NYC repertory company brings August Wilson, Shakespeare to Popejoy

The Acting Company, a premiere repertory theater company in New York City for over 50 years, is bringing two esteemed plays to Popejoy Hall. On Saturday, April 5, they will perform “Two Trains Running,” the Pulitzer Prize-nominated play by August Wilson, and on Sunday, April 6, the same actors will present William Shakespeare’s “The Comedy of Errors.”

DeAnna Supplee, who plays Risa in “Two Trains Running” and Adriana in “The Comedy of Errors,” said this is her first time touring in a repertory company.

“Honestly, I don’t think anything stretches you more as an actor than the live stage, but especially doing two shows at once,” she said. “It can be grueling, but it’s really fun.”

“I second that,” said J’Laney Allen, who plays Wolf in “Two Trains” and Dromio in “The Comedy of Errors.”

“When we were cast in these roles, I was a little worried, to be completely transparent,” he said. “I’m, like, two full productions at the same time? I don’t know if I can handle that. But the longer we’re doing it, I’m just having more and more fun.”

“We’ve come to find some similarities,” Supplee said. “They’re both classical in their own way. Shakespeare’s play, you know, is a classical Elizabethan English text. But August Wilson also has a bit of classicalness to him, too. We talk about there being a rhythm to it, and a very specific cadence to how his characters speak.”

The Acting Company is using a modern version of the Shakespeare text, adapted by Christina Anderson, which preserves the Bard’s rhythms but updates the language so contemporary audiences can better understand it, and the bawdy jokes can land more easily.

As a student, Supplee did a summer intensive Shakespeare program at Oxford University.

“I realized the Brits treat the text very differently than we Americans do. It’s much more technical,” she said. “Like, they’re very pronounced with those iambs, and they really want the words to do the work. Whereas I think over here, we Americans with our Stanislavski training, we’re really big on the emotion. And sometimes our emotions take precedence over the text. And they don’t play that over there. They’re very much like, the words are the words. Just say the words.”

“So, it was nice to get nitty-gritty into the mechanics of Shakespeare, but then also find a happy medium, so I can use what they consider to be the more important techniques and pair them with how we do things over here,” she said.

Allen said he had never performed Shakespeare until college.

“Which is crazy,” Supplee said, “because if you get to see him doing it, it looks like he’s been doing it all his life.”

In college, Allen also performed in the August Wilson play, “Gem of the Ocean,” which, along with “Two Trains Running,” is part of the playwright’s epic, ten-play Pittsburgh Cycle, exploring Black life in Pittsburgh during the Great Migration.

“I really related with the characters,” Allen said. “I’m from North Carolina, and there were a bunch of men and women in my family who sounded just like these characters. So, it was really easy for me to tap into that world.”

For his character Wolf in “Two Trains,” Allen said he drew inspiration from his great-uncles, who lived through the 1960s, when the play is set.

“When I physically walk out there as Wolf, there’s just a certain walk and a certain stance that I got from them that just drops me into Wolf,” Allen said. “I’m big on physicality as an actor. I have to find out where the character lives at in my body. And so, for Wolf, there’s a specific walk and specific gestures that completely tap me into Wolf.”

Supplee found inspiration for her characters in her family members, too. She said she modeled her portrayal of Adriana in “Comedy of Errors” after her younger sister.

“My younger sister is very over-the-top. Every minor inconvenience is the end of the world. And that’s how I treat Adriana, like the smallest thing ruins my day. So, just very big with the hands, very big with the gestures, heavy sighing, lots of ad-libbing,” Supplee said.

“Then, conversely, for Risa (in ‘Two Trains’), it was my maternal grandmother. She was our rock and our matriarch when she was still alive. She was a very soft-spoken, quiet and petite woman, but when she spoke you listened,” she said. “So, I definitely lean on her for Risa, because you see me more than you hear me.”

Both actors talked about the importance of representation and how their current, all-Black touring company has resonated with audiences of all races and backgrounds, who have seen themselves in their characters.

“I had a Black woman come up to me after a show at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach, (Florida), and she just hugged me and cried,” Allen said. “She said she had an uncle who was just like Wolf, and their family kind of ostracized him and dismissed him and kicked him to the side. And she was like, ‘Thank you for just letting me see his humanity.’”

“We’ve had amazing experiences like J’Laney just shared, where people who look like us, who haven’t been able to see themselves or their stories told onstage, get to be represented,” Supplee said. “But then, when we were in Ventura, California, we had a lovely older Jewish gentleman talk about how his family went through the pogroms of Russia, and how he felt as though everyone on the stage represented different people in his family.”

Allen agreed that the characters in both plays are universally relatable.

“We’re talking about the Black experience, but we’re also talking about any marginalized experience,” he said. “Queer experience, immigrant experience, women’s experience, rich or poor. You really can see yourself in both our Shakespeare and our ‘Two Trains Running’ characters. So, we hope people can come in with an open mind and an open heart to receive it.”

“Now more than ever, we all need to lean on each other,” Supplee added, “because we’re all marginalized in one way or another.”

NYC repertory company brings August Wilson, Shakespeare to Popejoy