Tag Archives: blackcreatives

21Jun/22

DeWanda Wise and Dr.Rebecca Hall Discuss Audio Drama, “Wake”

Wake

I found myself intrigued with the history of women-led revolts during times of enslavement, mostly because it is barely mentioned when it comes to Black History. With the new audio drama, Wake, the audience is taken on a journey with Dr. Rebecca Hall as she learns more about these fierce and inspiring women while facing her own obstacles, including resistance from the educational system. With Dr. Hall’s story of perseverance and the captivating voice acting of DeWanda Wise, Wake is an audio project you’ll definitely have to check out. Dr. Hall and Wise were able to take the time to discuss the journey of the project with Taji Mag. 

Dapper Dr.Feel (DDF): What inspired you to turn your graphic novel into the audio version that has just been released? 

Dr. Rebecca Hall (DRH): The Podium, who produced the audiobook, swooped right in and was like, “We wanna make an audio drama” and I’m like, “Awesome!”

DDF: Ms. Wise, how did you get involved with this project? 

DeWanda Wise (DW): My TV agent sent it to me. They know that I love information. I need as much information as humanly possible, so they sent it all at once. I just devoured it all, honestly. I read the graphic novel and I was a real creep and really dug into Dr. Rebecca Hall’s whole life, as much as [was] available online. I was really struck by it and it was one of those things that I could automatically recognize as kindred, both in ideological point of view and the approach to the project. Something that we talked about quite a bit was my approach as an actor, it was quite anthropological. I was also an Urban Studies major, so I’m just deeply invested in how we carry our lives and the lives of our ancestors.

I prefer to be hit [with projects that grab my attention], which is, like, deep, you know. It’s just, it struck me really deep. Yeah. Yeah.

DDF:  So how was your preparation different from your acting roles or your theater roles? 

DW: Not much to be honest with you. I think my approach is my approach. I’m like super research-centric. It was mainly kind of balancing and matching her (Dr. Rebecca Hall’s) very iconic voice. Very specific. 

DRH: My voice is iconic? 

DW: As soon as someone hears your voice, they’re like, “I know who that is”. Now you know this about yourself. 

DRH: I don’t know this about myself at all. 

DW: Now you do.

DDF: Dr. Hall, you’ve been through a lot during your career…being fired and taking jobs you were over qualified for. How did you continue to press on? 

DRH: Yeah, it was a nightmare. There’s actually so much that’s not even in the story, but I actually kept track of how many jobs I applied for. At one point, this was actually during the recession. I had 184 cover letters that I created over a two-year period. I was a mess. I mean, the last time I got fired, I got in the car and drove down to Moab, which is about four hours from my house. Then checked into some fancy place and stayed for a few days. I was already overwhelmed and doing all of this. I had a lot of legal support from protestors. My partner was very supportive and kept motivating me to move forward.

My father was really influential: he helped shape this, this determination I have. He was born in 1898, and never finished eighth grade. He lived in Chicago, working weird jobs like shoe shining and waiting tables. He kept getting fired because he wouldn’t be deferential to white people. Like, he wasn’t doing the Jim Crow thing and he just kept getting fired. I guess that’s in my DNA.

DDF: DeWanda, what was one of the obstacles you faced while recording? 

DW: There weren’t really any obstacles. It was a really lovely week, honestly. I’d just finished a job that was very lovely, but also very white. So the experience on Wake was so nice. These are some of my favorite actors. I get there and Chante Adams is there, it was so lovely! [There] was a Black woman Playwright, Black woman Director… Podium really lets us do our thing. 

DeWanda Wise (Middle), Chanté Adams (Right), and other castmates reading WAKE.

DDF:  Dr. Hall, so which one was worse, reading the painful stories of Black women in the past or revisiting your past while developing this project?

DRH: It’s interesting. I was just thinking about that. So, in the book, where I talk about how difficult it was…my emotional journey dealing with a lot of racism obstacles at Archives…it was all almost 20 years ago, so I have a kind of distance from it. Whereas, Wake is very present. So in a way, it was kind of more painful to write this. 

DDF: DeWanda, what historical figure would you portray in a movie? 

