This week, it’s not just pre-frosh who are visiting Wesleyan. Rome Neal, a distinguished actor, director, and producer from New York, has come to work with Devon Jordan ’04 on her acting thesis. Neal is directing and acting in “Valley Song”, a play by South African writer Athol Fugard; Jordan is producing, assistant directing, and acting.
Jordan decided last year that for her thesis, she wanted to bring Fugard’s play to Wesleyan. She approached the Theater Department with her proposal.
“I wanted to bring in a professional actor to play a dual role…of the grandfather and the author,” Jordan said. “Both are older roles—the grandfather is in his seventies and the author is in his sixties. The play is about the characters’ generational differences, so it would have to be played by somebody older to fully get the message across.”
Mickey Davidson, a Wesleyan dance professor, got her in touch with Woodie King, Jr., a producer in New York. King, who in turn gave her Neal’s contact information.
Neal is the artistic director of the theater program at the Nuyorican Poets Café, a celebrated performance space in Manhattan. He has won awards, including an Obie Grant, for acting, directing, producing, and light design. Recently, he received acclaim for his portrayal of Thelonious Monk in “Monk”, a one-man play by Laurence Holder.
Jordan and Neal met at the Audelco Awards, at which Neal was being honored, and Jordan proposed her idea.
“I liked that he had time to listen to me and was really interested in working with me,” Jordan said.
Neal was equally impressed.
“I saw this young, vibrant energy that reminded me of the energy that I had when I was a college student and wanted to pursue a career in acting,” he said. “As a producer, I think she’s top-notch. The work that she’s done in pulling all these pieces together is admirable.”
Both Jordan and Neal are passionate about “Valley Song”.
“The play is about the relationship between a girl…and her grandfather,” Jordan explained. “They live in the Karoo region, a rural region of South Africa. The girl wants to become a famous singer. She wants to go to Johannesburg and leave her town. Her grandfather, when he finds this out, struggles to let her go. It’s about that conflict… but it branches out so that it goes beyond those characters and is about the people of South Africa [post-Apartheid], where there’s a conflict between people who are really looking toward the future, and others who are afraid to accept that kind of change.”
Jordan and Neal met with Esmerelda Bihl, the actress who originated the role of the grand-daughter in the South African production of “Valley Song”. She, along with a dialect coach and the actors’ research on South Africa, helped Jordan and Neal to understand their characters more fully.
“You can play a South African, but if you haven’t touched base with the land, with the South African people, then you’re playing the role, not being it,” Neal said. “Hopefully in the production [at Wesleyan] you’ll see these South Africans appear on stage.”
Jordan is excited about the upcoming production, which will be held at the 92 Theater on April 1-3, at 8 PM.
“It’s something…that really hasn’t been done before,” she said. “A lot of students have brought visiting artists [to Wesleyan], but not as part of their thesis. The only way to get a project like this accomplished is to do it yourself. It was a pretty big idea I had, even though the play is a small piece.”
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