“We are so honored and excited to have the incomparable visionary artist Tonya Pinkins at Fordham Theatre. Her presence will have a transformational impact on the program and within Fordham University,” said May Adrales, director of the Fordham Theatre program.

The endowed chair was established in 2011 by acclaimed actor and alumnus Denzel Washington, FCLC ’77, to connect students with well-known industry professionals. Every fall semester, the chair teaches and works closely with students on performances and productions. Past chairs include Golden Globe-winning actress Regina Taylor, Tony Award-winning director Kenny Leon, and, most recently, Tony award-winning set designer Mimi Lien. 

Pinkins, the 13th chair holder, is no stranger to the stage. She has “won or been nominated for nearly every award there is in the American theater,” according to her IMDb profile. She was nominated for three Tony Awards, winning one in 1992 for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, Jelly’s Last Jam. She also earned Clarence Derwent, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, Lucille Lortel, Obie, and AUDELCO awards, and has been nominated for numerous other honors. 

Pinkins’ talents span the entertainment industry. She is an actress with more than 20 years in daytime television, appearing in popular television shows like Fear the Walking Dead, Madam Secretary, and Gotham, and performing in nine Broadway shows. Pinkins is also a filmmaker. Her award-winning debut feature film Red Pill was named an official selection at the 2021 Pan African Film Festival, won the Best Black Lives Matter Feature and Best First Feature at the Mykonos International Film Festival, and is nominated for festival awards worldwide. As an author, she has written two books, Get Over Yourself! How to Drop the Drama and Claim the Life You Deserve (Hachette Books, 2006) and Red Pill Unmasked: A Movie Making Memoir (Red Pill Movie 2020 LLC) and essays that have received international attention. She is also a podcaster, a singer who is performing in Manhattan this summer, an activist, and a mother of four. 

Pinkins is also a longtime educator. She has taught young artists at institutions across the world, including American University in Beirut, Old Globe London, the National Theater, Yale, ACT, UT Austin, Rutgers, UCSD, USD, University of Louisville, City College in New York, and New York University. 

Beginning this fall semester, Pinkins will become an integral part of the Fordham Theatre program, attending and offering feedback for student performances and leading workshops that center on building resilience, learning through failure, and taking creative risks. She will also teach an advanced course in her discipline, Creating a Character, where students will develop the skills necessary to breathe life and imagination into their performances.

“I am looking forward to learning how my work and experience can be of service to the architects of the future of the arts in our world,” said Pinkins.

Lien recently spoke to Fordham News in Pope Auditorium—the same space where she designed a set for a Fordham production more than a decade ago—where she reflected on her career and the semester ahead.  

How did you get into set design? 

I studied architecture as an undergrad. At that time, I didn’t know much about theater, but I was interested in thinking about space in a more conceptual and sculptural way, and then applying that framework to an architectural context that exists in real space with real people. While exploring how architecture can tell a story, I stumbled into set design. 

What is it about set design that you’re passionate about?

Set design is really central to a theater production because it establishes a physical world. You can have this world that is like a laboratory for life. It can be completely surreal or fictional. It’s a way to create really complete worlds that might be something that you haven’t encountered before, something that’s a little strange—something that moves you. 

What’s something about set design that most people don’t know about? 

One of my favorite things about being a set designer is searching for materials that suit a performance’s design objective and intention. What kind of material can create this image or illusion within the needs and confines of a theatrical stage and performance? Most of the time, those materials are not designed for how I’m going to use them, so I get endlessly amused while looking for industrial materials that were made for a different purpose. For example, I might be looking for something that’s shiny but also lightweight, or something that looks like falling ash. One time, I created a huge pile of red sweeping compound for a production of Macbeth, which represented internal organs of the body. I wanted it to be red because, obviously, there are a lot of references to blood in Macbeth! 

What brought you to Fordham? 

