André De Shields
André De Shields Workshop
The Actor’s art is one with a mythic theme: discover the Golden Triangle—that place in the psyche where mind, body and spirit exist as individual smoldering embers. Once converged, they burst into a fire in the soul that burns through all illusions. The Actor that succeeds in this adventure is transformed into the Hero, possessing the tool for unlocking the power of life buried in the unconscious. It is this power that the Actor can then invest in new ways of life called characters. The adventure awaits!
BIO
André De Shields
In a career spanning more than forty years, André De Shields has distinguished himself as an unparalleled actor, director, choreographer and educator. He is the recipient of the 2009 National Black Theatre Festival Living Legend Award, the 2009 AUDELCO Award for Outstanding Performance by a Lead Actor in a Musical/Male (Archbishop Supreme Tartuffe), and the 2007 Village Voice OBIE Award for Sustained Excellence of Performance. Mr. De Shields is best known for his show stopping performances in the original Broadway productions of four legendary musicals: The Full Monty, for which he received Tony, Drama Desk and Astaire Award nominations, in addition to both the Outer Critics Circle and Drama League Awards; Play On! (Tony nomination), Ain’t Misbehavin’ (Drama Desk nomination) and The Wiz (title role). At the Classical Theatre of Harlem, he has participated in five remarkable collaborations with its former Artistic Director, Alfred Preisser—as Makak in Derek Walcott’s Dream On Monkey Mountain, in the title roles of Archbishop Supreme Tartuffe, Caligula and King Lear—resulting in a co-production with the Folger Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, DC during its 2006-2007 season, commemorating its seventy-fifth anniversary—and Langston Hughes’ Black Nativity (Lucille Lortel, Drama Desk and Drama league Award nominations/Outstanding Leading Man in a Musical). He received the 2007 Classical Theatre of Harlem Award for Sustained Excellence in the Theatre. As an educator, Mr. De Shields has served as Adjunct and Distinguished Visiting Professor at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, where he taught Shakespeare, and designed the Interdisciplinary Arts Workshop, EXTREME PERFORMANCE: From Ancient Africa To Post-Modern America. He was the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr./Rosa Parks/Cesar Chavez Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, where he directed a multi-ethnic, pan-historical production of Euripides’ Trojan Women.