Colman Domingo & Director Greg Kwedar Break Down a Scene From 'Sing Sing'

It's a very conscious thing for me to show,

to support, to amplify tenderness,

especially when it comes to the way we view

black and brown men,

because the world is set up in a different way,

believing that we're not tender.

To sleep.

To sleep.

Perchance to dream.

Aye, there's the rub.

Hi, I'm Colman Domingo.

And I'm Greg Kwedar the director of Sing Sing

and this is Notes on a Scene.

It sure is.

The program at the center of this movie is

Rehabilitation Through the Arts, a program in New York

that has been putting on theater productions,

started at Sing Sing in 1996,

and they've been putting on theater productions inside

these maximum-security facilities.

This scene, what did you call this scene?

Taking the stage.

Taking the stage,

and this is when Clarence Divine Eye Maclin

playing a version of himself is actually

taking the stage and going through a rehearsal

and he's learning sort of, like, how to do it

and being coached by Brent Buell, played by Paul Raci

and he's having some troubles, you know,

as a newbie actor, right? Yeah.

Okay. You wanna take that again?

Why? Did I do something wrong?

No, no, no. We're just working at it.

But I'll tell you what, let's try something here.

Paul here, as Brent Buell, is trying to encourage

Divine Eye to take the stage, like,

to really take ownership of stepping on

and he's saying something really meaningful,

but I don't think he knows how to say the deeper thing

that only Colman can as Divine G,

and this is also a point in a movie that

we've probably seen this scene before in a lot of movies,

where the teacher, like, encourages the student,

yeah. Yeah, we didn't wanna suffer

those tropes of, like, you know,

white savior. Yeah, yeah.

And that's not what's happening here.

It's, like, he's just the person who comes on

and helps ignite and encourage as well.

I wanna see you come on the stage with Hamlet's,

you're in Hamlet's world

and you're bringing that all the way to your mark,

and then you say your line.

Let's try it.

A big part of, like, how we decided to frame

a lot of this movie is about the power of what happens

when you draw close, when you bring the camera

and actually look someone in the eyes

and hear their stories and, like,

the kind of mini stories that a face can tell

and a lot of our movie lives in a lot of these closeups.

To be-

Now, hold up. Did you do it?

Because we all fell asleep.

Oh.

I've known Clarence Divine Eye Maclin for eight years.

He was one of the first people Clint and I met

when we started to learn about the program

and he's one of those people that, you know,

you feel almost before they walk in the room.

He has this immense presence and

part of that is, like, charisma, and he also has a light,

you know, that emanates from him,

but he's a very deep human as well.

He's very intelligent. He's constantly curious.

Like, you know, he's out of his comfort zone

in many ways doing his first film,

but he was learning every single time and watching

and figuring it out and, by the time he got here,

his subtlety just shown so much

to know that he didn't have to play to the balcony,

'cause he was used to the theater.

So he was able to distill and learn

all the relationships of camera.

I think he's always had that, as a performer. He's a sponge.

I saw you walk out here like a man who's asking

this audience for permission to be here.

This is the theater rehearsal space

and I wish you could just see, like, above this.

There are these vaulted sort of wood ceilings

and, when you walk into this room,

it takes your breath away

and contrasted with the actual prison environment

that's surrounded by, like, miles of razor wire,

this space here was safe

and it was a place that you could really

express yourself. Who's this guy?

That is James Big E Williams.

That's Mosi Eagle.

Why don't you say who that is?

Who's that? This is my best friend Sean San Jose,

who's a phenomenal actor.

We've known each other for 30 years

and I knew he needed to go on this journey with us.

Who's this gorgeous, stunning gentleman?

King. King Colman.

King Colman Domingo. I think he needs a bow tie

as well, because he's cool.

And who's that?

[Greg] This is Sean Dino Johnson.

[Colman] Gosh, that guy has so much heart.

Take the stage and say, hey,

it's time to start paying attention to me.

You have to show- Brent. Brent.

[Brent] Yes, G.

Do you mind if I?

[Brent] Please.

The process of doing this work

is transformative on almost every level

and the proof is really in the pudding.

Like, the recidivism rate of people going back to prison

within five years of their release is over 60%

and graduates of this program, three here in front of us,

less than 3% ever go back inside.

3% recidivism rate, which is astounding

compared to the 60% that's the norm.

So this program is a program that works.

The world expects brothers like you and I,

all these brothers, to walk in with our heads held down,

you know, apologize for being there.

Now, what you gotta walk in is like a motherfucking king.

[Mike Mike cheers]

Like you own all this shit. Everything is yours.

