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 solo 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 years where he spent long nights immersed in Theater of the Absurd, while suffering a nervous breakdown at Juilliard. “Had you never had those breakdowns it’s possible you never would have found your writing voice, which is an extension of your acting voice” wrote Ed Bullins a young Kangalee in 2000.

Influenced from everything from the “Theater of the Absurd” to the monodramas by Israel Horovitz, Roger Guenevere-Smith, Eric Bogosian, as well as the satiric routines of comedian Dick Gregory, Kangalee Arts has cultivated a new form of performance art specifically referred as “Performance Essays,” critical writings that need to be shared through performance as opposed to a printed article. The first inkling of this stems from the rather traditional solo, “Gentrified Minds,” a performance poem that combined punk rock aesthetics with cinematic spoken word nestled between “bits” or “routines” about the dissolution of culture, the suburbanization of NYC, and the racist gentrification of working class Black & Brown communities. “Gentrified Minds” premiered in 2011’s Downtown Urban Theater Festival.

Kangalee Arts’ “Portraits” series — a program, for the fall of 2026, of different monologists and solo performers dissecting their own lives in order to create their own self-portraits with their words instead of paintbrushes.

Stay tuned for more updates!

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

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

With the commission from the Henry Miller Memorial Library - Kangalee turned Henry Miller’s majestic short story “Smile at the Foot of the Ladder,” into a theatrical performance; the Ensemble carved out a new mono drama conceived, staged, and performed by Dennis Leroy Kangalee, written in conjugal with DC poet and author Magus Magnus.