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[0:00] Lauren Van Hemert: Hi everybody, I'm Lauren Van Hemert, and this is Beltline to Broadway, where we talk about the theater from inside the beltline to the bright lights of Broadway and beyond.

[0:48] Lauren Van Hemert: What role does theater and art have in moving the dialogue and the conversation about race in this country forward? Oftentimes people take refuge in art, whether it's visual, whether it's audio, whether it's just going to a museum and trying to leave the outside world behind or trying to make some sense of the world through art. Sometimes the world can be so very matter-of-fact, and in being so very matter-of-fact, especially for young people, you know, being so very matter-of-fact, we take those things in and it can be for many people, especially people of color, can be traumatic to watch people with brown bodies being knocked around on the news and even in some art, but we take that and we do something with it when it comes to art, when it comes to the theater specifically, is what I'll speak about.

When it comes to what I do, even more specifically, it's trying to make sense of those stories and putting them back in front of an audience, right? Putting those stories back in front of an audience, but coloring in color all oftentimes those stories are just outlines, right? Those matter-of-fact stories are just outlines, and what we don't have time to do, and what a lot of people don't have the time to do is to go into the detail to really sift through the matter. Why is this person being arrested? Why is he being brutalized? Why did this woman rob this place and why is she now in jail? Why is that person on death row? Oftentimes we look at those matter-of-fact stories, or we look at these matter-of-fact stories of ICE raiding neighborhoods, raiding communities.

We look at those stories and again, going back to young people, young people see those things as a very black-and-white kind of issue. What I mean is they see them and go, well, the police are arresting them, they must have done something wrong. But what art does, art sheds light on those stories of the individuals, right? The individuals who were living lives before they got arrested, who weren't able to feed their children before they got arrested or before they did what they had to do. It sheds light on what that police officer goes through daily before getting out of that car and walking up to the window to stop somebody and give them a ticket. What art does is it tills up the soil and really tries to identify the minerals, really tries to contextualize what we are looking at.

And when we contextualize what we are looking at, we then have a broader understanding of how we got to where we are. That's what I try and do with my work. That's what I know a number of artists try and do with their work. They try and contextualize the past so that we can give voice and understanding to the present. We cannot stand here in the present and make assumptions or make opinions without knowing the backstory. So many times we take a look at an issue or a story or even an individual and make a knee-jerk assumption about them because that's who we are, right? We're humans, humans make knee-jerk assumptions, right? We make knee-jerk assumptions about individuals by the way they look, by their skin color, by the way they speak, or even just an action.

We make a knee-jerk assumption about who they are through that without knowing the backstory. So, what we as artists, I believe, have to do is contextualize it by looking at the backstory and bringing that forward so that we all can be on the same page, or at least have read the pages prior to the moment.

[5:29] Lauren Van Hemert: We talked about before we turned the recording on the talkbacks that you've had. And that you have after all your performances. Have the talkbacks, have the dialogue, have the conversation changed over the last couple of years since we've had this new president?

[5:50] Mike Wiley: Definitely. Let me give you the scene for you with my talkbacks. After an hour and a half of a solo piece that can run from anywhere from serious to tragic to humorous, I sit down and I say to the audience, all right. Now let's talk. Let's talk about what you just saw, and I will answer any questions you have, and I will take any comments that you want to make, but I want to come to the understanding that I'm just a regular human being playing a bunch of different characters. I want to have a good time in this talk back. We are going to laugh, we are going to learn things about one another, we are now all in the room together as a community because we've just spent over an hour together. Let's have a good time.

So we set the scene that way. I set the scene that way so that we're gonna have a good time in this talk back. So in doing that, people are even more comfortable, even more comfortable after a while. They should be comfortable after watching the show or whatever show it is, but we're even more comfortable now to have this conversation, to have these conversations about race, about American history, about how we've come to where we are. And I've always done that. I've done that for the past 18 years, but in the past several years since the election of Donald Trump, I find that I have audiences, specifically white audiences, that really want to get to the crux of it. They really want to, you know, when I was in Asheville during two weeks of my play about Emmett Till, predominantly the audiences were white, but also those folks wanted to talk about race in America.

