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DAVID E. TALBERT & MORRIS CHESTNUT TEAM FOR 'TYME': Playwright recruits Hollywood heartthrob for latest production.
*Playwright David E. Talbert has been writing and producing stage productions since the early 1990s developing his skill in the genre of gospel plays and moving into romantic musicals.
This month, Talbert is heading out on his 12th tour with the third installment of a romantic series of plays he's produced. This one is called "Love in the Nick of Tyme" and introduces movie heartthrob Morris Chestnut in his live theater debut.
"I was at a stage in my career where I wanted a different challenge," Chestnut said of taking the lead role in the play. "I've done a lot of movies and I needed something to reinvigorate my career in terms of me being enthusiastic about what I was doing. I kind of got complacent. I was doing so many movies and some of them were so similar in theme. I just wanted to do something different and work on my craft. When David called me, it happened to be the right time."
Chestnut, who also has producer credits for the play, is the reason Talbert tags the new play the "Rolls Royce" of his repertoire. It's the actor's current and major star power Talbert says brings Hollywood to the stage. But while Chestnut modestly accepts the accolades, he explained that he's working hard for the compliment. He says working on the stage is a lot more labor intensive than his days on the movie set.
"It's still a work in progress for me," Chestnut said. "Doing a play is a very difficult thing for me to do because I'm used to just going to the set, doing my thing, and going back to the trailer and not having to deal with an audience."
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Morris Chestnut
The actor admits that even with the tour beginning this week, he still finds acting in front of an audience to be a bit difficult.
"There are certain liberties that I like to take as an actor that you can't do on stage. Someone's always watching and you always have to be in character. A lot of times when I do a movie, I discover things as we're shooting and doing takes. Here, you may have a discovery in rehearsal and then trying to recreate it is difficult."
Although Chestnut is a little bit apprehensive about his talent on the stage, Talbert is quite confident. He told EUR's Lee Bailey that the role was practically written for Chestnut, calling the actor "the quintessential leading man."
"I wrote this play several years ago. I wanted Morris to play it, but he'd been doing movies one after another," Talbert explained.
Talbert explained that he waited quite a while for the actor to be able to do the play, but was also delaying the play to work on a film project.
"I'd been holding it because I wanted it to be special. I worked on a movie project for two years. I said, 'You know what? I'm going to get back to doing what I do.' I decided I was going to stop waiting for the Hollywood game. Then everything started falling in place for the play," he said.
The writer's plans were almost foiled at that point because he'd heard that Chestnut had signed on to do a different play. Fortunately, Talbert's wife called Chestnut's wife and got the two together.
"He's established himself in romantic movies over the years, so what better person to put behind the wheel but Morris," Talbert said. "The craft does transfer, and that's the beautiful thing. To have someone of his stature on stage, it makes it more than just a touring musical. Never before have you had a current film star that's in a limited engagement tour. Never. So it really is a special moment in time. It's black Hollywood on tour."
In addition to Talbert's distinction and Morris Chestnut's star power, the play also features songs written by R&B singer Vivian Green.
"Vivian came in and auditioned for the play," Talbert said. "I thought she looked too young to play the lead, but I was a fan of her music, so I said, 'You should write the songs for the play.' And then I found out that that was one of her dreams; to write music for a play. She's done an amazing job."
The play - also starring singers Terry Dexter (as Tyme) and Avant - begins its tour tomorrow (Thursday) in Houston and will hit 11 other cities including New York, Miami, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and more, to be followed by the release of the DVD and soundtrack. To check tour dates and find out more about the play, visit www.davidetalbert.com.
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