An Interview with Carl Cofield

Brandt Reiter: Let’s begin with your background.

Carl Cofield: I grew up in Miami, Florida, and my uncle was an actor. My uncle was a contemporary of Ossie Davis & Ruby Dee. And Burt Reynolds had a theater in Jupiter, Florida — called the Burt Reynolds Dinner Theater, of all things — where you [brought] in snowbird actors who wanted to really develop their craft and still keep working when they were away from TV and film. They would come down to Jupiter and do all sorts of exciting work. My uncle was part of this company of actors, so I’d go to the theater with him and, you know, what had a profound effect it had on me — seeing what these actors and these creators could do to an audience. 

I started working in the industry at four years old. Did my first national commercial, did TV movies, did film, all around four, five, six, seven. By the time I was ten years old, I had done about twelve national Burger King commercials. But there was something to me that was so profound about the theater. You’re creating the work in real time. You’re having a dialogue with an audience, and something magical is happening in that time. Sure — excuse me — that happens in film, but it’s different. By the time the actor does their work, it’s a year, two years before the spectator sees it, wherever they are — it can be in their home, it can be in the movie theater. But there’s something about that [audience-actor] relationship that really had a profound effect on me at that age. 

So my career is sort of the reverse. I started in TV and film and pulled closer to theater as something that was really exciting to me — the closest I have been able to find the words to put it in is a religious experience. You’re in community with people, there’s an event happening and hopefully there is something that resonates with everyone. So I started trying to study the craft as much as I could. I had the good fortune to be in a great place and my parents pushed education — not to only just say you’re an artist, but to really try and learn the craft and get in there and work with teachers. I went to two pivotal institutions. One is a junior high program called the South Center School of the Arts, where they brought in kids from all over the place. This later morphed into PAVAC, the Performing Arts and Visual Arts Center, where you would go to your regular high school for four classes and then they would bring you to a college where you would start conservatory training with people from all over Dade County. That later turned into a place called the New World School of the Arts [NWSA], where I was in the first class. 

NWSA brought artists from different concentrations together under one umbrella, under one roof. So we had dancers at the highest level who after graduation went on to Ailey, went on to NEA Awards. We had fine arts, visual artists, sculptors, painters working in acrylics, working in charcoal. We had actors and — not to brag — but when I was there, you had Terrell McCraney. You had Robert Battle, who’s now artistic director of Alvin Ailey; you had Katie Finneran, two-time Tony Award winner; you had Andrea Burns, who’s on Broadway now. It was just this amazing moment in time where educators were really committed to passing on the torch of what this art form could do and how it could really change the trajectory of people’s lives and gave it respect. The respect that Uta Hagen talks about, the respect for acting, that was our sort of North Star guiding principle. 

From there, I went to University of Miami for theater conservatory undergraduate. Great training. It was based on the North Carolina School of the Arts template. After a successful run there — and this will be a recurring theme — I had a teacher who saw more in me than I saw in myself at the time and said, “Hey, Shakespeare and the classics, that’s for you.” I was like: “What are you talking about? That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard in my life.” [And he said,] “No, you should really investigate it.” So I went to RADA [The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art] — he had a hookup there — finished, matriculated from University of Miami and came to New York like everybody else with big dreams in a suitcase.

My next thing was John Houseman’s Acting Company that had morphed out of the graduating class at Juilliard. John Houseman and Margot Harley had this vision of taking actors and playwrights and bringing them to communities that are less served. I was fortunate to be there, and the reason I bring this up is because it brought me into a community with different training programs and different points of view on how to work on material. In my Acting Company group, there’s actors from Juilliard, there’s actors from Yale School of Drama, there’s actors from North Carolina School of the Arts, there’s actors from NYU Graduate Acting. So all of us are coming together with different vocabulary and experiences working on creating the world of a play. And that is another thing that had a lasting imprint on how I view artistic education. 

How long were you at RADA?

Only for the summer program. But here again, I still remember the people. Nona Sheppard, she was an amazing Shakespeare enthusiast, educator, theater director. And even in that short time of working, like we always do, you know, you work on a play for three months, you rehearse it, you run it, but that three months can have a tremendous impact on the rest of your artistic career.

You direct quite often. I’m wondering when you made that shift.

I made that shift probably, let’s say…. Probably about twenty years ago it started percolating. I’ll tell you why.

