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Interview with Tony Parker, company member, performer, workshop leaderFerdinand Lewis: You’re an actor in the show. Tony Parker: Yes. FL: Tell me how long you’ve been with the company. TP: Since mid 1992, I think. FL: How'd you start? TP: They used to rehearse right down here on a street called San Pedro. It was an inner-city law center there. They used to actually rehearse out of that spot, and I just happened to be walking down the street one day and they were doing a street performance right there and I just got involved. I thought it was a good outlet because I’m a musician by profession. To me, this is just another form of expression. FL: You’ve never been an actor before? TP: No, the first time. But I’ve been doing like voice characterizations, this is what I’ve really been trying to get into also, but I’ve been doing it for a while. FL: What has it meant to you to be a part of this company? TP: It’s helped me a lot, even in terms of my music, in terms of feeling freer and doing what I do musically, actually. I don’t know. I never had a problem with stage fright, but in my personal life, it’s helped me in terms of just relating to people. I used to be extremely introvert. I was always the guy sitting in the back of the room, quiet. Sometimes now, I get like that. But what this has done, it’s braved me up in a lot of ways in terms of expressing myself, you know. After the show, people will be coming up to me telling me, "Oh, you’re doing all right, you can do this." I’ve actually started to think maybe this is something I can look into and actually getting into seriously. FL: Do you think this show is successful? TP: I think so. I think it’s one of the better shows, actually. In the past, most of the work had been purely improvisational work, and at the past two or three performances, they’ve been scripted out, and this is really a breakthrough. I see a lot of growth in everybody’s performing from doing improvisational work to doing the scripting work. I think it helps in terms of discipline and becoming better. FL: What makes a good show, do you think? TP: To me, just from the actor’s standpoint, when I’ve talked to other performers, I just try to encourage them to just be relaxed, not be so wound up and to just let it flow. As long as we can get up there and do the lines and not have somebody just freak out because they might forget something. FL: Do you live here? TP: I live on the outskirts, towards East LA. FL: Since ‘92, you’ve lived in this area? TP: Yeah. Well, I went through a period where I was homeless for maybe two years. FL: While you were doing this? TP: While I was still doing this. I worked and actually got it together. I’m getting it together, put it that way. FL: Your doing this helped you get it together? TP: It helped. It helped because it helped me get back in the flow of things. I had gone through some things in my personal life of a break up of a relationship and me just personally not dealing with it properly; to me it was the end of the world. Everybody else would tell me to get over it, but I thought it was the end of the world. I acted like it was the end of the world. I went through a serious period of self-destruction and what this did, it got me back in a positive flow of life and now, actually through my experience of doing it, I just don’t have those feelings anymore. FL: How does this company, how does LAPD affect the community, you think? You’ve been around a long time, what do you see? TP: It gives people an outlet. We have a couple of members in this production here who were in drug rehabs, for instance, and a lot of times if you’re going through that kind of experience, you’re down anyway and what this does is it actually gives a lot of people hope and just a positive vibe. I’ve seen a change in people who just come in and become involved. We do [perform in], like, Harborlife, Safe Harbor, Salvation Army, places like that, and people who get involved come in from those places and it really helps them in terms of their recovery and just getting back in the swing of things. Ferdinand Lewis is a founding member of The Ghost Road Company, an educator, writer and theater artist. He is currently at work on two books: "Ensemble Theater: An Anthology" and "Ensemble Theater: Traditions, Approaches, Strategies." He lives in Los Angeles. |
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