Sunday, July 05, 2009 | A+E, Theater, Reviews
'Blood' brothers

Kenny Leon and Tom Key reteam for talent-packed racial drama

Courtesy of True Colors and Theatrical Outfit
Kenny Leon and Tom Key

“BLOOD KNOT”
True Colors and Theatrical Outfit
The Balzer Theater at Herren’s
678-528-1500
www.theatricaloutfit.org
July 10-Aug. 2

Untying the ‘Knot’
Susan Booth on directing the directors

Athol Fugard’s "Blood Knot" unfolds in South Africa circa 1961, but as Susan Booth describes the experience of directing Tom Key and Kenny Leon in a remount of their 1998 triumph (originally staged by David Bell), "The brilliance of it is, while the play seems so specific to its time and place, it’s also hugely and richly available to a 2009 Atlanta audience. It transcends ’60s South Africa to deal with the fundamental challenge of understanding someone other than yourself, especially someone whose skin is different,” she says. 

“Sadly, that’s a fairly evergreen topic, and it’s what makes the play so profoundly provocative. I’d put Fugard alongside O’Neill and Beckett in his ability to speak about the deeply personal truths of being human—black or white, young or old, male or female. The play’s about what we think we know about other people, what turns out to be the truth about them, and that space in between.”
 
Like Booth, Key and Leon have illustrious directorial careers. Like her, both run their own theater companies. Working with them as co-stars has been an "absolute treat," she says. "They’ve known each other for 20 years, and that history is present in such a wonderful way. What’s fascinating is, they enter from radically different places, but they’re heading to the same point. Their processes are different, but what you end up with are two utterly true performances."
 
Ask Booth how much back-seat directing is going on during rehearsals, and she laughs. "If anything, there’s not nearly enough of it. I wish there were more. Sometimes, I want them to stop acting and be my artistic-director colleagues for a while," she replies.
 
Seriously, though, "That’s one of the most fantastic aspects about this project. As artistic directors, we’re all used to thinking about the big picture of a production, and about the even bigger picture of how a play like this sits in our community. These guys are amazing in their capacity to realize what their individual choices mean in a larger context." SP

BY BERT OSBORNE

Three of the theater scene’s heaviest hitters join forces in "Blood Knot," the revival of a famous 1998 Theatrical Outfit show featuring Tom Key and Kenny Leon as half-brothers in apartheid-era South Africa. In a new co-production between Key’s Outfit and Leon’s True Colors—this time under the direction of the Alliance’s Susan Booth—the men reprise their roles in Athol Fugard’s drama about racial strife and familial tension, Key as the light-skinned Morris (who’s been "passing" for white) and Leon as the dark-skinned Zachariah (whom he left behind years ago).
 
Contrary to the uneasy reunion they portray on stage, during a pair of recent interviews Key and Leon agree they’re thrilled about revisiting what they consider to be some of their finest work.
 

When you’re remounting a production like this, is the idea to recreate or recapture whatever worked the first time, or to wipe the slate clean and bring something new or different to it?

KEY: We’ve joked about that. We don’t really have much choice but to start over, because, frankly, we can’t remember a lot of what we did before. [He laughs.] It’s funny. People think two weeks of rehearsal is plenty of time to slip right back into it, but I’m thinking, “It was 11 years ago!”
 
LEON: I’m not sure "remount" is the right word, because there’s nothing about it that feels the same, other than having the same two actors playing it. There seems to be a totally different tone to it this time. There’s more comedy coming out in it. Part of that is inherent in the writing, but it’s also because of Susan. She’s just so smart and thinks in such a minimalist way, and you really need that kind of vision when you’re working on a play that’s as densely written as this one.

 

How has the passage of 11 years changed your take on this character?

 

KEY: Just on a personal level, Kenny and I bring a lot more life experience to these characters. From a professional standpoint, too, both of us are more practiced now than we were then. We’ve had 11 years to establish a greater trust in one another, even more than we had toward one another back in ’98. We’re on a very level playing field—not just as the only two actors in the show, but also because, as artistic directors, we were committed to co-producing this together.
 
LEON: Because the world is such a different place now than it was when we did it before, I feel there’s more immediate danger in the world, in terms of people and countries getting along. That gives the play a greater sense of urgency. It reduces things down to these two human beings, but it’s a metaphor for how all of us must learn to coexist on the planet in all our diversity, tolerant of our differences. Even more than before, it feels really timely and important.

 

In a two-person show, how much of your performance is fed or informed by your co-star?

KEY: Ideally, our work should be completely inseparable, like a dance in a way. The play is about our two realities. Even when he’s not in the room with me, the universe I’ve constructed for my character is always bound to contain him, too. Kenny’s instincts are simply golden. Thornton Wilder described an actor as someone with the ability to connect the imagination to the body and the voice, and Kenny is so physically connected that way. He’s truly got this character in him.
 
LEON: I don’t know. Fifty percent? [He laughs.] In a two-character piece like this, we’re totally dependent upon each other. That’s all we have on stage, each other. It requires a tremendous amount of trust, and I can’t think of another actor I’d rather be doing this with than Tom.

 

Does the actor in you ever catch himself thinking like a director?

KEY: I hope not. As directors ourselves, Kenny and I fully appreciate Susan’s role in the process. It’s her responsibility to direct this play, and it’s to our benefit as actors to just let her do her job. She’s so great at it, I feel I can totally let go of all that other stuff and just concentrate on my performance. Susan has made it really easy for me in that way.
 
LEON: No. I catch myself thinking like a smart actor, you know? There are things I may question in my own head, but I know that as an actor, what I need is a good, strong director. It’s all about following the vision of the director. Giving that up to Susan gives me the freedom to just act, a freedom that I don’t often get in other aspects of my career as a director or artistic director.

 

What sort of audience reactions do you expect? Will they be divided along racial lines?

KEY: In watching any play, you begin to identify with or root for one character more than another, and someone’s race, the ethnic experience they bring with them into the theater, that makes a real difference in how they see things. One of the things I really love about this play, that pendulum of who to root for keeps swinging back and forth. The writing’s so good, you really can’t anticipate what’s going to happen, but when it does, you can understand.
 
LEON: Again, I think they’ll be surprised at how funny it is—moments of great humor followed by profound moments of raw ugliness—but five minutes into the play, hopefully, they’re going to start looking at these characters, not as white and black, but as brothers. SP