An Improvised Life

Danielle Reddick believes life is one big improvisation,
which is why she hosts the Hat, a monthly event in which
artists of every ilk (and people with no artistic talent) can
get up and play at the drop of a hat. The Harlem native, who works as a hypnotherapist,
came to Santa Fe five years ago after four years on the road with the musical-theater
troupe Stomp. She has worked with Theater Grottesco and Shakespeare in Santa Fe
in the Santa Fe Film Festival.

Pasatiempo: How did you get involved in theater?
Danielle Reddick: I was always artistic. I remember at my third-grade graduation
they were handing out awards, and all my friends were getting academic awards,
and I was crying because I was thinking, "What about me?" And all of a sudden
they called me for excellence in the arts. I went to another school for the fourth grade,
where I played the lead in Get Feisty Love, a takeoff on Get Christie Love
[a television series starring Teresa Graves in a Pam Grier-like role].

Pasatiempo: So you were an 8-year-old doing Pam Grier?
Danielle Reddick: I don't think I saw any of her movies at the time.
Then in the fifth grade, I played Chiquita Banana in a play set in a fruit cart.
But this was Harlem in the 1970s. I would go from school to school because
they kept closing them down. And at one intermediate school I had this
teacher who taught Shakespeare, and she encouraged me to audition for
New York's high school for performing arts [Fiorello H. LaGuardia
High School of Music and Performing Arts] - the Fame school.
I didn't know anything about it - but I auditioned and got in.

Pasatiempo: So you were set on being an actress?
Danielle Reddick: I remember trying not to think about
it too much. It's just something that I did. But at that
time all the black actors on TV were playing servants and prostitutes
and gangsters, and I remember my mother saying, you might want
to find another career you can fall back on. But there was nothing else I could think
of doing. I ended up living on the Lower East Side in a tenement near a
lot of heroin addicts. I started doing off-off-Broadway stuff, street theater,
and children's theater. I was in an all-female version of Julius Caesar;
I learned puppetry and marionette work.
There were several years of just that - and waiting tables.

Pasatiempo: How did you get in the touring company of Stomp?
Danielle Reddick: I was doing a play and the director came up to me,
gave me a piece of paper, and said, "You have to go to this audition."
I said, "OK," and I went. It was a cattle call for Stomp.
The ballerinas were stretching in one corner and the drummers were banging
away in another; the people there were very entertaining. I never saw the play,
but after my second callback, I figured I better spend $40 and see what
I was getting into. And after I saw it, I was really scared. But I got the part,
and we rehearsed the show that summer - 1995, the hottest summer in creation - and
went on the road that September.

Pasatiempo: What character did you play?
Danielle Reddick: I was the comic relief. It was a great role. I was with them for four
years, and it was never boring. It was fun being part of that unit; it was rock 'n' roll.
But it was a very physical show. I spent a week and a half not being able to stand up straight.
Another guy in the cast had knee surgery. We were all broken. So in 1999 I quit and came
to Santa Fe.

Pasatiempo: In 2000 you got hired by both Grottesco and Shakespeare in Santa Fe.
What was your feeling about theater here at the time?
Danielle Reddick: My though was - and still is - you have to do your own thing.
After doing Grottesco and Shakespeare, I felt I had to do my own stuff and find my own voice.
Then came the dilemma: what do I have to say? I'm not angry, I'm not bitter, and I'm not
full of angst. So how can you be a performance artist if you're not angry? The answer is,
you do campy sci-fi stuff.

Pasatiempo: Would you do a play here if somebody asked you?
Danielle Reddick: It's important for me to get paid. But I'd do it for free if it speaks to me,
because I'm a ham. I've said no to a couple of pieces here. They asked me to play a
black ex-heroin addict in Women Behind Bars last year. I said no. Those are the
kind of offers I get.

Pasatiempo: Has your color worked against you?
Danielle Reddick: It hasn't hurt me, no. But during Stomp it was always,
"Oh, you're like a little Whoopi Goldberg. You're so cute, so funny." I didn't mind being
in Whoppi's shadow, but I kept getting typecast in those type of comedy parts. I don't want to
say that's because of my race, but I could come up with that if I wanted to rationalize it.

Pasatiempo: How did you get involved with the Hat?
Danielle Reddick: I sort of inherited it from it's founders, Chris Jonas and Molly Sturges.
I went religiously to their shows because I love improv. I personally believe that this city will
support good theater, but I think the bar is low here. The key is to do it well - then they will come.

Pasatiempo: So what's your goal now as a theater artist?
Danielle Reddick: My goal is to incorporate hypnosis into my stage work. I don't know what that
will look like yet. I'm trying to find out where my voice is. What am I comfortable saying - and if
I'm not comfortable saying it, then why say it? It's important for me to do work that is pure
and honest - But that's scary. What I like best about the Hat is that most of the people who do
it aren't actors. They haven't built up a storehouse of things that get in the way.