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Host Robert Lipsyte in the studio talking about the actor, Charles S. Dutton who spent 10 years behind bars and is now up for a Tony award for his lead role in the Broadway play, The Piano Lesson.

Clip from the Broadway play, The Piano Lesson, featuring Charles S. Dutton.

INTERVIEW: DUTTON


Robert Lipsyte
Your performance gets more astonishing than that. And one of the things I thought about afterwards was all that energy. You must have had that energy as a kid. And without discipline and craft. You're no wonder you got into trouble.

Charles S. Dutton
I don't know if I I guess I had it as a kid but I'm not really sure I am. I am. I kind of view these things. It's interesting how people like to sort of relate my life to August Wilson's characters, and I don't really see any similarities at all. I really don't because because New York audiences These are only things I've seen me in my ratings might bottom, the piano lesson. And I'm just wondering, had I'd done Othello first in New York, and no one knew anything about my life, or after Othelloi people heard about my life would they relate my life to my performance in Othello? I don't think I really had that kind of monumental energy or rage or any of that stuff. As a kid. I just happen to be in a neighborhood in Baltimore where you were expected to go to prison. You would just expect it to go. And I went and all my buddies went in And, and the trouble aspect was not that I'd never considered myself living in poverty. Never really, my neighborhood in Baltimore in the 50s. And early 60s was one that everyone took care of the houses, all the streets were cleaned the alleys were clean, and it was pre drug infestation. So you didn't have that problem at the time. I just happened to be, I thought I had a violent kind of calm around me. I couldn't go anywhere without a fight starting.

When you when you say expected to go to prison? I mean, what does that really mean?

Well, it's like, um, when you get off of the steps at about 10 or 12 years old, you know, and he's start running around a little bit, or you play hooky from school. I always hung around with older guys, so and when I was 12, I hung around with guys 1415. And these guys had already been reformed school. So the guys would tell you about how great it was there. And, or how tough it was there, which amounted to the same thing, basically. And the desire to go was sort of a test of man, desire to go was sort of an initiation. And what happened was that everybody you knew eight out of 10 guys had been there. The other two guys out of the 10 would be considered a Square's

Robert Lipsyte
when you got there was it great,

Charles S. Dutton
it was fabulous. reform school was the best thing you could do from an inner city kid going into a rural area. And I loved animals as a kid and I got a chance to work on a farm. And, and it was like a summer camp. But little did I know at the time, that reform school was actually preparing me for the next step. And in the next step, as being a ward of the state, and I went to reform school several times as a kid, each time was a different and higher level for reform school, because you got a little older and more experienced once you go for I went for a truancy being ungovernable delinquency, all those things as from 12 years to 15. And then at 15, I on I went for burglary, and stayed in reform school eight months. And what happens is that, um, you got to reform school and you go to a particular cottage assigned to a particular cottage, and you look around, you might have six of your friends there. I mean, you're you're running buddies from the street. And so all of a sudden 60 guys, okay, we're going to take over the cottage, you know, you go to the next gang, it's okay, we run in this joint and you know, might have a square off a little fighting little wins a fight, then they their, their superior group and the cottage ends. And so, you know, you've run a little rackets, cigarettes and selling and borrowing and loaning cigarettes, and, um, and then what happens? You know, you get out and you all talk about it to the other guys. You know, we were reformed school. We did this, we did that. And it

Robert Lipsyte
sounds like Choate, but the future is not as assured.

Charles S. Dutton
Somewhat somewhat, yeah.

Robert Lipsyte
Okay. So then then you're out. You've made these friends and you're kind of conditioned in certain ways.

Charles S. Dutton
Well, you're, you're very conditioned. What happens is that the graduation process from reform school to prison starts very fast. And then consequently, you hear about how great it is in prison. And so what happens is that I can remember a time when a three year sentence used to be a devastating thing to hear. Oh, man, so and so got three years Wow, man. After that, three years wasn't anything. five year sentence was a big deal. If you got five years, it was like, Oh, you would never get out. After that. Five years became nothing. 10 years was like life after that guys would plead guilty again, just to get 10 years. And 20 years was the eternity now guys get 20 years. It's like, you only got 20 years, no big deal. So you know, so that so the conditioning gets higher and your acceptance of it gets higher and my what I did, fortunately for me, is that I never really got conditioned by it. reform school. Yeah, because I thought it was like summer camp, but prison. I adapted to prison life. I never got conditioned by prison.

