Antony Russell plays Jackie Robinson running the bases as he talks with Kate Rozycki, playing Dorothy. |
Story and photos by Erin Grigson
University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Telecommunications
Two actors portrayed 10 characters in “George Washington
Carver and Friends,” performed at Midway College on Sunday afternoon. One actor
played nine characters, all notable African Americans.
Antony Russell is a 25-year-old actor who has worked for
Bright Star Touring Theatre, based in Asheville, N.C., since January. In
Sunday’s play, his major role was agricultural chemist George Washington
Carver. Carver was known for developing more than 300 uses for peanuts, and
that passion was portrayed in Russell’s performance.
In a series of costume changes, he played baseball Hall of
Famer Jackie Robinson, potato-chip inventor George Crum (left), egg-beater inventor
Willis Johnson, self-made cosmetics millionaire Madame C.J. Walker, heart
surgeon Daniel Hale Williams, Cascade detergent inventor Dennis Weatherby,
educator Booker T. Washington, and Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court justice. Those roles are pictured below in that order, ending with Carver.
Throughout the play and during Russell’s costume changes,
Kate Rozycki, 23, played a young student named Dorothy, who was researching
famous African American inventors and ground-breakers. Using what she called
her “magic book,” she met all these people, all played by Russell. The character
of Carver kept recurring, as Dorothy’s essay topic always came back to him.
Rozycki said in an interview, “At one of the shows the other
day, (some adults) were like, ‘You made learning about all these people really
fun.’ So this show is deceptively educational because maybe people don’t
realize how much they’re actually learning.”
About 80 people were in the audience for the performance,
most of them children. During the play, to teach the kids about the three
branches of government, Rozycki chose three from the audience and brought them
on stage. She then gave each of them a hat or wig to put on their head to
designate them as a specific branch. A boy with a top hat represented the
executive branch, a girl with a Ben Franklin wig represented the legislative
branch, and a boy in a powdered wig represented the judicial branch. Meanwhile,
Thurgood Marshall talked about his time as a lawyer arguing the Brown v. Board
of Education case that ended school segregation.
Rozycki said she has been with the company since November of
last year. On her last tour, she was the one with all the costume changes. In
“A Dickens Tale,” she played all the characters except Scrooge.
For this play,
though, Russell was the actor with hands full. However, he had some tricks up
his sleeve.
“Sometimes you have to put on a lot of different accents to
help out with that,” he said in an interview.
He said he has learned how to speak in several accents,
including Jamaican, Trinidadian, African, Bostonian, and New Yorker.
Still, that didn’t make his job much easier when it came to
all the costume changes he had to do in the hour-long play. During the
question-and-answer session with the audience after the show, Rozycki
complimented him, saying, “He did a good job. I didn’t have to stall once.”
After about 60 performances, it seems the pair should have
it down to a science. In a little less than two months, Russell and Rozycki
have performed this show anywhere between 50 and 70 times. And they still have
a month to go.
Along with the Carver play, they are also currently
performing “Struggle for Freedom: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King.” While
the Carver show is more upbeat and interactive with the audience, the King play
is more serious. In both, the pair enjoys working and performing together.
“I love how fun it is,” Russell said of the King play. “I
think it’s so awesome that we’re able to give that to people and let people
feel what it may have been during that time.”
Rozycki agreed, saying of the Carver play, “This is a fun
show. It’s kind of goofy.”
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