Adrian Thomas interviewed by Janis Butler Holm

An Interview with Theatre Artist Adrian Thomas

Adrian Thomas has over 25 years of playwriting experience. He studied theatre arts at Prairie View A & M University, where he learned the craft of playwriting from Dr. Ted Shine. He was mentored by Philip Hayes Dean at the Robey Theatre’s playwright’s lab. Thomas has produced, written, and directed many plays and films, and has served as a theatre tech specialist and/or technical director for numerous theatres throughout Houston and Southern California.

Holm: Before we address your theatre work, could we talk about your background? Where were you born and raised? How would you characterize your early years? Where did you do K - 12?

Thomas: I was born and raised in Houston, Texas. My early years in Houston were beautiful--given an understanding that the area I grew up in could be dangerous and beautiful at the same time. The Fifth Ward was a beautiful place, where black people owned small stores and had open block parties for birthdays and weddings. We were poor but happy--yet any loud bang, and everyone would break out running, knowing that the worst could happen.

My first five years were in the Fifth Ward, considered one of Houston's "poorest ghettos," and then we moved to the southwest side of Houston. My school was Ridgegate Elementary School, a mostly white institution when I first arrived in 1980--but a predominantly black and Latinx school by the time I finished grade five. I then enrolled in a brand new junior high called Christa McAuliffe, named after the teacher/astronaut who was killed in the Challenger disaster. As a new school, it did include more African American teachers. But many teachers were white, bussed in from other communities, and very standoffish towards the students. 

I clearly remember "blackness" being a massive part of my formative years.

Fortunately, I then attended Willowridge High School, which had a long, rich tradition of being a top school in the area for football and band. I played football for seven years--in both junior high and high school. At one point I hoped to get a full football scholarship, but with my less-than-stellar grades and perpetual injuries, that opportunity slipped away as  graduation neared.

In junior high and high school, I was also in the Performance Choir, which toured throughout Houston and sang with modest choreography and extremely upbeat music. We did a lot of gospel, R&B, and upbeat jazz tunes. We also did traditional choral music ("Deep River," Handel's Messiah, etc.) and competed in competitions. Many of our singers went on to professional music careers.

I also sang in the church choir at New Faith Missionary Baptist Church. (I love to sing in a group setting.) I joined several singing groups performing doo-wop, as we called it back then, and eventually we did hip-hop. Singing bass or low tenor, I enjoyed myself immensely. The singing groups were extremely disorganized, however, and my high school music teacher really didn't know much about music--she could barely play the piano.

I was exposed to theatre by complete happenstance. In my junior year at Willowridge, I was forced to take an elective in order to have enough credits to graduate on time, and almost all the classes available clashed with my mandatory football class--except a drama class, not something that interested me. But my drama instructor, Mrs. Webb,  liked me and asked me to audition for a play. I could not, given conflicts. But fate had it that I was hurt in football the week before the spring musical, and I needed extra credit, so I helped out with the play after all. For the very first time, I operated a spotlight--for a musical called Purlie Victorious.

At the beginning of my senior year, we had a new drama teacher, Toni Raio. She got my name from the previous teacher and called me into her classroom one day to ask me to audition for another play. I could not do it--again, football conflicts and grades. Still, I read the play and really liked it. It was called The Crucible. She also produced To Kill a Mockingbird. I wasn't able to do either one, but I hung out with the theatre people and helped build sets and paint whenever I could. 

In the spring, Ms. Raio chose to do a musical in our brand new auditorium. Our high school principal at the time, Mr. Glover, had brain cancer, and it was terminal. We were doing The Wiz, and I wanted to perform for Mr. Glover in this huge auditorium that seated nearly a thousand people. The opening performance was the last thing Mr. Glover saw. He passed away a few weeks later. We had his memorial service in that same space.

That was my introduction to performing in theatre. I had auditioned for a lead role but was not chosen. In fact, I originally had only one line in the play, but seven people dropped out of the production. So I ended up playing seven different roles/characters in many different scenes! At the end of the very first performance, I came out to do the part as the Gatekeeper (when the Lion, the Tin Man, and the Scarecrow are all coming back from killing the other Wicked Witch). The crowd erupted--someone screamed out "There he is again! There he is again!"  I didn't know what was happening and was just doing my part, but the audience apparently appreciated my efforts in all the various roles. I had not considered being an actor until that moment. I had not considered it because my football coach got upset that I was participating in the musical instead of being on the football field. He threw my helmet at me for being a fourth-year varsity player who wanted to be in a play. My participation didn't go over well with my coach or my teammates--even though I was legitimately injured and spending my time on crutches for the eleventh time in four years. 