DW: I would play Assata Shakur in a second! We were talking about getting the rights to that book and it is impossible because she’s a fugitive in Cuba. I’ve asked and am really trying to figure out a loophole, but yeah. 

DDF: Would you write that movie? 

DRH: I don’t think so, but I don’t know. Shakur’s autobiography helped me survive law school at Berkeley. Like, it was, you know, it was one of those reads where, at different moments of my life, I read it when I needed it. 

Make sure to purchase your copy of Wake, available exclusively on Audible now.

Wake

Wake is an imaginative tour-de-force that tells the powerful story of women-led slave revolts, and chronicles scholar Dr. Rebecca Hall’s efforts to uncover the truth about these women warriors who, until now, have been left out of the historical record. 

Cast: DeWanda Wise, Chanté Adams, Jerrie Johnson, Fọlákẹ́ Olówófôyekù, Katherine McNamara, Bahni Turpin, Rhian Rees, Karen Malina White, Román Zaragoza, Alex Ubokudom, John Clarence Stewart, Blake Cooper Griffin, Tim DeKay, Kate Steele, André Sogliuzzo, and Matthew Wolf.

Originally published as a part graphic novel and part memoir, Podium Audio acquired the exclusive global audio rights to Wake, the graphic novel named one of the Best Books of 2021 by NPR. Over the last year, Podium Audio has developed this work into a feature-length audio play in partnership with critically acclaimed playwright and television writer Tyler English-Beckwith.

24May/22

Disney Launchpad Finalist, Spencer Glover, Is Ready to Share More Stories

Every once in a while, I find an indie short film I can connect with during my coverage of film festivals. One of the films that stood out to me at the 2021 Bentonville Film Festival was Message Read by Spencer Glover.  Not only did Spencer impress audiences with his touching film, but he also won over the judges for the Disney Launchpad contest. He was selected as Director for the project, Black Belts

Taji Mag was able to catch up with the busy Writer/Director to talk about his upcoming Disney Plus project and his work as a creative. 

Dapper Dr. Feel (DDF): When did you fall in love with filmmaking?

Spencer Glover (SG): It’s been a little bit of a, well, not-so-crazy story. As a kid, I watched a lot of movies. I remember watching movies like Blood Sport and Jurassic Park. And so I think the love for filmmaking started when I was a kid. The “seed” was planted when I was young, but it didn’t really sprout until college when I got into Tennessee State. 

I remember as I was walking on campus and, at this point, I was studying Music. I was walking around the music building and it was connected to the Communications department. So I walked past some students that were running the Tiger News Broadcast, which goes out to the entire school. And I just saw this group of kids and they’re running the show… the cameras, they had a director, there were students working on the sound, and they were doing interviews. Something about that just sort of struck me and, later that semester, I changed my major to Film. From there, everything exploded. 

DDF: What is your process for making your films? Does it differ depending on the genre?  

SG: You know, I’ve realized this: that [with] films, for me, all I’m trying to do is just connect to the emotions that I felt as a kid watching movies. So, I’m trying not to be a Filmmaker who just deals with one topic because I love so many different types of films. But I do recognize that there are certain personal dramatics that come out of your work unconsciously.

For me, the themes could be anything from losing a parent or dealing with childhood trauma to just protecting things, protecting the world that you live in. Those things have sort of found their way into everything that I’ve written so far. And I think it’s going to continue to be that way. I try to recognize that feeling when I have an idea and I feel like that inspiration comes over my body. I try to really grasp onto that and examine what it is about the idea that is sticking with me.

DDF: What is your favorite film genre? 

SG: I have a lot of guilty pleasures in film. Action films are probably always going to be some of my favorite. Action comedies too! I think of films like Rush Hour shamelessly. It’s one of my favorites. It’s got a little bit of a different tune than what I regularly watch now, but I just try to appreciate the heart of the story and what it was trying to say. I’ve always been attracted to Sci-fi films and, like, the whimsy of filmmaking. So, I love to watch stuff that transports me to a different place where I can just forget about my problems and the world for an hour or two, and just kind of get sucked into the world of the movie.

