[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in Soho. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. Whether you're listening on the radio, live streaming, or on-demand, I'm grateful you're here. On today's show, musician John Pizzarelli joins us for a listening party for his new album, Stage & Screen. We'll also speak with Steve Cosson, the artistic director of the theater company, The Civilians, which is in The Greene Space tonight. They're the Greene Space's Artists-in-Residence this month. We'll speak to the co-directors of a new documentary about Judy Blume. That's the plan. Let's get this started with the play, Fat Ham, which Variety has described as the most invigorating new show on Broadway.

[music]

Alison Stewart: The Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Fat Ham, opened on Broadway last week to rave reviews after a successful 2022 run downtown at The Public, a collaboration with National Black Theatre. This modern Hamlet-flavored take on a son avenging his father's death is set at a southern backyard cookout, complete with potato salad, a cooler of beer, karaoke, and charades. The Daily Beast described the play as, "Dense and thoughtful as it is light on its feet," and a Deadline review noted, it is, "A turn sweet and saucy and very funny. The play stays just close enough to Hamlet to keep us off balance."

In Fat Ham, the rub is a barbecue rub. When Pap, the patriarch of a local rib joint is killed and his brother quickly marries his wife. Paps goes, crashes the cookout, and tells his son, "Boy, you better kill that mf'er." The son is nicknamed Juicy, who is a thoughtful, queer, moody college student with a thing for Radiohead. His gorgeous Daisy Dukes-wearing, just trying to make things right mom, Tedra, loves him as much as she hates being alone so she marries her dead husband's nasty toxic brother.

They celebrate the wedding with friends, including a church lady with a past, her kids, Larry and Opal, Larry teasing Ophelia, as well as Juicy's friend to the end, Tio, as in her ratio. It could be just a normal get-together, except that Juicy is considering avenging his father the whole time. Will he and the younger generation follow the script of the past?

Fat Ham is running at the American Airlines Theater on 42nd Street. Playing the role of Tedra is Nikki Crawford. Nikki, welcome.

Nikki Crawford: Thank you so much, Alison, for having us.

Alison Stewart: Then in the lead role as Juicy is Marcel Spears. Hey, Marcel.

Marcel Spears: Hey, what's going down?

Alison Stewart: All things good, I hope. I know you were both classically trained. Nikki, you went to Carnegie Mellon, excuse me, School of Drama. How were you exposed to Shakespeare in school?

Nikki Crawford: Oh, gosh. Freshman year. We started with all the classic texts and did a lot of Shakespeare, Ibsen, Chekhov, you name it, all the way up until senior year. That was my first introduction, yes.

Alison Stewart: Marcel, you received an MFA from Columbia here in this city. What do you recall from studying Shakespeare in school?

Marcel Spears: I really enjoyed the work. It's rigorous work. I do recall in the beginning of my training feeling a little out of place and meeting this classic text at a space where I just came from [inaudible 00:03:37] University, where all the actors and directors and everybody was Black. I stepped into this space where it almost feels like I have to unlearn who I am in order to access this work. [inaudible 00:03:53] it felt like they were trying to teach me.

I was lucky enough to have some really good teachers that allowed me little tips in order to bring my full self, my Black self, my whatever, my Southerness to my characters in a way that I think was always the intention of this work and always the intention of the writing. It was meant to be full. It was meant to be real. It was meant to be grounded. It was meant to be lived in, and not this frozen-in-place, stuffy, frilly collars. It was never that. We're telling these stories about these people because that's who these people were, but they are people just like us. They feel rage. They feel jealousy. They feel joy. I think once I got that in my head, I was able to access the work in a really, really fun way that I have enjoyed to this day.

Alison Stewart: Nikki, what jumped out at you about the Fat Ham script?

Nikki Crawford: Oh, gosh, I was sold pretty much from the first couple of pages between Juicy and Pap. What I love so much, these characters were so familiar to me because I grew up in Washington, D.C. and I know Paps, I know Juicys, I know Tedra, so the language just spoke to me. I love James' writing. I love how poetic it is. It's written with such a musicality and it just fit on my tongue so perfectly. The humor of it, as well as the pathos. It's deep all around. Yes, I was sold within the first couple of pages. I said, "I'll do it. Sign me up."

