WHOSE MUSE? HARRY WATERS, JR: ACTOR/ DIRECTOR/ EDUCATOR
Welcome to the latest installment of “Whose Muse?”, a series of interviews about creativity with its practitioners. The goal is to learn about strategies and approaches from folks in a variety of disciplines— including those in fields we don’t ordinarily associate with creativity.
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Perhaps best known for his portrayal of Marvin Berry in “Back to the Future” (in which his performance of the songs “Earth Angel” and “Night Train” helped the soundtrack earn gold-record status) and “Back to the Future Part II”, not to mention numerous other film and television roles, Harry Waters, Jr. has achieved great heights in the theatrical world as well. In 1991 he originated the role of Belize in the first production of Tony Kushner’s play “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes”. He’s amassed numerous credits both on and off Broadway, as well as nationally at venues like Mark Taper Forum, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, American Conservatory Theater (ACT), and San Jose Repertory Theatre.
Waters has spent recent years teaching in the Department of Theater and Dance at Macalester College in St Paul, MN. While in the Twin Cities he’s also appeared at venues like The Guthrie, Penumbra Theater Company, Mixed Blood, Pillsbury House and Theater, and Ten Thousand Things Theater. And as we’ll see, he continues to innovate in a performing arts world scrambled and reeling in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Waters brings a warmth and positive energy to all my exchanges with him— at some point I’ll have to publish a sidebar on how I met Harry, a bizarre and humorous story. I’m not surprised at all that this interview leaned heavily on ideas he’s imparted to me before: mindfulness, resourcefulness, art through community, cultivating a sense of place, and creativity through conversation. I’m grateful that he took the time to speak with me for this series.
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What's your origin story as a creative practitioner?
Coming from Denver, Colorado and then going back east, as we would call it from there, going to New Jersey for college and then New York City. I got this push because I was landing in New York at the crux of the Black Arts Movement, which is what it's called now— quite a number of Black theater artists, writers, directors, actors, designers who I was able to get immersed with. That really gave me this idea of how creative I can be just by being around people and being in the space with them, but then also learning how to be— learning how to be trusted, but learning how to trust other creatives to do their best work.
Some of that had to do with not being afraid of making big mistakes because we all do, and we all did back then— a different time in the world. I would have to say that one of those creative impulses to do this kind of work just came from being immersed in a community that I did not know when I was growing up. In Denver, I did not have an experience of Black theater. So therefore, it was, "Oh, my God, there's this huge thing that I get to be a part of." I really appreciated the reality that was going on on the ground. And then, of course, 30 years later now, they've named it the Black Arts Movement, but we were just making theater everywhere, and that's what was really exciting.
I miss a lot of those people because once again, it's different eras, different decades, different ways of being successful, whatever that looks like, but also different ways of just staying connected within communities. I'm here in the Twin Cities now, so I don't have as many connections to a lot of the people that I used to work with. I was there for about 10 years, and then I went to Los Angeles, which was another experience mainly because it's a television and film industry town, and I'm basically a theater artist in different ways. But I learned how to let theater be my foundation so that then I could get work, as you would say, in the industry.
Many times my agent would be mad at me because I would leave LA and go do regional theater. It was like, “You don't understand, I need to go do this other thing that sharpens my craft so when I get back, I'm better.” A good amount of the time I would go away for eight weeks. I would come back and I would book guest spots in commercials like nobody's business, because the creative muscle had been exercised. The theater that I worked on with people in Los Angeles was actually very helpful, because most people during that period of time, we're talking about the '80s, early '90s, people were doing theater just to get noticed so they could get an agent come to get them for a TV series or for a movie, as opposed to doing theater for the experience.
