"The space between the activist, dancer and poet is inhabited by the clown"

As a solo artist, the Actor becomes a monastic interpreter on one hand and a confessional storyteller on the other. Kangalee’s interest and emphasis on the actor’s singer-songwriter approach to performance has evolved over the years. Initially spawned by witnessing the work of Anna Deavere-Smith and Spalding Gray in the early 1990s, the Ensemble’s love-affair with the MONO-LOG form and with Beckett’s solo works goes back to the early days of Dennis Leroy Kangalee’s conservatory days where he spent long nights immersed in Theater of the Absurd. This opened the door to other monodramas by Israel Horovitz, Roger Guenevere-Smith, the monologs of Eric Bogosian and even the uncollected routines of Dick Gregory. Eventually Dennis Leroy Kangalee wrote and performed his first solo, “Gentrified Minds.”

Even the Ensemble’s recent creative political diatribe“My Dying City” - a sprawling work that was part revolutionary manifesto, love poem, and epitaph for modern America — was distilled into both a new chamber drama and an alternative solo version in June of 2025, while at the Borden Estate in Wallkill on a retreat with the Action Lab.

With the commission from the Henry Miller Memorial Library - to f Henry Miller’s majestic short story “Smile at the Foot of the Ladder,” into a play, the Ensemble will carve out a new mono drama conceived, staged, and performed in conjugal with a new collaborator/member, DC poet and author Magus Magnus.

Kangalee will perform, they both are collaborating on the script and Magnus will direct.

Stay tuned for more updates and more information about the philosophy of Solo acting and the parallel to music and poetry.

Photo of Dennis Leroy Kangalee rehearsing the second iteration of Beckett’s “Krapp’s Last Tape” at Studio 101, Brooklyn. 2022. (By Kofi Yeboah)