Broadway star Zakes Mokae, Las Vegas Sun, March 10, 1999

For Zakes’ sake Lisa Ferguson Wednesday, March 10, 1999 | 9:55 a.m. It's the stuff Hollywood screenplays are made of. Born and raised in apartheid-ravaged South Africa, a man endures years of oppression, beatings and incarcerations, and rebounds to build a theatrical workshop there. Eventually, he flees his homeland and makes his mark acting on European stages. Later, he tackles Broadway, earns a Tony award, and heads to Tinseltown to broaden his career in films and on television. Finally, with years of critical success to his credit, he gives back to the community by sharing his experiences with aspiring thespians. But this is no script. It's Zakes Mokae's personal tale of triumph. The Las Vegas resident (he's lived here for more than a decade with wife Mandy) won the Tony for his 1982 role in Athol Fugard's "Master Harold ... and the Boys." His latest project: Kicking community theater in Las Vegas up several notches. Mokae is directing a production of the award-winning '50s-era drama "Fences," which opens Friday in the Black Box Theatre at the Community College of Southern Nevada's Cheyenne Campus. He's also mulling over ideas to help make community theater a stronger entity here. While theater critics and fans lauded the recent settling of another Tony award winner here -- the musical "Chicago," for an indefinite run at Mandalay Bay -- that's not exactly the type of production that Mokae (who also directed the Las Vegas Little Theatre's 1995 production of "Master Harold") has in mind. " 'Chicago' is mainstream. I just want regular theater for people who live here, like you and me," he says. "If you do 'Master Harold' or 'Fences,' you get the locals, people who like to go to theater." He'd like to start something here similar to The Rehearsal Room, the theatrical workshop he founded years ago in South Africa with Fugard. He is also anxious to query Mirage Resorts, Inc. Chairman Steve Wynn about his interest -- if any -- in financially backing a small theater such as this. (Wynn last year announced that the company is considering building a pair of 1,200 -to-1,500-seat theaters on Las Vegas Boulevard.) Mokae is quick to disagree with claims that Strip entertainment has drowned out Las Vegas' community theater voice. "It's not because of the Strip, it's because (theater companies) cannot get people who are going to commit themselves" to projects, he contends. That was his first order of business with the "Fences" cast. Since rehearsals began in January, few of the actors have missed them. "I make these guys commit themselves," he says. And on opening night, "They get the jitters, just like everybody else." Revisiting roles As does Mokae, a former member of the English Stage Company-The Royal Court, despite having starred in such plays as "Boesman and Lend," in which he made his American stage debut alongside Ruby Dee and Jame Earl Jones; "Jacob Zulu," for which he was also nominated for a Tony; and "Blood Knot," which was penned specifically for him. Stage success came largely after Mokae left South Africa where, as a youth, he was repeatedly beaten and arrested in the name of apartheid. "It was part of our growing up," he explains, "being oppressed and being downtrodden and all of those things. That was almost like normal. ... Actually, if you were never arrested as a black person, we worried about you. I know I'd be worried about you." Besides plenty of "hope, hope, hope," he says, there was also laughter, used as a coping mechanism in those trying times. "You have to laugh about some of the humor of these things, which is why you find some of the humor in South Africa is warped. When we talk in terms of pain, we laugh." On the big screen, Mokae was featured in roles in "Cry Freedom," "A Rage in Harlem," "Outbreak," "Krippendorf's Tribe" and "A Dry White Season," which earned him an Oscar nomination as best supporting actor. But, he says, "I'm at an age now where I need to direct. "When I was young, if you asked me, 'What would you like to play?' I would say 'Hamlet.' But as I get older, when you say, 'What would you really like to do?' " -- it would be an newly written play, he says. At this point in his decades-old career, he'd probably pass on a classic Shakespearean role. "I mean, how many productions of Shakespeare are there? I've seen maybe 50 people doing 'Hamlet.' I see a lot of actors doing 'Othello.' ... After a while, it's hard to get really worked up, so doing new plays and (working with) new folks give you the whole energy." Fans of the gritty HBO prison drama "Oz" will recognize Mokae from an episode in which he appeared, as will devotees of "The X-Files," which also featured him in an installment of the wildly popular sci-fi show. But if the truth's out there, Mokae doesn't know where to find it: He was unfamiliar with the hit show when he was called to appear on it. "I'm not kidding," he says. "They just called me and flew me out to Vancouver," where the show was previously filmed (it's now produced in Los Angeles). Nor did he catch the episode when it aired. "I never really watch myself," he says. "You look really ridiculous sitting there watching yourself. "I'm basically a stage actor. Movies and TV -- especially TV -- I'm terrible!" he says, chuckling. "I feel much (more) secure and safer in the theater." Still, he says, "I think every actor should go to Hollywood at some point or the other, just like I think every actor should go to Broadway at one point or the other. It's an experience." Stage directions That's the sort of advice he's able to pass on to local thespians, including "Fences" cast members. Sly Smith, who appeared in the 1995 production of "Master Harold," also acted alongside Mokae in the '80s on an episode of the talking-car show "Knight Rider." "I watched him work ... and I said, 'Wow, this guy does this stuff so effortlessly and he does it well,' " Smith recalls. The chance to work with Mokae again, he says, is what lured him to "Fences." "He brings an awful lot of insight, and with his experience that he has had in the theater, he's a wealth of information." Smith stars as Troy, the play's lead character, who shined as a player in the Negro baseball league but was halted from going on to the major leagues because of his skin color. He's bitter watching his football-playing son reach for his own athletic goals. "I never did realize that it was going to be as demanding a role as it is," Smith says, "until Zakes pointed it out to me that this character, Troy, is on stage from the time the curtain goes up until the end" of the play. Martha Watson seconds Smith's sentiment. Having performed in local theater productions for two decades, the former track and field Olympiad says: "I just thought, 'what an opportunity to work with someone who has been on Broadway and (is) a Tony award winner.' I couldn't pass it up." Watson, who plays Troy's wife, Rose, in "Fences," performed in local productions of "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "My Fair Lady," among others. She says directors usually "want to block the show; they want you to learn your lines and they don't give you a chance to really get a lot of character (development) done, they want you to do that on your own." Mokae, she says, "works with you in all of those areas, but especially with the character, which, if you get that part of your job done and done well, the blocking comes almost naturally because you are Rose, you are who you are supposed to be ... and he makes that real easy." Cast members "ask me all sorts of questions and I tell them my experiences," Mokae says. "As an actor, I went around the world, so anybody who says the theater doesn't pay, that's not true because I'm an example where I made a living out of the theater." With the "Fences" cast, "Everyday I tell the actors some kind of story," he says, "and they look at me like, 'This guy, what's wrong with him?' " He probably raised a few eyebrows when he referred to late master thespian Lord Laurence Olivier as "a ham." "Because he's exactly what an actor should be, which is he takes chances, he takes risks," he explains. "He takes big ones, so when he falls, he falls hard, but once it's good and it happens, you marvel in it." Mokae also considers himself among the pork variety. "I would take a chance like Sir Laurence in two seconds; I wouldn't even hesitate. I'd just jump into it and take a chance and see where we go. "And that's what I tell (actors)" and students at the universities around the country where he has taught and lectured. "You have to take those chances as an actor. That's how you're going to find out if it works or not."