And for me, it was like, how are we also being these storytellers telling these very important, sometimes just silly stories for either an audience or for a certain community? And I was really fortunate that that was a large part of my survival while I was in Los Angeles during those years. It allowed me to get some other creative work like doing lots of television and a couple of films, and commercials. So I was really grateful for the fact that I never had to wait a table. I worked for a PR firm for a little while, and I did some telemarketing because everybody does, but I went for interviews for restaurants and that wasn't going to happen, I would pour soup on your head probably, so it was a good thing that they didn't let me in there.
I think that's part of my creative process, is finding communities to work with. I don't do this by myself. I think it's really important to find people that are mostly like-minded, but also people that are doing interesting projects that you want to share, that you want to be with.
Who's been a mentor to you, either as a personal acquaintance or someone whose wisdom you've received from afar, and how have they inspired or trained you?
I was always jealous of people who had mentors, because a lot of the work I had to do, I didn't know what I was doing and I would find out by doing it. There were a couple of people who didn't realize they were mentors to me because I would basically study them from afar. There was a guy named Duane Jones who was running the Black Theater Alliance in '76 in New York City. Duane Jones you would know because he was the Black guy in [the George Romero zombie film] “Night of the Living Dead”. He was running this organization, and I just was amazed at the way that he had a way of working and talking with people to get an organization thriving and running. So it was from afar, going "Oh, I want to be like that." I think that was resonating for me because my parents, both of them, are people who are type A personalities, who were also in charge of running different organizations. My father ran the local, regional organization of the fraternity called Alpha Phi Alpha, and my mother worked with a sorority called Alpha Kappa Alpha, but they also were leaders in the community of the sort of Panhellenic council at the church, of course, and people that would lead, sort of block organizations.
So seeing people run organizations and how they had to embrace different personalities was something that I got to witness. But I don't know that I would say directly I was mentored by them. My new phrase right now is “mentorees”— some of them are students, who've I've mentored, but they've also given me information about ways to be and how to work in the world. I'm very thankful for that— that was the gift that I think I got from Macalester, from those who graduate or are on their way to graduation.
I think it's very important for those of us who are seniors, who are elders, to recognize that there is this other thing that we can learn from those that are younger than us so we can be mentored as well as we are mentoring. So “mentoree” is a phrase I just want to put out there. I'm sure it's already been used, but it's something I'm embracing right now.
What is some inspirational creative advice you've received?
Oh, everything is fodder, your life— everything is fodder. Taking out the garbage is fodder for creative inspiration, going to a museum, walking down the street, standing and looking out your window, having conversations with people that you don't necessarily like, which is a harder one, but it also gives you something because something churns.
You want to look at the world as a way where there's no mistakes, there's only divine appointments. So what we do with these interactions, it may not be very direct or it may not be in use for a project that you're doing, but it's information that you then get to take in, and it's probably going to come out sideways in another kind of project. I always love to go to bookstores when I'm working on a project and I just wander around. I look at the big picture art books, I go in and page through some of the children's stories. You go through the award-winning novels and just page through them, sometimes just sit in a bookstore and there's something about the information that's being created in that space that you just absorb.
If you get a chance to go to nature, I mean, I'm not a camper or a hiker so much, but even going to the park. I advise people to do a vocal acknowledgement of what you see in front of you. For example, oh, “The sidewalk is cement and there's lines on it, and there's grass that's rolling over, there's this large tree, there's a bird that's coming down and flying over towards the lake, and there's a lake, there are some geese over the lake.” And as you're actually talking out loud, you're doing a meditation because you're getting out of the thoughts in your head that can drive you into a spiral, but you're also finding a way of giving voice to what you're seeing.
And it's primarily just for you, it isn't necessarily that you want to record it and someone's going to be using it, but it gets you into the space where you're able to acknowledge the beauty, the challenges, the horror, the amusement of things that are going on around you of actually giving voice to them. And then you have a way of talking with other people about ideas that you have, about ways of interpreting or translating a script or translating a concept that someone wants to share and wants to make it into a performance, or wants to make it into an art piece. I am stuck in being an artist. I'm not an accountant, I'm not a scientist, I'm definitely in the arts and entertainment field.
