Interview: Norm Lewis on His New (Non-Musical) Leading Role in Ceremonies in Dark Old Men

From the Phantom to Porgy, Norm Lewis’s Broadway résumé is filled with an array of memorable musical-theater roles. So the opportunity to do a play like Lonne Elder III’s Ceremonies in Dark Old Men was a welcome departure.

In the 1969 drama, presented by the Peccadillo Theater and Negro Ensemble companies and Eric Falkenstein at the Theatre at St. Clements, Lewis plays Russell Parker, a former vaudevillian, widowed father of three adult children, and unsuccessful barber. In the 1950s, his struggle to make a living and find a direction in life pushes him in the wrong direction.

The play, now directed by Clinton Turner Davis, was first presented by the Negro Ensemble Company in 1969 (a subsequent production featured a young Denzel Washington). Its look at the struggles of Black Americans remains timely, and Lewis spoke to TheaterMania about connecting with his character as well as his New Brain breakthrough and playing himself on TV.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

The role seems like a departure for you. Why did you want to do it?
It resonates with me in a certain way. It reminds me of family, it reminds me of cultural things. It’s set in a barbershop and I remember as a kid being in a barbershop with my dad and his friends talking about sports and politics and things like that.

How would you describe your character, Russell Parker?
He used to be a vaudeville dancer and performer, and being a dancer, you know that there’s a limited amount of time you’re in the business. He had to transition to something else. I see him as this guy who’s searching for a purpose. He’s been kind of fluttering since he’s no longer doing his art, and that has translated to his kids. His daughter is the most responsible of all of them, but seeing where [his two sons are] going and how they’re progressing, it’s a reflection of what Parker’s going through.

Your most recent Broadway appearance was also in a play, Chicken & Biscuits. Are you leaning more into shows that aren’t musicals.
I just go where the work is. [laughs] And these opportunities have been coming up the past couple of years, which I’m really grateful for, and hopefully will continue even more into the future. But yeah, I will never ever give up my musical-theater roots and journey because it’s too important to me. But when you find something as powerful as this, you jump at it.

You do get to show off your dancing skills.
A little bit. But I wouldn’t necessarily count them as skills. [laughs] Just some dancing.

It was a nice surprise to see you turn up as yourself in an episode of Better Things a few years ago, and sing in it as well. How did that come about?
I met [series creator Pamela Adlon] through some friends years ago when I did Tommy back in the ’90s. We would see each other or hear from each other periodically over the years, and I got a phone call from my manager saying, “Hey, Pamela Adlon wants to hire you as you. She wrote a script and everybody that’s in it will be playing themselves.” I said OK and it was fantastic.

Do you feel that race has impacted your career? You’ve played a lot of roles that would not traditionally have gone to a Black actor.
I’ve been one of the fortunate few to be able to do that, and I’m honored, but since all of the things that have happened with the Black Lives Matter movement and what led up to that, there’s been more conversation, and that’s been really impactful, because otherwise these small little things, like microaggressions, that people have experienced just percolate and then can explode. It might be little things that people say that they just don’t know could be offensive or their actions could be taken in a different way. The conversation has been amazing.

You paid tribute to William Finn on social media when he passed away recently. More than 25 years ago you were in his musical A New Brain at Lincoln Center. Was that a turning point in your career?
Yeah, I remember auditioning for the show and I ended up getting the doctor and understudy of the character of Roger. That same week I also got All My Children. I ended up taking All My Children. Unfortunately, the actor that was playing Roger had some vocal problems and they decided they wanted to have someone else for the recording, so they called me. That was all I was supposed to do. Then about a week after doing that, the producers and also the actor decided he would leave and I got a phone call about playing the role. So for about six or seven weeks I was doing All My Children during the day and A New Brain at night.

How great to be so in demand.
Yeah, interestingly enough, All My Children was a little stressful because you had new dialogue every day, and sometimes even while you were there they would change some lines on you. It was a relief to do A New Brain because it was something I knew, it was very much in my comfort zone and I loved the cast—Kristin Chenoweth, Penny Fuller, Malcolm Gets—and we had such a fantastic time together.

Getting back to Ceremonies in Dark Old Men, what do you hope audience members take away from it?
It is a story that is told through the eyes of an African American culture up in Harlem in 1956, but it’s a very universal play. There are people that have struggles in their lives and are always trying to do better, and this show is searching for the betterment of mankind. You’re trying to find that thing that can put you over, that can make you successful, that can make you able to live life the way you want to live it. I think people will relate to this story no matter what background they are.