I’ve actually worked here before. Sixteen years ago, I designed the set for a production of Top Girls, which was directed by Erica Schmidt. But it was May Adrales, the new head of the Fordham Theatre program, who brought me in as the Denzel Washington Chair. May and I have collaborated together on a number of projects in the past. One day, she emailed me and asked if I would do it, and I thought it sounded amazing. 

What are you most excited about doing here?

Fordham has really well-rounded and solid training in theater. I’ve met alumni who studied directing, design, and production, and everyone is really well-trained and grounded with a solid foundation in theater. I’m excited to challenge the notions of what theater and performance can be and really put design forward in that conversation. It’s something that I think a lot about in my own work, and I’m excited to share that with the Fordham community. 

I just had my first class today, and my students all seem amazing. Most of them are fourth-year students, so they have already been through foundational design training, and I have a good mix of students from different disciplines. I’m excited to have people with a range of experience because what I want to focus on in my class is not so much the nuts and bolts of set design, but the conceptual ideas behind design and how we can push the envelope. I have structured my course to focus on designing for performances through a more architectural lens because that’s my background and how I have approached design. I feel like the key components of thinking about space architecturally, like scale, volume, materials, light, and sequencing of spaces, are all things that you might learn in architecture school, but they’re also totally applicable to theater design. 

For their first project, my students need to find a site on campus and then conceive of a performance that might take place in that site. So I’m also training designers to think about being conceivers of an event, too, and not necessarily responding to a script. I want to treat design as more of a holistic theater-making discipline, as opposed to, here’s where I fit into it.

What professional projects are you working on? 

I just returned yesterday from opening an opera at the San Francisco Opera, which will run for the next few weeks. It’s a new John Adams opera, Antony and Cleopatra, using the Shakespeare play as the libretto, along with a few other sources. Now I’m in the midst of finalizing the design for a new revival of Sweeney Todd on Broadway, which has just been announced. 

How do you feel when you reflect on your life’s work? 

I feel incredibly blessed, lucky, and privileged to have been able to create projects on some of the scales that I have. Every project has a whole different set of circumstances, and therefore a whole new set of things to learn about and research. I’m excited to continue working in the avenues that I have worked in, as well as revisit my architectural roots and branch out into public art projects outside the theater. But mostly, I feel like this chair is such a gift and an opportunity to give back a little bit and to share some of what I’ve learned and encountered on my journey, even though there’s still a lot to learn. 

What advice do you have for the next generation of theater makers? 

What constitutes a performance? Space, event, and spectators, but that can happen anywhere … inside a theater, but also a street. As long as you have some action that’s happening and somebody who’s watching it, it could be defined as a form of theater. But what’s amazing about theater is that anything is possible. The reason that I transitioned from architecture to theater is that in the latter world, you have the magic of illusion. You can do things like figure out how to rig a piece of concrete so that it appears to be floating. So my advice to students is to be tenacious. Pursue the impossible, because in theater, anything is possible. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

On Dec. 2, Tommy joined the theater faculty for a virtual town hall on Zoom, where she responded to questions about her acting class at Fordham, her first experience working on a major motion picture, and the ghosts that find their way into all of her projects. Clint Ramos, head of design and production, moderated the discussion. The following is an edited excerpt.

Clint Ramos: How has your experience [at Fordham]been so far?

Liesl Tommy: The students that I have been working with have brought me joy every single session. They embody the things that I value the most in artists, which is curiosity and passion. It feels like that rush that one gets from rehearsal, of being in collaboration, of being with inquiring minds.

CR: What were the important [lessons]that you really wanted for them to get?

LT: The lesson plan that I had set for myself for the semester pivoted quickly in the face of what I was receiving from the students, in the face of their needs. My class is Creating a Character, and I pivoted from a pure acting class to something that was more spiritual. What I focused on was them as artists. Who are they, what are their voices, what are their dreams for themselves? And how do we make concrete practice manifest those things, in this time of turmoil?

CR: You’ve had so much success in directing. Is there any part of you that wants to go back to acting?