Alison Stewart: Marcel, what jumped out at you about the script of Fat Ham?

Marcel Spears: I think James Ijames, the playwright, his writing is really, really beautiful and layered and nuanced. I feel like what he did with the Shakespearean text in this play is exactly how I process it when I'm approaching the work. The juxtaposition of the way that I normally talk, because the people look like me, they sound like me, placed right next to this really, really high poetry, that's how I access the work. I feel comfortable in it. It felt like me. It felt familiar. James' writing is devastatingly beautiful. It cuts deep and then it holds you really tight. I think I was maybe four pages in into the-- it's like Juicy and Tio and then Juicy and Pap, and I was like, "All right. I'm doing this. I'm definitely doing this."

Nikki Crawford: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Well, Marcel, what was something that you saw in this role that you knew would stretch you as an actor? You talked about what you felt and it felt familiar. What would cause you to have to really stretch?

Marcel Spears: I feel like all of the men in this play, even Pap and Rev, are extremely vulnerable in a way that I don't feel like I was ever raised or able to access in my everyday life. You don't wear your emotions on a sleeve in everyday-- You have to be professional, you have to be respectable, you have to be polite, and the way you navigate is very stoic. Not down or angry or anything like that, but you have to conserve a lot. You have to be really conservative as you navigate this world.

We're actors, so actors get a little more leeway to be a little "crazy," but I feel like the men in this play are so vulnerable and so honest and so forthcoming with all their feelings, and I think Juicy, being in the situation that he's in, not being really accepted by the environment around him, almost this pressure to be smaller than he is, be anything but who he is, and his persistence in living in his truth, even though people not really accepting it, his dad doesn't really accept it, his mom tries her best to cover him from being who he is.

I feel like it would force me into a really, really vulnerable space that I'm not used to being in. I thought something about that was not only interesting to me as an artist, but I think necessary for me as a human, as a person, and I wanted to explore that.

Alison Stewart: Nikki, how about for you? What was something that you knew by taking this role you would stretch as an artist?

Nikki Crawford: Just tightening my comedic chops. It's so fast-paced. It moves so quickly. Just the language of it all. Also, Tedra's very overtly sexual [laughs] and that's a challenge going out on stage and just being that wide open was, at first, a bit daunting, but I've accepted it and just move in fearlessness. I have to because that's how Tedra lives.

Alison Stewart: The shorts are short, yes.

[laughter]

Nikki Crawford: Yes, they are.

Alison Stewart: My guests are Nikki Crawford and Marcel Spears, we were talking about Fat Ham, which is at the American Airlines Theater. Nikki, when we meet Tedra, who is Juicy's mom, who has married her toxic brother-in-law. What is important to Tedra in her life, at this moment in her life? What matters to her?

Nikki Crawford: Gosh, she wants to be happy, and she would love the typical family, the father, the son, and having the mother, a normal family, but she keeps picking these toxic men who happen to be brothers. I think she's, like most people, are just searching for happiness, and she wants to love her son. As we find out throughout the course of the play, her son really is the most important thing to her because he's been the most consistent loving thing in her life. That's pretty much it.

Alison Stewart: What's important to Juicy, Marcel? When we meet Juicy, what's important to him?

Marcel Spears: I think when we meet Juicy, he is trying to figure that out. He's trying to find his place. He's going to online school. Everything is half-committed, much like Hamlet. He's going to college, but he's only going to college online. He hasn't moved out of his mom's house. His dad died a week ago. His mom just got remarried to his uncle, and he's trying to process where he fits in in all of this craziness. He doesn't want to leave his mom, obviously, partially for fear of the unknown, he doesn't want to go anywhere, but also, he doesn't want to leave her alone in that environment because he feels like she needs him in some ways. She leans on him in some ways.

