Second Act
Can a hugely ambitious new production help the Duke Ellington School of the Arts stage an encore of its past achievements?

By Robin Rose Parker
Sunday, April 13, 2008

CLUSTERED TOGETHER IN THE MIDDLE OF THE GYM, the principal cast members of "The Wiz" are sitting in chairs rehearsing their lines. Their director, Lynda Gravátt, a veteran actress of stage and television, as well as a former teacher at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, takes a moment between scenes to talk about what is scheduled for the days and weeks to come. This rehearsal will be one of the last conducted in the gymnasium. The theater upstairs, which is undergoing some unexpected repairs, will finally be ready for the cast and the crew to begin the last stages of their preparations. That period will focus on the technical aspects of the performance, such as lighting and sound. And no one is more eager for the move than Gravátt.

"I really feel that you all are ready to get into the theater," she says, sliding her glasses from the end of her nose into her dark brown hair. "You all have to stay focused when we get into tech. When we get upstairs, I want you to all be so fierce and so focused that, if anything goes wrong, it won't have anything to do with you."

Sitting at the director's table with the other adult members of the creative team, Gravátt considers the students in front of her. "I know that you're all tired," she says. "I want you to rest when you're not rehearsing. Crash out whenever you can."

It is the end of a long week at Duke Ellington. In less than two weeks, these students will take the stage in what may be the biggest production in Ellington school history. It will involve nearly 200 students from all eight of the arts disciplines: theater (acting), technical theater, dance, vocal music, instrumental music, visual arts, museum studies and literary media.

Head of School Rory Pullens came up with the idea of putting on a show that would reestablish Duke Ellington as one of the premiere arts education institutions in the country. Convinced that no ordinary production would suffice, Pullens and his team hired 42 theater professionals who agreed to work for a fraction of what they would typically be paid. Gravátt, who has served as a visiting director for Ellington's shows in the past, was the first onboard, and it is her vision that the rest of the artists are striving to realize.

Gravátt's reluctance to choose among the large numbers of students who showed up to audition led, at least in part, to her decision to have two casts that could perform on alternating days. There was also a practical reason: 12 shows over nine days. That schedule seemed a tall order for the students unaccustomed to the vocal requirements of daily performance.

Satisfied for the moment with the progress of this particular cast, Gravátt and her team step out into the cold January air to take a break.

Both casts want to perform on opening night, closing night and the night of the Cappies (Critics and Awards Program) review, which is when other high school students critique and potentially nominate the show and its performers for "Oscar-like" awards. The murmurs of their discontent have reached the ears of the director, and, as Gravátt walks purposefully to her chair and reconvenes the rehearsal, it is apparent to all that she is displeased. "Let's be clear about what is really important," she begins. "We are all in support of whoever is on. Nothing is in stone. You can be replaced, because, guess what? I'm the director." The silence in the room is broken only by the hissing of the antiquated radiators.

"If you don't know who I am, go home to your computers and Google me," she says. "I lost a Broadway job today because of you. Because I left a job to come down here. It is a sacrifice I have made." Some of the students appear chastened, while others avoid her unflinching gaze.

"This school began as a workshop -- Workshops for Careers in the Arts," Gravátt says. "Careers. That doesn't mean you'll be famous, but it means you will be able to pay your rent."

RORY PULLENS KNEW HE WAS DREAMING BIG. He was betting that his high-end production of "The Wiz" would fill the 839-seat theater each night and draw the interest of top-tier corporations to consider underwriting future productions. This was just the kind of vision that Duke Ellington's governing board was looking for when it hired him two years ago. The duties of the head of school go beyond those of a typical public school principal; in addition to being the dean of arts and the head of academics, he would have to help raise funds for the school.

When Pullens, 50, was asked to interview for the top spot, he was more than a little surprised. He was happily ensconced at the Denver School of the Arts. But he was intrigued by the reputation of the Ellington school and wanted to keep his interviewing skills sharp, so he responded to the call.

