‘The Royale’ Steps Into the Ring at Jenny Boyd Theatre

Walking out of the Jenny Boyd Theatre after a standing ovation for preview night of The Royale, a rare stillness on a normally bustling campus was a perfect contrast to the percussive nature of Marco Ramirez’s play and the questions that it raises. In a moment of history, with so many voices surrounding you, how do you, alone, press forward in a nearly-unwinnable situation? What consequences do you bear with those decisions? And how do you sort through your own complex motivations, be they ambition, ego or trying to change the tidal forces of history?

The Royale, opening tonight, explores all of these questions and more set against the real world of boxing in the early 1900s. Premiering in 2013 at the Center Theatre Group’s Kirk Douglas Theatre in Los Angeles, the play has been produced at the Lincoln Center Theatre, in the UK and throughout the United States. Though The Royale is a “time capsule,” the play speaks to a continuing struggle to find racial equity.

I sat down with director Tosin Morohunfola to discuss how themes of the play, the unique setting of the Jenny Boyd Theatre, and the process that led to this production were all, as Morohunfola observed, a product of “serendipity.”

A Chat with Director Tosin Morohunfola

Director Tosin Morohunfola hails from Kansas, where his Nigerian parents immigrated. He told me that he, and his brothers, followed the “Blue Valley to KU pipeline” and that “I knew very early on that storytelling was my gift and my calling. It was very clear to me.” Initially skeptical about his career choice, his parents were supportive. After his time at Kansas University, he went to Chicago and then Los Angeles, where he is primarily known as an actor (check out his IMDB page for details).

His recent return to directing and theater is “kind of a return to normalcy and… my roots. I like to say that theater is my first love and my first language.” His pathway to directing The Royale was filled with, as Morohunfola calls it, serendipity.

He recently began inquiring about directing opportunities back in Kansas City, where the University of Tennessee’s Ken Martin previously held a position at the University of Missouri and reached out to Morohunfola about joining The Royale as director. Unbeknownst to Martin, Morohunfola had taken up recreational boxing two and a half years ago and is a drummer, both of which are critical elements of the play. In addition, he had auditioned for the role of Jay Jackson for the Midwestern inaugural premiere of The Royale. Though he didn’t get the role, he said that the play spoke to him and was surprised by his opportunity to helm the production 14 years later.

Morohunfola recently had his first professional debut, writing and directing his commissioned play The Drum Closet at the Coterie Theatre in Kansas City. The Drum Closet is “a coming of age drama about two Nigerian brothers, growing up in Kansas and trying to be the best drummer on the drum line.” 

Again, serendipity, as The Royale uses percussive beats throughout the play. In The Drum Closet, “the younger brother is chastised for how ambitious he is. He wants to be the best. He wants to be the section leader, even though he’s a freshman.” Morohunfola was able to make creative choices as the themes of the play echo one another.

The Royale as Time Capsule and Exploration of Modern Issues

On Dec. 26, 1908, after two years of attempts, American boxer Jack Johnson faced off against Canadian Tommy Burns. Johnson, a black boxer, defeated the white World Heavyweight Champion Burns after a referee ended the match for fear of race riots. The reaction was immediate, with novelist Jack London coining the racially-charged term “the great white hope” to describe previous heavyweight champion Jim Jeffries, who had retired rather than face Johnson. 

Encouraged by London and others to come out of retirement, Johnson and Jeffries faced off in 1910 in a fight originally scheduled for 45 rounds and with an invitation to President William Taft to referee (he did not). Jeffries quit after 15 rounds rather than risk being knocked out. Race riots broke out with several black citizens across the United States being killed or severely hurt. A Knoxville headline following the fight read, “Jeff could have beaten twelve men like Johnson but for Gilette and Delany,” blaming Jeffries’ loss on a governor and coach. I couldn’t find any historical records of any local race riots in 1910, though Knoxville would experience them a few years later.

The Tragedy of Black Excellence

The Royale is a proxy story that delves into the real world struggles and consequences that Johnson faced through the fictional character Jay “The Sport” Jackson, played by UTK third year MFA Denzel Dejournette, who Morohunfola called “a force to be reckoned with.” Dejournette has appeared in several plays at Clarence Brown, most recently Mr. Fezziwig in A Christmas Carol.  Morohunfola observed that it’s like Dejournette has been “training his whole life for this role” with a background in the physically demanding WWE. Dejournette balances Jay’s desire to win against the potential for violence if he reaches his goal with a nuanced performance and interactions with patrons as audience to his matches.

Jay’s challenge as a black athlete upending the status quo is explored deeply and with many facets. Morohunfola said Jay is “challenged for his ambition. How dare you want something this big as a black man? How dare you want to dethrone who has been the reigning white champion?” Jay has few people in his life that support this ambition outside of a tight knit group, including his coach — Wynton played by Kerwin Thompson, promoter (Jeb Burris’ Max) and sparring partner Fish (Keith Allen Davis, Jr.) — all with their own personal agendas and beautifully performed by the actors. 

