Those who are familiar with Joe Morton as the villainous and conniving father of Kerry Washington in the hit television series “Scandal” might be somewhat surprised at his newest role: Morton plays the legendary Black comedian Dick Gregory in Gretchen Law’s “Turn Me Loose,” at off-Broadway’s Westside Theatre through July 17. Pop star John Legend is presenting the production, which traces Gregory’s groundbreaking career combining standup humor with biting political wit that grew sharper with the years.Gregory might well have been relegated to performing in Black clubs had Hugh Hefner not been in the audience at a Chicago club in January 1961 when Gregory held a mocking mirror up to white society with the barbed quip: “The IRS is on me all the time. I wouldn’t mind paying my fair share of taxes, as long as I knew it was going to a friendly country.” Hefner invited the comic to perform at his Playboy Club, an engagement that led to a breakthrough booking on “The Tonight Show” with Jack Paar.Gregory channeled the national attention he gleaned into social activism, which intensified as the decade heated up, running for president in 1968 and going on hunger strikes to protest injustice wherever he saw it. And, as “Turn Me Loose” makes clear, he hasn’t let up. Morton says that at age 83, Gregory is still as fiercely and urgently dedicated to social justice as he ever was. Artinfo chatted with the Emmy Award-winning actor about playing one of the most complex and inspiring individuals in recent American history.What was the scariest part of playing Dick Gregory? Doing standup. It’s very scary. And doing justice to him. When I first saw Dick Gregory on television, growing up in Queens, it was startling and amazing, because nobody else was doing what he was doing.Did the line “My tongue was a switchblade” provide you with a way into his character? Yeah. In his autobiography, he was this skinny kid on the block who was not a fighter. He couldn’t stand up for himself. That’s when he started making fun of himself before you did. He knew he had a gift and could parlay that into making a decent living. He was so poor when he was young.He was known as the “Black Lenny Bruce” at one point. Well, both he and Lenny Bruce were the first to do political humor, and both were about the same age. You had this white comic doing political humor and [talking about] what was going on racially in the country, and then Dick Gregory doing material that was oriented toward racism but from an African-American perspective.Unlike Black comics before him, Gregory had a following that was largely white. Did his brand of comedy make him less threatening to his audience during the turmoil of the 1960s and ’70s? I think so. He stood his ground, and yet he wasn’t overbearing about it.As when he refused to go on the “Tonight Show” with Jack Paar unless he could sit on the couch after his routine? Yes. This came out of a conversation that he had with Billy Eckstine. They were watching the “Tonight Show” together, and Eckstine said, “I hate this show.” And Dick asked why. And Eckstine said, “Because Black performers don’t get to sit on the couch with Paar.” Dick had never noticed that before. So he said, “I’m not going to appear unless you let me sit on the couch.” And they met his demand.Hard to believe that it was even an issue at the time. This was 1961, ’62? It was revolutionary. That’s why it got so much attention. It was a shock. For the white audience watching the show, here was this Black person who was so terrific, talking about racial issues in a way that they could understand. Dick opened that door for Black comics who came after him.How did Gregory do that without being threatening? More and more, what Dick was saying had a serious underbelly. His comedy flipped things so that whites could see themselves in the situations they were putting Black people in. He would talk about whites on welfare: “And the one thing we don’t want them to be doing is having all those white babies.” He was able to not be threatening, but there was something edgy about his humor. It put audiences at ease but then toppled them over and toppled them over in a way that made them understand there was something wrong with the system.At what point in his career did he become more politically active? I think the change was completely related to [Mississippi political activist] Medgar Evers. His dedication to the movement became more and more intense and really became a complete dedication when Medgar Evers, his friend, was assassinated. After that, Dick thought, “What I’m doing is not nearly enough to what I should be doing.” He sharpened his humor. It was no longer funny jokes about racism. There was a sense in those years, “Why can’t you people be patient?” And he answered, “Why should we be? White folks weren’t that patient. Look at the Revolutionary War.”Why did the government consider him enough of a threat to tap his phone? He was heavily linked to Martin Luther King and Medgar Evers at the height of his career, and he had a wide following. Once he became an activist and started addressing college audiences and talking about the terrible things racism did to Blacks, he suddenly became very threatening. An interviewer asked him at the time, “Do you still want to be funny.” Fair question? The interesting thing about that question is, he was asked that again by an interviewer three or four days ago in Chicago: “Do you still want to be funny?” It made me want to put my fist through the TV. I think it’s disrespectful. When it was first asked, it was an absurd and ignorant question — asking somebody who is clearly about being Black in America and all the struggles that go with it what is most important to him, being funny or his people having their civil rights. What that question did do is help us put that perspective in our play.What makes Dick Gregory relevant now? Unfortunately, we’re facing many of the same problems he always addressed: income disparity, a world in which policemen are murdering Black men, corporate greed, companies creating toxic chemicals and calling it food. He was extraordinarily prescient. Even though we’ve made some progress, we’re still dealing with a lot of these issues.At 83, he’s still performing and speaking out. He works some 200 days per year, at clubs and universities. And it’s not just about racism and income inequality. It’s also about wife abuse and domestic abuse and the minimum wage. He’s probably pursuing social activism more fiercely now as he’s getting older and mortality is facing him right between the eyes. His urgency increases day by day.How did John Legend get involved as a presenter? John, from what I gather, does a great deal of activist work. He’s not just someone who is at the top of the charts but someone who wants to help the community elevate itself. He sees what Dick Gregory has achieved, and this was an opportunity to get his message, one that he cares deeply about, to a broader public.
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