Pullens never expected that he would make his reputation as an educator. A Southern California native, his aspirations have always revolved around the entertainment industry. Since his days spent studying "The Tonight Show" as a small boy, he had been interested in what went on behind the camera. Who wrote Johnny Carson's monologue? That was the job he wanted. His academic pursuits were primarily connected to his passion for the arts. He has undergraduate degrees in communications, theater and English, and he earned master's degrees in education administration and speech communication merely to satisfy his parents' practical concerns about how he would earn a living. Pullens spent more than a decade in the entertainment industry, working as a writer, producer and script editor on stage, film and television projects, including "Hollywood Shuffle," "The Five Heartbeats" and "A Different World." But eventually his desire to spend more time with his wife and three children caused him to consider education as a career.

After working for several years in Southern California, at Compton High School and then at the Los Angeles Arts Academy, Pullens and his family moved to Colorado. There, Pullens served as the creative director at the Denver public schools' elementary arts school, Smith Renaissance School of the Arts, whose curriculum he helped to design. He eventually moved to the prestigious Denver School of the Arts and held simultaneous positions as arts principal and director of academic affairs.

His journey to Washington for his interview had a less than promising start. The airline lost his luggage, and his late arrival precluded a trip to the store to buy a replacement suit. So, dressed in a sports jacket, a T-shirt and jeans with a picture of the late rapper Tupac Shakur on them, Pullens showed up for the daylong interview with the board, PTA members, staff and students. "I said to myself, they will really have to see you for exactly who you are," Pullens recalls. And they did. The students liked the idea of having a head of school who was down with Tupac. And along the way Pullens decided he was down with Duke Ellington as well.

Pullens, his wife, Juanita, and the youngest of their three children, Keana (now a literary media senior at Duke Ellington), arrived in the Washington area in December 2006. From the beginning, Pullens says, he stepped into "internal chaos." "We all wanted the same things," he says. "It's just that we all had different ideas of how to get there." Pullens wanted to return the school to its former position as a top arts facility, despite its deteriorating physical state and what school officials have perennially seen as inadequate support from D.C. Public Schools.

From its beginnings, Duke Ellington was a model for innovative collaboration. The school evolved from a summer program, the Workshops for Careers in the Arts, which was conceived to give students with raw talent and little or no resources instruction in the arts. From the start in the late 1960s, founders Peggy Cooper Cafritz and Mike Malone, who is now deceased, knew that if they had any hope of achieving their goal, they would have to capture the interest of the city's most wealthy and influential people. "There had to be some way for the District to recognize the power of the arts," says Bill Harris, a visual arts teacher who participated in the workshops. So, in an effort to draw attention to these talented teens, Cooper Cafritz and Malone took the students' art to the streets. They went into District neighborhoods, set up stages and performed for the residents. "Street theater began because that was a way to put a face on this program," Harris says. "That's how we got to be known, how we got to be a force."

Cooper Cafritz and Malone continued this vibrant idea when they opened the school in the fall of 1974. Their creativity served not only as a way to attract funding but as a means to recruit future school talent. "We would perform in the 'hood . . . we would literally block off streets," says Jocelyn McClure, president of the Duke Ellington School of the Arts Alumni Association, who graduated from Ellington in 1978. "It gave us the opportunity to take the art to the streets for kids to be able to see," she says. "It was how Duke Ellington made its name."

The growing star power of the school's graduates and former staff members, such as opera singer Denyce Graves and dancer/choreographer Debbie Allen, further burnished Ellington's reputation. Yet frequent changes in leadership at the District administrative level began to pull the school off course. A parade of superintendents "had different ideas about how important the arts should become and how many resources do you give to it," says Harris, who has been at Ellington for 26 years. The school "kind of slowed down from year to year." The heads of school turned over quickly, with little carry-over of ideas. "There hasn't been any unanimity with regard to how we move from point to point," Harris says.

Shortly after his arrival, Pullens realized that "the staff had been through an awful lot." The school's artistic disciplines were used to operating separately, with their own agendas and very little oversight. "I knew my charge was [that] we needed to become one," Pullens says.

Pullens and his new team wasted little time. Last year, they began work on a recording studio, which opened recently and will enable students to produce tapes for auditions for college admissions. In addition, Pullens and the Ellington Fund, the nonprofit arm that raises money to supplement the school, have secured significant funding, much of it from the Magic Johnson Foundation, to begin work on an information media center that is scheduled to open this month. It will include theater and music libraries, a computer lab and listening stations. "They all needed to have progress that they could see," Pullens says.