I think it’s important to put everything in context. For me, I come from a regional theater background. Why I love regional theater so much is because it’s less transactional than “You shut up, you buy a ticket, you sit in your seat, you go home.” The regional theaters that I came up with, the community actually had agency in their theater. There’s automatically a sense of pride. You talk to most people from Minneapolis, they’re like, “The ‘G’, the Guthrie, is our theater.” There’s a sense of pride, there’s a sense of community already built-in, and [it’s] almost like in the old Greek tradition, right? There’s a civic responsibility that you’re going, you’re sitting next to the mayor, sitting next to the person who works at Trader Joe’s, there’s all of this sort of civicness that goes into being a citizen in Minneapolis or at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. My theater, the Coconut Grove Theater, there was something that, by virtue of being a citizen of this community, you were expected to go to the art and let it foster conversation. 

So at a certain point in my acting career, I had been fortunate to work with some really great directors, really great. But I also worked with some poor ones, which I think is absolutely just as valuable because it tells you what you don’t want to do. And so, looking at the Molly Smiths of the world, artistic directors usually leaned at that time into becoming directors. So you had to cut your teeth in the freelance world and eventually if you were lucky you go to a theater, you start a relationship, they’re like, “Oh, we loved your production of so and so,” and they bring you back. And over that dance, you deepen your relationship with that theater. So that was a model that I was interested in. For me — here again, working on models — my first acting model was Negro Ensemble Company; that to me was the benchmark. If I could come to New York, have a career like that, like my idols, I would be fulfilled. Eventually the dream changed. Perhaps I can go run a mid-sized theater where the bureaucracy is down, right? But it’s really about art and engagement with community and not a community theater in the negative connotation, but actually in the affirmative: Community theater where people are like, “Yes! Oregon Shakespeare Festival! I grew up there, my parents took me there, I bring my children here.” And so I decided to focus on directing and learn the craft. 

So I went — and here again, great educators — I went back to school. I had been working pretty successfully as an actor. And I decided to try to learn the craft of directing even more, and devote three years to it. Luckily by this time I’m married to a beautiful woman who was supportive of that. And we were pregnant with our first son. So, you know, things are stepping out on faith a little bit. But we decided to go back to school. It was important to learn from practitioners, not just academics in my case, because I went in pretty clear-eyed about what I wanted graduate school to be for me. I wanted to know how to fundraise, how to work with a board, how do you work with enhancement money on your productions? I had formulated questions and I was on the clock. I didn’t have esoteric ideas about what it was; I had been in the field for a long time and I knew the cogs of the regional theater machine. I was just really coming to stretch out a little bit more. So I went to graduate school and learned, spent time with Anne Bogart and Brian Kulick, Tina Landau…

You were at Columbia.

Yeah.

And did they have the answers to your questions? 

If they didn’t, they pointed me in the right direction. Nine times out of ten, they did, because at that time Brian was also artistic director [of Classic Stage Company], Anne’s running SITI [originally Saratoga International Theater Institute], Tina’s putting “SpongeBob” on Broadway. So there’s many voices that you’re learning from. And that’s my approach to academic actor training. We expose you to big ideas, a smorgasbord of ideas and let you come to the best method for you. I don’t believe in gurus. I believe in exposing you and letting you choose.

This is a good place for us to segue. These “big ideas”; can you be a little more specific in what some of them might be?

Yeah. So for the actor, you know, I think we start from “living truthfully under imaginary circumstances,” right? And then we can poke at it and prod at it. Then we can go into Michael Chekhov’s psychological gesture. We can go into Grotowski, into the physical life of it. We can open it up a little bit more, but we have to have that understanding, that baseline, that we’re living truthfully under imaginary circumstances. And I think for me, it’s also important to — especially where we are in time and place — to bring all of yourself to the party. What does that mean? We’re in the middle of a long overdue conversation, a global reckoning about race, about inclusion, about equity, about diversity. So I’ve worked with a number of actors, especially of color, in roles that they might not traditionally be cast in. And usually at some point, there’s a conversation that says, “Well, oh, you want me to be, I can be black?” And even by that question, I think we’ve had a big problem, right? And my answer to that is, “Of course, I cast you because I want all of you, all of your lived experience, all of that in this character.” Might this, I don’t know, might this “Seagull” be a lot different than a more traditional, set in Russia, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? It might be. But my argument is always, if we live truthfully under our imaginary circumstances, it can unlock something that perhaps even Chekhov didn’t know was in the work. So it’s not limiting us in a very boxed-off identity politic art — “Oh, I couldn’t possibly do that because I’m not that.”  It’s more in the affirmative to say, “Well, that resonates with me. I know loneliness. I do know loneliness. I do know longing. And my longing might not resemble this Russian, but it is just as truthful. As long as we’re in there, we can shine a light on the human experience.” That’s the type of artist that I want to help foster along.

