We were lucky to catch up with Bobby DeJesus recently and have shared our conversation below.
Bobby, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.
I was a junior in George Washington High School and had been in an acting class taught by Robert Stonebridge. The funny thing about that is that acting is not anything I had ever really thought about beyond maybe how enthralled I was by seeing Henry Thomas in “E.T.” and Pedrito Fernandez in “La Mochila Azul”. I was a DJ originally and rolled with a DJ crew called Dy-Nas-D Productions. So, music was my first love but we were cutting class, getting high, in the stairwell of my school, as young people sometimes do and we decided it was a good idea to go running through the halls and making as much noise as we possibly could, while tearing down bulletin boards. So, there I am zipping through the hall, causing mayhem and this tall 50 year old, white man, comes out of one of the rooms and whack! Smacks his hand against my throat stopping me in my tracks. And he’s like “What the hell is all that ruckus you’re making?!?” and I utter “Let me go!” and he’s like “Okay!” And he flings me inside the classroom. And as I try to break the momentum of me being flung into the room, I realize that there are two girls on a mini stage and there’s stadium seating in that room. And I’m like “What are you guys doing?” and one of them is like “Isn’t it obvious?” and rolls her eyes so hard at me. By that time Stonebridge is in the room and has the door closed behind him. “Sit down!” He yells. “God forbid you might learn something!” So I do… I am indeed a captive audience, and in every sense of the word, fully captivated!
At the end of the class, as I’m walking out, I stop in front of him. “Hey, is there any way I can come to this class, every day, at this time?” He looks up at me with this devilish smile. He knew he had me. “Wait, let me get this right. You wanna cut class, every day, and come to this class, during this period, for the rest of the semester but not get credit for it?” I hesitate, not knowing what to say. “Ah what the hell, why not? You might as well learn something while you’re here. Sure.” “Yes!” I pump my fist and leave with a smile. And I did. Didn’t miss one class, or another day of school, from that day on. By the end of my time in George Washington High School, he would let me give input on scenes being rehearsed and even direction to other classmates. I really took to it!
He can see that I’m essentially shitting bricks and he’s like “Okay, that’s it. Perfect.” And I’m like “Okay but I don’t sound anything like this man” and he gives me a line reading and asks me to imitate it, I do. And he’s flabbergasted. I can see the excitement in his eyes, which gives me a bit of confidence. And as he’s sending me off on my merry way to rehearse and fill myself with self doubt, I turn to him. “Stonebridge, how long have you been planning this?” And he’s like “Since the first day you got up to rehearse your first scene. Right after that I started having the notion that you could do this. I didn’t ask you before because I didn’t want you to have enough time to think too much”. I smile and leave.
As I’m walking out of there, I think to myself “Yo, don’t worry. This is some theater club nerd shit. Ain’t nobody gon be there at no 8 o’clock in the morning, in this hood ass school.” That thought was very reassuring to me. Well, that is until the moment I walked into the school, on that morning and saw so many people. The school was buzzing with energy. And I thought to myself, “Hell nah. They’re all excited about something else. Not this competition.” And I make my way to the classroom.
The competition begins. They draw a name out of a hat. It ain’t me! So, I’m like… “Okay, I have a few minutes to go over my lines in my head…” The person gets up, the lights go down, the lights come up and they launch into their monologue. I can’t recall who it was, or what the monologue was that they were doing because as I said before, lines in my head. They finish and another name is drawn. It ain’t me again. So I take a deeeep breath. And as that next contestant gets up and starts doing their thing, a strange deep calm comes upon me. It was as if higher intelligence got a hold of me and I remember thinking. “Okay bro… This is a big moment in your life. This is it. The fork in the road. If you can go up there and rock this, in front of all these people, you got what it takes to do this. Because no audition is gonna have this many people looking at you, at once, with this kind of pressure. Just breathe deep.” I think one more person went up before my name was called.
