New Play Tells Story Of Late Comedian Richard Pryor
(CBS) -- For co-authors James Murray Jackson Jr. and Rod Gailes OBC, Richard Pryor was someone whose life story needed to be told.
"When I was younger, I used to wear my hair in this big afro and many people used to tell me I looked like a young Richard Pryor," Jackson said. "I kept getting that. My acting teacher asked me to choose a celebrity character. She suggested I do Richard Pryor."
He says from then on, he knew he was destined to play the late comedian on stage.
Jackson portrays Pryor in the new play "Unspeakable."
"I don't imitate him, I channel him," he said. "There is only one Richard. The goal is to try and channel his energy and let it express itself to the world. I watched tapes, audio, everything I could get my hands on."
Jackson says in researching his role, he realized Pryor was a tortured soul, with fame and money but without what he really needed most.
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"The most surprising thing, I discovered his need. He wanted to be loved, he wanted to express it but I don't think he could ever understand it, connect to it outside of comedy," said Jackson, Jr.
"Off stage, he was back to his demons. I don't think he figured out how to escape or balance it."
Pryor grew up in Peoria and lived in his grandmother's brothel. His mother was a prostitute and his father her pimp. The comedian-actor was married seven times.
The play starts near the end of Pryor's life, when he was stricken with multiple sclerosis. He died in 2005. The story focuses on his life between 1967 and 1982.
"There is no way to deal with that era, it was a perfect storm, Richard was shedding his Bill Cosby impersonation routine. There was more leeway with the things he was saying," said Gailes OBC.
The director describes the show as a "dramatic fantasia" inspired by the comedian's life.
"I really thought Richard was the person who said all kinds of things that ten years before that you couldn't have gotten away with it. He came along in the tail end of the '60s and had that change of spirit, in a time of civil rights, women's rights, war, then later in life to have all this success, and saying all these things you couldn't get away with saying. Then to be entombed in his body with MS, not to be able to express it, it just was an organic fit to title it 'Unspeakable.'"
The director says there was no doubt they wanted to debut the emotional story in Chicago, just up the road from Pryor's hometown. The story even features several Chicago actors.
"We wanted to develop this first commercial production in a theater town. This is a theater town. There are so many people, different walks of life connected to theater here and the theatrical experience so it's a great place for that."
Jackson won a best actor award for his portrayal of Pryor in an earlier incarnation of the play at the New York International Fringe Festival back in 2005.
"I hope the audience comes away with something that they didn't understand or know about him. That they can appreciate him as an artist. He had so many issues but he took those issues and created something that made us all laugh and cry," said Jackson, Jr.
Unspeakable opens tonight, October 6 and runs at the Broadway Playhouse at Water Tower Place through November 8.
