Why I Play Thomas Jefferson
After many years as an actor I realized that I wasn't doing much with my brain, much less exploring my natural interest in the world around me. So, after an actress-friend told me about this new company of which she was a member, The American Living History Theatre, and that they were looking for an actor to play Thomas Jefferson, I took myself over for a meeting. Being the same height as the president, 6'2", and at that time a bit more slender than I am today, I was asked to join up, go home and write a show, "Jefferson vs. Hamilton"!
Write a show? Hmmm. This was something entirely new for me.
I had inherited my love of history from my mother. My family had traveled throughout Mexico during my youth, absorbing the culture there. That interest in other peoples is what drives me today to explore the tenuous relationship between any society and their government. I learned from Mr. Jefferson that no government can claim legitimacy without the tacit and active support of its populace; that the enemy of democracy lies not so so much from without -- from invasion -- as from within, in the form of apathy; that those who do not take advantage of the right to vote do not have to be listened to. And finally, that a flourishing society is one in which the rights of the majority - always paramount - must not overcome the rights of the minority to be heard as well. Jefferson said that the fact that we disagree doesn't impute any criminality to either side.
This is why I continue to do my one-man, energetic, emotionally taxing, show. I take away as much from my audiences as they do from me. And, I'm pleased to report, in the process of sharing ideas (in the form of questions-and-answers), we both learn what a thriving, living, intellectually-aware concept democracy truly is.
Currrently writing for Latino monthlies, and for www.zap2it.com, his journalistic endeavors had him published, at one point, on four continents: Africa, Australia, Europe, and North America.
Mr. Reynolds won a 2004 Los Angeles-area EMMY Award as a producer. In addition, he coaches and mentors young actors.
He may be reached at reynolds.dale@gmail.com.
"Jefferson vs. Hamilton" being a two-character piece, the other actor and I sat down with the director and wrote a thirty-minute playlet based on the intellectual and emotional arguments between the two great men. We first presented it at a church in Glendale, California, in February of 1976. After a decade of performing it, we all agreed to let it lie down and go to sleep peacefully, while I made the decision to go out on my own as Jefferson in a revised Q&A format. And, for the past twenty years, that is precisely what I have done.
A Southern California native, Dale Reynolds has been a performer and journalist for the last three and a half decades. His professional acting experience encompasses Theatre (Broadway, Off-Broadway, Dinner Theatre, Summer Stock), as well as Feature Film ("Repo Man"), primetime Sitcoms ("The Jeffersons"), Dramas ("Dallas," "Knots Landing"), and many a commercial.