When you say, for instance, you cast an actor and the actor says, “You want me to be, I can be black,” what you’re talking about is casting an African-American actor in a traditionally white role and saying, you can be African-American in this, right?

Absolutely. You can be who you are. 

So, does the reverse hold? Do you cast white actors in traditionally African-American roles? 

I have not yet, but it is something that we are coming to have conversations around, especially in training. In actor training, that’s a big conversation now, to experience what August Wilson is doing and how his language is coming alive and how his language is, I would argue, just as heightened as any of the other “classics” that we’re using, right? I would certainly agree with that. So I have yet to do it because with that comes a responsibility to be mindful of people’s trauma levels and hearing the N-word — as Joe Rogan will attest — even if it’s properly in context.

There’s still — we’re still at that moment in time. I use August Wilson as one example but, I mean, we could use Derek Walcott, “Dream on Monkey Mountain.” Hey, as a director, I could say it’s a surrealist take that I’m going to put on this, right? And then we can poke and prod and expand the boundaries a little more because we’re talking about colorism and classism. So if I’m interested in that, I could make a dramaturgically sound argument that we could explore the workings and be blessed to come in contact with these big thoughts and big ideas and this type of work.

I want to circle back to this a little later in our conversation. But first, if you would give me your full title in your current position, and talk to us a little bit about how you got there.

I’m the Chair of Graduate Acting at New York University. I’m also an Associate Professor here. How I got here would be pretty much how we were talking before: I went on to do pretty well in the director space, and from that the opportunities that were afforded took me to different places to teach. Because I think, as my teacher, Anne Bogart, says, I think it’s also important to “teach one, do one, and learn one.” What does that mean? So, as a director, as an actor, I can do a play, right? But it’s also important to maintain that balance and be a student. So, I got to go learn something. So, “do one, learn one, teach one.” And then, when you have to teach it — Michael Jordan can tell you how to slam a basketball. Not everybody can do it; you have to learn to meet the artist where they are. So I think it’s important to get in that teacher space. So from that, directing professionally, I was able to go into the classroom. I was able to go into the classroom here at NYU, I was in the classroom at my alma mater, Columbia, and I was also on faculty at Yale School of Drama. From that, and my desire to spread the gospel of the art form, that changed my life. It was important for me to maintain the relationship with the future generation of theater-makers. So, you know, there was a national search for this position at NYU, I threw my hat into the ring, went through about a year-long process and was appointed.

Had you been an adjunct at NYU? Or were you full-time previously? 

No, no, due to my schedule, the adjunct space worked the best because I was, as you know, you’re digging in. I was in Ashland at the Oregon Shakespeare Fest and putting up a show but able to say, “All right, in the spring I’m going to come back and I’m going to teach two classes” or whatever. 

So, this is quite a different series of responsibilities: Taking over as chair of a department after having been an adjunct, and doing it at a particularly difficult time with all the COVID disruptions. So what has the adjustment been, if you can speak to that? 

Well, it’s been huge. And I will say, I think one of the biggest takeaways for me too is the mental health, mental wellness component of the artist. Why do I specify and say the artist? Because I always say the artist is being asked to go to places that most civilians repress, choose not to deal with, self-medicate, whatever you want to say. But for the artist, I think in the empath way, we feel it a different way. So the mental wellness component of it has been substantial. That coupled with how we see white America and where we are in our global reckoning with all things, has definitely led the conversation about where we go as an artistic institution and a training institution. So I preface that by saying all of those things go into this new calculus for what the world is that we’re preparing the next generation of actor, theater-maker, performer to go out into, right? 