He has tasked himself with being there for her in that way. He's trying to piece together this new version of who he is, and that's where we find him, when he's tasked with avenging his father's death. Now you add this new element on top of what he's already going through as a young man in the world trying to navigate being a Black, gay kid in the south, growing up in this very pseudo religious environment, trying to figure out who he is. Now there's this murder mystery thing that he has to somehow avenge his father's death and take on that mantle. It's tricky. He's trying to find out who he is when we find him.

Alison Stewart: Now, Tedra, Nikki, Tedra's trying to keep the peace. Even if she's somewhat responsible for the chaos by marrying the brother-in-law. At one point in the play, she lets Juicy know what's on her mind. Let's listen to this clip from Fat Ham.

Tedra: I want to talk to you.

Juicy: About what?

Tedra: Your daddy.

Juicy: My daddy is dead.

Tedra: You know what I'm talking about.

Juicy: The king, my queen, is dead.

Tedra: Yes?

Juicy: It's Shakespeare, kind of.

Tedra: You watch too much PBS.

[laughter]

Juicy: How can one watch too much PBS?

Tedra: You don't need to know all that.

Juicy: It's harmless.

Tedra: Whatever. You need to stop [unintelligible 00:13:28] Rev.

Juicy: I didn't do nothing to him.

Tedra: That little charades trick you pulled.

Juicy: No, I pulled a slip from the bowl just like everyone else.

Tedra: You upset him.

Juicy: He didn't seem upset to me.

Tedra: Well, he was. Just be nice to him.

Juicy: How nice the quarrel was.

Tedra: What?

Juicy: It's Shakespeare.

Tedra: If you bring up that dead, old, white man one more time, don't nobody want to talk about his ass. You act like he got all the answers. You look crazy out here quoting Shakespeare and shit.

Juicy: Well, it seemed appropriate.

Tedra: Appropriate, my ass.

Alison Stewart: Nikki, what is the subtext of Tedra being perturbed that her son watches too much PBS and maybe listens to too much MPR. What does that exactly mean?

Nikki Crawford: She knows Juicy is intelligent. I think, in this scene right here, what has happened is that there's a huge blow up after the charades moment and her and Rev go into the house and are fighting. The subtext that I've created here is that Rev has given her an ultimatum, either it's Juicy or me. She has to come in and tell her, the one person that has been the most consistent, and who she loves more than anything on this planet, that he's going to either get it together, stop all of this crazy stuff with the Shakespeare and stop acting like you're more intelligent than us, or you're going to have to leave.

That's what I think in this moment is happening. She's just so angry with him with this nonsense of Shakespeare. Rev says it at the beginning of the play. He says, "He thinks he's better than us." I doubt Tedra went to college or Rev went to college. They got married and had families. That's what they were told to do. That's what their parents did. She needs Juicy to come down with the rest of us. Basically diminish his light in order to live in a peaceful way in this household.

Alison Stewart: Something, Marcel, I noticed, and I was wondering if this was a decision that you all made with Saheem Ali, the director, is Nikki has a thick southern accent, Juicy does not have the same sort of syrupy southern accent. What went into that decision?

Nikki Crawford: Can I answer?

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Nikki Crawford: Marcel, can I say something about that.

Marcel Spears: Yes, go ahead.

Nikki Crawford: I'm sorry, honey. When I read the script, that was the voice I heard immediately. I talked to Saheem about that, because James is not really specific as to where it is in the south, but it is in a southern state. For me, I just felt like Tedra needed to have that draw in her voice. I felt like it worked better with the language. That was the decision that I made, and Saheem and James agreed with that. Go ahead, Marcel. Sorry about that.

Marcel Spears: James is the same way. We're both from the south. There's this odd thing, and I almost hope it changes with education in this country. Somehow we've decided that people's dialects or specific people's dialect, Black people's dialect, is somehow the incorrect way to speak English. I think the more that people learn about AAVE and African-American Vernacular English, the more we realize that that dialect is just as valid and just as important culturally and just as beautiful and poetic and heightened as any other way of speaking English.

