Noted actor to stage play and screen film at Bates
Race, gender and relationships will be among the topics considered on stage and screen by an award-winning actor during a visit to Bates College.
Paul Outlaw will stage Here Be Dragons, a solo performance of his own creation at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 8, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St. In this 90-minute kaleidoscope of characters, Outlaw portrays more than 15 “real” individuals, from a legendary mulatto knight of the sixth century A.D. to a centerian former slave in the 1930s to a homeless gay man of today.
Outlaw will screen and discuss Pepe Danquart’s Schwarzfahrer (Black Rider), winner of the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film of 1994 from 4 to 5:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 9, in Room 105 of the Olin Arts Center.
Screened at film festivals throughout the world and the winner of many festival prizes, the feature follows a streetcar ride in Berlin with a German widow and African-American male. An exploration of issues of race in Germany, the 12-minute film, featu ring Outlaw, was the first German-made film starring an African American ever to win an Academy Award.
Outlaw, a New York native, graduated from Harvard College before he studied acting at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Before his relocation to Berlin in 1983, Outlaw worked in Off and Off Off Broadway theater, including Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival, the Circle Repertory Company, the La MaMa Experimental Company and the Harold Clurman Theater.
In Berlin, Outlaw continued his work as a teacher and coach and was active in Berlin’s Off-Theater scene, playing Vladimir in the Berlin Playactors’ inaugural production of Waiting for Godot. His German-language debut of Barrie Keeffe’s Barbarians led to his own direction of the first European production of Sam Shepard’s Suicide in B-flat.
As a singer and songwriter, Outlaw was featured vocalist in several Berlin bands. He has contributed to the soundtracks of various films and TV productions. Since 1994, Outlaw has lived primarily in New York. Most recently, he costarred in Roland Tec’s feature film, All the Rage, which features Outlaw’s latest musical composition, “Boy Crazy.”
Both the stage performance and the film are sponsored by the Multicultural Center, the German Club, the Department of German, Russian and East Asian Languages and Literatures, the Film Board, the Department of Theater and Rhetoric, the Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Alliance, the Affirmative Action office, Amandala!, and African-American studies. Sangai Asia is also a sponsor of Schwarzfahrer.
The public is invited to attend both events free of charge. For more information, call the Multicultural Center at 207-786-8215.