Holm: When did you first know you wanted to be seriously involved in theatre?

Thomas: During the run of that show, two momentous things happened. First, during my argument with my coach, the mother of one of my childhood friends overheard the fight and saw my coach throw the helmet. She walked over to me after he stormed off and asked what was going on. I explained that I was being kicked off the team for doing a play, and she said, "You can play football only ten years at the most, but you can be an actor until you are ninety--and given that you and Chris are both hurt, you might want to look into theatre." (Her son's name was Chris.)

Second, a friend who had graduated the year before came to the performance of The Wiz and talked to me about the theatre program that he was studying at Prairie View A & M. He said the acting program was outstanding and named a few well-known actors who had gone there. That piqued my interest--my best friend from church was already attending Prairie View.

I ended up applying to only that university and barely got in--with extremely late registration. But those crazy few weeks ended up changing my life. Within a month of hitting the campus, I was competing in the American College Theatre Festival and trying to figure out if I could do theatre for a living. (It took years to find my way, but I have since worked steadily in theatre and film.)

Holm: What was your major during your college years?

Thomas: When I arrived at Prairie View, I had no intention of being a theatre major. Instead, I wanted to study music, majoring in singing and minoring in theatre. Opera was my goal. I had been in the Performance Choir for seven years prior and in my church choir all my life.  I really loved singing, but I did not sight-read music well. It was clear I had a lot of work to do, and I would have to learn foreign languages, which I struggled with, so this was to be an uphill fight.

But when I got to the university, I was told that the choir director who had actually come to my high school to do a clinic had been fired that summer, and he would have been my only contact on the campus. I was also informed that there was really no way to be a theatre minor--either you majored in theatre or you wouldn't have a chance to perform.

So I was a theatre major at Prairie View A & M University from 1993 to 1997. I performed in hundreds of shows--and I am not exaggerating! We performed year-round in what many people would call skits or short-form performances. We visited high schools, junior highs, other colleges, churches, and dozens of corporate events.

Our theatre unit was originally a part of the English Department, and a theatre club named after the famous African American actor Charles Gilpin was formed there early on. This group, the Charles Gilpin Players, toured the whole of the United States, performing for over a hundred years. Dr. Ted Shine founded the Theatre Department as a separate entity at Prairie View in the 1970s, and it thrived until 2014, when the program was dissolved. Theatre majors from Prairie View now run programs at Dillard University, at Cal State Dominguez Hills, and in venues such as the Karamu Theatre in Cleveland.

So I went to a powerhouse program that was heavily underfunded and understaffed, but it won two National KC/ACTF Kennedy Center Championships: once in 1983 for the musical Don't Bother Me, I Can't Cope and again in 1997 (with me in the role of Troy Maxson) for Fences, by August Wilson. Both plays were directed by C. Lee Turner, who ran the program with Dr. Shine from 1979 to 2011. They trained me and hundreds of other African American theatre artists who are now artistic directors, technicians, and teachers. I loved my program but hated the constant stress we were under to perform without the resources we needed. 

Holm: Did you study theatre at the graduate level?

Thomas: No. I did not graduate from undergrad. I went to college as a teen father, and I could not ignore the financial responsibility of providing for my son. I took a job, thinking I would later return to school, but I could not. Child support in Texas was harsh, and for twenty-two years my wages were garnished. You can't get student loans if you are behind in child support. 

Holm: How did your schooling prepare you for what was to come later in life?

Thomas: I was prepared for the real world because, during my college years, I had learned to survive and to work very hard. There was no aspect of theatre that I and other students had not learned--from stage management to set design and construction to making playbills and touring. We had done live events at historic sites and had performed in traditional show venues and giant convention centers. We had written our own shows and skits, staged for Congress and other dignitaries. We had fought with our school's administration for funding and had protested at the seat of power, in the chancellor's office, on behalf of the entire Texas A & M school system. We had taken on hard subject matter, such as date rape and homophobia.

In particular, I learned professionalism from Dr. Shine, who always started his rehearsals at 7 p.m. and ended his rehearsals at 10 p.m.--no matter what. He also chose very difficult shows with large casts. I learned how to perform with power and polish from C. Lee, how to read subtext and maintain a painful honesty on stage and off. I learned how to lead from C. Darryl Rodriguez, who was our Technical Director from 1993 to 1995. He taught me how to lay out wood, use saws properly, and delegate what needed to be done to complete a show. He taught me how to fail and to try again. 

