John Douglas Thompson portrays ground-breaking 19th-century dramatic actor Ira Aldridge in Shakespeare & Company's production of 'Red Velvet.'

LENOX, Mass. — The first African-American actor to play Othello on the London stage was a ground-breaking pioneer of the theater ... and not just because he was the first African-American to play Othello on the London stage.

 

Ira Aldridge is the subject of "Red Velvet," which makes its regional premiere this month at Shakespeare & Company.

 

In 1833, the native New Yorker made history by playing the Moor at Covent Garden, taking on a role that previously had been reserved for actors in blackface.

 

The play focuses on the three days when Aldridge was called upon to fill in for an ailing thespian, the controversy that ensued and the impact on his career. But Lolita Chakrabarti's script goes beyond that brief period to show audiences how Aldridge's innovative style over several decades on the European stage helped change the way actors play Shakespeare.

 

"To me, he's not only an icon but a hero in a sense," says John Douglas Thompson, who brings Aldridge to life at the company's Tina Packer Playhouse through Sept. 13. "And I've come to realize that what I get a chance to do is because of what he did. And the way in which I do it is because of the way he did it.

 

"Had he not brought these innovations to classical acting, we might still be in this situation where it's very gestural and declamatory with a lack of what's happening on the inside. Maybe it would have changed, who knows? But he was an innovator. He forced that change to happen. That's also discussed in the play — his particular style coming up against the 19th-century classical acting style and how he took that style and modified it and made it better."

 

Thompson, an Obie Award winner and Shakespeare & Company veteran who played Othello in Lenox in 2008, is a longtime admirer of Aldridge and used his appearance this summer in "Red Velvet" as an opportunity to dig deeper into the life of the 19th-century thespian.

 

Recently, he sat down with iBerkshires to talk about the play, Aldridge's place in history and summer in the Berkshires.

 

Question: Have you done many biographical/historical works like this?

 

Thompson: In 'Iceman' I played this character Joe Mott, who in O'Neill's life was a real person. This person was a friend of Eugene O'Neill. His name was Joe Smith, but he called him Joe Mott in the play. That's kind of like you're playing someone who is real.

 

And when I played Brutus Jones in 'Emperor Jones,' another O'Neill play, that character was based on a Haitian ruler that O'Neill had found out about. Even though there are some fictionalized aspects of it, it was kind of a real person.

 

And I just finished 'Tamburlaine.' Christopher Marlowe wrote that, but that was an actual person.

 

So I end up playing some characters who are obviously fictionalized but drawn from the real one.

 

This one, Ira Aldridge, is 100 percent real in the sense that this person really existed, we're drawing on real events, there's not too many fictionalized aspects of his life. The playwright has taken some liberties. It's a play. But this is close to real life events.

 

Q: That being the case, was it your approach to do more research and find more that wasn't on the page?

 

Thompson: You want to find inspiration to a certain degree and detail. You want to fill in some of the gaps in a person's life. You want to maybe even know things that aren't represented on the stage, but they fortify you for what you do on the stage.

 

Part of the research is, it's a lot of fun to find out about this man and what he did in his life as an itinerant actor who became not only the first black actor to play 'Othello' in London but one of the first great classical actors, period.

 

He brought a certain amount of realism to his acting, which we as contemporary actors all benefit from because that's what we're doing."

 

Q: So you're looking not just at biographical information but also at reviews and what was written about him at the time?

 

Thompson: Oh yes. There's an academic by the name of Bernth Linfors ... he's written an exhaustive study on Ira Aldridge. This is volume three, and he has another volume that is going to come out. I have all three of the first volumes, and they're about 300 pages each, so it's a 900-page biography that goes from certain periods: 1807-1833, 1833-1852, 1852-1855. He looks at these three periods of Aldridge's life as three major periods of development and shaping as far as who Ira Aldridge became — the formative years, his major performing years and his really rewarding years after he left London.

 

This has all the reviews, letters from admirers or friends, statements from critics or other people who saw his work. It's quite exhaustive — everything from his travels to London, to Scotland, to Wales, to Ireland, to France, to Germany to all parts of Eastern Europe and ending in Poland where he passed."

 

Q: How did you come to this project and how much did you know of Mr. Aldridge's work before you started?

 

Thompson: I've always known of Ira Aldridge.

 

I was doing 'Othello.' I was a student at Trinity Rep Conservatory in Providence, R.I., and after my first year of studies [1992], someone asked me to play Othello at The Rhode Island Shakespeare Theater, a company by the name of TRIST. There was a gentleman there who played Brabantio, his name was Richard Donnelly, and for my opening night gift, he gave me a book called 'Shakespeare in Sable,' and it was about all the African-American actors who had performed classical theater, primarily Shakespeare, from the 19th century onward.

 

On the cover of this book is Ira Aldridge. He's the cover and he's the first chapter because he's the first great actor.

 

The way I came to the play was I saw a production of this play in New York. And I happened to see it with the director, Daniela Varon. We didn't go together but we ended up there."

 

Q: You two already knew each other.

 

Thompson: We knew each other from here because she was one of my teachers here at Shakespeare & Company, and we'd long been thinking about a project to do together. We'd done a couple of readings and workshops but never a production. So we saw his play and knew immediately that we wanted to do this play and work together. That's how it came to fruition.

 

Q: You must have been excited to know there was a play out there given the place Ira Aldridge held in your esteem.

 

Thompson: In my esteem, but certainly in many others.