I get up there and boy, oh boy, is this place packed! So, I’m trying to force a smile to not let the judges know that I’m way more nervous than I appear. The lights go down and I start getting into my wretched posture. The room is so quiet you can hear a rat piss on cotton. The lights go up and I went unconscious. It was as if the spirit of Shylock had possessed me and I look out into the crowd burning them with my eyes. “To bait fish withall!! If it shall feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge!….” I went absolutely nuclear. I mean, I left it all right there on that stage. When the lights went back down there was a dead silence in that room, for what seemed like forever before they went back up and it was like the stadium roar, when the home team does something at the end of the game to decide the game. Everybody, it seemed to me, was standing and clapping. The judges too. Stonebridge has tears rolling down his cheeks. And in that instance I knew, I was an actor. Haven’t looked back since.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Well, I guess you can say there were gradual transitions from one phase to another, in how I got into my industry. I remember being home from community college, where I was studying Mass Media Arts, marred in the deepest depression of my life, at the fact that I was denied the right to put my financial aid papers in, with about 10 minutes to spare, by a white lady with a serious attitude who felt it was incumbent upon her to teach me a lesson, on why it was a bad idea to allow it to get that close, till closing time. Cruel, just cruel but I’m thankful to her for being such a you know what… The issue was, it was a two hour drive and I had been held up by something. Can’t recall what it was but the point is, the bursar’s office was still open and the gate was still up, when I got there. In any case, that was it for that. I sat in my car and cried for about three hours before I mustered up the energy to drive back home.
Upon my return I hit the bed and two weeks had passed before I even knew what was going on with me. On one of those days, while I was laying in my bed, I heard some commotion out on the avenue, outside my window and decided to look out of it. It was a film crew, doing a short film, helmed by a Dominican director called Freddy Vargas. I quickly got dressed and went out there to speak to him. I waited till he yelled “Cut!” and quickly approached him. “Yo, put me in your movie. I’m an actor and I’m good!” He looked at me a bit shocked at how bold I was. And it just so happened to be that he’d lost an actor for his project, which I quickly replaced. This was a short film about the murder of a man named Kiko at the hands of the police, in Washington Heights, where I’m from. And it had to do with police brutality. Being a young man from the hood, myself, I knew something about that, from having been roughed up by Giuliani’s henchmen, who wore “We Own the Night” T-Shirts. They were police officers doing gang shit, basically. Anyway, that man had been murdered by them. And I’m in no way saying that he was innocent but trust that habeas corpus was NOT observed, during that interaction. In any case, I was now in my first short film. Not long after that, I managed to meet a manager who basically got me enough gigs, to get into SAG-AFTRA, which I joined through the waiver program.
I consider myself a fun loving, passionate lover of art, kid from the hood, with, perhaps, a touch of spiritualism. Not in a biblical/religious kind of way but in the way of compassion and trying to see the humanity, in others and the good in most things. I write screenplays and have directed, produced and acted in a few of my own short films. I’m all about bringing the narrative form to life. It’s what I live for. And am in the midst of working on a few feature film projects, that I hope will finally bare some serious fruit. While I slowly work my way towards launching my own indie film company.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
I’m a firm believer that any society worth it’s weight in even salt, should be subsidizing art. We spend so much money and expend so many resources on so much (I’m looking at you Military Industrial Complex) but we’re constantly cutting resources for what’s most important. When education and the arts are on the cutting block, you know where we’re heading and find me someone who didn’t need what we do, to survive that once in a 100 year event, we’re just coming out of. Think about what it would’ve been like, to do that without movies or music. Good luck with that. So, what we do is important. At it’s best it allows others to feel something that they otherwise may have challenges feeling, vicariously, through us.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
Oh, man… Okay, let me start by prefacing this by saying that the person in this story, is very well meaning and caring and that she said what she said out of love. I come from a modest family. We’re all pretty much blue collar, and in the 90’s when I was a teen, becoming an actor and making it in this industry, wasn’t really a thing, in the sense that there was no clear path on how to do that. And my aunt dreamed of being a dancer. And she was really great at it but I’m guessing she had her dreams squashed somehow or another. Anyway, one day we were hanging in grandma’s kitchen and she asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. So, I launched into dream of becoming an actor, with the enthusiasm that Ralphy had for his Red Rider BB rifle in “A Christmas Story”. She was unmoved. And the next words she uttered, cut right through me. “Those dreams aren’t for people like us…” I was crushed but I stood my ground. And I told her, “Oh yes they are. Watch me.” But I’d be lying if I said it didn’t take a lot of wind out of my sails.
That’s something that I’ve had to unlearn. And what I have to say to any young person or anyone that might be reading this is… Dreams are for everyone. If you can dream it, you can try to be it. Go for yours. Aim for the end of the universe. The least you could do is wind up among the stars, or at least in the stratosphere. And from up there, the world looks very different. You see, it’s not just about “making it”. It’s about being it. It’s about falling in love with the process and living a life full of purpose. I mentioned stratosphere because the world looks different when you live with purpose. And besides, if you’re an artist, you have in you, an expression monster. Feed it, or it will feed on you.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: bobbydejesus
- Facebook: facebook/bobbydejesus