Those folks wanted to talk about how police brutality is affecting the black community, how the criminal justice system is affecting the black community. People that I dare say were not necessarily trying to be quote unquote woke three or four or five years ago, are now saying this is not the America that I thought it was, right? There are a number of us out here that always knew that this was going on, right? Specifically African Americans. Black folks, we always knew that this was going on. We always knew that the chance of white backlash, i.e. the Trump election, could and would come. But there are certainly a number of white folks out there, predominantly more white folks than black folks, that certainly believed that the election of President Obama echoed and ushered in a new day for America, and in some ways it did, certainly so, but in many ways, what it did was turn over this rock, right?

This rock, this underbelly that has always been there, and now you know we talk about giving voice to the voiceless, right? Well, here's a fella that has given voice to the folks that because of their privilege have always had a voice, but now want to use this voice for hate speech, want to use that voice for racist tactics, want to use that voice and that bullhorn in ways that we haven't seen in decades. And so what having these talkbacks do is it gives folks an opportunity to really kind of release, release whatever they've been, whatever's been pent up that they feel that they want to be able to ask or say about the political process and how it has affected them and how question mark can they help?

What can they do? Oftentimes I have to say, okay, you're asking me what you can do. I think you need to go internally and ask yourself what you can do. I think you know what you can do. I think I don't have all the answers, but I know though, I do know this. I know that the first step is asking the question, right? The first step is asking the question. If you are willing to ask the question, what can I do? And then are willing to actually put your soul and your feet into it, as Dr. King once said, anybody can be great because anybody can serve. So any one of those people can be great if, as he said, a heart filled with faith and a soul generated by love, right? So if you are truly an individual that has a soul generated by love, the question is not necessarily, what can I do?

It's maybe how do I do it, or when can I do it, or how soon can I do it? There's a number of things there, you know. And don't get me wrong, don't get me wrong. I have certainly felt in audiences, people button up and cringe because they might have voted for Trump, or they might believe in the things that he espouses. And I watch the audiences, I see those folks. My adult audiences, I don't necessarily hear from those folks. I don't necessarily hear them say anything, you know, racist or condemning or anything like that. There are certainly people that will ask questions that are just what's the word I'm looking for, uninformed, right? You know, I play about Henry Box Brown, the slave who mailed himself to freedom.

Well, can you tell me about the good masters? I'm sorry, I'm sorry, what? You know, the good masters. You know, I understand they weren't bad masters, certainly they were bad masters, but what about the good masters? When you say good master, what is what you know? So that opens up a door. It all opens up a door to dialogue. Can't shut the door even if it's an uninformed question, right? So we have to have that conversation. Okay, let's have this conversation about the good master, right? And if we're all a family and if we're all having fun, I also take that opportunity to say, okay, well, let's talk about your definition of the good master. But let's put it in more modern context. Let's say you were kidnapped, you were duct taped, you're tossed in the back of a car, and you weren't beaten or anything like that, and you were fed every now and then, and all of that good stuff, but you were still kidnapped and you were still duct taped in the back of a car.

So, does that make a good kidnapper out of those folks that took you? No, it doesn't. So, you know, and the audience will have a laugh, and we're all a little bit more comfortable, and that person will say, Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So let's have this open conversation. My harder audiences have become younger people, which you wouldn't think, right? You wouldn't think that it would be the younger people, but it is the younger people because I'm pushing back for them. I'm pushing back what they are being taught at home, and that's a hard thing.

[13:58] Lauren Van Hemert: Why do you think exposing kids, and I asked this question of so many people, but I'm especially interested in hearing what you have to say about it. Why is it important to expose kids to the art and to theater and to stories like the ones you're telling? It is ultimately, for me, it's in the way that I present the work.

[14:21] Mike Wiley: It's the way that I take it to the masses, and that is by breaking the fourth wall and talking, speaking to them directly as those characters, and then bringing them up on stage to be a part of the production.

[14:38] Mike Wiley: Having them play roles in the show, a little, you know, 10-year-old white girl portraying Rosa Parks is not going to be the same when she walks off stage as she was when she was on stage.