For me, it’s important to reverse-engineer: We see this world that we’re aiming at, that we’re trying to build, what tools will be effective in helping us get to that point? So it’s not one of the conversations where we just throw the baby out with the bathwater, because I’d say a lot of what NYU grad acting has done has produced some wildly successful artists. It’s about tweaking in this day and age, and refining, and perhaps looking and listening with a different set of ears and eyes to meet the artist at this time. That has been one of the major revelations for me. To your point, absolutely. Learning a program and working in an institution like NYU, there’s a lot of moving parts; in any academia or any academic setting, there’s a lot of moving parts. What I always tell the artists, especially now when frustrations are running high with mask mandates and performing, we’re going to fight for you, but you must realize in an institution like NYU, change happens at the speed of legislation. It doesn’t happen like I’m the artistic director and I say, “We’re doing this.” There’s so many moving parts and hierarchy that is just embedded in an institution of this size, of any size, for it to function properly. So all those have been new experiences, new challenges, and new opportunities. 

You were speaking earlier about how at one point you thought you would like to be artistic director of a mid-size theater, a regional theater, and partly because there’s less bureaucracy and you’ve moved into a position where — from what you’re saying and what I would assume — there is an overwhelming amount of bureaucracy to deal with.

Yeah, for sure. You know, I think the comparison is valid because each institution definitely has stakeholders. So even if you are artistic director, you still have a board that you have to be in conversation with and be thought-partners with. I just think when you’re in an educational setting, you just have many more stakeholders, right? You have the students, first and foremost, you have your faculty… that’s just something that you have to manage and figure out, right? Then you have the hierarchy of the institution, but then you also have important alumni, donors, patrons, whatever. So I’m sure there is a comparison to be made between somebody like Joe Haj or, you know, Molly Smith, but I think the missions are different so there’s perhaps more stakeholders on the university, educational side. 

Taking over this position must involve a very steep learning curve. And when you came in and looked at it and got to know it, were there things that you said, “Okay, this is not working, we need to move, try something else,” or “This is absolutely something that we need to preserve while we’re also trying to do this other thing”?

Yeah, for sure. You know, there are things that… there was a platform that I sort of campaigned [on], if you will, coming in. I think I make no secret — and join a lot of other artists to say — it’s almost morally reprehensible to ask an artist, an actor, or painter to come out of any institution that is training them with $100,000, $130,000, $150,000 in debt. We have to do better. So that is something that keeps me up at night. And figuring out this model, this rubric, this calculus of how we move that needle.

Yale recently made their acting conservatory free, yes?

You’re correct. And here again, I would be remiss if I didn’t say that James Bundy has been somebody who I deeply admire, who I call a friend and a mentor. But, yeah, what they’re doing at Yale in really thinking about complex problems and potential solutions is a shot across the bow to any artistic institution. I think it’s very ironic, too, that in the same year that Yale announces that the entire school has been fully endowed we lose a vulnerable one like ACT. So there has to be an ecosystem, what I call a middle-class ecosystem, where artistic institutions and education centers are funded, they’re taken care of because they are important — I would almost argue the word of the day is “essential.” If you were to ask me during the pandemic how most people got through, I could make a compelling argument to say a lot of people went home and turned on Netflix and watched some of our graduates move them in profound ways that gave them hope to carry on. So, I can make a very compelling argument that arts education and arts training helped catapult us out of a very, very grave, dire situation.

I would agree with that. It’s always interesting because arts departments tend to be smaller than a lot of other departments on campus — smaller than English departments, business departments, and yet nobody brings out the business department when it’s time to entertain the donors, when it’s time to promote the school. It’s always the arts departments that they go to, and often the Theatre department in particular. So I think that our departments play an outsized role in the institutions, in the culture.

NYU was locked down during the pandemic. Were you doing classes online? How did you handle that?

We did. Here again, I can’t take too much credit for this. This is a Herculean effort by the extraordinary faculty and staff here at NYU. We offered in-person classes, obviously under some very strict mandates and guidelines. We shifted — like everyone else — at a moment’s notice to a hybrid format. And a lot of our faculty — I’m sure a lot of the arts faculties — had never done anything online, Zoom and breakout rooms and all of this. But here again, this is what I always argue, too: If anybody was prepared to pivot at a moment’s notice, I’m here to say it’s usually going to be the artists, because we always improvise, adapt, and overcome. That’s the nature of our work, to look around, see our given circumstances, know what our obstacles are, but know what our objective is. “All right, we don’t have lights tonight. Got it.” “Okay, well, then you play Hamlet tonight. You are Laertes, and I’m going to do a rap of Boy Willie in “Piano Lesson.” Okay, let’s go.” And then we’ll figure it out. 

