These days, Colman Domingo is known as one of America’s finest actors of stage and screen, an Emmy winner for Euphoria, a Tony nominee for The Scottsboro Boys, and an Oscar nominee for Rustin. A second Academy Award nod seems destined for his latest role as John “Divine G” Whitfield in Greg Kwedar’s drama Sing Sing, opening in Bay Area theaters on Friday. But 30-odd years ago, he was a young actor at the start of his career touring California with Make a Circus, an offshoot of the Pickle Family Circus. But then he got a call to audition for a show called The Yellow Boat for Berkeley Repertory Theatre, a company he’d long wanted to work with.
“He makes it sound fancier than it was, saying Berkeley Repertory Theatre,” laughs Sean San José, Domingo’s Sing Sing costar and best friend as the two meet the press in a San Franciso hotel room. “It was a school tour.”
Named for the New York prison, Sing Sing is a drama built around the institution’s Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) program, which seeks to transform the lives of men who are incarcerated through theater. With the exception of Domingo, San José, and Paul Raci (who plays the inmates’ civilian director), the cast is made of graduates of the RTA program. Domingo character is based on a real man, an innocent man unjustly imprisoned, and the company’s star performer. San José is Mike Mike, Divine G’s best friend, in the rehearsal room and in the cells, where the two exchange thoughts and feeling through their shared wall.
Three decades ago, the idea of sharing a screen was not yet a thing for Domingo and San José. They met at that Yellow Boat audition when they were assigned to read together. “I can remember exactly the moment seeing Colman for the first time,” San José says. “He looked all cute and sexy, like he still does now. He had shorts on and a little backpack and he was putting his backpack down. We just sort of locked eyes and we’ve been best friends ever since.”
“We vibed immediately,” agrees Domingo.
They each got a part in the play. Show business glamor it was not. They rose at 5:30am. San José would pick up Domingo and they would drive from San Francisco to Berkeley where they would join the rest of the cast in a van. They would travel to elementary schools, up to three schools a day, put up a set and perform. “We were very happy to do it,” San José says. “In that story that we did, we played best friends. Which is funny because in the movie we play best friends, and we are best friends. I will take it!”
Eventually, Domingo left the Bay Area, following his star to Broadway and Hollywood. San José forged his own success in Bay Area theater, a co-founder of Campo Santo, the former longtime program director at Intersection for the Arts, and current artistic director at Magic Theatre. He has collaborated with the American Conservatory Theater, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Kronos Quartet, and more. He is also a playwright, whose modern translation of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, was performed at Portland Center Stage this spring. And he is part of Domingo’s Edith Productions.
“We’ve been collaborating ever since we met,” says Domingo. “Constantly, and there have been times that we do things, sort of in the shadows, like we’ll do a workshop of a new play of mine. Out of town, where Sean’s directing it, you know, or he would send me scripts of his and I would give him notes.
“We’ve constantly worked together for the past 30 years, and then this one, in particular, came up. I was invited to be a producer and star in it. There was just this role of Mike Mike. And I thought, ‘Oh, he’s somebody that Sean will be able to fill up in a way that I think was not on the page.’”
“I thought that I also needed someone who is sort of—I don’t know if he’s actually written as sort of like my best friend in the film—I think he’s like my soulmate,” Domingo adds. “But I knew that there were elements that Sean could bring that could help. He offers a lot as an actor, director, writer, and producer, and I felt like he could help us figure this out, because that’s what Greg and (screenwriter) Clint Bentley wanted me to do when I came on board. It felt like an extension of our process. And so, I said, ‘I would love for you to check out this actor Sean San José,’ and I told him all that he does. I think it seemed just right. We needed more multihyphenates on the show.”
Domingo and San José communicate most days in what San José describes as “silly, chatty texting,” in addition to sharing material and ideas. “Colman gives me vision,” San José says. “I feed off that vision. So, when he said, ‘Oh, read this script,” I’m just thinking, ‘Oh, good. I’ll read another idea.’
“Obviously, it’s a dream for me to do this, but what was cool that our approach to it was the same approach that we always have, which is about story, which is about the form… Our approach was not about like, ‘Hey, how can we play best friends? We’re best friends and will emulate that on screen.’ I actually think we played music together. I saw his character was and sort of instantly thought, ‘Where do people orbit around this guy?’
“That’s a force in the story: who’s boring in on surviving this world that he’s in. And it just became a dance, like we always do together. And I think out of that, either naturally, but more so by storytelling, we said, ‘Oh, these, these two guys kind of need each other and then our natural friendship can easily lead into that. But I think it was a much more inverse approach than the sort of on page like we play best friends together.”
Domingo credits Kwedar with giving his cast the freedom to create, likening the process of making Sing Sing to making jazz together. When he watches the film now, he cannot see where one idea ends and another begins. What he sees is generosity from every person on screen as he echoes San José’s comment that it was a dance. For San José, there was an extra pleasure in observing his bestie in such an intimate environment 30 years since that first auspicious audition.
“it was interesting being able to watch Colman work and watch him create character,” he says. “It had more to do with being a receptive listener and watcher as opposed to like 30 years of friendship, watching him create character. I just, in turn, painted in the areas that were available.
“In other words, I didn’t come and go like, ‘Hey, I’ll be energetic and I’ll be jokey.’ I looked at the words on the page in a scene with him but the force of what he does in a room, you know what music to play, I’m not gonna play his music. I’m gonna have to be in the orchestra with him. And so, in a really amazing way, I mean, this is true, I wouldn’t be in the seat, I wouldn’t be in this position creatively or in my soul, if I didn’t know Colman. I’m so lucky. But my character wouldn’t have been created if he hadn’t created this character. All I’m doing is finding the space to get it.”
SING SING opens in Bay Area Theaters this Fri/2. More info here.