LT: No. I think that once you turn the corner [and spend]too many years away from it, your body changes and your performance muscles shift. I was an extremely disciplined actor because I had come from a dance background. I was one of those people who if I didn’t have literally three hours of physical activity a day, I didn’t feel like myself.

Once I switched to directing, the gaze shifted away from me, and I felt like my energy shifted from my body into my head. My workouts became much more about stress relief than being in top physical shape. I still work on monologues sometimes as a self-soothing activity, just to keep the connection between language and thought alive. When I’m talking to actors about that, about communicating thought, I just feel like I could never forget the thing that I’m asking them to do.

CR: When you’re talking about developing a practice for an actor in your class, is there anyone that you’ve said, ‘This works for a person who has trouble with this,’ and ‘This works for a person who has trouble with that’?

LT: There is a physical and a vocal practice that actors should be doing daily so that no matter what happens in that audition, that rehearsal room, or what happens as they’re walking down the street, they have connected with their pure self and their instrument.

The most important practice is one that allows you to know where your own power lies when people and forces are trying to take it away from you. I speak especially as a television director, when you’re walking into environments that are not always yours, that you didn’t create. Especially as a woman of color, you never know how welcome you are going to be in these environments.

CR: Do you think that informed your methodology in casting? You’ve been ahead of the curve in terms of really pushing for what we now call “nontraditional casting.”

LT: The phrase “nontraditional casting” isn’t useful for me because I grew up in South Africa, where people of color were in the majority. There was a huge Indian population, there was the indigenous population, and then also the African population. I just grew up saturated with every kind of person, eating every kind of food, and listening to every kind of music, and all of it synthesizing into a community.

I never really looked at it as nontraditional casting, I just looked at it as casting. But I never did what people call color-blind casting. When I cast outside of the dominant culture’s aesthetic, it was always with a political point of view that I was using to unpack ideas in the play.

CR: What was it like leaping from theater to a major-studio-backed motion picture?

LT: I’d always wanted to direct a film, and after Eclipsed we started kind of prepping for that. I was able to do a lot of very different kinds of television in a quick space of time with the eye on film eventually. Then, insanely, the Aretha Franklin biopic happened, and I chased it very hard. I had a very clear vision for it. The thing that I learned in television was that when in doubt, focus on storytelling. And I knew how to block, I knew how to compose, and I knew how to talk to actors. In my experience, even the stars, if you’re giving them something that will make them better, will not challenge you. They are so smart, and something magical happens. And then you’re on your way.

CR: What is the most important lesson you’ve learned throughout your career?

LT: Know what you love and then do that. There are certain things I just love and I put it on stage or on film all the time. As an artist, I accept that there are certain themes that in this lifetime I am meant to explore in my work, and I don’t fight it. I always put a ghost in everything that I am in charge of, and every single time it opens up something new in myself and my humanity.

CR: Yeah, what is that ghost thing?

LT: I don’t know, I just feel like we’re always learning about grief and we’re all haunted. I just feel like no one talks about it, but I feel like it’s one of the unifiers. Everybody eats, everybody drinks, everybody breathes air, everybody is haunted by grief.

CR: Anything that you can say to us that may have helped you buoy you forward?

LT: So much of our work is about muscling through. That’s good because we’re able to make magic happen with very little resources in the theater. But it also means that we put our minds and bodies through a lot.
I have realized that caring for my nervous system is what’s going to give me longevity in the business. I used to think it was money, I used to think it was maybe having a position of authority, being an artistic director or whatever. But it’s not that. So, the thing that I would say to everybody is, just make sure that you’re taking care of your nervous system and don’t close down to your community during this time. For us, that flow of energy is really survival.

Denzel Washington, FCLC ’77, received the inaugural Ossie Davis & Ruby Dee Living Legends Award from the Crossroads Theatre Company in New Brunswick, New Jersey, on October 19 during a ceremony that, perhaps more than any other in the celebrated actor’s career, highlighted his deep connections to Fordham University.

Presenting Washington with the award was Fordham Trustee Anthony Carter, FCRH ’76, the president of Crossroads’ board of trustees.