Did you manage to keep in-person classes all through this? 

Yeah. Yeah, primarily. I mean, we had a moment where everything had to — you remember, March, what was it, 13th, 2020, where everything just ground to a halt. We scrambled, we let the dust settle for a while. Then we kind of got back to it.

So let’s go back around now to this conversation about diversity, inclusion, and equity that all institutions are dealing with. Theatre departments in particular seem to be ground zero for this. I know that in my talks with colleagues at other institutions, everybody is interested in making things more inclusive, making things more equitable, increasing diversity, but we don’t really have a roadmap for it. They’re open to replacing texts, techniques, even Stanislavski, etc., but their question is: “What do I keep? What do I get rid of? And what do I replace it with? Can I really teach acting without Shakespeare or Chekhov or Ibsen?” Could you talk about how you might be addressing this, or what you might be planning? 

Yeah, you know, here at NYU we’ve just completed — not just completed, we’re in conversation about–  an internal audit about that very thing, about where our curriculum is going and where is it at. What I can say is, for me, there’s an importance in understanding the techniques at play but, more importantly, how those techniques can be used in other settings. What does that mean exactly? I think rule number one, we have to start expanding the canon of what we consider these heightened texts. I’m trying to veer away from classics, these heightened texts that get put up on [a pedestal] and — rightly so — are looked at in a certain light. We have to first and foremost expand what that even means. So, Wilson, and by virtue of what we’re just talking about, for me, goes in that category. So, you can’t say Chekhov if you’re not saying Wilson, right? Just even that slight change sets the table a little larger so everybody might be able to find a seat. 

On a different scale, Chekhov has been a huge part of our curriculum for a long time. For me, it’s important to understand why Chekhov is that. And for me, the value in saying to my students, “What I appreciate the most about Chekhov is it looks like people are just having a wonderful time and everyone’s rich and time doesn’t seem to exist here, but underneath they’re having a picnic on top of a volcano.” And so, if I tease that thread out a little bit more, I can at least articulate I think there’s value here. Because when we work on underwritten material, à la when you go out to Hollywood, you might get something on the page that looks very incomplete, that looks very bald, if you will. If we can create this rich emotional life underneath it, this Chekhovian sort of technique  — that can be found also in the work of Lynn Nottage. When we start looking at the people of “Sweat”, they say sparse words, but there’s a rich emotional cauldron that’s boiling under there. That can be applied to some of the things you might find yourself in at Netflix, at Amazon, or in new plays where playwrights are, you know, they’re writing in a different way. So that’s one example for me. And also saying, much like in a classical music format, “Hey, here are these twelve notes. How we put them together, you’re gonna find your own style of music, because the same twelve notes are Beethoven, but also Charlie Parker, and also so-and-so-and-so-and-so-and-so….”

So, even if I have to change the name of the class so it’s not “Chekhov is the thing that we’re leading with” — it’s “inner-life richness” or whatever — we can start and look at Chekhov and see examples of that, but that’s not gonna be the North Star that guides us through the entire thing. That’s one of the things that interests me, because I remember, as an actor who didn’t see myself represented in syllabi — I was bummed out. I was bummed out. Like, what possibly could arcane 400-year-old jokes from Shakespeare — why would that even speak to me? What interest would I have in that? I’m here to say that now we can at least offer some other possibilities. I just had the privilege of working with Will Power on “Seize the King” here in New York, that did pretty well. He put his spin, a twenty-first-century spin on Shakespeare that feels authentic but feels fresh. It feels inviting. And he’s doing everything that Shakespeare was doing, using wit, using repartee, flipping thoughts on themselves. But now we have some choices. So now I can arguably go before my scene study class and say, “Let’s take a look at ‘Richard III’ in the, you know, the source material, but also I want to do a side-by-side comparison with ‘Seize the King.’”

“Seize the King” is a rewriting, re-imagining of Shakespeare’s “Richard III” in heightened contemporary language. 

