Keeping tabs on the Bay Area
Actor Mahershala Ali returns home for HBO documentary
Mahershala Ali is a twotime Academy Awardwinner, and he spent Sunday fulfilling his duties as the reigning best supporting actor winner by handing out the best supporting actress Oscar to Laura Dern.
But he wasn’t always such an extrovert. Two days later at Oakland’s Fox Theater, Ali reflected on what he was like as a child before he followed “this trail of bread crumbs that helps you find what you’re destined to do in life.”
“My personality was a little catlike,” Ali said smiling. “And what I mean by that is I would find myself feeling out a space, testing things a bit. Cats can be shy and tucked into a corner a bit until they are comfortable, and I could definitely be like that. I’d be quiet until I wasn’t.”
That’s why Ali, who was born in Oakland and raised in Hayward, was so taken by the children in HBO’s new documentary “We Are the Dream: The Kids of the Oakland MLK
Oratorical Fest.” For more than four decades, Oakland children from all backgrounds have learned about history and themselves by performing speeches and poems in an annual recital that honors the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. When Ali saw some footage from New York director Amy Schatz’s documentary, he leaped at the chance to help produce the film with his production company, Know Wonder.
The hourlong documentary premiered at the Fox Theater on Tuesday, Feb. 11, in a celebratory event that included Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, Schatz and several of the kids and parents who are in the film. The documentary premieres on HBO on Tuesday, Feb. 18.
The reception for the film actually took place before the screening. School night, you know.
“I saw it, and I was really inspired by this little secret in the Bay Area that (Schatz) was shedding light on, and just the impact that it seemed to have on these kids from the standpoint of challenging them, putting them in a somewhat uncomfortable space, but seeing them walk away with their selfesteem elevated,” Ali said. “And that really resonated with me because I know I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing right now if I didn’t have some sort of experience in that oratory space a little bit, from early on growing up doing some things in the church.
“I would write poems and perform them or share them a little bit. I remember when I did something for my grandfather’s retirement, and when my aunt Ruby passed away, who lived in Oakland, I remember writing a poem for her funeral. But I didn’t get seriously into (writing and performing) until very early in college.”
Ali paused and smiled, as he did often Tuesday night, thinking back to his young self.
“I would have looked up to a lot of the kids in this documentary,” he said.
One of the children featured in the documentary is 9yearold Gregory Payton Jr., who helps preach at the Greater St. John Missionary Baptist Church with his father and performs a very impressive rendition of a King speech. Although he seems like a natural, Payton said before seeing the movie for his first time that he was nervous during his performance.
“It was wonderful,” said Gregory, now 10, of the experience. “Still to this day, like this morning, I look back at it and I think, ‘Wow, it was amazing.’ I learned so much about Dr. King, how he was a wonderful man.”
But the students at the MLK Oratorical Fest don’t just recite King’s speeches. With the assistance of their teachers, they write their own poems and essays, applying King’s philosophy to modern problems.
“The big surprise for us is we thought we were making a film about a competition. Making a film that was about a winner,” Schatz said. “What we discovered was that it was not really about the competition itself, but was really about an opportunity to showcase these powerful performances and the voices of young people. It was really about them thinking about their world.
Boys and girls from varied backgrounds — black, Muslim, Latino, Asian and white — participate. Some of the sweetest parts of “We Are the Dream” are the introverted kids, painfully shy, who work for weeks on their performances with the guiding patience of their teachers, and the joy on their faces when they receive applause.
“Those are the ones I always cry over in the doc,” Ali said with a smile. “The shy ones who get themselves up there anyway and do such a wonderful job. Having to navigate your own anxiety and your own fear and know that the courage to get up in front of people is a muscle that has to be exercised.
“To get that lesson now is something that will stick with these kids as they age, as they move into the workforce, as some of them become more politically active, as some of them work more in their communities or with their families, this is the type of thing that will continue to encourage them to try and locate what is just within them and really try and communicate that, and graciously.”
Ali, who went to St. Mary’s College and lived in Berkeley as recently as 2011, said he has his ear to the ground for great Bay Area stories to tell. He sees Know Wonder not just as a vehicle to amplify stories of the underserved, but also as a way to grow as an artist and stay true to his roots.
“I’m specifically tied to the Bay Area,” Ali said, adding that he wants to do anything “that in some way sheds light on some of the extraordinary things that are going on here.”