[14:55] Mike Wiley: Regardless of what she is being told at home, right? Regardless of what she is being told at home, she is never going to forget that once she played Rosa Parks on stage, once she had an opportunity to speak her mind through the voice of Mrs. Parks or Martin Luther King or an enslaved African American, you name it, she's never going to be the same.

[15:23] Mike Wiley: I'm not saying that I'm changing the world through that. I'm not saying that I'm changing her life in any way. But what I am saying is that 10 years from now, even if over the course of those 10 years, she's got parents at home saying, you know, these people are this, these people are this, these people are this. Somewhere in the back recesses of her mind, she'll still remember that time she played Rosa Parks.

[15:51] Mike Wiley: And maybe, just maybe, when she goes on to college, or if she doesn't go on to college, maybe she'll be somewhere and she'll be in the presence of another African American or a black man, and that moment will pop into her mind. That moment that she got to be the other, as it were, right? That moment where just for a millisecond, she got to walk in somebody else's shoes.

[16:23] Mike Wiley: And even if, even if at the end of the day, I don't bring you up on stage, you just watched your peer, who is a white girl, go up on stage and play that role, and you think to yourself, that could have been me. Not playing the role, but as Rosa, right? So what I do in the way that I present my own solo work is by asking those folks, asking these young people, and I do it with older audiences too, asking them to take a moment and step into the shoes of the other, right? By shedding that light on what they have never or may have never or rarely have an opportunity to do those individuals they rarely have an opportunity to talk to or read about or even understand, or even have best friends or good friends that are of another race. Here they have an opportunity to actually for a moment be them.

[17:32] Mike Wiley: You wrote a piece for Arch North Carolina called We Could Be Heroes that speaks to your own experience growing up in Virginia. And on your website, it says that this piece is a statement of gratitude to those who incite greatness.

[17:47] Mike Wiley: Yeah. Who were the people in your life who incited the greatness in you?

[17:55] Mike Wiley: And oh man, that is a long list, but I will I will gladly I will gladly talk about them. My mother inspires greatness in me because for the most part throughout my life she was a single parent doing as much as she could as often as she could with myself and my brothers just eking by oftentimes. I'll sit around with peers and we'll joke, you know, we'll joke that if you don't know what sleeping in the kitchen means, you know, the oven campfire means, then yeah, you know, you might not know what poverty is. You know, if you don't know what and you know coming in the house and flipping the switch and the lights being off and your first thought is not oh the breaker is out and your first thought is oh power bill, then you don't know what you know poverty is.

[18:02] Mike Wiley: And there were times in my childhood numerous times where you know we slept in the kitchen with the oven open to get warm where we you know turned the lights on and hoped that they would turn on and they did not. We huddled together to keep warm, you know, number of things. But my mother was always trying and trying and trying, and you know, things got better and better and better over the years. So, you know, you go from living in the projects at age six and seven and eight to a house to another house, to another house, to an apartment, you know. But my mother was always reaching, always striving, always trying to make more money to get us what we needed, my brothers and I, to get us what we needed to survive.

[19:57] Mike Wiley: So my mother, and then my grandmother, because when my mother wasn't there and or couldn't afford, you know, all of us, you know, one of us might go and live with my grandmother for a time. And we kind of take turns doing that. And so my grandmother, this matriarch of our entire family, she is another individual, another hero who went from being, you know, a rural country girl to a domestic living in the city to a kindergarten teaching aide, raising, you know, eight, nine kids of her own, and then helping to raise grandkids and then great-grandkids. She is a hero of mine, and then my aunt who said, I know that there is no one else in this small city of Roanoke, Virginia, who is an actress that is aspiring to do more than create and entertain in this town. So I'm going to go to AT and I'm going to study theater.

[21:06] Mike Wiley: She brought me down to AT one summer and exposed her nephew to the world of theater. But not only that, she just exposed me to college for the first time in my seventh grade year. And so I learned things. I saw things. Steven Spielberg was auditioning folks for The Color Purple because that was the summer they were shooting The Color Purple in North Carolina. And so I learned things by seeing this long line of women trying to audition for that. I learned things from the young actors that were there as students.