Yeah. It was successful here. People really dug it, the New York Times and all that other stuff. But anyway, more importantly than that, when I talk to students about it, you can draw a line. Let’s say — not to say that Shakespeare is the greatest and that we should have all these festivals dedicated — but you should understand it and understand what’s at play and the techniques at play. Because now when I ask you to do it here in “Seize the King,” you can stand up a little straighter, metaphorically, and say, “Oh, I see what’s happening. I see.” So that is one way. I think what some of our colleagues at, like, Oregon Shakespeare Festival are doing, where they have invited — where I’ve invited — contemporary playwrights to put their spin on Shakespeare: Marcus Gardley re-imagining “King Lear”, that’s a way.

And then, you got playwrights like Marcus Gardley who are going in a different direction entirely. When you look at his takes on Moliere — he’s doing a wolf in sheepskin shoes based on “Tartuffe.” That is fresh. So, I think there’s a way to feed two birds with one seed, where we talk about the original source material, talk about its problems, talk about its flaws, talk about its benefits, and offer a twenty-first-century work, either as companion or “Here’s something new and fresh.”

The grad acting class at NYU, how many students do you take?

Sixteen per cohort. 

Is that eight and eight? Is it eight men, eight women? Is it the sixteen best actors? How is it that you construct the class?

Well, you know, gender is something that is very much in the zeitgeist of everybody. So, in essence, you say sixteen of the best actors, but usually it falls out into eight male-identifying actors. And, you know, we gotta make space for our gender non-conforming artists. So that’s — it’s a tough question to really answer.

It’s a tough question to even think about.

Yeah, but a reality, right? So, yes, we try and break it down, for lack of a better word, equitably, for other actors, female-identifying or non-gender identifying. Part of that is the reality of the business, right? That most of the roles that are out there right now — and unless things drastically change very, very quickly, for the immediate future — most of the roles are written for men.

And so, is that part of the responsibility of a school to say, “I need to be able to put out a class of people for whom there is actually going to be paying employment”?

Well, you know, I won’t speak necessarily for the school, but I think for me it’s vitally important that, while we prepare for the world we want, we must be prepared for the world that is in the interim. Because I — as we grapple with a lot of these things, and I don’t mean to be, you know, pejorative at all, but, you know, people saying like, “Yeah, I don’t feel like coming in today. I need a break. I got a lot going on.” I do get that. And I wanted to create space and hold space for that. Unfortunately, the world I know as it is now — where “Moulin Rouge” cost $75 million to make — I don’t know if there’s a time for you to say, “No, I’m not coming in today. I need a mental health day.”  I feel a sense of responsibility: If we’re asking you to pay this money, we got to figure out a way to get the instrument to do the work at hand so you can hopefully get more work.

You talked a lot about your interest in regional theater and how they’re connected to the community. The graduate acting school at NYU — is it connected to the school community at large? Does it connect to the community outside the school, in the East Village, in midtown Manhattan? Is there any thought about how it could interact more and be more of a part of the community that surrounds it?

We’re thankful to have partners, artistic partners like the Public [Theatre], which is literally across the street from us. We have a working relationship that way. Truthfully, I need to find out how — what our imprint is really in the community. That one is gonna require a little more teasing out on my part. In addition to my position here, I also have the privilege of working at the Classical Theater of Harlem, which we are really, to that point, we are on that model almost exclusively where we serve our community. And that, by virtue of me being here too, we’re going to expand our footprint from downtown village to Harlem, right? And really try and step into this idea of “artist-citizen” that Zelda [Fichandler, former NYU Chair of Graduate Acting] always talked about, which is something that I think is just as important now as it was when the term was coined. So that doesn’t really answer your question, but.… 

Well, to some extent. I was thinking, I’m a longtime New Yorker — though I’ve been in LA for five or six years now — and an avid theatre-goer, in addition to working in the industry. And I don’t remember thinking about NYU much in terms of productions that might be going on there, what I might be interested in seeing — and I lived on 14th Street, so it was just a 10-minute walk for me. Is there any thought about bringing in the public at large? I’m wondering, with your interest in the community-building that theater can do, if there’s some way to accomplish that.

You know, that’s a great question. And I had not thought about it in those terms specifically, I think the way I approach it is more of training our artists to go out and spread the gospel, and spread the gospel in terms of how they work, how they collaborate, how they show up. I have a romantic notion: We’re like the Peace Corps, right? We have really good actors and they take those lessons out. Because honestly, that is how I first found out about NYU Grad Acting. Being on a bus with the Acting Company and seeing how playful, how smart, and how rigorous these actors were, and this is twenty-five years ago, maybe more than that, thirty years ago, but it still stuck with me. I think those types of things, no matter what theater, what TV, web series, Snapchat, those things can make a lasting impression on whoever. So, I tend to think about it in terms of that, and probably expanding our footprint with other theaters who really shoulder that type of responsibility. The ones that come to mind are Classical Theater Of Harlem, I think of Epic Theater Ensemble — I don’t know if you’re familiar with them back in the day, but they are really focused on folks who don’t normally get a chance to go out to a four-hundred-dollar-ticket arts experience.