In November of 2021, I was sitting with a notebook

and finally had this clarity to center

the story of putting on this play between

a friendship between the real Divine G and Divine Eye

and this treatment just kind of fell out

in about 10 minutes and, at the very end of it,

I just wrote Colman Domingo as Divine G and-

What, did you see, my in Zola and you thought that-

[both laugh]

[G] I own this fucking theater.

This is my fucking theater.

[Mike Mike] I own this bitch.

I own all this shit.

That's it, yeah, yeah.

Now, give him some love, give him some love.

[audience applauds]

All right, all right, all right, that's enough.

All right, now what's your emotional state?

What's underneath?

My character had to meet Divine Eye's character

where he lives.

Like, he lives in this other very sort of raw place,

and so I had to make it more accessible

and make him understand, oh, this is still your experience.

You can take what your life experience is

and apply it to Shakespeare.

At the center, for me, I think that this film

ultimately is about brotherhood,

because they're looking after each other in every single way

and making sure that they're helping each other find access

to whether it's their emotions, to their feelings,

to advocating for their own liberation.

They're in this place doing the work

and because the system's not set up for that to happen,

but they're taking ownership and really just like, you know,

finding the light in their lives.

So I thought, what a beautiful message,

and I wanna be a part of messages like that

and these complex representations of black and brown men.

Mad as a motherfucker.

Okay. Nah, nah, nah, okay.

Anger is the easiest thing to play. Am I right, Brent?

Too easy.

[G] What's more complicated is to play hurt.

[Colman] I think this is a tool for life-

Yeah. Actually,

what's being said right here.

The fact of saying anger is easy,

but to play hurt is more complicated.

Again, I think the thing that I learned

and we all learned from even studying RTA

and the purpose of how theater plays in this

is you're giving people life tools as well.

You're saying, oh, okay, wait, I'm not angry.

Actually, I feel more complicated emotions than that.

People who are learning this stuff in these theater games,

rehearsals, it's very unconscious

that they're actually applying this to their own lives

and making them think differently about their own feelings.

That's why I think a program like RTA is so important

and how it works and how theater works, period.

[G] It helps you name the thing.

All right, now try that.

You know, we also shot this movie beautifully lensed

by Pat Scola on super-16 film.

It was a very conscious choice for that,

because this is a movie about all the richness

that kind of comes, like, from the earth,

from being grounded in the earth

and to, like, shoot on an actual physical medium,

like, film, I think really helped us sing.

We shot our movie in sort of two halves.

The first half, we're in more, like,

kind of formal incarcerated spaces like the yard,

the cell block.

We were shooting in a decommissioned prison

that had closed a month before we went in there.

You know, we were only in there for 10 hours a day.

It wasn't active anymore.

But you still feel the oppression

of it. Yeah.

The heat, the lack of ventilation,

the ghost in the walls, how it's just a constant maze,

like, to go down one stairwell to only go up another,

and then you have no idea where you are.

When we finally kind of left that in our rear view

and came into the theater, we were just flying.

Yeah.

From the top. There you go, Brent.

There's little moments like this to see one hand going out

and seeing this big strapping man grab his hand as well,

applauding what's happening with this brother, that,

okay, good, he, he got the lesson, you know?

So I feel like, so those small moments and gestures

of comradery I think are very important.

Yeah, man, a big key word that you helped us find

was tender.

I mean, that's a simple gesture of that,

but the fingerprints of that are all over this film.

It's a very conscious thing for me to show, to support,

to amplify tenderness,

especially when it comes to the way we view

black and brown men,

because the world is set up in a different way,

believing that we're not tender.

To deconstruct and smash tropes of hypermasculinity

and to show that, you know, hey, these brothers,

'cause it is what I witness, you know.

I have friends. We call each other, Hey, beautiful king.

How you doing?

Because we need to hear that,

because the world is telling us we're something else.

So I think, in a space like this,

where these men have sought tenderness out with each other,

because it is tender to do theater, to express yourself,

to be vulnerable with each other,

especially in a place that is

set up to be dangerous actually.

Like the yard, but bigger.

I'm Divine fucking Eye.

[Brent] Yes, yeah, yeah.

I hope people recognize the human potential

behind these walls.

There's a line that Paul Raci says, where he says,

Who would've thought that the healing of the world

would begin right here behind these walls of Sing Sing?

Is one of the most potent lines to me,

because it says a lot.

It says that, could you even imagine

that the healing we're doing here,

with all obstacles against us, this radical love

that's happening for self, for healing,

for rehabilitation is happening here?

Just imagine what we take out into the world.

If we can do it, the rest of the world surely can.