But "The Wiz" may be his most critical test yet. With a budget of $200,000, Pullens wants to thrust the talent of Duke Ellington's students and staff into the spotlight again, a goal that will require everything the school has to give.

LYNDA GRAVÁTT HAS COME INTO THE THEATER to check on the show's technical progress. A company has been hired to work on the fly rail system, which is the pulley system used to lift and lower the scenery backdrops. Dressed all in black, from her dark sunglasses to her black shoes, she looks about with a slightly disapproving air. She is followed, as usual, by members of her creative team.

"Hey, Lynda!" Ken Johnson, chair of Ellington's theater department and one of the show's producers, calls out. "Are you okay?" His question has a bit of hesitation in it. Johnson says they had a tense phone conversation the night before.

Gravátt nods, her attention drawn by the sight of two crew members having an animated conversation just out of earshot. The idea that a new problem could be brewing is worrisome.

"What is that about?" Gravátt asks, extending a manicured finger toward the men.

She quickly is assuaged by her stage manager, Nicole Leonard. "It's nothing," she tells her. Leonard's industry credits include working as a road manager for gospel superstar Fred Hammond as well as serving as the stage manager for the national tour of "Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk."

"Oh," Gravátt says as she exits the stage. "'Cause I don't want any surprises."

Much of Gravátt's tension originates from her decision to have two casts. The implications for rehearsals, costumes and performances made an ambitious pursuit twice as daunting. But Gravátt was determined to include as many students as possible. "I'm a grandmother," she says. "I couldn't say no to the babies. So I made that decision." Then she adds somewhat ruefully, "And no one stopped me."

Gravátt has been steadily employed since she left a teaching position at Ellington in the 1980s. Soon after directing "The Wiz," she will have moved on to the role of Ruby in the Kennedy Center' s revival of the August Wilson play "King Hedley II." And she is working as an understudy for Phylicia Rashad in the Broadway revival of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."

As someone who has spent her share of time with actors, Gravátt recognizes the unrealistic expectations that many of the students possess. "Most of them want to be stars . . . I'm trying to help them understand that it's not about stardom; everybody is not going to achieve that," she says. "What I try to encourage them to understand is that it's more important to be a working artist."

Nichalas Parker, who is one of the students playing the role of the Cowardly Lion, says that preparing for the show leaves little time for a life outside of Duke Ellington. "My dad complains because I never see him," he says. "It's like I'm a professional, and I'm not getting paid."

Gravátt believes it's important that students see the realities of working in the theater. "I have exposed them to the arts in a way that has shown [some of] them -- 'I can't do this for a living; it's too hard' -- which is a wonderful lesson to learn."

JOHNSON IS SURROUNDED BY PROBLEMS. In addition to being a producer, he is also the artistic director, which puts him at the center of "The Wiz." If Pullens is the visionary, calculating the play's potential benefits to the school, Johnson is the man behind the curtain -- synchronizing the musical's various components into the single production the audience will experience. It is Johnson who spent the summer in preproduction, making decisions about the creative concepts of the show as well as what they would cost to stage. It is Johnson who has lined up the dozens of theater professionals to serve the show, such as Grammy-nominated conductor e'Marcus Harper, who has worked with numerous artists, including Michael Jackson, Aretha Franklin and Carlos Santana; Brandee Mathies, who has designed costumes for Washington's Studio Theatre for more than a decade; and set designer Patrice Andrew Davidson, who has worked around the country staging revivals such as "Beauty and the Beast," "A Raisin in the Sun" and "Porgy and Bess."

Johnson's many years spent as a producer and director have prepared him for the formidable task of coordinating "The Wiz." "Everybody here has had a bad day, when they just lost it," Davidson says. "Everybody, except for Ken."

"I'm a servant leader, that's what I believe," Johnson says. "I'm there for you. And I'm gonna do whatever I have to do to facilitate your creative brilliance. I've found that that has led to just as much respect from people as parading around looking like you're in charge."

Johnson, 50, has inhabited the world of theater for many years. In college, Johnson, who intended to become a lawyer, took an acting class and fell in love with the theater, finding a place and a focus that would allow him to explore a variety of interests. "Theater allowed me to encompass history, politics, music -- anything that I was interested in, the theater called upon," he says.

