{"id":21658,"date":"2017-09-29T14:07:29","date_gmt":"2017-09-29T18:07:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/college.unc.edu\/?p=21658"},"modified":"2024-07-02T16:36:54","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T16:36:54","slug":"from-stage-to-classroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/?p=21658","title":{"rendered":"From Stage to Classroom"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Samuel
Samuel Ray Gates poses for a portrait in Kenan Theatre at the UNC Center for Dramatic Art. Photo by Jon Gardiner\/UNC-Chapel Hill.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Samuel Ray Gates came to the acting game a little later than most. In high school, he was a jock, not a theater kid. He went on to Hampton University in Virginia to get a degree in finance and didn\u2019t see a single play while he was there.<\/p>\n

Gates was on the traditional track to success. He moved from his native Detroit to Chicago and worked as a supervisor in a GM warehouse. Sure, he was still a contractor making $13 an hour on the midnight shift, but GM would eventually offer him a permanent job with benefits, better pay and a pension.<\/p>\n

There was only one problem. \u201cI was working at a job that I hated,\u201d Gates said.<\/p>\n

It was the 1990s economic boom and people with degrees like his were making lots of money. \u201cBut that just paled in comparison to what I imagined it must be like to be Denzel Washington,\u201d he said of the Academy Award winning actor, then starring in Spike Lee films\u00a0Mo\u2019 Better Blues<\/em>\u00a0(1990) and\u00a0Malcolm X<\/em>(1992).<\/p>\n

\u201cI could really see myself doing that,\u201d Gates said, even though he hadn\u2019t been on a stage since kindergarten and had never taken an acting class in his life.<\/p>\n

Then Gates\u2019 father, a successful entrepreneur, passed away at age 45. After his dad\u2019s death, Gates discovered that the father who had always wanted him to pursue a career in business had also wanted to be an actor when he was younger.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat sort of gave me the courage to pursue acting,\u201d Gates said.<\/p>\n

Learning to act at ACT<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Gates did some research and found that Washington had attended graduate school at the American Conservatory Theater (ACT) in San Francisco. He called and chatted with a kindly registrar who walked the neophyte through the process.<\/p>\n

First, the registrar told Gates, he would have to audition. The school was actually holding auditions in Chicago in the next couple of weeks, he added, so Gates should prepare two monologues. Gates had to call back later to find out what a monologue was.<\/p>\n

On the day of his audition, \u201cI was so nervous that I drove with my left foot on the gas and the brake because I couldn\u2019t stop my right foot from shaking,\u201d Gates said. Nonetheless, ACT offered him a slot in its summer training program. He would need to fly to the West Coast.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I buy a roundtrip ticket, I\u2019ll come back,\u201d Gates reasoned. \u201cSo I bought a one-way ticket.\u201d After the summer program, he was admitted to ACT and even got a scholarship.<\/p>\n

Gates moved to New York to try acting there. He did get work \u2013 on stage and on screen \u2013 and in 2005, after attending a Broadway production of Shakespeare\u2019s Julius Caesar, he met Denzel Washington, an actor he still admires.<\/p>\n

But Gates, like most actors who aren\u2019t Academy Award winners, needed other jobs to pay the bills. A friend told him about a playwright who was teaching juveniles at Rikers Island prison in New York. He was helping them write poems, songs, stories and plays about fatherhood and he needed an actor to give voice to their words. Gates got the gig.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just electric,\u201d he said. He was hooked. He began participating in Write on the Edge, an educational program of the Manhattan Theatre Club that serves at-risk and court-involved students in New York City and northern New Jersey.\u00a0Each year the program provides 26 separate residencies, giving more than 500 students the opportunity to write and revise an original play and see it brought to life by professional actors
\nlike Gates.<\/p>\n

People often praise Gates for the work he\u2019s done with incarcerated youth, but \u201cthe longer you do it, the more you think,\u00a0\u2018I don\u2019t deserve praise for doing that.\u2019 We have a problem.\u00a0The majority of them look like me. It\u2019s an epidemic,\u201d he said. \u201cThey may or may not be getting something out of it, but it\u2019s changing me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gates eventually developed a curriculum based on the plays of Pulitzer Prize winner August Wilson, author of Fences and The Piano Lesson. Wilson\u2019s Pittsburgh Cycle consists of 10 plays, each set in a different decade of the 20th century, that offer a lively way to look at history unfolding from a black perspective, Gates said. He also taught an introduction to drama workshop at Cristo Rey Brooklyn High School.<\/p>\n

Coming to Carolina<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Now Gates is the newest faculty hire in the drama department, teaching introduction to drama for majors.<\/p>\n

He was attracted to being a part of Carolina because, like\u00a0ACT, the University follows a model in which professional actors are the teachers. \u201cIt\u2019s one of few programs based on apprenticeship, with students working alongside professional actors,\u201d\u00a0he said.<\/p>\n

As an assistant professor, he looks forward to exchanging ideas with young Tar Heels, just entering the age where they begin to reflect on their lives. \u201cI\u2019m drawn to students who\u2019ve lived a bit,\u201d he said. With his own acting experience on stage and screen, he can also share with them what he has learned about the craft and about the business.<\/p>\n

As an actor, he will perform in the Playmakers Repertory Company\u2019s November production of Dot, written by Colman Domingo, a professional acquaintance. In the play, West Philadelphia matriarch Dotty struggles to hold on to her memory, while her three grown children fight to balance care for their mother and for themselves. Gates also plans to explore the ever-expanding southeastern TV and film market from Virginia to New Orleans from his base in Chapel Hill.<\/p>\n

\u201cWorking at Carolina gives me a great opportunity to further both my acting career and the continuing development of my teaching at the university level where I can nurture students,\u201d Gates said.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the first time Gates has come to Carolina, though. When he was in high school, the track coach (who was also his basketball coach) invited him to come with the track team to train at Carolina. Gates played some one-on-one basketball games\u00a0in Carmichael Auditorium and couldn\u2019t resist showboating a
\nlittle bit.<\/p>\n

\u201cI practiced the iconic shot by Michael Jordan,\u201d he admitted. Well, who hasn\u2019t?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Story by\u00a0\u00a0Susan Hudson, University Gazette<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Samuel Ray Gates, the newest faculty hire in the drama department, came to the acting game a little later than most. In high school, he was a jock, not a theater kid. He went on to Hampton University in Virginia to get a degree in finance and didn\u2019t see a single play while he was 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