 

He's American. He spent most of his performing life in England and Eastern Europe, but he was raised in New York City — in the Bowery. It was the kind of story I wanted Americans to know about and theater audiences to come and get close to this guy because he's part of our history, and he's an icon as far as I'm concerned as it relates to classical acting. And it's a story many people don't know.

 

Actors as well as your basic theatergoers don't know about this man who, as I said before, was not only first black actor to perform Othello but was one of the great classical actors, period.

 

It's just a story that we as Americans should know, and I'd like us to reclaim Ira Aldridge back into the vaults of our history. He's well into the vaults of Eastern European history because he performed there so much and even in British history to a certain extent but not in ours because I think his story is uniquely American.

 

'Ira Aldridge' as Othello (1826), by James Northcote, Manchester City Galleries.

Q: Because so much of what he did was over there in Europe, there's a certain tendency on the part of Americans to see our history as ending at the water's edge.

 

Thompson: Ira Aldridge knew that his playing Othello in London was a political event. He knew that he was representing the black race and shifting the idea of, 'Is this something we can do? Are we capable of cultural and intellectual achievements.' The whites were saying that wasn't possible, and Ira Aldridge was taking on the mantle and proving that point, resoundingly.

 

"But due to the racism of the time with the newspapers of the time, they were going to write poorly about him in an effort to reverse that argument and discredit him. That certainly seems to be what happened he was performing Othello at Covent Garden in London. He ultimately was dismissed from that job, and that had a really devastating effect on the extension of his career — would he work in London and become the star he should have been.

 

"That didn't work out that way, and he became this itinerant performer who performed all over Eastern Europe and became very famous for his performances.

 

Q: On the one hand, maybe it was a blessing in disguise because the reason we know of Aldridge now is not because he played Othello in London but because of all the wonderful things he did outside of London — in Russia and Ireland and Germany, France and all those places.

 

Thompson: This play is about that career-defining event and the revolution he brings to theater because that revolution is still happening. Classical acting was very gestural and declamatory, but he began to shift that to a newer style of fluidity, less declamatory, better use of the voice, more realism, more connection of one actor to another as well as to the audience, more emotion. He brought all those things to his acting, and that began to shift the classical acting of the day.

 

Q: So he broke more ground artistically, perhaps, even than he did racially?

 

Thompson: I would say both. Because race was — as it is now — so important. It defines everything. Racism is like a cancer.

 

"That's what's interesting about the play. It's very contemporary — maybe not in setting but certainly in tone. He was dealing with the same things in the 19th century that people are dealing with in the 21st century."

 

Q: Have you done much 'Othello' since that first production in Rhode Island?

 

Thompson: I've done six or seven 'Othellos,' and I'm hoping to get back to it. The last one I did was in 2008 here.

 

Q: Not having seen 'Red Velvet,' I'm assuming there are some excerpts of 'Othello' in there?

 

Thompson: There are.

 

Q: How different is it having played Othello versus playing Ira Aldridge playing Othello?

 

Thompson: It's quite different because the 19th-century acting style as we've discussed is a very particular style that emphasized the external aspects of it, how your body was positioned. The big challenge for me will continue to be adopting that 19th-century style and then modifying it in the way Aldridge did, improving it.

 

Q: So you have to step backwards and then forward again?

 

Thompson: But I've got these contemporary ideas in my head, so it runs up against that style of acting.

 

I've found slowly but surely it's starting to happen — dropping into that 19th-century style and then bringing Ira's innovations to it.

 

That's really different.

 

As far as speaking the verse, Ira said, 'I speak it as I feel it.' So instead of paying attention to some rule of how to speak dramatic verse or blank verse, he feels that emotion should be the guide. And in a weird way I've always believed that too ... because truth and emotion alters rhythm and gesture. So if you're feeling something, you don't have to go into these standard poses.

 

Q: Where do you go from here?

 

Thompson: Well, I go back to New York. And then I'm going to do the 'Satchmo' we did here at the [American Conservatory Theater] in San Francisco. It's a big theater, an 800-seat theater, so it will be really interesting to do a one-man show there. Then I do it in Colorado Springs at a smaller theater.

 

After this, I go home.

 

Q: And home is New York?

 

Thompson: Brooklyn. Brooklyn, N.Y., man. Now it's everyone's hometown. Time to move to another place now that everyone's figured it out.

 

But I like Brooklyn. It's close to some places I work. I worked at [Brooklyn Academy of Music] this year and TFANA, which are essentially across the street from each other and about a mile from my apartment. So I could ride my bike to work. It's the first time I could do that.

 

I didn't have to deal with Manhattan for 3 1/2 months. I only had to go there for an audition or something, but other than that ... because typically that's where I'm working and I'm there every day. And sometimes ... midtown with all the traffic and the people, it's like, 'Please!'

 

But to get up in the morning, have your cup of coffee, get on your bike and ride to work.

 

Q: It's almost like being in Lenox.

 

Thompson: I love Lenox, man. Lenox is so nice over the summer. ... You can't beat up here over the summers. This is like one of the major cultural areas in the United States if not the world. You've got Williamstown, Shakespeare & Company, Jacob's Pillow, Tanglewood, Barrington Stage, Berkshire Theatre Festival, Chesterwood. What don't you have up here?

 

I see why people come up here. And then you've got Kripalu, Canyon Ranch, Blantyre — all within a 15-, 20-minute drive.

 

If I could live up here, I would, but I guess the winters are probably really bad. I mean, the last winter you had, I think that was probably one of the worst ones.

 

More information and tickets for "Red Velvet" can be found here.