March 2, 2016 The Skanner Page 7
Arts & Entertainment
‘I want a challenge,’ Says Forest Whitaker on Broadway Debut
By Mark Kennedy
AP Drama Writer
NEW YORK — Forest Whita-
ker has not one or two copies
of the script he’s memorized
for his Broadway debut. Not
three or four copies, either.
Try five.
The actor, director and pro-
ducer pulled them out of his
backpack recently and all of
them were battered, under-
lined and soaked in highlight-
er. One was studded with little
photographs he added to evoke
feelings.
Whitaker these days is like
a graduate student during fi-
nals. Every word seems to have
been interrogated, researched
and then put back, gingerly.
This is what he needs to do.
“You’ve got to. Well, I mean,
I don’t know if you’ve got to. I
“
a Broadway revival of Eugene
O’Neill’s “Hughie,” a short play
about human connection that
requires the actor to speak for
an hour virtually nonstop.
“It’s really going to force
me to grow,” he said. “It’s very
challenging for me in so many
ways. I guess I didn’t even re-
alize how challenging until I
actually took it on.”
Like O’Neill’s more famous
works such as “Long Day’s
Journey Into Night” and “The
Iceman Cometh,” ‘’Hughie”
deals with the pathetic illu-
sions men create for them-
selves to fill their sad lives.
Tony Award-winning pro-
ducer Darren Bagert, who
helped lead the last Broadway
revival of “Long Day’s Journey
Into Night,” sent the script for
“Hughie” to Whitaker in the
hope of finally luring him on-
MARC BRENNER/POLK & CO. VIA AP
Whitaker this month stars in a Broadway revival of Eugene O’Neill’s ‘Hughie’
This image released by Polk & Co. shows Forest Whitaker, right, making his
Broadway debut in a scene from “Hughie.”
was likely to decline. But some-
thing about “Hughie” — with
Michael Grandage directing —
grabbed him.
Color can’t be wiped out — it’s there, I’m a Black actor —
but you move past that into the minutia of the story itself
and the spirits or souls of these particular people,” he said
have to,” he said during a visit
to his modest dressing room
at the Booth Theatre. “There
are so many things for me to
learn.”
Whitaker this month stars in
stage.
Whitaker over the years had
been offered plenty of roles
in plays or revivals, but al-
ways refused. Even his agent
warned Bagert that the actor
“I had never heard of it. I
had never seen it. I actually
couldn’t locate someone who
had,” Whitaker said. “It’s al-
most like doing an original
play because it has no precon-
ceptions around it and yet it’s
written by this amazing play-
wright.”
“Hughie” is a two-character
play set in a rundown New
York hotel in 1928. Whitaker
plays Erie, a low-level gambler
and spinner of tall tales about
himself. The only other role is
a bored night clerk, who has
taken over from the recently
deceased Hughie.
Erie is mourning the loss of
the only person who believed
in him. “He’s a guy who likes
to tell stories and likes to hear
himself talk,” Whitaker said.
“There are guys like that. I had
a friend who, even if you left
the phone for 30 minutes and
made a sandwich and came
back, he’d still be talking.”
The play marks Whitaker’s
return to the stage after 30
years. After graduating from
the University of Southern
California, he was in an im-
prov show at the Mark Taper
Forum and a musical at the
Inner City Cultural Center,
but then movies came calling,
starting with “Fast Times at
Ridgemont High.”
Since then, Whitaker’s cred-
its include Oliver Stone’s “Pla-
toon,” Lee Daniels’ “The But-
ler,” Neil Jordan’s “The Crying
Game” and his Oscar-winning
turn as Idi Amin in 2006’s “The
Last King of Scotland.” He said
he needed to grow before re-
turning to theater.
“He easily could have done a
multitude of other ensemble
plays, which he would have
easily gotten amazing ac-
knowledgment as the featured
actor,” said Bagert. “But Forest
said to me, ‘I want a challenge. I
want something that’s going to
challenge me as an actor and a
person.’”
See WHITAKER on page 11