Especially when you go to the UK, the dialects are all over the place. Everybody's speaking English, all over the place. Growing up in the south, living under respectability politics and carrying this up a certain way, you're taught in order to function in a professional world, in order to navigate a professional world, you have to speak a certain way. You have to articulate yourself a certain way in order to be accepted, in order to not be looked down on, or in order to maintain a professional career. That's something that I think is pervasive in the American education system, especially in the south, especially in Black communities.

You try to teach these kids that the way that they naturally speak isn't quite good enough. It's good for around the house, but it's not good for professional settings. The higher up you go in education, the more and more those dialects fall away and smooth out. I'm from New Orleans, and I have semblances of a New Orleans accent, but for the most part, I talk like this. Even though I grew up in the places that I grew up, with the people I grew up with, and there are people in my family that sound completely different from me. That's just how it was.

I thought that was a beautiful thing because James, our Playwright, has that same thing. His parents sound different from him, as a Morehouse grad or whatever the case may be. Juicy, his accent has naturally smoothed as he has learned and matriculated through this education in a way that makes his family proud, but also alienates him from them a little bit.

Alison Stewart: We're talking about the play Fat Ham, which is at American Airlines Theater. I'm speaking with its leads, Nikki Crawford, plays Tedra, and Marcel Spears who plays Juicy. We'll have more after a quick break. This is All of It.

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Alison Stewart: You're listening to All of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest this hour are the leads in Fat Ham, Nikki Crawford plays Tedra, Marcel Spears plays Juicy. It is a modern take on Hamlet, but Marcel, you get to deliver a few straight speeches of Hamlet from Hamlet. What is it like as an actor to go back and forth between the modern language and the Shakespearean language?

Marcel Spears: For me, it's a lot of fun. As an actor, it's a lot of fun. It's probably one of my favorite things about the play. The thing is, the way that Black people speak is already really, really beautiful and really, really lyrical and musical in nature. Transitioning from everyday contemporary speech into one of Hamlet's soliloquies isn't as crazy mentally. I don't have to go into really a different place in my mind. As far as the storytelling, I just try my best to honor what James wrote, and each soliloquy is placed in a new context, and so I just try to get the clarity of that story.

I just want to get it there really, really well. As an example, there's one moment in the play where Larry, the character played by Calvin Leon Smith, beautifully played by Calvin, is our Laertes. He is really vulnerable, Juicy. He exposes something that is really, really hard for him to say. He leaves and Juicy is left with the aftermath of that and then he goes into what a piece of work is a man, and it recontextualizes that entire speech in a way that you wouldn't think about it in the context of Hamlet. It's fun for me as an actor. I'm just like, "Oh, this is dope because it fits this." It fits the moment so well, but I never thought about it like that. It's a lot of fun.

Alison Stewart: Nikki, this isn't a musical, but you do have a song and dance number in Fat Ham. How did you prepare for it?

Nikki Crawford: Well, I didn't have to-- I've done a lot of musical theater before, prior to this, so it's just fun. I really just tried, as I was choreographing it with the choreographer, just trying to find the comedic elements of the dance and song. We originally had another song when we were at The Public, but we couldn't get the rights of that, so we switched to 100%, what was it Marcel, two days before we had our first show, I think-

Marcel Spears: Yes, two days before.

Nikki Crawford: -or maybe the day--

Marcel Spears: I think it might have been a day before preview because two days before previews we were still hopeful that we might get the rights to the other one, we never got it. Literally maybe a day before previews at The Public, Nikki switched the whole song. It was crazy.

Alison Stewart: Wow.

Marcel Spears: She did it though. Nikki, she's a pro, she a old school pro, so this is [inaudible 00:23:02] for real, for real. She tries to be modest, but the little karaoke moment in this show is light work for Nikki Crawford. It's light. She could do it easy.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] [unintelligible 00:23:13]

Nikki Crawford: Compared to the musicals that I've done in the past, this is nothing, but it's so much fun.

Alison Stewart: Well, I know that you've done musicals, but I thought this is such an interesting-- it's a different beast because you're doing karaoke. It's a performance of the way Tedra would do a dance number, so it's a little bit layered.

