COURTESY THE ACTORS' GROUP
Gemini Burke delivers the philosophies of Holloway, a key character in "Two Trains Running," which opens today.
Stress relief
Gemini Burke turns to
the stage to ease the
pressures of his job
By day, Gemini Burke leads a team of social workers that seeks out homeless military veterans. By night, when the opportunity presents itself, he pursues his love of acting.
"I was working too much when I started and one of my bosses told me I had to do some extracurricular activities. I told him I used to do theater and he told me to get back into it," Burke said late last week, calling from somewhere in rural Oahu as he and his U.S. Vets team were out on patrol, as it were.
Burke, who's already appeared in Manoa Valley Theatre's 2000 production of "Of Mice and Men" and Diamond Head Theatre's recent staging of "Ragtime," returns on a smaller stage, as The Actors Group teams up with Leonard Piggee and the Honolulu African American Repertory Theatre to present August Wilson's 1992 hit, "Two Trains Running."
The play is a self-contained story within Wilson's larger decade-by-decade look at the experiences of African Americans in the 20th century. "Two Trains Running" has been described as a less violent and confrontational version of Spike Lee's pivotal film "Do the Right Thing."
The year is 1969, the place a Pittsburgh diner, where a small group of regulars discuss the violence and other social ills they've experienced or observed.
Burke plays Holloway, a 65-year-old man who "does a lot of philosophizing," as he talks about the history, experiences and future prospects of black people in America. (The other members of the cast are Moses Goods III, Honey Brown, Doona Sallee and Derrick Brown.)
"It's a deep play, and (Wilson) says some pretty rough stuff (in it). (My character) says 'The white man ain't stacking no more niggers' and then he explains what 'stacking' is. I got a whole monologue on that and it's very poetic, if you look at it. Or he says, 'Now that they have to pay you, they can't find you no work ... but if this was a different time, there wouldn't be no niggers walking the streets. They'd all be in the cotton fields.' When I read that, my look at it was, that he's right. You gotta hear this stuff."
COURTESY THE ACTORS' GROUP
Russ Goode, left, Doona Sallee and Derrick Brown also star in the production set in a Pittsburgh diner.
Burke adds that although the characters are African American, the issues involved aren't limited to the experiences of one race or ethnic group. Others have also had to survive discrimination in the form of limited economic opportunities and the problems caused by exploitative urban redevelopment programs.
While he's too young to remember much about the 1960s, a decade filled with the struggle for civil rights, his day job with U.S. Vets puts him squarely amid the social programs that began in those turbulent times. Burke himself spent four years in the Marines before enrolling at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 1990.
It was there that he came into his own as a actor, where he appeared on the Kennedy Theatre mainstage in "Lone Star" in 1993, and stole the show as a mentally impaired "wise-fool."
"I was playing football for UH and it was pretty good (until) I had major back surgery that messed things up, but I played for a couple of years. That's when we went to the Holiday Bowl ... but from the point after I hurt my back, I got into a lot of television, theater and films, and then I got into motion capture -- computer animated graphics.
"I used to work with troubled youth, but now I'm giving back to where I came from, the veterans," Burke said.
Of the "4- to 5,000" homeless on Oahu, about 1 in 6 is a veteran, he said, estimating that about 60 percent of them are survivors of the Vietnam war, who remain traumatized either by their combat experiences or by the poor treatment they received when they returned home. Others are survivors of the first Gulf War, and a few are early casualties from the current conflict.
"There's homeless people all over the islands, and what we're trying to do is find our veterans and place them at Barbers Point, where there's a homeless shelter with a back-to-work program that gets them back on their feet, gets them stable and back into the community (to be) successful. We get these guys off the streets, get 'em clean and sober, send 'em to treatment programs if they need it, medical treatment if they need it -- whatever a vet needs to get him back and stabilized in the community. That's what we're trying to do.
"There's a lot of stress (in this job) and theater is my release -- to be able to be that other person for a while and not have to worry about the things we deal with day-to-day. To be (Booker T. Washington) in 'Ragtime' was great for me, it was fantastic to bring what I could to that character. Not only did I play that character, but I learned who and what he was (and) what he'd done for society."
‘Two Trains Running’
Presented by The Actors Group and the Honolulu African American Repertory TheatreOn stage: 7:30 p.m. today, continues same time Thursdays through Saturdays, and 4 p.m. Sundays, through Feb. 8
Place: Yellow Brick Studio, 625 Keawe St.
Tickets: $10
Reservations: 722-6941 or tickets@taghawaii.org
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