Holm: You're a man of many talents, Adrian, and, like many theatre professionals, you bring a variety of life experiences to your work. What kind of non-theatrical training/jobs have you held in the past and present?

Thomas: For most of my working life, I have been a stagehand and craftsperson. I am currently a Crew Chief and Assistant Technical Director at La Mirada Theatre, here in southern California.

But I have had many survival jobs. I have drawn caricatures and airbrushed t-shirts at theme parks in Texas and California. And I'm a decent visual artist. Though I have no formal training in painting or drawing, my mother always bought me books and art supplies, and I learned enough to get a caricature artist job at Six Flags Astroworld in the summer of 1994--and again in 2001 at Universal Studios. This kind of work has kept me in creative circles and around giving artists who have influenced my sons to become far better visual artists than I am. I love scenic painting, which I learned, for the most part, on the job from other craftspeople.

I have also had security jobs far too often and have hated most of these. Typically, I managed until the next play or movie came along and always found a way to keep doing shows as a writer and actor. I have also driven a school bus and a tanker truck to help pay for my youngest son's professional track-and-field dreams. Those gigs lasted a little over a year and a half, but I was still doing shows during truck-driving school.

Holm: When and why did you make the move to California?

Thomas: In the year 2000, I was living in Houston, Texas, but was on tour in Chicago. I moved to California after the tour was cancelled after only four weeks.

I knew my young family could not make a living in the arts in Houston. Most of the theatre companies in Texas were white-male dominated, and I had worked consistently only in children's theatre, as had my wife. We had a newborn, and I have two other sons from previous relationships, so I needed to be able to provide and to thrive. It was either Los Angeles or New York--and I don't like cold weather.

L.A. was the right decision, but it took nearly seven years to get work at several performing arts centers as a technician. As an actor, I've gone years without work--and then gotten cast in six or seven projects. What I've learned is that I must create my own projects and opportunities.

I've directed and written several short films and a Web series. I've directed another artist's Web series. I've built sets for two major TV shows and written commissioned plays for churches and schools. I've produced an award-winning documentary. I'm currently building my own organic brand of healthy alternatives to luxury skin care products--such as soap, hand salves, and lip balms. (I'm a dedicated vegan and believe healthy natural products are much needed.) 

Holm: Other than playwriting, what work have you done since coming to the Golden State?

Thomas: La Mirada Theatre, which I've mentioned above, is a 1266-seat house. We do shows that are fresh from Broadway or on their way to Broadway. I'm in charge of the crew for every show and concert. This is my fourth technical director job since 1995.

I've also been a master carpenter and lead flyman for tours such as Carrie the Musical Experience and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer at Madison Square Garden in New York. (As a flyman, I jumped off ladders to make Peter Pan, Carrie, or Rudolph fly on a pulley system.) I've built sets for Disney, Byron Allen, and Tower Sound and Vision--from video walls to permanent installations at the Burbank Studios for Blizzard entertainment. I still draw caricatures at parties and events five or six times a year, just for fun. I also sell my crafts at events five or six times a year and online year-round. I love making shows happen and now am focused on producing my own shows, finally joining the Dramatists Guild, and securing a literary agent for my playwriting career.

Holm: Between 1994 and the present, you've had multiple workshops, readings, and productions of both full-length and short/one-act plays. Can you talk about some of these works? What topics have you addressed? Which plays were the most satisfying to you as a playwright?

Thomas: My playwriting career has focused on the black family in all of its complexities.

I particularly enjoyed writing a play inspired by singer Lauryn Hill's album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.  This piece has characters based on the themes of several of her songs, and I titled it Song of the Miseducated. It's a stylized drama similar to George C. Wolfe's The Colored Museum, where stories flow from one scene to the next.

I have loved writing in workshops with young people, talking to them and taking notes and building characters tackling the same issues they are. The most difficult play I had written until recently is called Kingdom Killers, begun in 2004 and finished as a one-act in 2006. It was read by members of the Robey Theatre at the Nate Holden Performing Arts Center to a sold-out crowd for two nights. I wanted more time to turn it into a two-act, but the grant money was spent, and I was theatrically homeless again.

I've spent the last three years taking a far deeper dive into the same family structures, dealing with the homophobia, family secrets, and deeply held religious beliefs that divide many families. The recurring themes in my plays are the struggle to forgive, trust in others, broken trust, mental health, and how a racist society informs people's decision-making. 