Nikki Crawford: It is, but no different than doing a musical and playing a character in the musical. I'm just singing as Tedra, and so probably not really trying to sing well because Tedra wouldn't.

[laughter]

Nikki Crawford: Again, just playing the comedy of it. That's my main focus and not really trying to sing it, because we have our big singing moment when Marcel does creep.

Alison Stewart: Obviously, we've been talking about there's a lot of comedy in this show and people may be familiar with your work on television, Marcel, in The Neighborhood, and in The Mayor. I was watching an interview or reading one and you said Cedric The Entertainer, with whom you work, has been a mentor to you. What is a piece of advice that he has given you either about comedy or about acting that you've been able to use in this production?

Marcel Spears: That's interesting. A piece of advice that Cedric has given me about comedy that I could use. He's given me so much advice and he's helped me a lot just in the business world of what we're doing, but I think when it comes to comedy, I think the thing that Cedric does the most for me is he gives you these little validating nods. He don't say too much and because [inaudible 00:25:18] he finds the funny in different things, and so he'll give you these nods of approval, he'll give you like, "Oh, that was good. That was funny."

I would say one of the things that he's told me that I think I've used in my career in general, not just specifically for this play, but he's given me permission to, not permission, but he's reinforced the idea of trusting my comedic instincts. Like reelings from those gut feelings that there is a joke in here, there is a moment in here, and if I do it right, if I hit it right, if I get the timing right, if I have a nuanced enough touch, that joke can work, and finding humor in everyday human experiences, everyday human things on stage and on screen. I think that's some of the things that he's helped me find or trust that was always there.

Alison Stewart: My guests are Marcel Spears and Nikki Crawford, you can see them in Fat Ham at the American Airlines Theater. We've talked about some of the comedy and the music, but there's drama in this, there's emotion, there's important conversations about generational trauma in the play Fat Ham. I want to play another clip in this. It's Juicy and his pal Tio, who's this hilarious stone, but really wise friend ultimately, who gives Juicy some advice after Juicy confesses that he may try to kill his uncle. Let's take a listen and we could talk about it on the other side.

Tio: Do you still love your pops? What? You're not sure?

Juicy: I don't know, man. It's not about whether I love him or don't love him. He my daddy. That means something.

Tio: Does it? I was talking to my therapist about you, and--

Juicy: What?

Tio: Yes, and he said [unintelligible 00:27:24] deep, and grand, hell, engineered, they hard to come out. Your pops went to jail, his pops went to jail, his pops went to jail, his pops went to jail, and what's before that? Slavery. It's inherited trauma. You can't outrun your whole family's trauma, man, and that's okay. You okay. You ain't got to let it define you.

Juicy: That was deeper than I expected.

Tio: Yes, well, I've been working on myself lately, and since you're a part of my life, I guess I've been working on you too.

Alison Stewart: Marcel, how is generational trauma playing out for Juicy?

Marcel Spears: Juicy finds himself in a long line of hard men who have had to be hard in this country for one reason or another. He finds himself outcast from those men just by being who he is, being Black and queer, and his queerness separates him from the idea of what these men are. While his familiar bond, him being directly related to these men, ties him to them and therefore ties him to this tradition of his daddy went to jail, his daddy went to jail, his daddy went to jail, which is a familiar story for a lot of people in this country that look like me and not always because of anything that they've necessarily done, but because of the power structures that exist in this country.

Juicy is in a position that a lot of people in Generation X and a lot of millennials are in the process of breaking these cycles. He sits right there at the crux of that. He does not want to repeat history, he doesn't want to fall in line with these men. He doesn't want that to be his story. He doesn't know how to find his own story because he's writing something completely new and different, something that he hasn't seen before. This task that he gets from his dad to avenge his death is right in line with all of these men. These men make hard choices. They make extreme choices. They can be brutal, they can be aggressive.

That's not even something that his father would second guess or even think twice about, but for Juicy, you've got to think about that. You've got to really think about that, because then that would land him right in the same position that many of the men in his family have been in before. It's a tricky moment where our Juicy has to contemplate as Hamlet often does.