“Forty-six years ago on the Fordham University Bronx campus, a place we called 80 acres of paradise, our home away from home, is where I met our honoree Denzel Washington, and where our friendship began,” Carter said during the ceremony at the State Theatre New Jersey.

He praised Washington for his “stellar body of work” and for taking “acting and the industry far beyond where anyone else has.” But he also honored Washington in deeply personal terms. “I see you beyond being a great actor. I see you as a man of principle; determined, focused and disciplined. … I know you to be a great man and a great friend who just happens to be great at what you do. And we all cherish that.”

In his acceptance speech, Washington spoke to his faith, saying, “Man gives the award; God gives the reward.” He said he was “grateful, honored, and humbled” by the recognition, and “blessed to have a strong family.”

“But the reality is, I’m just beginning. The rest of my life is dedicated to glorifying God, to being a living witness of the grace of God, the mercy of God, the patience of God.”

He thanked Crossroads for recognizing Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, and others “who helped to teach me to be the actor I’m trying to become,” adding, “I am hopeful and humbled by the possibilities to come, on the stage and in the world.”

Washington, whose first stage role was in a 1975 Fordham Theatre production of The Emperor Jones, said later that those possibilities might include returning to Crossroads to star in or direct a production.

David Alan Grier hosted the ceremony, and various other luminaries paid tribute to Washington through performances and speeches, including Courtney B. Vance, This Is Us star Susan Kelechi Watson, Phylicia Rashad, and Stephen McKinley Henderson.

Rashad and Henderson are former holders of the Denzel Washington Endowed Chair in Theatre at Fordham, a professorship Washington established with a $2 million gift to the University in 2011. That same year, he also made a $250,000 gift to establish an endowed scholarship for Fordham Theatre students, 12 of whom attended the ceremony in New Brunswick.

Carter gave the Fordham students a shout-out during the ceremony and saluted Washington for his commitment not only “to the generation of actors here and around the world who stand successfully on your shoulders” but also to “the next generation of great actors.”

The Crossroads Theatre Company, which opened in New Brunswick in 1978, focuses on telling stories of the African diaspora, and in 1999, it earned the Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre. After two years on the road, the company, which is the only professional black theater company in New Jersey, has settled in as a resident member of the New Brunswick Performing Arts Center.

And yet, despite her brutal schedule, during a recent Monday afternoon workshop at Fordham College at Lincoln Center, Jackson arguably had as much, if not more, energy than her charges.

“When I get into it, the students give me so much joy and so much hope for what we got for the future in theater,” said Jackson, who sits on the board of the American Theatre Wing. “That they’re even interested! I live in California and most of those kids, they’re just trying to get into movies and TV, and I’m like, ‘Does anyone know what it is to love the theater?’”

Jackson told Broadway’s Playbill that her love of theater began after seeing the musical Camelot. She went on to develop extensive Broadway and off-Broadway credits, including roles in the acclaimed off-Broadway production of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf and the Tony-nominated Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, as well as dozens of film and television productions, including Juanita, U.S. Marshals, Fried Green Tomatoes, and Malcolm X. Her Tony-nominated Broadway run in A Raisin in the Sun placed her opposite Denzel Washington in a production that has since become something of a feeder for the endowed chair he funded at Fordham. The play’s director, Kenny Leon, held the post in 2014 and actor Stephen McKinley Henderson held the chair in 2016.

Jackson said that for her role in To Kill a Mockingbird, a reinterpretation of the classic novel by Harper Lee, writer Aaron Sorkin, producer Scott Rudin, and director Bartlett Sher each played a role in convincing the actress that she wouldn’t be coming to Broadway to play a black maid without agency, as the character is portrayed in the book. The New York Times notes that Calpurnia, as played by Jackson, is the “needling conscience” to Atticus Finch, the play’s lead protagonist, played by Jeff Daniels.

