Memphis to Sundance
Local actor Kenneth Farmer a star of festival film ‘Alice’
When the soon-to-be-released movie “Alice” was shot in Savannah, Georgia, in 2020, Kenneth Farmer of Memphis was ranked at No. 6 among the actors listed on the “call sheet,” the daily production schedule. h No. 1 was the film’s star, Keke Palmer, now 28, a popular performer since childhood. Listed second was rapper-turned-actor Common. At No. 3 was Jonny Lee Miller, who first made a splash in the British druggie comedy classic “Trainspotting.” h So No. 6, that’s pretty good, especially for the fulltime hospital pharmacy coordinator and sometimes Memphis stage actor with relatively few film and television credits
“I’m Keke Palmer’s father-in-law in the story,” said Farmer, 59. “I’m the patriarch of the family.”
“Alice” is one of the 80-plus feature films chosen from among some 4,000 submissions to have its world premiere during the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, set for Jan. 20-30.
But due to the surging omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus, Sundance this year will be primarily an online rather than in-person festival. Events in the Sundance home city of Park City, Utah, have been canceled. However, the Sundance “satellite screen” partnership remains in effect, which means that seven venues across the U.S. will give a select number of Sundance features their world public theatrical premieres this month.
Among the “satellites” is the Crosstown Theater, where eight features and two shorts will screen Jan. 28-30, under a collaboration between Sundance and Indie Memphis. And one of those features is “Alice,” set to screen at 9 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 30. Farmer will be on hand, to introduce and discuss the film.
A feature debut for writer-director Krystin Ver Linden, “Alice” is “not your usual slave story,” according to Farmer. The Sundance program provides this synopsis : “When a woman in servitude in 1800s Georgia escapes the 55acre confines of her captor to discover the shocking reality that exists beyond the treeline... it’s 1973.”
That description may remind some readers of the 2020 slavery-themed horror movie, “Antebellum,” or perhaps M. Night Shymalan’s “The Village,” from 2004. But “Alice” was “Inspired by true events,” according to Sundance.
Farmer is, essentially, a lifelong Memphian. “My biography is kind of like Elvis,” he said. “I was born in Mississippi” — in Abbeville, near Oxford — “and moved to Memphis when I was 3 years old.”
At the no longer extant Longview Elementary School, Farmer was “the only male,” he says, in the drama club. In a production of “A Christmas Carol,” he was Ebenezer Scrooge, while all the other characters — Tiny Tim, Marley’ ghost, and so on — were played by girls. He enjoyed acting, but “I got teased so much I dropped out.”
After graduating from Fairley High School in 1980, he attended the University of Memphis and majored in marketing. He’s had a good career since, but “I realized as the years went on I should’ve majored in theater and dance,” he said. “I tried to play it safe but I found if you don’t follow your dreams, you’re not really playing it safe.”
Eventually, both Farmer and his wife, Cynthia Farmer (the couple has been married 31 years, and they have four grown children), began
auditioning for and acting in local theater productions at almost every level, from church plays to Theater Memphis extravaganzas — “every kind of community theater I could find.”
Farmer was in the Hattiloo Theatre production of “Hurt Village,” written by Pulitzer Prizewinning Memphis playwright Katori Hall; a Playhouse on the Square version of the musical “Dreamgirls.” He and his wife appeared together in “Little Foxes,” at Theater Memphis.
Farmer acquired representation from the local Colors talent agency and from the Atlantabased Smith Young Talent agency, and began to appear in supporting roles in various movies and TV shows. He was the Rev. W. Herbert Brewster, the famed Memphis gospel composer, in an episode of the CMT drama series “Sun Records,” and the comedic “Mo Money” in several episodes of the sitcom “Still the King,” which starred Billy Ray Cyrus as a washed-up Elvis impersonator.
One of his favorite roles was in the 2019 thriller “The Fanatic,” directed by Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst, in which “a rabid film fan stalks his favorite action hero and destroys the star’s life” (to quote the Internet Movie Database). The “film fan” is played by John Travolta.
“I had two scenes with him and one was a pivotal scene, you know where the movie turns and the plot thickens,” Farmer said. He said he and his wife attended the film’s premiere in Hollywood, and “we were surprised when my name was in the opening credits, I was like, ‘Oh, snap!’”
For “Alice,” Farmer spent close to a month in Georgia. Much of the time was spent on a “set” intended to represent a sugar cane plantation. “They had actually planted real sugar cane,” he said. “Everything was authentic. I had a real machete, I was cutting that cane down.”
He said he did plenty of research into postcivil War peonage and similar topics before traveling to the location. He said the experience of making “Alice” was particularly meaningful for the cast and crew because filming took place in the wake of the some of the biggest Black Lives Matter protests.
Farmer said he hopes his experiences will encourage others to pursue their dreams. “I want to be inspiring to Memphis because we have so much talent here,” he said. “It can be done.”