[21:46] Mike Wiley: But I also was in a summer camp to learn acting and mathematics. You can see there are a lot of women that were influential in my life. And then there were men that were influential as well. There was a sixth grade teacher who asked me to be Abraham Lincoln in this school play. And it was all black school, so it really wasn't odd to be Abraham Lincoln in the school play. But he asked me to be Abraham Lincoln in the school play, and at first I said no, but then he finally badgered me into doing it, and I found this love and this discovery of playing another character and changing my voice and posture to be another being, and so he was an influence, and I cannot remember his name, and that saddens me to this day, but he propelled me and pushed me.

[22:41] Mike Wiley: And that was the summer before my time at AT, and so AT just became brighter for me because of that. And then there are the parents of my best friend. He was is a Methodist minister, and his wife was a history teacher, and she would teach us about Africa and American history and slavery, and I would go to their church on Sundays, but then he would take us to the movies after church on Sundays, and so I had this love of cinema at a young age, and through those folks, them being extended family now and extended parents, I learned from them, and so those folks were influences in my early years.

[23:30] Mike Wiley: And so, in a nutshell, in those, you know, first 15, 16, 17 years of my life, we didn't have a lot of money, but we had a lot of love, and it was that much love that made me think I could make a go of doing what I do. I don't think if I was that poor and then had no love at all, I don't know if I could have had the guts to make a go of it.

[23:50] Mike Wiley: I don't know if I could have had the guts to, as I say in that We Can Be Heroes speech, to take the city bus downtown one rainy fall afternoon and audition for the local production of Alice in Wonderland. There I was, this little black kid and a little round face and a little tiny afro in the sea of punky brewsters and Ricky Schroeders, and I walk in, and the junior league is holding auditions, right? It's the junior league that is actually auditioning kids for this production of Alice in Wonderland that's happening at the local professional theater, actually.

[24:49] Mike Wiley: Mil Mountain was a professional theater at the time, at the local professional theater, and they will they say, you know. What role would you like to audition for? And I said, I want to audition for the queen. And the woman says, Well, the queen is a woman. And I say, I know, it's the best part. And then they whisper to one another, and like she looks at me again. She goes, but the Queen of Hearts is a woman. I said, and I know, I know. I just really want to read that part because it's a really awesome part.

[25:14] Mike Wiley: And then they whisper to one another again and like hushed tones or whatever. They turn back to me again. It's like alright. So I auditioned and used and read aside, you know, read a little part of the Queen of Hearts, and I did not get it. Looking back on it, I don't know if any black, and I don't know if there were any kids of color in that particular, I don't know if they ever had any kids of color in those first in those early years in those junior league plays. But I walked out of there sad because I looked around at the other folks and I knew that they had more money than I had, you know.

[26:10] Mike Wiley: I knew even at that age, because I was probably 11 or 12, I knew at that age that they had more opportunities than I had, but I also kind of knew that I had the guts to do what I did. And then I wouldn't let that no stop me from doing it again. And so I continued and continued to audition and continued to read for roles and continued to do plays at school, and a lot of that is because I had so many people around me saying, You can do this. We love you for what you're doing. There was no one who ever said you might want to think about something else. Ever. You know. And it's okay to try. And it's okay to fail. And it's okay to try again. Right.

[27:09] Mike Wiley: And sometimes I would get pushed. Sometimes I get pushed to try harder. My grandmother would always say, she would always, she always had this saying. Whenever I would get a little down about, you know, my either my career or not getting something, or if I would debate about even trying, she would say, she would say, Michael, nothing beats a failure but a try. That was her, that was always, always what she said.

[27:17] Mike Wiley: Nothing beats a failure but a try. And that made me reach for goals that I might not have reached for if I didn't hear her in the back of my mind saying, if you don't do it, then you've already failed.

[27:59] Mike Wiley: If you like what you've heard on this episode and want to talk about it, I would like to invite you to join our online community on our website at www.beltlinetobroadway.org. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or Blue Sky at Beltline to Broadway. Until next time, I'll see you at the theater.