HOME |
MUSIC EVENTS |
FAMILY EVENTS |
ART EVENTS
THEATRE |
MOVIES |
UPCOMING EVENTS
ARCHIVES |
ABOUT |
ADVERTISE |
CONTACT |
DISTRIBUTION
entertaining u newspaper: your monthly guide to entertainment
<<
Up & Cummers
|
Main
|
Billie to Badu
>>
|
|
|
by jon bosworth
jaxvillain@yahoo.com
"Those two voices in my head, the voice of 'go get it,' and the voice of family, they actually work together in this weird dance. My teacher/coach, Barbara, taught me early on that acting is about setting perimeters and doing whatever you want within those perimeters. That's a good example of how I do my art and my life. I'm setting up these perimeters, and then I'm free to do whatever I need to. I'm going to make my living as an artist and make my art pay the bills."
|
|
Al Letson is a poet, an actor, a writer, a filmmaker, and very possibly the next big thing on NPR. Not WJCT, but NATIONAL Public Radio. He is currently one of the top ten finalists in a contest NPR has been fielding online called Public Radio Talent Quest (publicradioquest.com); a sort of American Idol for a more intellectual set. The grand prize of the contest is ten thousand dollars toward producing a radio pilot of the show you would bring to NPR. Al Letson is taking this opportunity. This isn't the first time he has jumped at an opportunity that most people would consider a long shot, and if he wins, it also wouldn't be the first time that Al succeeded when most people would have thought it unlikely at best.
Al grew up in Orange Park. His father is a minister and his mother is a housewife. At fifteen he worked a part-time job, not to buy a new car, not to get flashy clothes; he spent every dime he made in the studio recording rhymes and focusing on creating a career in hip-hop.
"When I was sixteen my dad offered to buy me a car if I would stop spending all of my money in the studio. I told him no thanks. I don't know many sixteen year-olds that would do that."
Al started doing poetry slams back when he was working for American Airlines. The job allowed him to travel all over the place, doing a poetry slam in New York one day, Colorado the next, and then Texas. So by the time one witness was describing Al's set on their blog, someone from the opposite side of the country would post about having seen him the following night. He ranked third in the nation in 2000, but he didn't want to spend the rest of his life going city to city to read a three-minute poem, leaving only the poetry slam as his legacy. After all, Al is married with children.
But the poetry slams did give him some worthwhile things to put on his resume. Namely from HBO.
"I have conflicting feelings about Def Poetry. I think it's great because it definitely helps people understand exactly what it is you do. Before Def Poetry, I would tell people that I was a performance poet and a playwright and they would have this look on their face, like a big question mark. But now, because of Def Poetry on HBO, everyone knows."
Al's face on national television and his national ranking in the poetry slam scene enabled him to get a taste of how life as an artist can be. One minute you can be in the clouds because you're getting paid a couple grand to deliver your performance before an auditorium of college students and the next you're praying for a friendly couch to sleep on and fifty bucks for a bus ticket home.
"I paid my dues, I slept on couches and in subways. I begged people to get on a microphone and I can see how it affects me now. It keeps me grounded. Now there are kids who are eighteen years old who are already on TV and their work isn't as good as it should be, but they've been on Def Poetry so they can write their own ticket. They didn't have the opportunity to learn their craft and let it grow. If I had gotten onto Def Poetry back when I first started out, then my poetry would be horrid now, because it was horrid back then."
So he moved on to writing plays and eventually landed on his one-man show Essential Personnel. That show got him a commission which led to more commissions for his unique type of work. Al became a sort of local, live-on-stage auteur, writing, directing and starring in his own work. He subsequently wrote Griot, Chalk, and Julius X. But he wasn't fixed to the local stage, he was invited to the legendary Fringe Festival in New York City to perform Griot just last year. He is currently getting prepared to bring Julius X to a local stage.
"Julius X was the hardest play I ever wrote. I'm dyslexic and Julius X is a retelling of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar but it is set in 1965 Harlem. Transposing Shakespeare into modern day was really hard, but I took it on because I knew it was going to be a challenge. I find that when I take things on that aren't a challenge, I get bored really easily and they don't keep my attention. I've got so many ideas that that's a struggle anyway, so I have to tackle something that's going to give me a hard time."
So few people work harder at their craft, and even less are able to maintain creativity in so many different directions at once, but his wife is supportive and his children adore him, so he pushes on toward that success that may just lay waiting for him inside of a publicly owned radio studio.
Not long ago, Al decided that he wanted to get more into filmmaking. With his oldest son attending Douglas Anderson School of the Arts for filmmaking, this was a natural progression, one of those times when the voices in his head were dancing together to mix art and family. Already no stranger to writing, creating, and directing, film was an easy next step and his short film got him to the semi-finals to appear on the Fox show On the Lot.
"Our movie did incredibly well on the website. We put it up and a week later we had 8,000 hits. In less than a week after we submitted it they called me."
But in the world of television, the best product isn't nearly as likely to make the cut as the best fit for their marketing agenda. Al didn't make the cut because they already had a black guy with dreadlocks.
"It's TV. The role was filled." Reality schmeality.
"But the show ended up being pretty horrible so I'm actually really glad that I didn't get on. I mean, I definitely love directing and all of that stuff, and I am definitely going to continue to do it, but reality TV is not where I want to make my mark."
It may seem like an unlikely time for such a creative and aspiring personality like Al Letson to head toward radio, the one medium that he hasn't already achieved some modicum of success in, but for Al it means making something great for an institution he truly respects.
"I am not an American Idol fan at all…but I Googled American Idol and one of the things that popped up was 'NPR's American Idol.' I'm a big NPR nut, so I clicked on it and it took me to the contest and that was the first I heard of it."
