Black Actor Finds Success, Independence Go Together

In San Diego, where it is notoriously difficult for black actors to find work, Damon Bryant, 31, now playing Matthew in the Lamb’s Players Theatre production of “Cotton Patch Gospel,” closing Sunday, is one of the busiest performers in town.

He averages about four shows a year, with credits ranging from the Old Globe to the San Diego Repertory Theatre to the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company to the Bowery Theatre.

But it wasn’t always that way.

Five years ago, Damon Bryant was homeless and hanging out at Horton Plaza, thinking, as he puts it, that his life “was due for a change.” His arm was still recovering from a gunshot wound. He was shot, he said, when he confronted a gang of young men who had given drugs to the woman he had hired to take care of his palsied adoptive father. The injury lost him a bone and his peace of mind. He recalls being afraid to go to his father’s home or his girlfriend’s house out of concern that he or his family would get hurt.

“Then this tall white dude snatched me and said, ‘Damon, I want you to read.’ I thought it was the police,” Bryant said. “But it was Sam Woodhouse.” Woodhouse, the producing director of the San Diego Repertory Theatre, remembered Bryant from earlier shows.

Bryant went to the reading, where he met Max Roach and George Ferencz. They were working on a jazz version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” which opened at the Rep in 1987. They handed Bryant a part to sing and he walked away with the part of Bottom. He played it with a cast on his injured arm.

Bryant had performed before but not professionally. As a student at San Diego Mesa College he picked up English credits by performing at the Educational Cultural Complex. Later, he performed in the Southeast Community Theatre production of August Wilson’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” at the Lyceum Space.

He had no formal training either as an actor or a singer (although he grew up singing in the congregation of the Calvary Baptist Church), but directors quickly picked up on what he calls his “natural” talent.

“I don’t know how to prepare. I don’t have any methods. I just do it,” he said.

After “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” one part led to another as David McClendon, then associate director/casting director of the Old Globe Theatre, called to offer him the part of a black cowboy in the Stephen Metcalfe musical “White Linen” in 1988. The job included a chance to get an Equity card. Bryant took it, even though he had been simultaneously been offered “The Colored Museum” at the San Diego Rep.

But rather than being awed by the opportunity to work at the Globe, Bryant also let the writer and designers know when he found the work offensive to him as a black man.

He was particularly incensed by the costume he was asked to wear: a shirt stained with chicken grease, overalls and big shoes. There were black cowboys then who dressed as the white men did, he insisted. He wanted to wear cowboy boots and a cowboy hat. He walked out over the conflict and, in retrospect, he said, “They should have fired me.” But someone from the theater called him that night, and the next day he returned, with a book about black cowboys to show that blacks did indeed dress as the whites did.

“I got my cowboy boots, and I got my cowboy hat. I didn’t get my gun. But they did give me a knife.”

Bryant has had his favorite shows, among them “Glengarry Glen Ross” at the San Diego Rep, but along with nearly every role, he gives what he calls “the Damon lesson” in which he tries to “educate” the people he works with as to racial sensitivity.

Now in rehearsals for his next show, “The Boys Next Door” at the Lamb’s Players Theatre, opening April 19, Bryant, who is deeply religious, is letting the cast and director know when the script’s depiction of the language his black character uses is not authentic.

“In this part I’m playing, there are a lot of lines that use the infinitive form of the verb ‘to be’ as in ‘I be this, I be that.’ I’m changing that. Instead, we use the word ‘be’ adverbially as in ‘I’ll be standing here.”’

Lamb’s isn’t fighting his efforts.

“They’re nice people. They’re handling it with love and patience and understanding,” he said.

Bryant was born in Washington, but raised in San Diego from the age of 16 months, when he was adopted by his mother’s cousin and wife. He has made a lot of fast friends here in the theater world, especially at the San Diego Rep, where he has been cast in eight shows, including the role of Langston Hughes in the recent world premiere of “The Life and Life of Bumpy Johnson.” He said he has made his share of enemies, too, but he doesn’t regret that either.

“Baby, I have survived from the streets, and I have come close to losing my life on several occasions, and no one at any theater is going to intimidate me. I’ve never revered them or thought I better be good to this person because this person might hire me because I could always make money doing something else. And I have. I have always had a real job.”

He just left his job as a night security guard and is selling cars. He intends to get a degree in accounting to help support his wife, Marvell, 2-year-old daughter Jessica and his dog.

Bryant wouldn’t mind being a film star someday and intends to get an agent after “The Boys Next Door” concludes May 25, but he said he will always have another way to make a living besides acting.

“I like to tell them (producers, directors) to kiss my ass if they become condescending or insulting. I like to tell them I don’t care, I can do something else.”

PROGRAM NOTES: The La Jolla Playhouse has lined up Phoebe Cates, Susan Berman and Laura Innes as the three sisters in Anton Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” with Saturday Night Live cast member Jon Lovitz, George Hall, M.K. Harris, Robert Picardo and Nancy Travis rounding out the cast at the Mandell Weiss Theatre. The show, to be directed by artistic director Des McAnuff, kicks off the 1991 Playhouse season May 12 . . . .

Ticket sales for “So Many People Have Heads,” the San Diego Repertory Theatre benefit starring Whoopi Goldberg, Ben Kingsley and Patrick Stewart on Saturday, were sluggish enough to make those working the box office nervous last week. But sales Monday were brisk, and Tuesday, after Goldberg won best supporting actress for “Ghost,” they were even swifter. Tuesday afternoon, only a handful of seats were left for Saturday’s 6:30 p.m. show and about 100 for the 9 p.m. show. Tickets range from $50 to a $200 package that includes dinner and a reception with the opportunity of meeting all three performers. . . .

Thanks to the Bowery Theatre’s successful production of “The Laughing Buddha Wholistik Radio Theatre,” which has just been extended through April 21, it looks as if the theater will be able to move to a new show and the announcement of a new five-play season. The deficit has been reduced from more than $30,000 to just less than $25,000, artistic director Ralph Elias said. . . .

The Big Kitchen Dessert Theatre will extend its production of Vaclav Havel’s “Audience” through April 14 . . . .

The Famous People Players, a renowned puppet company from Canada in which 15 of the 20 cast members are developmentally disabled, will present its depictions of such famous people as Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley and Liberace on Monday and Tuesday at 9:45 a.m. and 11:45 a.m. at the Spreckels Theatre.