A funny thing happened to Clevelander Jimmie Woody. He went to Kent State University, played football, got a degree in advertising and then he discovered Shakespeare. Well, maybe not quite that quickly. After getting stung by the acting bug, Woody took some post-graduate courses in theatre at Kent and soon thereafter found himself at a prestigious university in New York studying with Andrei Serban and Anne Bogart. Those in the know would recognize these heavyweight names from Columbia University and the wonderful world of theatre. Woody’s life has mirrored some of the tragedies he’s performed that were written by history’s most widely known playwright. He performed Shakespeare’s Hamlet at Tri-C and the role of Friar Laurence in Romeo and Juliet recently in the Cleveland Shakespeare Festival; he also appeared at the Cleveland Public Theatre and the Beck Center. He hosts a monthly event, The Labyrinth, which blends poetry, visual art, music, theatre and other art at 13800 Harvard Avenue, usually on the 3rd Saturday of the month. Cool Cleveland caught up with the actor/director to gain some insights into the man behind the mask.

Cool Cleveland: Though it was tough going, you cut your teeth in New York on a newly found passion. What was your experience?
I was acting throughout New York City, from Washington Heights to Brooklyn, to Flatbush and even in the Bronx. I was one of the only students who was going to this expensive Ivy League school, but was homeless. For the last two years, I just slept on friends’ couches, slept in teachers’ classrooms, offices, anywhere I could find…because I could not afford the housing. The housing situation in New York is really tough as nails, if you know what I mean. It was the first time in my life that I applied myself 100 percent, where I tried my hardest to really understand the craft of theatre, acting, and what goes into it.

So what did they teach you in grad school when it comes to theatre?
In grad school, they’re trying to teach you the craft of acting: presence, character, how to apply characters to certain scenes, but Columbia was like a creative hotbed where we were able to do things that weren’t conventionally correct in theatre. We were able to explore different areas and find different things. Our teachers told us that it was time for us to go outside our boundaries because you’re not going to be able to do that in the professional world. They’re just going to want to “see it;” they’re not going to give you much time to experiment. Plus, our school was considered an experimental theatre. Teachers Andrei Serban and Anne Bogart just laid it out for us and they challenged us. They challenged me. It was tough for me in certain parts just to understand what was being required of me. Number one was Shakespeare. I COULD NOT STAND SHAKESPEARE. I couldn’t stand it for my life.

How do you feel about it now?
Oh, I love it. It’s interesting because now that I teach at Tri-C (Cuyahoga Community College), I’m working with students there that…one of the first things I threw at them was Shakespeare. People were like ‘how could you throw Shakespeare at them when they don’t know the first thing about acting. The way that we were taught was that if you can do the classics, you can do anything contemporary. You can get up and do Suzan Lori-Parks’ Top Dog, Under Dog, if you understand Shakespeare or if you understand Greek mythology and all that stuff that we worked on.

I tell my students that when I was in high school, I used to find ways to work around Shakespeare. I would get the movie, buy the Cliff Notes, get somebody else to do the work for me...because at the time I was the jock and I had certain privileges. I couldn’t stand it [Shakespeare]. And even in grad school at Kent, they assigned it for us to read and I still didn’t read it. But in grad school [at Columbia], we were told that we were going to devote one half of the year to nothing but Shakespeare, so how in the heck am I going to cheat or find shortcuts because I gotta get up there and act it. You can’t do a shortcut if you’re getting up there and acting. That was another defining moment for me because…I said [to myself], 'You know what? I can’t stand this, man. I don’t know what the heck he’s talking about, but I’m going to really dive into it.'

How do you get to a point where you really do understand Shakespeare?
We were working on As You Like It. That’s a romantic comedy kind of thing. Our teachers recommended that we read the play, and I was like ‘I don’t even understand the first word that he’s saying!' What I wound up doing…I would have a dictionary and anytime I came across a word I didn’t understand, I just started looking up those words. And also, my one teacher [Priscilla Smith] said, "You're gonna' have to understand what each line is saying because if you don’t understand it, how the heck is an audience going to understand what you’re saying?" So I would put it in my own vernacular. To be or not be. To live or not to live, that is the question. To be great or not to be great, that is the question. You know, just breaking it down so I understood what was going on. And that’s when the sky opened up and the seven white doves came down from the sky. The gratification that I got was when we went up and we presented these scenes, and I understood what the heck I was saying and I wasn’t trying to put on the English accent and act Shakespearean; I was just being me. That’s when it opened up; then I felt a lot better about it.

It’s something that you really gotta get into your body. The more I did Shakespeare, the more I understood that what he wrote related to human nature, and what goes on in our lives: love, hate, loving somebody and them not loving you and vice-versa, jealousy, tragedy, disappointment, depression. He has all of this day-to-day stuff we deal with in his plays. Once I really got past the language thing and I understood what he was saying, that’s when I was like, ‘Wow, that’s really cool.' I really understand what I’m doing now.

It almost sounds like you’ve been able to internalize Shakespeare to a point where you can apply scenes or text or whatever into your everyday life, and have a better insight into human behavior.
It’s funny, but in a lot of ways I identify with Hamlet because of what was going on with him, you know, how it was to lose a father. What brought me here to Cleveland was the fact that my father took ill with colon cancer and I didn’t know this until a day or two before I came back here to see him. Three days later, he passes away. My whole world changed. And some of the things that happened with relatives and family in Shakespeare kind of happened to me. I could relate to how it was to lose a father and to feel different and to feel like something just isn’t right inside of me, but then on the outside, people don’t understand what’s going on with you. It’s that whole mourning and loss of your ties to your ancestry, to your legacy. You know, my father passed away and then to compound it, two years to the day of my father passing away, my mother passed away. And she passed away on September 11 of 2000, not 2001, but 2000. I understood his ‘inky cloak.’ So I can relate.

By Cool Cleveland contributor Vince Robinson vrobinson12@hotmail.com

Interview and photo by Vince Robinson (:divend:)