The September rain was pouring down at intervals, and Denzel Washington was directly in Wali Jamal’s sightline as the Pittsburgh actor demonstrated how he made history this year.
Mr. Jamal, who has appeared on many stages throughout the city and beyond, performed an excerpt from August Wilson’s “How I Learned What I Learned” as Mr. Washington was making some history of his own that day, reporting that he and a few other Hollywood heavyweights were contributing $5 million to help re-create the playwright’s Hill District childhood home as a cultural hub.
Mr. Jamal first performed Mr. Wilson’s rarely seen one-man show for members of the national August Wilson Society during their April colloquium in Pittsburgh. He then brought it to the New Hazlett Theater for three days, Aug. 30-Sept. 1. That made him the only person to have performed in “How I Learned” as well as all 10 plays in the Pittsburgh playwright’s American Century Cycle, each set in a different decade of the 20th century.
That achievement has earned Mr. Jamal designation as the Post-Gazette’s 2018 Performer of the Year. It is the 35th year PG theater critics have named a top performer, with never a repeat name, and only twice in that time has more than one actor shared the honor.
In May, he joined the rarified group of actors to have run the Cycle, when he played Elmore in “King Hedley II” in the August Wilson House backyard. Staging it was Mark Clayton Southers’ Pittsburgh Playwrights Theater Company, which is having its second go-round through the Cycle, more often than not with Mr. Jamal in the cast.
Mr. Southers, an August Wilson disciple who was mentored by the late playwright, has been in turn mentor, friend and employer for Mr. Jamal, recruiting him into the local regiment of Wilsonian Warriors. In September, Pittsburgh Playwrights re-staged Mr. Wilson’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” with Mr. Jamal as Toledo, adding to his extensive Wilsonian experience that measures up to any actor in the country.
The 90-minute “How I Learned What I Learned” is Mr. Wilson’s 11th play, in which he looks back on his career even as he remembers what it was like to be a 20-year-old on the Hill, with that career still ahead of him. The writer performed it himself in 2003, two years before he died.
To date, Mr. Jamal is only the third other actor to be licensed to do it. The first was Ruben Santiago-Hudson, who did it off-Broadway in 2014. The second, actor-playwright Eugene Lee, has done it several times, including at the Pittsburgh Public Theater in 2015. (Coincidentally, Mr. Lee was named Performer of the Year in 2016.)
As if performing as August Wilson in a solo play weren’t daunting enough, Mr. Jamal found bringing it to the stage a struggle. He was thwarted twice in attempts to complete the feat in Atlanta, once by 4 inches of snow that ground the southern city to a halt. At the Hazlett, he produced it himself. But now he has it in his repertoire and has already been booked to do it elsewhere.
As he said in the “How I Learned” program, “My heartfelt desire is to be the Pittsburgh ambassador of August Wilson's work.”
A Downtown resident, Mr. Jamal has had no formal acting training. The kid who grew up going to the movies at the Mount Oliver Theatre on Brownsville Road has learned through observation and experience, acting for a majority of Pittsburgh theaters. This year, besides his work with Pittsburgh Playwrights, Mr. Jamal was also seen in the East Coast premiere of “Rules of Seconds” for barebones productions and is currently onstage for Bricolage in the Midnight Radio parody “Die Hard N’at.”
There were many other performers of note in 2018. Here are a few:
MVPs: Tony Bingham and Drew Leigh Williams, two of Pittsburgh’s most versatile performers. Mr. Bingham went from Quantum Theatre’s epic “Chatterton” to Pittsburgh Public Theater’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Sweat” without missing a beat. Among the roles for Ms. Williams, a singer-comedien par excellence, she was a hoot in “Xanadu” at the CLO Cabaret (it ran into January) and in the new “The Double-Threat Trio” at Pittsburgh CLO’s inaugural Spark festival. She also had a tragi-comic turn in City Theatre’s “The Revolutionists.”
MVPs II: Dan DeLuca, a last-minute replacement in Pittsburgh CLO’s “Brigadoon” after his fun turn in “The Full Monty.” Also Sam Lothard (“I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” Prime Stage; “King Hedley” and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” Pittsburgh Playwrights) and John Wascavage (“Up and Away,” CLO Cabaret; “A New Brain,” Front Porch).
Leading men: Matthew Amendt — clear, intelligent, lithe and likable as the ultimate stage hero, Hamlet, at the Public Theater. Jonathan Visser, showing his range in the title role of “Chatterton” and even had a song, something he gets too rarely.
Leading ladies: Daina Michelle Griffith, making the instantaneous leap from “The Revolutionists” to Front Porch Theatricals’ “Grey Gardens.” Also gracing stages this season were veteran performers Helena Ruotti (“Chatterton”) and Robin Walsh (barebones’ “Rules of Engagement”).
Something completely different: Dylan Marquis Meyers, Ken Bolden and Max Pavel, who put their Active Analysis workshop (a study of acting led by Cotter Smith) to work in “Orphans” at an offbeat space in Lawrenceville. And those wonderful bears in Gab Cody’s “Inside Passage” at Quantum.
Ensemble: Ultimately, theater is a team game, and among the best teams in 2018 were the strong multi-ethnic casts in “Nomad Motel,” “Citizens’ Market” and “Pipeline” at City Theatre; “The Devil Inside” at Playhouse Rep; “Pride and Prejudice” and “Hamlet” at the Public; and the soaring singers of “Titanic” at Pittsburgh CLO.
Sharon Eberson: seberson@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1960. Twitter: @SEberson_pg.
First Published: December 13, 2018, 12:00 p.m.