I like those character-driven sort of indie dramas too. Like the ones you watch and just know that this film is going to break your heart. I was watching Drive My Car the other day and during the first 20 minutes of the film I’m like “This movie is going to break my heart.”. An hour or two later I am in tears saying to myself “Why is life like this, why do we have to go through this?”

DDF: What was your reaction when you got selected as a Launchpad finalist?

SG: Just pure joy. I remember one of the coordinators for the program set up a meeting with me for 15 minutes after the second interview. I got on the call and the coordinator said “man, I’m not even gonna waste time…you got it”. And I just had the biggest smile on my face. It was a big thing for me and I just felt a lot of joy.

I’ve gotten over a little bit of a hurdle in my career because, as Filmmakers, we all struggle with this; that idea of “can I perform at a level that’s high enough?” You aspire to that, but you do the work and then you put it out. Sometimes it doesn’t resonate or connect the way that you want. And you have that battle of, like, “Man, I don’t know if I’m in the right space or doing the right thing”. So hearing that I got into this was, it was a boost of confidence and it was really validating.

DDF: This leads to my next question. Have you ever questioned yourself at any moment in your filmmaking career? If so, how did you overcome it? 

SG: I did have my moment, but I was able to get over it. The post-production of my film, Message Read, was really hard. We had plans to take it to the professional post house, do professional color, and all these other things and, you know, money is tight in our industry. We only had, I think, a $12k budget for the project, and all of that money was used up during the shoot. So I had to take on being an Editor and doing graphics, visual effects, and color. It was a lonely process, but in the end, this film is such a personal story.

I’m very critical of my own work, so I’m seeing all of the shortcomings. We sent it out into the world and we submitted it to the Sundance Film Festival and South By Southwest Film Festival and all these places. We got rejected from all of them. 

I’ve learned that everything you create, you don’t control and it has it’s own life. So we put the film out and it got rejected a bunch in the beginning. Kariss (my partner and wife) had similar feelings: that we did a great job with this film. We’re happy and proud of it. We can’t control anything else. Then, at about four months into the pandemic, the movie started gaining momentum. Out of nowhere the project just started getting into festivals and people were really starting to respond to it. I think it had to do with the fact that, as a group, we were losing so many people at that time and the story is about dealing with loss. It was just connecting in a way that we didn’t expect. And it just goes back to the idea: you don’t know what’s going to happen. So, I’m thankful that Message Read is making a connection now. 

DDF: Can you tell us about your Disney project, Black Belts

SG: It’s a Kung Fu story. It’s a father and son relationship dealing with loss. It touches on aspects of masculinity and what it means to be masculine. I think you and I grew up in an era where a macho man was the way to be for boys and young men. I was talking to a friend about how from the 80s and early 90s, it was peak macho. It was, like, shoot’em up and a lot of action associated with masculinity, especially in entertainment. It was such a fun time, but it could be a little toxic and Black Belt touches on a few of those areas.

It’s coming out in 2023 on Disney Plus. We’re in development with it right now. We’re doing rewrites on the script and I’m working with Xavier Styles (the writer of the story). It’s also a true story for him, so it’s been really fun. It’s definitely a process and it’s really setting me up in a way that feels true to the studio world because this is the first film that I’m going to be directing something I did not write.

Also, a big part of this program is that it’s multi-hyphenate filmmaking. This season, they actually split it into two groups. So there are Writers and there are Directors. I just applied as a Director because I wanted to really take a shot at receiving somebody else’s script, finding myself in it, and then putting it up on screen. 

You try to find your way into it and make sure that you connect with the material. It’s been a journey. We have about another month of development, then we go into pre-production, then we shoot the film in the Summer, then post-production takes place, and then there’s a release on Disney Plus. 

The entertainment industry has shown progress in Black creatives getting exposure to audiences across the world. Spencer Glover is one of the names that will be on that list. I know Spencer talked about how the movie Drive My Car broke his heart. Well, Message Read broke my heart and so I’ll be looking forward to seeing his future projects. Make sure to check out his work on his website and be on the lookout for his Disney Plus project, Black Belt, in 2023.