Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for July 10, 2008 CHRISTOPHER JACKSON INTERVIEW

Southern Illinois native finds success on Broadway in Tony Award Winner

By Brent Stewart, The Southern

When Christopher Jackson was in the audience at the Tony Awards in New York City's Radio City Music Hall in June, it was a surreal moment. He was watching the cast of "The Lion King" perform "Circle of Life," which he had done exactly 10 years before. In just a few hours, "In the Heights," the production he had been involved in since 2002, would win the award for Best Musical.

Born in Metropolis and raised in Cairo, Jackson left right out of high school to attend the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York City. However, it was in Southern Illinois that he began cultivating his theatrical career. Though he dabbled in community theater with a few shows at Shawnee College, his first taste of what was to come was at McLeod Theater as part of the chorus of "Hello Dolly" in 1993. He never really wanted to do anything else.

"In The Heights" began as an original musical conceived by Lin-Manuel Miranda during his sophomore year at Wesleyan University. The musical eventually found a home at Off-Broadway's 37 Arts Theatre, seven years after the idea was first born. It quickly became an audience phenomenon and a critical success, luring both traditional and non-traditional theatergoers with its unique mix of contemporary music ad modern themes.

After more than 200 performances, "In the Heights" played its final Off-Broadway show in July 2007 and moved to Broadway in February.

Jackson plays the role of Benny, a young taxi dispatch worker, who falls in love with Nina, his boss' daughter, who has recently dropped out of Stanford.

Flipside sat down with Jackson to talk about his career, "In the Heights," and the experience of winning a Tony.

When you were still in Southern Illinois, what first got you interested in acting?

Well, I grew up singing in church, what was then Cairo Baptist Church, now Mighty Rivers. I was in my junior year of high school when a teacher that was at our school pulled me aside one day and said "Why don't you try participating in the speech team?" and that was really all it took. It introduced me to the world of plays and literature.

Although our school didn't have an active theater group, it was the next best thing. I was in 11th grade doing a dramatic interpretation of "The Crucible."

It was enough to just spark that curiosity in me, and that was enough to get me thinking this was something I wanted to do. My mom was very supportive, and everyone in the community was very supporting of me and encouraged me to try it.

After graduating from college, how difficult was it to start a career in New York?

I don't think the career part was as difficult as the "life" part. I didn't know anything about doing laundry or paying my own rent. The cost of living in New York is through the roof. I was fortunate enough to book an Off-Broadway show about a month after I graduated, and it ran for four months. I got my equity card, my union membership through that, sort of legitimizing the pursuit. And then I went through a year and a half of not being able to catch a cold.

I was fortunate enough to audition for "The Lion King," that was a new Broadway show at the time. I got hired an hour before the first rehearsal started. So it's all been a bit of a whirlwind in terms of my level of expectation and what the business really was and represented. I went from working four jobs to being a member of a groundbreaking Broadway show that just celebrated its 10th anniversary.

You said the "life" part was the hardest part. Being a kid from a small town, what was it like being in New York trying to adjust to that way of life?

I'm sure for a lot of people in the same position it would have been difficult. The pursuit represented its own specific difficulties. One part about being from a very small town like Cairo is that I got to know everybody, and I think that experience sort of helps you discern the things that are the most important in life, which is character, and the qualities that make a good person a good person. I didn't know anything but love and support in Cairo. That was always readily available to me anytime I needed to talk to anyone anytime I needed to a phone call. And anytime I came home, there was such appreciation for what I was trying to do.

I worked in a grocery store, and I got to know just about everybody in town. I guess it just made me more open to seeing different faces and interacting with people. I don't feel like I've ever really lost that small-town mentality. It's a bigger city, but they're just buildings, and they're just people.

How did you get involved with "In the Heights?"

I came on in 2002. I'd just finished doing a production in Chicago. Our show had closed unexpectedly, and I was looking at the prospect of getting another day job to keep the lights on. A friend of mine called me and said "There's this amazing project these guys are working on, and its different; it not like anything you've ever done; it's something you'd be perfect for, You just need to meet these guys."

I walked into the room, and I'm the grizzled Broadway veteran (laughs), and I'm looking at them like "OK, these kids don't know anything." What I quickly learned was that they were incredibly smart and incredibly clear in the vision of what they wanted to create.

Was it a labor of love in the beginning?

It's kind of like when you start laying a brick wall. It's hard to know just how big the wall is going to be or what it's really going to look like. But, you know, you just put one brick on top of the other and before you know it, you've built a castle.

The beautiful part about "In the Heights" is that it's a very simple story, and it's told at the speed of life. There are things that happen in every-day life that are rarely depicted on the stage. With the current crop of Broadway shows, a majority of them are set in a particular time period where the social atmosphere is decidedly different. This was something that was very modern, very today. It was timeless in a way, because this kind of story and the things that happen in our story could happen at any given time in someone's life.

Even though it's a story that happens in a very big city, it's a very small neighborhood it takes place in, Washington Heights. What's true about most of New York is each block is its own town. There are people you see every day, you pass every day going to work or coming home from work or sitting on the stoop. It takes on a very small-town feel.

The brilliant part about "In the Heights" is someone from Iowa or Illinois or Mississippi can come and see our show and find portions of the show that relate to an experience they've had.

It seems like your upbringing really prepared you for this role.

Absolutely. It's interesting, Benny is an outsider. The social dynamics shift a little bit in terms of the difference between Cairo and Washington Heights. I was always included, and I felt a tremendous longing growing up. Benny is a non-Latino in a Latin neighborhood, and he is accepted, and he is a part of the community.

Individually, growing up there were still issues from being from a mixed race and dealing with the subtleties of small-town life, never really dealing with any kind of over cruelties in that regard, but there was always a subtle difference.

I think that all of us are outsiders at one time or another ... be it when we're kids or in college or whatever. We're all trying to find the place we fit in. That's the universal story as well.

On stage this spring at the Tonys, what was that like for you?

It was tremendous. I had performed in "Circle of Life" with the Lion King 10 years to the day onstage. This was a decidedly different atmosphere and circumstances. To sit in the audience at the beginning of the show and see that number and know that I had been there was pretty special.

A career like this is filled with ups and downs. You go through the valleys, and you learn a lot about yourself, and you're fortunate enough to be a part of something like "In the Heights." Knowing that I've worked on it so long it makes it even more special that we found the success we've had. It's not often that you're part of a production where you a certain part of ownership.