The veteran actress has said in several interviews that to play the role, she has drawn on memories of her grandmother, who worked in service for a family. In her workshops, she tells students to draw on their own experiences, but she also wants them to examine the playwriter’s intent and align themselves to the language and culture they are intended to portray. She said that for today’s students who are awash in the selfie culture of social media, it can prove to be a difficult task.

In a Q&A following a monologue workshop, Jackson discussed teaching today’s acting students, respecting the lines of a playwright, and theater’s role as a conduit for change.

What are some of the biggest challenges facing young actors today?

The generation now seems to be of one mainstream thought that they’re all plugged into: “This is who I am. Find me like this. This is how you got to get it.” They are committed to you coming to them rather than them having to come to you. It’s their thing. I’m here to show you the practical side of working. How to get it together to be a professional.

You require the students to mark up their scripts to denote pauses, inflections, levels, and rhythm. Why?  

When you mark your script, you mark the lines in the natural way that you hear it. This is an unnatural thing that we’re being asked to do, which is to act. So, we actors have to try to render the language and give it back in a way that people already know. And the audience hears that. The students are all smart enough in the academics of it, but they have to go back and try to figure out what’s interesting and an interesting way to say it. This is a safe space. We are here to get it, to understand exactly what it is, so there is no good, better, best.

Watching you reminded me of watching a coach on the field: “Take a breath here, take a count there, modulate your voice, modulate your tone.” Tell me about coaching students in that way.

One of the students has a beautiful voice that is very low, way down here. And I said, “First of all, you’re going to give yourself vocal nodes trying to talk down there all the time.” I understand it’s a beautiful voice, but you can’t stay there. You have to give me some levels. I told them all from the beginning, “We’re going to get a big bag, and we’re going to fill our big, large imaginary bag full of tricks and techniques. So that when we need them, we’ll go into them and use them.” And one is the, “one, two, three,” count that I did today. That’s just a natural sort of beat between a phrase transition. Because sometimes you’ll pause and say, “Am I pausing too long?” And that pause actually can be measured: Count one, two, three. For actors who know it personally, their clock is tuned to that already. Later in your career, you’ll meet people while you’re playing and you pick up on the rhythm of what they know. And by and large you can hear it: your rhythm, their rhythm, and you just fall right in line. It’s like playing a symphony. That’s what I’m trying to teach them. That is taught. You can learn how to do that.

You read the script when the students perform and you stop them on the slightest mistake, even if they replace the word “the” with “a.” You told the students, “This is theater, not TV.” What did you mean by that?

It’s exactly that. The playwright’s a wordsmith. And if you’ve done TV, they write like this: “OK, yeah, do this line, do that line, change that.” But playwrights, they sit with a piece, they go over it, they do each line, they go through it. So out of respect for the playwright, you should really deliver the lines the way they wrote them. Don’t add, don’t take away.

With certain writers there’s a highly specific cultural rhythm. How is that accessed? 

With August [Wilson] people say he has to be taught to a certain rhythm, because of the cadence of how he wrote. But he didn’t create it. He just wrote what he heard. And he was so good at it that everybody thinks that he created this language. But it’s not just from Pittsburgh [the setting for most of Wilson’s plays]. I’m from Atlanta, Georgia. I know people who talk like that. It was the rhythm of their speech that he was able to access. For actors playing those roles, you need to have something culturally that you can lean on to get that.

The president of Ireland was here at Fordham recently and he said that with so many of our established institutions under fire, the arts have seized the moral center. Do you think that’s true?

I’m not so sure about the moral center, but isn’t that just a conundrum? You see how the tables have turned. It used to be that the moral-less people were in the arts. That’s how it was always viewed. But the arts have always given us a reflection of our better selves, of who we should be and while, like in the Janus picture, showing us who we are. It’s our job in enduring the most tumultuous of times: to create. That’s when you rally against what the ills are and try to provide at least a platform for conversation.

Well, I think our time is up.

Really truly. Sam is in town (actor Samuel L. Jackson, her husband), and he said, “Will you be home and have dinner?” I said I would.