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What I am about to share with you shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Having achieved an admirable profile as a performer in musical theater, I was, for a long time, eager to exercise my drama muscle. The opportunity presented itself in 1986, when Woody King Jr, Producing Director of the New Federal Theater, asked me to meet with Dennis Zacek, Artistic Director of Chicago's Victory Gardens Theater Company. Dennis had come to New York to direct a production of Lonnie Carter's THE SOVEREIGN STATE OF BOOGEDY BOOGEDY. It was intended that I should play the Chaldean King of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar. After reading the play, I anxiously awaited my meeting with the Bible-literate Brother whose dramatic voice spoke with such Afrocentric juice. And that's the truth. Imagine my shock, when upon being introduced to Lonnie Carter, I was greeted by a long, tall, porcelain Polish-American, with eyebrows resembling a California brush fire. The bonding was instantaneous. Born in that moment of amazement was not only a friendship that will last both of our lifetimes, but also an artistic collaboration, the fruit of which is the Gulliver Trilogy. And that's the truth. Incubated in the mind of Lonnie Carter, the Gulliver Trilogy is the result of a Swiftian egg, as in Jonathan, being fertilized with Jacksonian sperm, as in Jesse. The initial issue of this mating would be reared at the Eugene O'Neill National Playwright's Conference in Waterford, Connecticut. It was the summer of 1989 that I first essayed the role of Gulliver, a thoroughly modern protagonist suffering the thoroughly ancient problem of hubris. Lonnie, a superior political alcemist, had placed two seemingly disparate elements into his dramatic crucible: the nearly misanthropic phantasmagoria of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels and the democratic optimism of Jesse Jackson's two presidential campaigns. Both Swift's and Carter's hero is named Lemuel, meaning "consecrated to God". Swift's character is, perhaps, more reminiscent of Old Testament Job (Ch 14), while Carter's Lemuel is informed by the New Covenant (1 Corinthians 13). And that's the truth. Not long after the O'Niell birthing, Lemuel Louis Gulliver's Rainbow Coalition established Common Ground in a grassroots production at the Pittsfield Public Theatre in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, during the summer of 1990. Three years later a decidedly more righteous campaign achieved Mother Ground in the Club at La Mama E T C during the summer of 1993. Each of the three Gulliver summers of love served to sharpen and clarify the presidential candidate's message of Excellence, Excellence, Excellence. And that's the truth. Then, in prolific succession, during the winters of 1994 and 1995, came parts two and three of the Trilogy--GULLIVER REDUX and LEMUEL, respectively. GULLIVER REDUX--in which our hero is discovered in deepest, darkest Africa, licking the wounds of having been beaten up by World Myopia--is a true episodic sequel continuing the odyssey of the three main characters first introduced in GULLIVER: the Candidate Ego, himself; his Id, White Swan; and his Alter Ego, Black Cat. However with part three, Carter threw us a curve ball. (Kind of redundant when discussing Lonnie, huh?) Not only would part three be conceived as a prequel to parts one and two, but it would be executed as a rap opera. Moreover, it would be the only of the three parts in which I would not play Gulliver since the rap opera delineated the life of Lemuel Louis Gulliver from his Gullah birth to his rite-of-passage college years. I directed instead. And that's the truth. Recently Lonnie informed me of a GULLIVER IV. Which goes to show you that presidential candidates never die; they just go on campaigning. I am ignorant of the dramatic content of this latest installment in the Gulliver saga. Which is just as well, since I am still wrestling with the Angel of Exegesis concerning parts one through three. It is an exhilarating and spiritually refining struggle; and like the patriarch Jacob, I shall not let go of this angel until he blesses me. For in the end, however many parts it takes, I love Lonnie Carter, Lemuel Louis Gulliver, and Jonathan Swift--three champions of Liberty. And that's the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Actor, Director, Educator | |