Sometimes entertainment may not necessarily be happy and joyful. It may be something that's challenging and hard, and those things are very much a part of how you are thinking and processing the worlds that you're walking in. Now that I'm older, I don't get to walk quite as much in as many places, so therefore I'm really mindful of how the tempo, my tempo has changed. And so with that tempo changing, I take in more things along the way. I mean, really noticing where the light fixtures are coming in, what's the source, is that an LED light or is it an old light bulb? And how that's giving off a different refraction to me. I don't know where that's going to show up in any of my work or conversations with people, but I find it also keeps me active creatively because I'm observing and questioning and acknowledging everything that I get to encounter.
We sometimes get our blinders on because we have to get to the next thing and then we have to get to this other thing, and we can only deal with what that is as opposed to having the blinders off and there's so much going on.
So all of those things are a part of the change in tempo, because what am I doing right now with what's in front of me? I'm looking forward to the time that I get to reengage groups or larger collections of people in public spaces or in creative spaces. I do have a thing that I do or have been doing for the last three years, called “Outside Voices”, which is in Powderhorn Park, where we make people laugh and scream and say hello to each other. It started because myself and Katie Burgess hadn't seen each other in a few months, this was at the beginning of the pandemic, and we saw each other and just started screaming. And we realized how good that felt because we were outside and we could do it— we could be fully voiced and fully present.
So that's part of the thing that I like about being where you are and then just acknowledging how you are in those spaces. I'm not a quiet, demure, coquettish kind of person, I tend to be a little bit more effusive, if you would say, or animated. And I don't have to apologize for it anymore, it's just like, I've been doing this for almost 70 years so I guess that's who I am. But finding places where I can be fully present, I think that's part of how I really want to acknowledge the change in tempo that I'm going through right now in my life.
What are some habits you can share that help you cultivate creativity?
Music of course. And I always encourage people to suggest songs for me to hear, people from across the spectrum, even if it's in different languages, because then I'm hearing once again, the music of life that's coming from these different sources. Whether it's my sons sending me something that I need or I probably haven't heard, or whether it's my parents who are playing some old jazz, all those things fuel that other creative part that I feel is an important element in just thinking about being a creative. Also, I read the comics. Sometimes they're actually funny, but there's also something that's a little bit of a release because artists are making those strips— they come from those many artists that are creating these ideas and these characters and observations about life, and they're put out there to be shared with us.
I will say that I've made a conscious effort to not read the newspapers so much because I just get angry and frustrated and depressed, so it brings up a different kind of emotional vibration. I'm looking forward to going outside more. I mean, that's really where I'm—like I said, I'm not a hiker or a camper, but just even going to the place that people don't like. The Mall of America is great because you're seeing people in their natural element, being themselves in that element, whether it's families or there's teenagers, people from other countries, people that are shopping, people that are working in the shops— there's something very vital about that human engagement of people that are moving in spaces.
I guess I'm really driven by how are we more human with each other. Someone asked me about what my purpose was that I wanted to bring to the world, and I had to say it, I just want people to be more human with each other. Acting of course can be a foundation for practicing that, but if that's a part of what I get to share with people, then I'd really like to be able to find a way that that's something that I get to leave the planet with.
Also, food. I'm not a foodie, I just like food. I mean, I learned to cook a lot during the pandemic. I make great banana bread and zucchini bread and sweet potato biscuits and lamb and pork chops with apples. So food is also something that is enthralling because it also takes me away from the obsession about anything because you have to actually do something. There's a process of seasoning and tasting and eating and cleaning up that food gives you as a part of an activity.