Charles S. Dutton
Well, for my first for those seven half years, I was a total knucklehead. For those seven half years I am I came in with a three year sentence of second time I forgot for manslaughter, I got out. Two months later, I went back in for possession of deadly weapons. I got a three year sentence 18 months into the three year sentence, I got an additional eight year sentence tacked on to the three. And so I had to do the three first and then start on the eight. So I wind up doing four and a half of the eight before me parole, but for for those years. I was. I mean, it was a period in the country where it was the leftist movement, and I involved myself in the Black Panther Party in prison. I was reading all the leftist literature. I believed that there was gonna be a Second American Revolution and I thought myself as a political prisoner, although there was something in me that says this is very convenient to do. To consider yourself as a political prisoner. I justified anything that you did in prison. But there came a time when a friend of mine sent me a book of plays without any inkling that I wanted to be an actor to send an anthology of Black plays. And I had it maybe three or four months before I actually picked it up and read it. And I got sent to solitary confinement for verbal abuse on the guard or something I can't quite remember. And I got sentenced to three days in solitary confinement. And you get one piece of reading material aloud one piece of reading, which, as they call the lingo, in prison reading material, and I, that was the book I took. And I read a play in solitary confinement, called day of absence, I'm just trying to say it was Yeah. And it was so hilarious that I thought, once I got out of solitary confinement, I would get the funniest guys I knew in the prison. And we put this play on. And something occurred to me inside as I read this three days of reading this place, is that I had this desire to get out of isolation, and really start this thing and really be passionate about it. So I got 8, 10, guys, and we put on a talent show. And in the midst of a speech in that play, I looked out in the audience. And I saw all these men were so transfixed that I felt this eerie kind of power. And I said to myself, I can remember vividly that I said, I've, I have these guys in the palm of my hand. And from there, I really got, I really found what I needed to believe in. And the problem I think, and with prisoners, or people in general, going back and forth to prison, that you don't really find anything to believe in. Some guys do it in religion, but then it's nice to be in religion while you're in prison. Because it's organized, and it's safe. And you have like a family. And you're sort of protected. But then when you get out, you know, you go back to your ways, and religion is thrown in the blackboard until you get back into prison again. But to me, I found something to believe in that was that was positive. And that was human, or humanity orientated. So all of the negative stuff, all of the drug lingo, all of the less good this, let's do that, all of the basic prison vocabulary, and the way guys dealt with each other, became so prehistoric to me, I just couldn't pay, I couldn't, I didn't have the patience to sit around two, three guys talking about what they're gonna do when they get out which all men, you know, we're gonna do this, we're gonna take over that we're gonna kill him, we're gonna do that. All of a sudden. And it wasn't, it wasn't very, it wasn't a sudden, I mean, a revelation that like hit me over the head, it was just something that I had in me all along. Because I was even in even as a kid, in my early days of trouble, I always analyze what I was doing and the consequences. So unlike many of my friends, I was concerned about what would happen to me. But it was this defiance of handling it, and going through it, and taking it on the chin and being a man about it and all that, that led me to do it and want to do it. And there was a certain kind of attitude that I had from about for the first four years. That was one that I was prepared to die. And I thought it was because of this of the revolution. But it was such defiance that something happens to the human spirit in confinement, that even when I was beat up by the guards, many, many many times. There was there was something in me that rather than see for rather than see or hear them, see me screen. After their five minutes of their beating, when I got a breather, and could speak, I would say, well, you guys can't hit any harder than that.

Robert Lipsyte
Do you think this attitude to spirit informs your work?