So did thousands of other people. 1400 of them became contestants and there have been various rounds of challenges and eliminations. Al has interviewed some local people, addressed Florida's property tax cut, and offered some opinion commentary in various segments of the competition. Users of NPR's website have been the ones voting and judging for the prospective radio host they like the best.
"I had it set as a bookmark on my web browser, and then the day I went and erased the bookmark, I was thinking 'well, that didn't happen.' Ten minutes later they called me and I was a top ten finalist."
Now that Al has made it to the final five, he is preparing for the best possible scenario.
"As I've made it past each round I've been thinking 'this might happen.' So I've been developing a game plan."
The concept behind the show that Al wants to create is much more than just a radio show. Although Talk of the Nation and The Diane Rehm Show include callers in the discussion, they are only voices and the only involvement the general public can have on these shows (assuming they are even able to get through as callers or noticed as emailers) is to address the topics that the host and the guests bring to the table. Al's show, which will be called State of the Re:Union, will be about different American communities, and the content will be directed by the people living in those communities.
"I'm not naïve, I know there is so much bad shit happening in the world today, so much bad stuff going around, but I think way too long we've been governed by fear, so what this show is all about is looking for the light, you know? Not being governed by that fear anymore. In every episode we would go to a different city in a different state and look at that city's artistic and cultural happenings, but we also do two stories, and those stories evolve around two topics: bringing people together and pulling people apart."
He calls it a "feel good show" because it celebrates the parts of a community that make it different. His objective is to highlight something that benefits a community and embraces that community's diversity, and then to address something that is pulling the very same community apart.
"In seeing how people are being pulled apart we can see better how we can bring people back together."
Although he has not won, and perhaps will not win, the NPR contest, it has driven him to nurture this idea and he is currently planning to make it a reality with or without the help of NPR. The concept does not have to exist on the airwaves, it can be plenty effective online. He has already mapped out the inaugural show. It will focus on a church in Jacksonville that actually addresses racial diversity from the pulpit.
"What I love about the church is that it is very mixed. The other thing that is great about it is that the pastor actually preaches about race. You may get a black minister that is speaking out about racial injustice or something along those lines, but you don't usually get a dialogue from the pulpit about how we are all screwed up on race and how we can change things."
He juxtaposes this story with a story of how gentrification can divide and destroy the communities it is meaning to rejuvenate. To tell this story he found a group of boys in the Springfield area of Jacksonville, a neighborhood currently enduring gentrification.
"It's basically about these young boys in Springfield who are watching their world get smaller and smaller because Springfield is getting more and more gentrified. I'm not one of those people that think that gentrification is automatically a bad thing, I think it can be a bad thing. I think that some places do need to be revitalized, but it's all about how you do it and if you are doing it with the people in mind. I don't know that that is the case in Springfield. I do know that these boys are definitely watching their community shrink and change completely. I did an interview with them where they were laughing so hard about the white people in the neighborhood having a party in the park. They could not believe that anybody would have a party in the park, it's just so foreign to them. I thought, 'what's weird about that?' Because I see parties in the park in Riverside all of the time, I mean there is nothing strange about that."
Although this first episode seems to have a racial focus, race is not at all the centerpiece or the theme of the show.
"I don't even think race is what pulls us apart, I think it's class more than anything these days. It's a class thing that the boys in Springfield don't understand having a party in the park. I'm black like them and I totally get having parties in the park."
In spite of the fact that Al Letson is a semifinalist on the Public Radio Talent Quest and it is his face and his voice that people are voting for, he hopes to create a show that not only transcends the radio, but also transcends him.
"I'm just going to go into a community and try to find the stories. What's different about my show than probably anything NPR does now is that my show is asking for listeners and people from all over to get involved in it. I'm getting together a really interactive website / magazine. If you have an interesting story about your city or you think a show should take place in your city, then cool. Give us a holler. Tell us about your story. We'll post it on the website and we'll either hook you up with a producer who will help you produce the piece or we'll get the affiliate to do the piece or we'll come out there and do it… What that does is bring the audience into the process of creating the show. I think that NPR can be too insular and not really go outside of itself."
NPR is certainly in a position to help Al achieve some of his grander goals, but it is also in a position to gain from Al's vision and youthful perspective on how to integrate the new digital medias with the oldest digital media.
"When you go to an NPR website, it is a good, functional site, but in no way, shape, form or fashion will it wow you or pull you in the way their shows do. To me, my favorite show on NPR is This American Life. Excellent show, but if you go to the website, it is a website that is there because it needs to be there, but not because it wants to be there. In this day and age, it's foolish to do anything without recognizing what the new media has done. That's what my show is about, bringing in the new to mix it with the old."
Al's primary goal is to help America escape the homogeny of our corporate existence and find a way back to our communities. Rather than always listening to radio and television that is crafted by international corporations to appeal to the general audience to serve national advertisers, he wants to remind listeners that their local community is the lifeblood of this nation. Nothing is more important to the well-being of our society than maintaining our individual and distinct communities.
"I guess to sum it up, the goal is to show that your neighbor is just like you and where they're different; we can find strength in those differences. I just feel like the country has been so polarized in the last eight years, and so this show is trying to bring that back by showing people in Idaho that people in Florida are just like them. We have the same wants, the same desires, and when we're different, it's a good thing."
Go to publicradioquest.com to listen to Al's submissions and place your vote for who you think should be the next NPR radio host. If you pick Al Letson, you could be listening to State of the Re:Union, or you could be asking Al to do a show about your community and you can use your vote as leverage.
|
|
EU Critic’s Choice Awards
