We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Gerrad Alex Taylor. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Gerrad Alex below.
Alright, Gerrad thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Do you wish you had started sooner?
It’s a very interesting story on how I stumbled into a career in theatre. I was in my Junior Year at Johns Hopkins University getting ready to join the field of Neuroscience and study Sleep, Dreams, and Altered States of Consciousness. It was here at Hopkins that I met John Astin (who you may remember from the 1960’s “Adams Family” television program). Although I had worked with some of the student theatre, improv, and sketch comedy groups on campus, it was always in an extracurricular capacity. Taking a class and talking with John got me thinking that maybe my ambitions lay somewhere else. So my interests began to shift from the sciences to the arts, and the rest is history.
It’s an interesting idea to think about how my life may have been different had I started my creative career sooner. Unfortunately, Hopkins does not have a degree seeking program in Theatre and Acting and because of my limited exposure to the practice and (maybe more importantly) the business of theatre and performance, I did seek out further conservatory-style training in grad school. When I look back on the years and (maybe more importantly) the MONEY spent on schooling, I can’t help but ponder what may have been had I started training in undergrad and perhaps not needed a grad school education or any other myriad of paths I could have chosen for my life. But, I’m sure that’s no different than the paradoxical relationship many of my peers have with their college/university education; appreciating and despising the experience all at the same time. We are the generation of student debt; a legal promise that we made to some headless institution before we even had the ability to legally buy alcohol or rent a car. I am an educator and I absolutely understand the value of training for your vocation AND I also understand the burdens of pursuing a higher education in a capitalist society.
With all that said, I’ve had some invaluable experiences and met some of the most special people in my life because of the trajectory I took. I could have dropped out of Hopkins when I was bitten by the acting bug, gone to some studio in NYC, and immediately began auditioning for Broadway shows, but my life would have been very different. I probably wouldn’t be doing this interview with you all right now. I’m appreciative of the experiences I’ve had through my very unconventional induction into the theatre. I’ve traveled all over the country, met some of my greatest friends and colleagues, learned so much about craft, worked at institutions with leaders and values that I respect and have helped me articulate my own artistic values, and so much more. The investment of time and money allowed for that.
Gerrad, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Well, as I stated earlier, it was John Astin’s “Contemporary Theatre and Film” course at Hopkins that sparked a new interest in me thinking seriously about the acting profession. This took me to a graduate program in Las Vegas and then on to several years working freelance around the country in St. Louis, Minnesota, California, Upstate New York, and eventually back to the DMV region. In grad school, I discovered a strong proclivity to speech, dialects, and heightened language so naturally the majority of my work was with Shakespeare and the classics.
In 2014, I began working with the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company in Baltimore, MD as an actor. Since then, my relationship with the company has grown and continues to grow. In 2017, I joined the staff as the Director of The Studio, CSC’s in house acting studio offering classes and camps year-round for youth and adults. The Studio was the brainchild of our Artistic Director, Ian Gallanar, and we worked together over the next few years to grow it from an idea into a program that serves hundreds of Baltimore area students each year. In 2020, I shifted from the educational branch into the artistic branch of the company as their Associate Artistic Director. This new position at Chesapeake Shakespeare Company focused on building valuable relationships and partnerships in the Baltimore community. I also spearheaded the creation of a black affinity space for actors called the Black Classical Acting Ensemble. This ensemble opens up “sacred space” to allow members to find and nurture their authentic voices in the classical drama while centering and treasuring their experiences and opinions as Black Americans, to discuss the relevance of Shakespeare and the classics in Baltimore, and to invest in an expansion of the classical dramatic cannon initiative to include anti-racists and Afrocentric perspectives.