My most recent two-act is my most radical--and my most straightforward--piece of work. And, at this moment, it's my favorite. Oh When the Saints is on its way, I hope, to establishing me as a major playwright. I've been submitting it for several months to playwriting open calls, and I'm now in the midst of co-producing it at the Odyssey Theatre in west Los Angeles.

Holm: Do you outline before writing, or are you a discovery writer? Do you have specific rituals that you follow when you write? Do you have trusted readers to vet your work?

Thomas: I do have a writing process. I first write a short story with a few key scenes and/or bits of dialogue. My characters are usually based on people I know and something about their circumstances. I write out who, when, where, and what happens in short form--and in my head proceed to act every part. Deadlines and show dates keep me working.

When I know I'm going to workshop a show, I send my scripts to actors and the other playwrights. I also do table reads. At this point, I've seen enough bad theatre and film to gauge what's nearly good and what's moving, and I try to write about the hard things that many will not touch.

Phillip Hayes Dean taught me to be brutally honest and to stop holding back while he was my dramaturg at the Robey Theatre, here in L.A., from 2004 to 2006. Now my friend and fellow playwright Kathleen Shaw fills that role. We both started at the Playwrights' Lab at the Robey. She moved back to Kentucky, but we keep in touch, supporting each other's writing. 

Holm: Do you have a writers' community that supports your writing?

Thomas: I do not have a true writers' community, but I have an extended family of theatre artists who all dip their toes into producing work in and around Los Angeles. I've recently joined ALAP (the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights) and am hoping to join some other writing groups. Meanwhile,  I have a ton of supportive theatre professionals in my life in the tech world.

Holm: What kind of racism have you experienced personally, and how has it affected your life choices?

Thomas: To be honest, racism is a part of my DNA. I would not recognize America without overt and open racism. I am a large black man and have lived with intense racism since I was thirteen years old. At thirteen, I had a gun trained on me--over a peppermint--after buying candy at a gas station (the gun was pulled by a white female police officer). I paid for the soda and candy but allegedly stole peppermints. I went to a friend's home afterward, and his mother was so upset she drove us back to the store to confront the store owner. The cops were called again.

Four years later, at a pool party, a friend and I parked in the wrong parking spot and had a shotgun trained on us by the person whose spot it was, who also proceeded to call the police. The policeman also pulled out a gun, then slammed my best friend down on the hood of the car in front of dozens of onlookers. Then the cop pointed his gun directly at me, telling me to back up or "I will shoot your black ass." All this over a parking space, for which we apologized, and the owner of the space next to the one we'd mistakenly taken explained the mistake. But the guy with the shotgun never had a cop gun pointed at him even though he was intoxicated with gun in hand and I was standing a full car length away with my hands in the air. Not until I shouted for someone to call my mother, who worked for a law firm, and named the law firm did the officer let my good friend go.

So, yes, racism is part of being black in America and informs all of my work. I can recall being in Burbank, leaving work, and being followed and pulled over. In Palos Verdes, a cop followed me for over thirty minutes--even through a McDonald's drive-through and a mall parking-lot structure. Thankfully, the other techs arrived, and the police finally left after running my plates.

The reality is that I could name dozens of other racist incidents at work and in life, but I focus on what is good, noble, peaceful, honest, and true. I'm an overgrown Boy Scout and hope to win people over with love--and to conquer my own biases. I am part of the NAACP here in the San Fernando Valley and of another organization, called Black in the Valley, that throws large community events four times a year to promote civic and commercial empowerment for black entrepreneurs.

Holm: What advice do you have for beginning BIPOC playwrights?

Thomas: First, read and support plays of all types. Go to Native American art shows. See plays about Jewish families. Go to Broadway HD online and stream classic plays. Take a writing class. Take an acting and directing class at a community college. Be part of the artist community--and then write, write, write. Read with friends who are actors. Get a business card and a Website only for playwriting. Join a writers' circle. Save your money. Meet other playwrights.

All that I have just said is difficult and time-consuming. And some people will lie to you and say they will read your script or work on your project--and then they won't.

But others will.

So get organized. Write all types of plays--comedies, one-acts, mysteries--and then get personal. Tell the truth. Always remember this, if nothing else:

You can never give an audience back the two or three hours that they spend watching your play. You can give back money but never the time spent to get to the theatre or to drive home. Make your show the best part of their day, week, year. Put in the work. They have come to hear what you have to say. Get out of the way of the characters. They will hold you up and speak for you through the ages.

Always remember the 3 E's of theatre: We must Educate, Enlighten, and Entertain every time we do a show.

Holm: Thank you, Adrian, for taking the time to answer my questions.

Thomas: Thank you, Janis. Let's do a show.