Ian Hersey) battling for Carver’s soul in “The Life & Death of Art.”
Featuring theater stalwarts Ward Nixon, Tessa Martin, Justine Stock, and Dennis Leroy Kangalee himself — like you have never seen them before — mingling the traditions of Brecht, Hansberry, Odets, Baraka and Kushner. Running for a week at the JACK Theater in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn — the play exemplified the work, style and passion of the Kangalee Arts Ensemble.
Designer Edith Raw’s early mock-up for the set design and an early sketch detailing separation of space of the two key locales in the play. Below right, are some of the early canvases Raw painted, collected and prepared for the play as original works by Carver Carmelo.
A rehearsal at Studio 353, March 2024
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All members of the ensemble are committed participants, no one receives a salary yet and we depend on the zealousness of each participant, our audience...and the kindness of strangers. We do not exist without you and appreciate both your support and your financial contributions. Consider making a tax-deductible donation today!