Last year, I stepped down from a full-time role at Chesapeake Shakespeare to focus on my career as a freelance actor and director and explore/develop other personal works. I still help manage the Ensemble and have been able to play a part in its growth over the past year to producing two fully fleshed out productions. I spend a fair amount of my time now as an educator as well. A few years ago I returned to Johns Hopkins University to teach acting and direct in light of John Astin’s retirement. I also am now one of the new Assistant Professors at University of Maryland, Baltimore County. I have found that I think my personal background and relationship to learning gives me a lot to say in dialogue with students and have really enjoyed these new experiences in higher education. This coming fall, I will be directing two different devised pieces with University students. It’s very interesting to see the reflections of yourself in the students you teach and how they find their way into the work. I am really enjoying being a support for that.
How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
I love this question! So, there’s this Confucius quote that hangs above the door way of my barbershop. It says, I think, “If your plan is for one year, plant rice. If your plan is for ten years, plant trees. If your plan is for 100 years, educate children.” I think this is the essence of how we sustain and support the arts and establish a thriving creative ecosystem. Educate; and not just expose but actually educate. Let me clarify: I think it’s worth taking a look at what it is exactly that we’re teaching folks about the arts. It’s great to have visual art, drama, music, and dance classes in pre-K through 12th grade; I know a ton of schools and school systems that offer arts exposure like this. But the students come out of these classes with just an anecdote about a fun (or not so fun) class they took and no real investment in the material. I was exposed to “Geography” in High School and I probably cannot point out a lot of countries in Eastern Europe now. I was educated on the poetry of Claude McKay and the writings of Alice Walker in High School and I can still quote “If We Must Die” but also I can have an informed and personal discussion about why the banning of “The Color Purple” is ludicrous and senseless propaganda of the same white-supremacist values that Alice Walker was probably writing against. I think we can and we must inspire that sort of personal investment in the arts in children who will grow up to be patrons, donors, advocates, critics, teachers, and maybe even artists themselves. Also, looking at arts education, it’d be great to ask how we can better prepare these young artists for the REAL WORLD that they have decided to engage in. Once again, I see a lot of “Business of Acting” classes that expose students to the idea of auditions, agents, building a brand, and so forth. And I see a lot of actors that claim to have taken a “Business of Acting” class and have no idea how to do their taxes; how to structure their artistry as a business so that they can pay their bills and feed their families. A thriving creative ecosystem, in my opinion, is one in which the creatives can actually survive being a creative so let’s teach them how to write off all of the car expenses they accrue while traveling all over the country, let’s coach them on how to negotiate a contract, let’s show them how to write a business plan. It’s not enough to just present the tools, exposing students to the ideas and concepts of art, but actually educate them on how to use the tools and make them active participants in the creative ecosystem. I if we go back and look at the kindergarten art hour and interrogate its actual value and come all the way up to the advanced senior year acting class in the BFA program and do the same, this is where we’ll begin to set up a sustainable culture of art for 100 years and more.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
It changes over time as the world changes but I think every serious creative should have a definitive mission driving their actions and investments of time and money. Currently, I am interested in creating “sacred space” that presents an artistic platform for melanin-rich indigenous people of the Global Majority and their Allies to tell stories that preserve and celebrate the history and culture of the Global Majority. At the end of the day, I consider myself a storyteller; an artist, sure, but simply put, a storyteller. And I am most interested in telling the stories of my ancestors and culture because I’d like to see more of that in the mainstream. So, I’m interested in how we can create the circumstances to support that? Who are the students and creatives that need this support? What are the communities that need these stories? Where are the physical spaces that will be incubators to this work? I use the term “sacred space” as well, admittedly borrowed from an educator I admire, Olisa Enrico, to also emphasize that I am committed to work that respects and uplifts the individual with whatever boundaries they come into the process with. I see the terms “safe space” and “brave space” used a lot right now but I prefer the term “sacred space” because I think it also accounts for a universal connection to a spirit realm that must also be acknowledged and respected when entering into work that may challenge us on a spiritual, existential, or metaphysical layer.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @uncle_gerardo
- Facebook: Gerrad Taylor
- Linkedin: Gerrad Alex Taylor
Image Credits
Kiirstn Pagan, DJCoreyPhotography, RJPhotos