My other thing that really I love to share with people that's part of my therapy is I iron shirts. Every Sunday, I get the ironing board out, I put on something on television, and I iron the shirts. It's something that's a beginning, middle, and end activity. Because it's a crumpled shirt, it's been washed, OK, we spread it out, we iron it, we move it around, and then you get to hang it up and you've got a product that you actually helped become a reality. I recommend it highly. If you're putting your focus on it, then it allows that activity to be literally the most important thing you're doing. Because you want to get it done and you want to get it done in the best possible way. So you put a little bit more importance on it because you want to put your best into it, so it satisfies you that way.
What's been inspiring to you lately as a creative person, and why?
My son has created a show in New York. It's a BIPOC murder mystery immersive theater piece called "The Art of Killin’ It". He basically was able to get someone to give him some money to build a manor house inside a warehouse so the audience can go into these different rooms, and there's actors that are playing the different characters, but the actors also talk to the audience. It's not like Sleep No More where the actors don't talk to the audience, the audience just follows them. The audience gets to participate in solving the murder mystery.
I'm so impressed with the complications that he had to go through to make it happen. So I'm inspired by my son. He's created the show, it's been running almost a year— it'll be a year I think in July.
It's in this warehouse in Williamsburg in Brooklyn, and you can only have a audience of 25 to 40 because people do move in the space, and they were able to get it started even during COVID. They have COVID protocols. They lock up your phones before you go in. They were able to get some support from various community members to keep the show going. And now, he's looking on just switching up the casting and telling some of the stories. So it's very inspirational that way. I like that.
Can you provide some insight into your creative process, and why it's important to you to proceed thusly?
It used to be throw stuff at the wall, throw it all, see what happens. Now, depending on the foundations of it, if it's text-based, if it's very text-based, I really want to work with the writers or writer about what story they want to tell and how they want to tell it, and being able to ask them a lot of questions, but then also for them to be open to making changes. There's actually a conversation that we get to have. Sometimes the conversation may lead us down tracks that we never return to, but in that process, we've also created a relationship. Relationally, that's the key to all my creative projects.
A couple years ago during COVID, myself and my friend, Lelis Brito, were hired by Bare Bones Theater to do a different kind of experience because usually they would do a big extravaganza by the river, they'd have huge puppets, they would have fire, they would have musicians and bands and people sitting on bales of hay, and they would have a full week or two that all these performances would take place. Then because of COVID, they couldn't do anything in-person.
So what we were able to do was contact different artists in different communities, and we created a forum where they could respond to that. We call it the Passages, the Grieving and Mourning of the Fires on Lake Street. So this was that October after George Floyd. We had a weekly walk on Lake Street. Every Sunday, we would walk from Chicago and Lake down to the 3rd precinct on the other end of Lake and Minnehaha, and then we would walk back. Because we could be outside, there's something about walking in the neighborhood, and certain artists would come and join us and we would just have conversations, we would see certain businesses. And it allowed us to have a really grounded experience in the space that we wanted the artists to make work in.
And because of that, we were able to work with about 35 artists who all made different pieces or installations, and it was all up and down Lake Street and some of the arterial streets and parks and businesses. That became such a wonderful creative experience that we knew that there was no way we could duplicate it again. But it was because we risked something, and we started it because we wanted to make it relational. The relation was us talking with the artists and the artists talking in the neighborhoods that we were walking through.
People had new relationships. People went into stores they didn't realize were there because they're walking, they weren't on a bus or in a car. And that was a great way for the work that the artists were then engaged with, and so we were able to give them feedback on things about that because they had to work in their homes or in very isolated spaces because they couldn't all work together. So that was a great opportunity to working creatively, to find creative ways of working that were not normal because of the circumstances.
I also directed a piece in the parks in 2021, written by Elle Thoni, a piece called “Queen B: A New Work of Honeybee Futurisms”. It took place in the future, and it was a musical. We rehearsed outside in the park, we performed it at Franconia [Sculpture Park], we performed it at several places in Rochester, we performed in Powderhorn Park, and at what we call, not Robert's Lot, but here at the NDC spot on Chicago and Lake. So we were able to create performance outside.