Charles S. Dutton
12 years ago, I would have said yeah, out of prison in the college, when I did sort of us. All of that stuff. I think it may inform it now. But sort of intuitively, where I don't think about it anymore. I guess it would be you could relate it the same way of doing the theater game. As a young actor, I don't really need to do theater games anymore as an actor. So 12 14 years ago, I would probably have dwelled on who I was in my past and relate a lot of that to the characters but at this point, In my life, I don't really think about

Robert Lipsyte
well, you have a body of craft now.

Charles S. Dutton
Yeah, absolutely.

Robert Lipsyte
But Now, in the beginning of this interview, you said that, had you come to New York and played Othello and nobody had known anything about you? No one would have seen certain things. But the point is that people do see things in your head. You must be aware of that.

Charles S. Dutton
Well, well, yeah, I am. I am. But I'm wondering. For instance during Ma Rainey when no one knew anything for the first month or two. During the show, it was the reviews were rave reviews. Interesting enough, after stuff started coming out about my past. In sort of the secondary reviews, or the later latter reviews, or reviews of the play, I was, there was talk of a while this is a circle. This has been a circumstance of a happy accident, that he could never do another performance like this. You know, his life. This part. He killed a guy in real life. He kills a guy on the stage. It's a volatile, volatile kind of character and monumental rage. I'm sure this guy had all this stuff as a kid. So I kind of view that interesting enough. I don't know there's another other way to play levy. I don't know another way to play boy, Willie. I don't think there's another way to play him. I don't know another way to me the fellow's rage is monumental. Lear's rage is monumental. I think

Robert Lipsyte
But by individual solution, what about the Little Rock Dutton in East New York right now, a kid who we now call at risk, you know, and it probably the same way is kind of destined to do some of the things you do? What can be done for him?

Charles S. Dutton
Well, um,

Robert Lipsyte
Can society intercede

Charles S. Dutton
well, you know, it's, it's, it's this and this is, this is a question that's going to sound very cliche, and, and probably fatalistic, but, you know, you can, you can build a million more prisons in every state, and you're going to keep building because you're the problem is really not being dealt with, you have to fix the problem before they go to prison. You know, and, and, and if, if society as a whole at large, isn't really trying to fix itself, then you're going to build one prison after another, and you're going to fill them up in no time. And, and, and, and the difference is that, um, and these black kids that are going to prison believe it is not an a genetic thing, where they're born, to live these kinds of lives. I mean, it's, um, I think the difference is, when I was coming up, I didn't consider my neighborhood ghetto because it was clean. And although it was a probably a poor neighborhood, but it was clean. And I think as things deteriorated, and as drugs became prevalent, and his morals dropped in his in his in his codes were not thought about in this honor became something that was just nothing. These kids were born into the situation, and you look around and you say, Okay, this is my environment, this is how I deal with it, you know, there's, there's something to say, there is something to say about 20 years, 25 years after integration with this whole problem, which is Charles Dutton's theory, I feel, and that because, and that's not to say I was against integration, or was against integration, many years ago, people can live where they want and shouldn't be able to live with anyone. But where what happened to all the black lawyers and black doctors and black teachers and black scientists, or whatever they do used to live in Harlem, but used to live in all those places in the United States, that were the real and true role models. You know, I mean, this push to, to integrate in this push to, to leave, you know, when you look around and you see only so called simulators, or quasi leaders or whatever, the guy who has a Cadillac, you know, and and, and, and the, and Venice and giving back that whole question of giving back of being a role model. I don't like to consider Charles Dutton as a role model, because to me that says, I'm mistake free. And I'm perfect. And God knows I'm not. I would like to consider myself as someone who took responsibility for his life and decided that you only on this planet for a couple of seconds in the large scheme of things and while you're here, you should help somebody or do something with your life and, and have an epitaph that says something positive.

Robert Lipsyte
You certainly done that. Charles S Dutton thanks so much for being with us. That's the 11th hour, I'm Robert Lipsyte.

Lipsyte announces the show and introduces himself. Show ends.

Funding by Announcer. Charitable orgs overlay The Eleventh Hour graphic.