ANDY DRACHENBERG: How did you become a part of All The Way?
PETER JAY FERNANDEZ: My agent called me and told me about this play about LBJ, his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement and his re-election in 1964, which fascinated me. I was excited when I saw that Robert Schenkkan, who I knew many years before and admired his work, had written this play. In addition, when I found out that Bill Rauch, who I had never worked with but had heard a lot about, was directing the play, I thought- Well this is going to attract a lot of attention. So I went in and auditioned. They had me reading for Ralph Abernathy, and then they asked if I could look at the Roy Wilkins role instead, which made more sense to me. And here we are.
AD: As you began to get further connected with the piece and the characters, what qualities about your characters and about the portrayal of this world engaged you?
PJF: The three generations of Civil Rights workers that are portrayed in this play are unusual for a lot of reasons, but mostly because our focus has been on Martin Luther King Jr. He’s an iconic figure and rightly so, but a lot of people look at the Civil Rights Movement as him and that’s it. He was certainly a leader and a pioneer in terms of non-violent demonstration, but those who worked behind the scenes and in front of the scenes don’t get the same focus. Roy Wilkins was a pioneer for Civil Rights, as was A. Philip Randolph, among others. They are the older generation and their attitude was that we make change in this country for people of color by legislative method. Their view was that we work with the government and within the law. And of course MLK’s attitude was that we have to do more than that because we’re not making progress. We need to demonstrate, but we’ll do it peacefully. Then you have the third (much younger) generation, which is Stokely Carmichael and Bob Moses. Stokely, at 23, had already been in and out of Parchman Farm, which is a really brutal prison down south. He and Bob Moses were very much exasperated that things weren’t happening fast enough. They’re the energy of youth and their methods were certainly a lot more assertive. What’s striking about All The Way is that Robert [Schenkkan] has included the tension between those three generations of Civil Rights workers. They’re all right and they’re all wrong at the same time. And the beauty of it is they are strategizing and disagreeing even as the movement itself is morphing, so the moments on stage have a real active feel to them. It gives us an eye into the machinations, the strategies, the personalities, the agendas that made up the Civil Rights Movement and its complexities. That was exciting to me and still is because it’s still morphing and changing.
AD: With all of these different perspectives of that period voicing up and trying to take action and make decisions, what memories and experiences from your past do you remember having informed your performance?
PJF: I certainly knew who Roy Wilkins was before reading All The Way. I didn’t know as much about him as I do now, but I’m old enough to know what was going on when John F. Kennedy died and what the President’s death meant to the country. I remember being down the street, playing with some of my friends and one of the kids came out and said, “The President got killed!” He was a joker so I didn’t believe him until his mother came out and told all of the kids to go home. I remember my mother saying, “We’re in big trouble now.” I didn’t know what she meant, so she explained, “If they can kill the President, who’s next?” What’s really been illuminating for me during All The Way is being able to see who LBJ was in the midst of all this. At that young age, I just saw him as this kind of cubbish, balding white man from the south who seemed fairly stern and suddenly became the President.
As I grew older and came of age during the end of the Vietnam War, like many other people in this country, I didn’t look at LBJ in a favorable light. I didn’t find his involvement in the Vietnam War palatable in any way. I didn’t think that we belonged there, and I was losing friends, older friends, but friends. The possibility was that, if they weren’t cutting back, I might have gone. My experience of LBJ was quite myopic because all we really got in those days was LBJ on camera, and he was an uncharismatic, dry figure. In doing this play, doing the research and seeing who he really was behind the scenes, we now know that he’s a volatile, very funny, passionate, larger than life politician. So I have a much clearer view of LBJ’s role in how the Civil Rights Bill and the Voting Act Bill came to fruition. It couldn’t have happened if he wasn’t there. It was a perfect convergence of agendas and energy in this country and he was the linchpin.
AD: What has the audience offered you in this production, not only as an actor but as a piece of the production?
PJF: The audience is the other character and, the way the play has been staged and written, when we’re not portraying our particular characters we are sitting as witnesses. The way the play is staged, as we witness, the audience becomes witnesses with us. They partner in the play. Their responses are sometimes quite visceral, quite lively, and quite involved. Their responses in talk-backs say that this playwright and this production have its finger on the pulse. Obviously it’s about a different era, but the resonance is pretty strong and they continue to reverberate, given what we are dealing with today.
AD: You just brought up what is happening today and, aside from a shut-down, we are also at the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil Rights Bill passing. Has that impacted or affected the resonance of this piece?
PJF: Absolutely. It’s been part of our conversation since the very first day of rehearsal. You can feel that energy and that involvement from the audience. We’re in some strange times here, yet they’re not so strange. There’s a lot about what’s going on now that is similar to then. For all their differences, for all their agendas and disparate backgrounds, the politicians of LBJ’s era found a way to make this happen. The political landscape, the lack of alliances in Washington and the fact that we don’t seem to be able to work across the aisle is what’s different now. Politicians now talk about wanting a dialogue and wanting to collaborate, but nobody wants to give up anything. So since everyone is so reluctant, we’re still stuck. It looks like it might be beginning to move a little bit, but in the 1960’s it was a different political alignment; you had conservative republicans, you had moderate republicans and vice versa on the other side.
AD: Moving again back towards the process, what opportunity has having Robert Schenkkan in the room and in the process offered?
PJF: Oh, it’s a huge bonus. He came here thinking he had a fairly complete play and it’s changed since he’s been here. I was very impressed with the initial piece of writing, but what’s great about this play is that you can get in the room and dialogue. When you have a cast of really intelligent actors, they have a lot to say about what they are doing. Robert Schenkkan is one who is confident enough in his own skill as a writer that he’s willing to listen to other approaches and other perspectives. Through that collaborative dialogue, we have been able to refine and hone a lot of the material and deepen the story. Ultimately this play is talking about history, but people aren’t interested in history if it isn’t human beings that are conveying the history. And that’s the beauty of the play; these people are complex, they’re contradictory, like real people, and having him in the room has allowed us to really flesh that out.
AD: The world that exists in this production is almost Shakespearean in terms of the cast. What has it been like to have this opportunity to work with so many people telling this story, and trying to capture so many voices and ideas in one piece?
PJF: It’s interesting you say it’s Shakespearean, it is very much so and, strangely enough, I’ve had a fairly large amount of Shakespeare in my career. I’ve done quite a number of Shakespeare productions, several of them on Broadway. I like that huge cast in a room. I don’t think there’s anything more powerful than the notion of ensemble. When you have a number of people who are selfless enough to sublimate themselves to the story that’s being told, it’s something really incredible to see. Everyone has a sizable speaking role, but then you’ll see people playing parts that have no dialogue, yet there’s such subtly and nuance in the storytelling that it is enhanced in a whole other way. Also the staging and the use of this particular set, makes the play even more epic because the audience is subtly included in the debates in the House, in the Senate, in the Convention, and in the funeral scene of James Chaney. This play is universal- it isn’t about my particular moment of glory, it’s about us as a whole. Ensemble storytelling at its best.
PETER JAY FERNANDEZ (Roy Wilkins/Shoeshiner/Aaron Henry) Recent: All the Way (A.R.T.). Broadway: Cyrano; Henry IV; Jelly’s Last Jam; Julius Caesar; Merchant of Venice. Off Broadway; CQ/CX; Richard III; Macbeth; The Pain and the Itch; Too Much Memory; Widowers Houses; As You Like It; Henry VIII. TV/FILM: “House of Cards”; “Deception”; “The Good Wife”; “Blue Bloods”; “Damages” “L & O (all)”; Adjustment Bureau.