good pursuits
journeys through ethics
When Mike Wiley auditioned for a play for the first time, he already knew the character he wanted to play: the Queen.
The play was a youth production of “Alice in Wonderland,” the theater was in Roanoke, Virginia, and Wiley was in eighth grade — and the only Black kid present.
The “table full of white ladies” in charge of the auditions was stunned, Wiley recounts. “‘But the queen is a woman,’” he imitates one saying, in a steely Southern accent.
Nevertheless, the young Wiley auditioned as the Queen, because, he says,“it was the best part.”
When Wiley was cast — though not as the Queen — it was the beginning of a relationship with the theater that would span decades. It led him to pursue an MFA in Acting at UNC-Chapel Hill, create his own production company, write and perform over a dozen original plays, and eventually, become the Stephen and Janet Bear Assistant Research Professor of Arts, Ethics, and Education in the Program in Education at Duke University.
He still performs, constantly.
Nowadays, he always plays the best part. That’s because he plays all the parts.
Wiley writes and acts in one-man plays. By changing his accent, adjusting his posture and movements, and communicating with the audience in countless other tiny, calculated ways, he guides them through complex stories, even as he switches between a dozen or more characters.
His plays focus on figures in African American history. Some of them you probably already know — like Jackie Robinson, the first Black baseball player in the Major Leagues — and some you probably don’t, like the fiery Abraham Galloway, a spy and all-around “badass” who led a group of formerly enslaved men to fight against the Confederacy in North Carolina during the Civil War.
He tells the stories of Emmett Till, of the Freedom Riders, and most recently, of Booker T. Spicely, a Black soldier who was shot and killed by a bus driver in 1944 in Durham, North Carolina, after protesting an order to move to the back of the bus.
In a nation that still struggles to reckon with its painful history of racial oppression, Wiley’s performances can be challenging, unsettling, and even cathartic — especially for audiences unused to seeing such unvarnished representations of the American experience. These plays feel necessary — so necessary, it seems almost a given that they exist.
But, of course, like the past itself, none of this was inevitable. Writing and performing one-man shows about African American history was a career path that Wiley had to carve out for himself.
“I wanted to be able to go into schools and take little-known or rarely told stories in African American history…not only stories of hardship, but stories of hope.”
Wiley in costume as Abraham Galloway, who escaped from slavery in Wilmington, North Carolina, became a Union Spy, and led a group of formerly enslaved men to fight against the Confederacy in North Carolina during the Civil War. Galloway was elected to the North Carolina Senate in 1869. Photo credit: Justin Cook.
“Remembering what I was exposed to in school, I never saw any Black plays, as far as somebody coming into my school and performing,” he says.
This was in spite of attending a predominantly Black elementary school in Roanoke, V.A., where Wiley didn’t fit in. He once told his mother that he couldn’t find his shoes just so he wouldn’t have to face his bullies at school the next day, and she pretended to believe him.
But his peers eventually gained some respect for him because of his talent as a performer. He remembers emceeing the school talent show, where he channeled his love of storytelling comedians like Dom DeLuise, to laughter and applause.
After transferring to another local school, Wiley joined the youth ensemble at the local community theater, and his love of theater took off.
“Theater was an escape for me,” he says. There, he could pretend to be another person, in another time and place.
Theater literally took him to other places as well — like the Soviet Union in 1989, as part of a multinational youth theater troupe that sought to promote peace through the arts. The experience expanded his notion of what the art form could do.
“I realized that theater didn’t have to be creating a character, putting up a production, and closing that production,” he says. “I realized that theater could also be a vehicle for change. It became an integral part of who I was and what I wanted to do in the world.”
In the ‘90s, Wiley had a lightbulb moment while driving and listening to long-form documentaries on NPR.
“I would hear these voices talking about an event in history, and I would think, ‘I could do that,’” he says. “‘I could do that on stage. I could do all of those voices, and present this story.’ It started to bubble in my head — how I could do it, and what it would look like.”
A chance encounter with a book on African American history at his aunt’s house brought Wiley’s vision into full focus. “I started flipping through it, and I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh! This is what I can do. I will tell these stories.’”
“I realized that theater didn’t have to be creating a character, putting up a production, and closing that production. I realized that theater could also be a vehicle for change.”
Wiley’s first play was “One Noble Journey,” the story of Henry “Box” Brown, an enslaved man who squeezed into a wooden box and mailed himself to freedom. Wiley still performs it. Its main prop is a box large enough for him to fit inside, and he pops out of it at the beginning of the play.
First produced by Durham’s Manbites Dog Theater in 2000, the play received positive reviews. But Wiley wasn’t satisfied.
“I always knew, even in the writing of the piece, that I was going to find a way to not only do performances for professional producing companies, but also in schools,” Wiley says. “I wanted to be able to go into schools and take little-known or rarely told stories in African American history, and make that change. Not only stories of hardship, but stories of hope.”
Wiley bought a surplus fax machine and faxed flyers to Upward Bound programs up and down the East Coast, offering to perform his play. He drove to state after state with the box hanging out of the trunk of his little Ford Tempo.
Wiley had participated in Upward Bound, a program that helps low-income or first-gen students prepare for college. Now he was performing for students just like himself, bringing them an experience he never had.
Wiley has now performed at hundreds of schools — and for all kinds of audiences. He still makes audiences laugh, but he says he uses comedy strategically, so that they’re better able to absorb the gravity of the histories he presents.
“The most important part of what I do is to be able to do both simultaneously,” he says. “Making you laugh and making you think.”
Wiley tries to “meet people where they are,” he says, in spite of the difficult subject matter of his plays. The key ingredient is forming connections with the audience — not only the audience’s connection with Wiley, but also their connection with each other.
“I’m creating a shared experience,” he says.
Some of his shows involve audience participation. When he brings a white person onstage to play a Black character like Jackie Robinson, he knows it might be the first time they allow themselves to identify with that person and feel, in an embodied way, the discrimination they faced.
“But even in those pieces where I don’t bring someone onstage,” he says, “I still feel that I am giving them an opportunity to walk in the shoes of someone else.
“The way theater works is: you start to identify with a character. You start to travel the world of the play as that person. In an ensemble play, you can choose that character. But with me playing all of the characters — you’ve got to choose me!
“And in identifying with me, you are taking the journey with me. We are on this journey together.”
Writing: Sarah Rogers
Photography: Justin Cook
Photography Assistants: Alex Boerner, Allie Mullin