For me, it was working with people that I hadn't worked with before, with little resources. I've got a studio, I've got a rehearsal space, I've got costumes, I've got set pieces, I've got props… Imagine having nothing and going, like, "So what do we have? What can we get? Who do we get to support us who can volunteer or just offer things?" And we were able to get a full production. We had musicians and rolling set pieces that I borrowed, because [Macalester was] going to throw away something and I said, "Tom Barrett, can I have that piece?" He went, "Sure." And we repainted and we made it into a jewel.
So there's a new way of just engaging people that you don't know and getting them to trust you, I will also say, and being honest about some mistakes that you made about being emotional. I'm an emotional person, so sometimes I have to roll it back, "Okay, sorry for losing my temper there, that was just something that happened and nothing personal." Yeah. But working with people in spaces where they want to bring what is important to them in the process, whether it's puppets, whether it's material, whether it's certain kinds of props that they think might be appropriate, and then how do you include those in the work that you want to collectively make?
I consider ourselves collaborationists. We're working together in as many ways as we can. I'm not as excited about regular theater anymore, that's something that has happened over the last two years—because I hadn't been in a theater. It's, like, well, performance and engagement can happen in a number of different ways, a number of different places. So I've really been happy about finding these different ways that I get to be in the world. I don't know yet what's going to happen with the next one because everyone's ready to open back up, so we're going to be doing the things we did the way we did them again. And am I interested? I mean, I'm happy that people are working, that they're bringing it, but I don't know that I need to do it right now.
Meanwhile, I get lots of offers now to help people with their scripts. I'm doing a workshop at the Playwrights' Center this week. I have a meeting right after this (I have to remind myself shortly) with a writer at Teatro del Pueblo who has a new script, and so I'm going to be helping him walk through it dramaturgically and direct it for them. I'm learning something, because a third of it is in Spanish. And I'm not a Spanish speaker, but I have to understand how the Spanish is helping tell the story because it's a big, huge, sprawling script.
So I still am very much enamored of writers. I say my drug of choice is writers because they have the courage to put the words on the page. My joy is, like, how do we bring the words to life? And they don't always have to be in a theater particularly, but they can be in a space that do we want—is it for the public? Is it just for a specific audience? How do we have that awareness of what is it that we're doing and making? Who's it for? Sometimes it could be for the three people that show up. Sometimes, yes, we want to have it online and it's going out to a hundred thousand views or something. I'm not locked into having to do it for notoriety right now.
Part of the reason I think most of us have done theater as such, is that exchange of human vibration. There's many other ways of doing it now, accessible in different kinds of ways now for different kinds of communities. I think that's what we've discovered, and hopefully there'll be more. How do we keep that going?
What holds you back, and how do you defeat these things?
I'm old, I'm Black, and I'm gay. I'm not from the street, I'm not a high functioning academic. What happens is sometimes I just play all the negatives, the things that I'm not, as opposed to the things that I do— the things that I do bring. And I would say in these last few weeks, I've been able to engage quite a number of former students who have reminded me how important the time that I spent with them was. And I didn't realize it, but it's something that I'm now having to acknowledge. So this is an interesting question also.
So we also have an imposter syndrome. There are better people who've done this better than I can, so what I put on my computer: “Avoid comparative despair.” I literally have it up here so that I can remember. There are people who are great writers. My partner is a great writer, he writes books, he writes assessments for PhD programs. He's working on a consulting project with creative strategies for cultural planning. And I'm going to go, "I don't do any of that, that's not what I do."
So I try not to let those things get in the way, but I know that I get people to laugh, I can get people to move, I can get people to at least think about something a little differently. I know the things that stop me are things that I've also learned. I've learned what makes me say “I'm not good at that, so I shouldn't do it.” Well, now I think we're in a mode where it's, like, "Why the hell not try it?" And that's what I'm going to try and do for the rest of 2023.
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