Since then, Johnson has worked on plays all around the world, including at the Kennedy Center and the Royal Court Theatre of London. He's spent much of his career at the renowned Crossroads Theatre Company in New Brunswick, N.J., which has showcased stars Ruby

Dee, Ossie Davis and Avery Brooks. That's where he met Lynda Gravátt.

At Duke Ellington, Johnson immediately started breaking down the barrier between the school and professional worlds, Johnson says. "The Wiz" is a continuation of that idea. "The best place to learn something is where people do it -- this merging of professional craftsman, artists, directors . . . with the students creates an opportunity for the student to be an apprentice inside an environment that is no longer theoretical."

His own desire to move from the theoretical has Johnson contemplating his future at Ellington. "I don't know how much longer I'll be here," he says. "A light has come on, and I think I'm nearing the end of what I have to give, what I could get, and now I think other journeys are calling."

RORY PULLENS IS LATE FOR THE MARKETING MEETING. With three weeks to go, the group is gathering to hash out practical details. Pullens arrives with nothing except his in-house radio. He sits down at the table and listens to the discussion in progress. It seems the box office team is struggling with maintaining ticket sales records. It is unsure how many $20-a-seat tickets have been sold and how many tickets have been put on hold for parents who are planning to pay later. "We are three weeks out, people!" Pullens interjects, sitting up in his chair. "Forgive me if I'm barking orders -- pay Pullens no mind -- but we need some answers. We need answers this week."

Pullens knows that everyone is feeling the anxiety of the approaching show. "We've raised the stress level for everyone," he says. "We're pushing, but that's what you have to do to make progress. You should feel stressed."

There is construction taking place all over Duke Ellington. Outside the theater, in the lobby that serves as the school's art gallery, a demolition crew is hard at work. Thanks to some generous local companies, the school is able to renovate this voluminous worn-down space. With not much time to re-carpet and repaint, the two-story gallery, which sits as a main junction in the building, has become something of an obstacle course for students and staff on their way to class.

Construction is happening inside the theater as well. The cast and the crew of "The Wiz" have finally moved in and are beginning the last leg of their journey toward opening night. The theater is stately; its deep crimson walls and red, cushioned seats have been well maintained and, were it not for the occasional glimpse of peeling paint visible just beyond the exit doors, one could forget that it sits in the heart of a beleaguered building.

There are clusters of activity all around the house. Gravátt and her team are sitting behind large boardlike tables that are covered with notes, snacks and Starbucks cups. On the other side of the center aisle, the stage managers are studying their plans, and the lighting director and his assistant have set up shop. Onstage, the opening scene is about to begin, and the student performers stand in their street clothes waiting for a voice from the darkness to tell them to begin.

"Let's take it from the top and see where it goes," Gravátt says, her voice resonating throughout the house even without a mike.

As they begin, the students are scurrying around in fear of an oncoming storm; the teens playing Uncle Henry and Auntie Em take clothes off of an imaginary line as they call Dorothy for help. Imani Bowden, a young woman with wide eyes and shoulder-length hair, runs out to the edge of the stage and calls, "Toto!" She runs to and fro asking for help from passing townspeople, many of whom will return as principal characters later in the show. The young man playing the Tin Man hobbles by with a cane. The Lion goes by as a vagrant. And all the while Dorothy is running and calling out into the dark theater for Toto.

"Hold!" Leonard, the stage manager, speaks into her headset. The actors come to a halt, but no one seems to know why. Then Leonard gives the cue for the scene to begin again. The sound of the wind blows, and Dorothy again runs from side to side looking and calling here and there. And as the cast members move across the stage, dancers emerge spinning, twirling and leaping.

"Stop," Gravátt's voice rings out.

"Hold!" follows Leonard.

"The wind just went by," Gravátt says, referring to dancers personifying the wind. "The wind just went by, and no one responded!"

The scene begins again, and again the dancers emerge to move around the stage, almost reaching the other side . . . "Stop! Gravátt says again, looking at her notes. "Tin Man, very nice with the wind. Antonio, that's two winds you didn't respond to. You have to respond to the wind," she says to them all. "Now it's time for you to create."

Days later, the sound still isn't right. This is not a new issue; it was evident when the theater rehearsals began, but everyone assumed that it would be worked out by now. Quietly frustrated by the lack of progress, Ken Johnson is sitting nearby, listening intently to a musical number that is being overshadowed by the crackle and hiss of faulty microphones.

