Spirit of support
Chappelle’s path to Ellington was indirect. He grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland; Yellow Springs, Ohio; and Capitol Hill, spending time in his parents’ separate homes after their marriage ended when he was young. His late father, William David Chappelle III, was a music professor and social activist, and his mother, Yvonne Seon, was a pioneer in establishing African-American studies as a university discipline. When he moved back to Washington to attend high school, he started at Eastern, but he was having trouble adjusting. And he wanted to get out.
His mother bought him a Time magazine with Bill Cosby on the cover, which inspired him, at 14, to plot a career as a comedian. “For him it was a calling,” Seon told me. “I knew that was the direction he wanted to go in, and I was going to support him to find his way.” She urged him to visit comedy clubs, where an older comedian told him that to become a comedian he should study acting. After less than a year at Eastern, he and his mother decided he should transfer to Ellington. He almost blew his audition for the theater department, though, when he forgot parts of his monologue. As he recalled during his recent visit to the school, one of the audition judges asked why he wanted to act. “I don’t want to act,” he replied. “I want to be a comedian.”
When young Chappelle crossed the portico of the historic school for the first time, he found himself in a new world. “This was the pinnacle of my formal education,” Chappelle told me after his address to the students. He never attended college. “I was really oddly prepared for what I faced once I got out of high school. A lot of it just had to do with them cultivating confidence in taking risks in artistic expression, which is not an easy thing to do, and in the context of today is becoming increasingly more difficult. To express yourself freely without fear of repercussions.”
Chappelle mentioned classes that had an impact, including non-arts courses in subjects such as District history and street law, and a workshop on how to engage with police officers. He took classical acting, modern acting, improvisation, technical theater and script analysis. But rather than detailing specific life-changing epiphanies, he circled back to a broader spirit of support that he felt in the Ellington environment.
“Just becoming more broadly culturally aware,” he said. “It kind of unpacked me out of whatever box that I was in and put me in proximity with different walks of life. ... There was an idea that people were very invested and interested in our well-being that was ingrained in the culture of the school. And I think the students were actually invested in one another’s well-being.”
One factor in his Ellington preparation seems mundane, yet he referred to it both in his speech and during a tour of the building, as if it might be key: the long hours. Students take traditional high school courses until early afternoon, then pursue one of eight arts majors until about 5 p.m. Rehearsals, exhibitions and produc-