Denzel Washington
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“… Once a Person’s Voice is Captured, They are Expendable”: Director George C. Wolfe on the Musical Histories of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Black music. White privilege. Chicago. 1927. What could possibly go wrong? Indeed, nearly everything, and it’s chronicled with artful intensity in August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, the second in a cycle of ten plays that compassionately detail the 20th-century experiences of African Americans. Ma Rainey’s was brought to the screen this season in a stellar production directed by George Wolfe that stars Viola Davis in the title role and, in his final role, Chadwick Boseman as the upstart young trumpeter and rake in her band. Wolfe, a Tony Award-winning theater director and writer, is gradually building a formidable resume […]
by Martin Johnson on Feb 23, 2021 -
“Take What’s Useful from Your Teachers”: Denzel Washington and Antoine Fuqua at TIFF
This week Denzel Washington and director Antoine Fuqua unveiled their new thriller The Equalizer at TIFF, but over the weekend they spoke at a 90-minute Mavericks conversation. About 500 fans packed the elegant Isabel Bader Theatre a few miles north of the TIFF Bell Lightbox on Saturday afternoon to hear Washington, who dominated the casual chat. Several times, Washington implored the many actors in the audience to perform on stage, not film. “Acting is acting,” he declared. “I don’t know what film acting is. The truth is the truth.” His first love is theater; film was an accident in his life. “I wasn’t planning […]
by Allan Tong on Sep 10, 2014 -
Rising Voices
In Denzel Washington’s second directing effort, the Oprah Winfrey produced The Great Debaters, he takes what he learned from his debut, Antwone Fisher, and uses it to make the inspirational true story of one small all-black school’s rise to the top of the college debating ranks in the Jim Crow South. Washington also stars in the film as the rebellious Melvin B. Tolson. Known for his American Modernist poetry and a contemporary of the Harlem Renaissance, in the ‘30s Tolson was a professor at Wiley College in Marshall, Texas. There he coached the debate team and in 1935 his team […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Dec 21, 2007