Pullens walks in with a worried expression. "What's going on with the sound?" he asks.

"We're going to have someone from the Kennedy Center come in to check it out tomorrow," Johnson says.

Pullens folds his arms and looks at Johnson. "You do know that sound can ruin even the best of shows?" he says.

Johnson nods in agreement as he steps aside to receive a call. Gravátt joins in the conversation, and Pullens asks her what time she will require the students to arrive on days that the curtain will go up at 10 a.m.

"Nine," Gravátt answers.

"Nine?" Pullens asks, his eyebrows raised in surprise. "You're brave."

"I'm not brave," Gravátt says to her growing crowd of listeners. "I'm gonna tell them like my daddy told me. I came downstairs for my . . . I think it was my second wedding, and he was gone. I went to the church, and I said, 'Daddy, who were you gonna take down the aisle?' And he said, 'Whoever was here at 10.' I have two casts. They'll be on time."

IT IS OPENING NIGHT, AND THE CAST IS ALL HERE, but the crows don't have heads. Johnson has been concerned that the costumes were running late but didn't imagine he'd still be waiting for a delivery half an hour before the show.

"Have the heads arrived yet?" Johnson asks peeking into the costume room.

"No, not yet, but they're due any minute," says Beverly Johnson, who is in charge of Ellington's costume design technology program.

It's 7 p.m., and the show will begin at 7:30, with or without the crow heads.

Backstage is buzzing with activity.

Two designers are urgently working to adjust late-arriving costumes. The makeup artist had to pull out the day before, so Gravátt and one of the mothers are helping the students put on makeup.

At 7:15, a young man dressed in black hurries down the hallway with a large cardboard box.

"Is that them?" Ken Johnson asks.

"They just got here,"the young man nods.

He takes the box straight into the costume room, to the delight of the two crows waiting just inside the door. The box is opened, and the headpieces are lifted out reverently as students Le'Asha Julius and Ellen Winter inspect them quickly and then tug them on their heads. Julius, the taller of the two, struggles a bit to pull on the beaked head, but she manages and secures it under her chin.

Harper, the show's musical director, comes in to inspect the costumes. He's apprehensive because they didn't rehearse with the heads on. "I'm concerned because anything on your heads can change the sound of the mikes," he says. "Who, who, who," one of the girls excitedly practices.

The fully dressed crows start out of the costume room, "No matter what, just keep singing," Harper says with a smile. "Don't stop singing."

THAT EVENING, AS THE OPENING PERFORMANCE NEARS A CLOSE, the young woman playing Dorothy on this night, Keziah John-Paul, stands at the center of the stage, disheartened that she has been left behind by the Wiz, who has just lifted off in a hot-air balloon.

Dressed all in white, her hair separated into thick girlish pigtails, she is comforted by the band of friends who have been by her side for the adventure. And as they circle round about her, Glinda the Good Witch, a radiant vision in white and silver, descends as if from a cloud. Her angelic presence is accompanied by the surging orchestra and the sounds of surprise that can be heard from children in the crowd.

Dorothy begins to say goodbye to her faithful friends. As John-Paul sings the lyrics to the song "Home," the friends who accompanied her in Oz walk by one by one, leaving Dorothy to make the last leg of her journey alone. As she clicks the heels of her silver shoes three times, a distant light illuminates her aunt and uncle standing in the center aisle, waiting for her to return. She runs to them, a better, stronger and more grateful person, having been invigorated by new experiences, new friends and a belief in herself.

Postscript:

By all accounts, "The Wiz," which ran in mid-February, was a great success, selling enough tickets to cover the $200,000 investment and then some, Pullens says. The production also seems to have gained the school the attention Pullens was seeking. Even before the play was staged, Virginia businessman Kenneth Feld decided to extend a $100,000 grant to the school for another year, and Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty, who attended the production along with Feld and D.C. Council member Jack Evans, has since committed to improving the school's deteriorating building. The experience also has brought with it a more personal revelation for Ken Johnson. Perhaps what he has been looking for is already here. "You might be thinking, 'I need to go somewhere else'," Johnson says. "But what if somewhere else comes to you?"

Robin Rose Parker is a freelance writer based in Maryland. She can be reached at roseparker.robin@hotmail.com.