And in terms of those same folks who are growing up in these underserved communities, or students with disabilities, students from lower-income families — is there a way to be more inclusive of them in the school?

Yeah, I mean, here again, for me, that ties back to my directive number one. We got to find financial freedom, right? Because by virtue of that, we’re excluding people who, for whatever reason, can’t afford a $70 application fee and then potentially, you know, X amount of dollars in tuition. So for me, the Yale School of Drama — the David Geffen School at YSD — has thrown down a gauntlet, right? Are we as other arts institutions gonna step up and meet them? And I think we have to. I don’t think of it in terms of competition, so to speak, because I think that’s a weird thing to pit artists in competition. But I think that’s forward-thinking. I do think it’s forward-thinking. And as these wealth gaps continue to grow, I don’t see them reversing course anytime soon. We have got to do our part.

Are you in conversation with the heads of other programs about how to find a way forward and regularly interact with them?

Yeah, for sure. And truthfully, the conversations unfortunately haven’t been as robust as I would like only because everyone is building the airplane and flying it at the same time with COVID mandates. So that takes up the majority of our headspace. So we’re in conversation with Columbia, with Yale, with Juilliard, about best practices: “What are you doing? You finding anything that’s creative, a possible creative solution?” So that is where our headspace has been.

Are you continuing to teach and direct as you Chair?

Yeah, I think it’s important. Forgive me, you mean at NYU or nationally?

Both.

Yeah, yeah, I think it’s going back to “teach, do, learn one.” Yeah, it’s important for me to go out into the field and, you know, apply and stay sharp and learn from different communities. So, you know, this summer I did two projects. I did one in town here at Classical Theater of Harlem. I did one at St. Louis Shakespeare, “King Lear” with Andre De Shields as King Lear. And to be quite honest, it’s a way for me to employ my, you know, alums.

There’s nothing wrong with that.

You got to do it. I mean, that’s one of the perks of paying the price of admission.

This has been a really rich conversation, and I have to say it’s such a pleasure to talk to a fellow academic and theatre artist who clearly has strong ideas about what they want, how to help people, and knows what they’re doing. And I so much appreciate your time.

Listen, right back at you. We’re comrades in arms. As I say, we’re still in the struggle. And we always will be.

*This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Carl Cofield, Chair of NYU Tisch Grad Acting Program, was appointed Associate Artistic Director of the Off-Broadway award winning Classical Theatre of Harlem in 2018. For CTH he has directed: “The Bacchae” (New York Times Critic’s Pick), “Antigone”, “Macbeth”, “The Tempest” and “Dutchman”. He directed the award-winning world premiere of Kemp Power’s “One Night in Miami” for Rogue Machine Theater in Los Angeles, Miami New Drama and Denver Center. Other regional credits include “A Raisin in the Sun” and “Twelfth Night” at Yale Rep, “Henry IV” at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, “Disgraced” at Denver Center, “The Mountaintop” at Cleveland Play House, August Wilson’s “Radio Golf” at Everyman Theatre and many others. For the McCarter Theatre, he collaborated with seven playwrights: Nathan Alan Davis, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Dipika Guha, Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins, Kwame Kwei-Armah, Emily Mann, and Regina Taylor, and directed The Princeton and Slavery Plays. Honors include an N.A.A.C.P theater award, L.A. Drama Critics Circle Award and many AUDELCO nominations. As an actor, his work has been seen at The Manhattan Theater Club (“Ruined”), Berkeley Rep, Alliance, Arena Stage, The Shakespeare Theatre, Intiman, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Shakespeare Santa Cruz, Milwaukee Rep, Alabama Shakespeare, The McCarter, The Acting Company, Studio Theatre and many others. He was in the founding class of The New World School of the Arts in Miami, Florida and earned his B.F.A in theatre performance at the University of Miami. He holds an MFA in Directing from Columbia University and has also taught at Columbia, NYU and the New School.