Alison Stewart: Nikki, did you want to add anything about the way generational trauma is explored in the play?

Nikki Crawford: Oh, yes, especially for Tedra, just the cycle of going after these abusive men. For me, when I was building the character of Tedra, I thought about what her father must have been like, or her grandfather. It's normal to just accept the behaviors of Pap and Rev and to be in that. You see at the end of the play where she just has a breakdown, the scene between Juicy and I and when Pap comes back again, and it's that moment of, I'm going back into this mess that has been a part of my family for as long as I've been alive. It's hard once you've grown up into something like that to break that type of abuse and seeking out those types of men because it's familiar, and we all love to associate ourselves with something that is familiar, and abusive men, unfortunately, are familiar to Tedra.

Alison Stewart: I want to ask you a quick production question before I let you go. There's a lot of audience interaction, there's a lot of breaking of the fourth wall. I saw it Saturday. I saw it at The Public and I saw it Saturday. There was some lady in the audience who was just sure she was in the show [unintelligible 00:31:59]

Nikki Crawford: Oh, yes. That happens.

Alison Stewart: Third row.

Nikki Crawford: All the time.

Alison Stewart: Does it happen a lot? Nikki, does that happen often?

Nikki Crawford: It does. You remember the scene where I come out and said, "What'd you tell them?" When he's talking to the audience. I said, "They think I'm trashy, don't they? Because I married my late husband's brother." There have been a few times here, even on Broadway and then also at The Public where somebody will shout out and says, "Yes, we think you're trashy." [laughs]

It's like, one night, I think we were in previews, and they said, "Yes, we think you're trashy." I said, "I hear you." I've been thinking like, "Okay, if this happens, I've already broken the fourth law, I'm just going to respond in some way." It's fun, but sometimes it can affect the rhythm of the play, you know what I mean? We, as actors, have to control that and take it back from the audience so they don't get up there with us and start performing.

Alison Stewart: Marcel, how are you handling the interaction now? Also, because now I don't think you did it at The Public, you're in and out of the audience as characters are going up and down the aisles as well.

Marcel Spears: Yes. Even at The Public and here on Broadway, and I think that's the beauty of what Saheem Ali, our director, did, when we were at The Public, because it was a thrust stage, it was almost in the round. It was barely a thrust. Because that's the way that it was built, it was very intimate. James wrote the fourth wall out of the play. There's no fourth wall. It's like a fourth curtain. You can move through it. You talk directly to the audience and they respond directly to you.

Saheem was able to create that feeling and environment, even on this bigger stage, in this bigger theater house. People are going up and down the aisles. I'm talking directly to people in their seats and things like that. They talk back and they be having a lot to say. The beautiful thing is James intended for a little bit of that. In the [inaudible 00:34:13] of African Americans in this country [unintelligible 00:34:16] responses are part of how we communicate and how we enjoy storytelling.

There's room, there's a little air for a little bit of that, but it is always interesting when audience members feel so moved by something that they [inaudible 00:34:31] really in it. There's this one moment where Rev, the king, our Claudius in the play, he's struggling. It looks like he's going to die and people in the audience are like, "Die." They're literally like, "Die. You should die."

Alison Stewart: "It's time. You've got to go."

Marcel Spears: It's hard for me to stay present in the circumstances and in the stakes of what's happening because it's a very serious moment, even though it almost feels farcical the way it's happening, but when people are like, "Yes, die." I almost want to laugh. It almost gets me every time. That bubbly lightness in the show is always fun, because that's what makes each audience different. Some of them are more responsive than others, but it keeps it fresh, it keeps it crispy, because you really never know how somebody's going to take something.

Alison Stewart: Fat Ham is at the American Airlines Theater through June 25th. I've been speaking with its leads, Nikki Crawford plays Tedra, and Marcel Spears plays Juicy. Thanks so much for spending time with us today.

Marcel Spears: Thank you.

Nikki Crawford: Thank you.

 

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