Derrick Lee Weeden, Actor

Derrick Lee Weeden in The Tempest

Derrick Lee Weeden has acted at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. His past roles include the title character in Coriolanus.

Audio Excerpts

Weeden talks about voice

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Weeden recites from Othello

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Interview Excerpts

ON STORYTELLING

STEVE ROWLAND: What’s the purpose of telling stories?

DERRICK LEE WEEDEN: To remind us that we’re human.  I think just because we’re walking around as human beings doesn’t mean we’re civilized; it doesn’t mean that we’re capable of compassion and being sensitive to other people.  Any of that.  We need things to tell us that – that demand, that demand us to be higher.  The demand that speaks to our higher selves.  We need things that remind us of our flaws.  We need things that – we need a mirror, which is Shakespeare.  “Hold, as it were, a mirror up to nature . . .” – Hamlet’s advice to the players.  You’re holding a mirror up to nature and he’s advising them on their acting style, that you need to be natural and real.  Whatever that means – real.  But, also, we’re showing the audience – we’re showing people, themselves, and we need to be reminded of that.  And I think that’s the – that’s why we tell stories.  I – I – I – that’s the big reason, to me, in Shakespeare.  To hold, as it were, a mirror up to nature.

ON CASTING AT OSF

DERRICK LEE WEEDEN: Casting.  What people term non-traditional casting, what they call “color blind casting”, what they call “open casting”, whatever that is.  I don’t know what tradition is because I’ve always been black. You know, so I don’t know what any – you know.  And we’ve always been here and people of different have always been here and they’ve all – you know.  So, whose history is it?  In Shakespeare’s day there were black people there.  If you’re talking any side of the Atlantic, there were all kinds of different people there.  For as far back as there was Atlantic trade.  There’s all kinds of people there.

There are many different ways to handle that kind of casting.  And it just depends on what kind of production you want to do.  There’s five, six, seven different ways of handling it.  For example, when I played Coriolanus in a production with Tony Jacobi, we used it – that Coriolanus was black, his mother was black, his son was half, and his wife was white and blond.  And it was a story – part of the story was about this patrician guy who’s moving up – that was part of it.  But also, it had a great deal to do with – at the time that we did it, of course, because black men were killing black men and black boys were being raised without fathers, and so there’s that aspect to it.  You could have seen all of that in that production, or you could have seen none of it.  It would have gone right by you and you wouldn’t have noticed it.  So – so that’s one way of handling it.

Another way is to say, “We’re not even going to pay attention to any of that stuff,” and Valeria and Tartooth is going to be black and – is – I’m sorry – Perdida in Winter’s Tale is going to be black and her mother’s going to be white.  And we’re not going to pay attention to any of it.  Or, Philip the Bastard is going to be Hispanic and his mother’s going to be black.  We won’t pay – that’s another way of handling it.  There are a lot of different ways of handling it.  Depending on, conceptually, what you want to do with the production.

ON ABRAHAM LINCOLN:

DERRICK LEE WEEDEN: He grew up, probably, at the very bottom of the socioeconomic ladder – the very bottom; on the frontier.  On the frontier at the time – Kentucky, Illinois – where – where he was in abject poverty; there was no station lower than where he grew up – with no schooling, with nothing.  He would walk for miles to borrow books.  He did learn how to read and that’s how he went about things.  He simply taught himself all the things that he taught . . .

Now we know that – and there’s some argument about it, but a lot of people believe – experts, who know much more about Lincoln than I do – believe that he was our single-most intelligent president.  He certainly was our only poet president.  And a massive poet.

And he loved the theater.  He – those – those – those four years in the White House during the Civil War – he lived in the theater.  That was his place away from all of it.  And especially Shakespeare.  And he was known for quoting Shakespeare, for reading speeches out – out – out of the books to his – his secretaries and anybody who was – who was around him.

He loved language.  And – and as well as we know, of course, as a storyteller.  Even I think the Lincoln-Douglas debates – the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates where – he lost that race but he still made – he still, after he lost that race, he traveled the country giving speeches.  He was – he was a nobody from Illinois but he traveled the country giving speeches because he was such a great storyteller.

So my point is, is that Lincoln had much less of an education, much dire situation that he was born into than Shakespeare ever was, but yet he rose and was, you know – he had the single greatest stamp on our country.