The racial climate of the time squeezes Jay between “a rock and a hard space”: his ambition for himself and as a representative of African Americans and the potential for reprisal if he is seen as “too big for his britches.” Anquanizia Hall expands the audience’s perspective as Nina, Jay’s sister. Morohunfola notes that Hall “is scene-stealing magnetic. Just whirlwind of accountability and of perspective.” He added that she turns the whole play on its head when she enters. Her performance during preview night crescendoed from subtle to explosive, leaving many patrons in tears.

The most defining moment for me was a conversation between Jay and Wynton, in which his mentor explains how he fought in Royales when he was a young man.  Morohunfola explained that “white viewers would pit young black kids against each other, trying to bare knuckle fight for scraps or for whatever change was thrown at them.” As a back alley sport, these Royales were not the legitimized sport of today and could continue with 40 or more barbaric rounds with the last man standing.

As the sport legitimized through white boxers, Jack Johnson’s rise to champion was diminished with an asterisk by his title as the “Negro” World Heavyweight Champion. In the play, Jay spends much of his time pursuing Bernard Bixby, a proxy for Jim Jeffries, to erase this asterisk. Wynton tells Jay once you step into the ring, all of your decisions are yours alone. Morohunfola called it a “present versus future dilemma” between the right to affirm your own dignity and fight for your people’s future rights while protecting your people in the present.

Morohunfola called it “the tragedy of Black Excellence. Is it that people will invariably try to squash it? Destroy it?” In the real world fight, Jack Johnson prolonged the fight to temper expectations and hopefully, head off violence. Johnson had to deal with the questions of “Do I fight with the possibility to empower my people? Or do I, or if by fighting, do I jeopardize my people based off of certain reprisals of violence?” Jay’s struggle reflects through through several innovations with percussion and story-telling.

Noting that we can’t know what was going on in Jack Johnson’s head, The Royale explores his thinking about these themes by voicing his internal monologue out loud. The play allows leeway in interpreting the fights, and body percussion (stomps, claps and more) is used to mark the fighting scenes. Stylized boxing scenes between Jay and his sparring partner Fish are punctuated by a finely choreographed rhythm to the ensemble’s beat. I found it intriguing that every character who enters and leaves Jay’s life in the play stomps on the way in and out, reflecting their impact on his life.  Morohunfola called the ensemble incredible and expressed his gratitude for them.

The djemba drum continues the percussion with the two elements representing Jay’s external life with the excitement and pressures of the fight with more intimate moments of self-reflection as Jay ponders his responsibilities, accountability to his community, and the legacy he wants to make. The djemba, played by Corey Hodge, also represents the presence of Jay chasing legacy or legacy chasing him, “depending on the context of the scene.” 

Stage Design and the Boyd Theatre

The configuration of the Jenny Boyd Theatre is another serendipitous aspect to this staging. Set in thrust formation, patrons will be seated on all three sides and will “feel like you are walking into a boxing ring…scenes take place in and around and amongst the audience, so the play will literally talk to you and ask you to talk back, ask you to cheer and boo, ask you to be a part of it. Which is exactly the kind of immersive theater that I love.” Morohunfola called the experience “the superpower of theater.” The fourth wall will dissolve for the audience, who he called “the last character of the play.” 

Scenic Designer Alondra Castro carries the tension that Jay feels into the set design as she collaborated with Morohunfola. She researched the spaces that early 20th century boxers would inhabit while showing the various expectations around Jay in the banners on the wall. Positioned close to one another, one read “Jay Jackson is a disgrace to boxing” with another “Jay Jackson, a Giant in the Ring.” For me, the shifting positions of the stools in the ring even reinforced the conflict that Jackson felt.

Experiencing the Power of The Royale

It’s a great opportunity to to look at this play through modern lens and ask how far we’ve come and, and if we can, how much further we need to go to get to a place of true equality so that someone like Jack doesn’t have to jeopardize his entire community.

At the climactic confrontation with Bernard Bixby (which I would not spoil for the world) and its consequences, both positive and negative, we are left to ponder Jackson’s motivations, but more importantly, the nature of a world in which he was forced to choose between them.

And, as importantly, where are we in present-day society?

“I think a play like this asks us how much has changed,” Morohunfola said. “Sport is more recognized, and we see a rainbow of athletes in many fields, which is beautiful, but also when are they asked to shut up and dribble? And when is Black thriving challenged even now?” He concluded, “To the point of legacy, who can say if this was the greater right thing to do? Or if it wasn’t? We live in a continuum of decisions being made that change the landscape of our world.” The Royale will leave you exploring and challenging these issues for yourself.

The Royale runs through April 12. Going in with very little context or knowledge, The Royale has become one of my “must-see” recommendations for this theater season. Tickets are still available at Clarence Brown’s website.

Clarence Brown Theatre: Website | The Royale | Season | Ticket Info