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Mike Wiley is one man, with so many roles
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<br /> By Byron Woods
<br /> Reprinted by permission;
<br /> originally published in the July 18,2012 issue of The Independent Weekly,Durham,NC
<br /> ,> :3 r The Indies:2012 Triangle Arts Awards The Independent Weekly www.indyweek.com
<br /> It sneaks up on you, the first time you see a solo stage work by documentary theater playwright and actor Mike Wiley.You're struck as he
<br /> vividly impersonates a witness to an event from the history of race in our country, like the Montgomery bus boycott,Jackie Robinson's
<br /> integration of major league baseball or the trial of the men who murdered Emmett Till.
<br /> After that character has his say, someone from another walk of life takes center stage and contributes his testimony.Then a third, of a
<br /> different gender, race and social or economic class, brings up a crucial fact not considered up to then.A fourth diSmiSSElS it, but a fifth
<br /> responds differently to the revelation.
<br /> "He's a modern-day, one-man Rashomon,"says producer Serena Ebhardt,who has directed Wiley in a number of his solo works and who
<br /> wrote a history of Brown v.Board of Education that he performs on stage. "He explores all of the voices in a particular historical moment as
<br /> a writer as well as an actor.Using his breath, body, eyes,face and voice, he is capable of literally making you believe he is all of the
<br /> different people for whom he speaks.And he is really very good at looking at a picture from all sides."
<br /> "It's almost a genre he's developing to tell the inexhaustible story of the African-American experience,"says Ray Dooley, head of UNC's
<br /> Professional Actors Training Program,from which Wiley graduated in 2004. "You marvel at the chameleon nature of his character changes
<br /> and the technique he uses to do that.And to see someone use that masterful technique in the service of such worthy, important and
<br /> compassionate material—really, every time I see Mike, it's a highlight for me."
<br /> Before, during and after his studies at UNC,Wiley toured his one-man shows at schools, community centers and theaters in Virginia, North
<br /> Carolina and South Carolina.The odyssey garnered him a warning letter from the Department of Dramatic Art—before it won him the
<br /> University's Graduate School Impact Award, for service to the state.That service also earned him a commendation in 2008 from then-Lt.
<br /> Gov.Beverly Perdue, who termed him "an actor who challenges his audiences to consider how they think about our history and current
<br /> events."
<br /> Wiley's visibility as an artist has increased dramatically in the past couple of years.After Duke's Center for Documentary Studies and UNC':
<br /> dramatic art department co-commissioned his first work for multiple actors—a history of the Freedom Rider movement called The
<br /> Parchman Hour—a student production of it toured the South and clinched its subsequent professional premiere at PlayMakers Repertory
<br /> Company.
<br /> "The thinking was good,the writing was good and the sophisticated physical and gestural vocabulary was thrilling to me,"says PlayMakers
<br /> Artistic Director Joseph Haj."It seemed a great opportunity for the organization, and I couldn't have been more pleased with the outcome."
<br /> During that time, regional filmmaker Rob Underhill based his short films Empty Space and Wolf Call on sections of Dar He,Wiley's solo
<br /> performance about the lynching of Emmett Till.After those films began receiving recognition and winning awards, Underhill began work on
<br /> a full,feature-length version of that work—in which Wiley plays more than 30 characters on the screen.
<br /> This year,the film version of Dar He has taken best film awards at the Black International Cinema Berlin festival and the North Carolina
<br /> Black Film Festival and accolades at black film festivals in San Francisco, Newark and Charlotte,with additional screenings coming up in
<br /> the fall.
<br /> "Mike almost writes in a cinematic format:with smaller scenes, lots of impacts," Underhill says."On stage he wants to be very engaging
<br /> with the audience, and that translates well in the editing room."
<br /> Wiley used to cringe when people called his work a ministry."Gospel exploitation is alive and well in quite a few plays out there, and many
<br /> have been made into films," he observes."But as a society, we have forgotten over time the milestones of African-American history.There
<br /> are so many untold stories and unknown individuals. It finally hit me:These plays are a prayer for remembrance.And now that I have two
<br /> sons, it goes a bit deeper for me:They're a prayer for hope as well.They're my attempt, as skillfully as possible,to put on the skin of each
<br /> individual person in my shows."
<br /> Wiley meticulously researches the stories he puts on stage. For his first production, One Noble Journey, he haunted Virginia's state library
<br /> in Richmond,where manuscripts on Henry"Box" Brown, an intrepid 19th-century slave,were kept. For the adaptation of Tim Tyson's Blood
<br /> Done Sign My Name,Wiley interviewed a number of principal characters during repeated trips to Oxford, N.C.,where the autobiographical
<br /> novel was set.He routinely transcribes video or audiotape interviews while working on characters and scripts."On stage, he's literally takini,
<br /> the words out of people's mouths," Ebhardt says, "and he honors all of their viewpoints.If Stokely Carmichael actually saw The Parchman
<br /> Hour, 1 don't believe he'd be too pushed out of shape with how his words were used."
<br /> The fall looks busy.In August, he's in Deep Dish Theater's season opener, August Wilson's Radio Golf. In September, he begins filming a
<br /> screen adaptation of One Noble Journey with Underhill. For the spring, he's contemplating a solo piece—with jazz orchestra—on John
<br /> Coltrane,Thelonious Monk and Nina Simone with Duke music professor John Brown.An adaptation of Danielle McGuire's At the Dark End
<br /> of the Street is in the works, as are possible collaborations with regional playwrights Chaunesti Webb and Ashley Lucas;and novelist Paul
<br /> Cuadros.
<br /> Quite a few stories for one man.But Mike Wiley is clearly up to the challenge.
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