Video: Inside Opening Night of HOME on Broadway

Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World

The latest from Roundabout Theatre Company is Sam Art Williams' beloved play Home, directed by Kenny Leon

and we're here at the opening to celebrate with the company. Right now, I feel an immense sense of joy and love, and just everybody at Roundabout has been so wonderful

All of the actors, Kenny Leon has poured so much work into this production

And so I'm feeling like this is a celebration of Sam Art Williams, so we lost a few weeks

ago, but it's a great time to celebrate his legacy and his life and the work that he's done

I think this is, this play should be in the top of the American canon, right up there with any

of the great works, you know. And so the fact that we get to do it right now so soon after his transition, I just feel a lot

of joy, feel a lot of joy. I treat revivals as if they were new plays

So I'm never trying to do a new museum piece. I'm not trying to do home the way it was done 40 years ago

But I'm trying to look at the power of Sam Arts. words and the stories and see what does it mean to us now

How can I present it today? And I'm real proud of what we have on the stage

You know, one of the things we try to do here at Roundabout, we have something called a refocus project

And we try to reach back and get those artists who should have had a wider audience

when they were doing the work. And I was telling someone, I said

I'm preparing to do Wilders Our Town. I'm preparing to do Shakespeare's Othello

But Sam Martin Williams' home belongs in the same army. You know it in the same army if it weren for the country at the time So I glad to introduce this play to a new generation You know his poetry the way he developed characters

Those women on stage play 40 or 50 characters. Like, in 89 minutes, they play all these characters

and it shows you the real power of theater. You don't need a helicopter. You don't need a horse

You don't need a car on stage. You just need three great actors that demands for the audience to use

their imagination. Imagination is what this is about. So I'm, I'm glad to do it for those reasons

but I'm also glad to do it more so because we lost Sam Art, you know, a couple of weeks ago

you know, and he entrusted me with the play. So it's like I feel a great sense of responsibility

I owe him a lot, so I want to do it right. I want to do it right because Todd Haynes

who in the theater's name after now, asked me to do the play, and he's no longer with us

So, you know, while I'm still here, I want to do things that honors their lives until it's time for me to join them

But, yeah, I love the play. I love the poetry. And I love the way audiences are leaning forward with it

Oh, my goodness. So I read the play for the first time in 2021. Roundabout did a virtual reading

This was still during the pandemic. And I read for a woman, too. And I was obsessed. Kenny describes it as a big, joyous theatrical life-affirming poem

And I completely agree with that. I think what excites me the most about the play is the way it moves between scenes and prose

with so much ease. It's just phenomenal. And it's just three of you up there

What is it like sharing the stage together, the three of you? It is a gift

I'm working with two of the most talented actors, Tori Kittles and Story airs and we are up there Once that train starts you can get off the ride for 90 minutes We just up there supporting each other Story and I are going in and out of all these different characters and it a really fun ride

We're having fun, and I hope the audiences that come to see us are having fun as well

I love working with them. And it's also, I mean, we all share the same excitement and terror with each production

And so I've enjoyed crafting this story with them. Brittany has been such a great partner with me on stage as we tell this story

where he's been such a great leader in the room. He's the most positive actor I think I've ever met

And so it's been really great working and building with both of them. I would say what it means to me

You know, this play reminds me that no matter how hard life hits you

you can always return back to home. And home is a very special and unique thing for all of us

We all define it differently. And this play is a reminder. And I think it's a reminder that we need during these times

that no matter how tough things look or seem or are, getting, we can always return back to home. And that's, I needed that reminder. Well, it's been great to

just watch and learn. I mean, it's, every day is a learning experience and also collaborating

Kenny has a pretty open room. And so all ideas are welcome. His is the final decision. But

but it's, it's great to really see how something blossoms in Kenny's rooms. I love the play because

one, Sam Art Williams is a beautiful writer and we didn't know anything about him. And now we are able to

celebrate him. He passed away, but we can still celebrate him, you know, in his death. But it's a

great reminder to go back home. You know, we're all in New York. We move away from our families

like find a dream And you always have to go back to that foundation you know your morals who what your mom taught you You know what I mean And I think that a great reminder that you don have to be anything else But you you know go home

Cherish it. People know you from television and film, but now being on Broadway, being on stage

what that has meant to you. You know, I started out training for the theater, and this is my Broadway debut

But, you know, plays always seem to find me at sometimes the most inopportune times

But this one, you know, Kenny Leon, who I've worked with before, you know, I was his reader, right, for fences on Broadway

And I didn't get the part. That's right. That's how Kenny and I met. I was his reader for the production he did with Denzel and Viola

And I didn't get it. But Kenny called me to do Still Magnolia as a movie he was doing, which, by the way, was how I met Queen Latifah

And I'm now on the show The Equalizer with her. But after that, Kenny hired me to do Guess Who's Come to Dinner with the Great

gratefulish of Rashad. And so this is the third time, Kenny and I have gotten to work together

And, you know, he called me up. And like Kenny, you know Kenny. You know how Kenny speaks

So Kenny called me up and said, hey, mother, what are you doing in April? And I said, I don't know. What are we doing

And he was like, well, we're doing home. That's what we're doing. And so to be able to work with him right now

Kenny is a national treasure. There's no doubt about it. He's one of the great American theater

the director's working right now and to be in a room with him and his to understand how he comes

to find his vision that whole process has been such a such an education and such a delight

and so I've loved working with him again you know and hopefully you know this will be just a

celebration of him but also a celebration of Samart williams and his legacy in his life