Enoch King
@enochaking in his living room
-Theatre-
I didn’t know Enoch well before I emailed him (as I’m sure it felt to him) out of the blue and asked to come to his home for a chat in the middle of a global pandemic. But I had a good reason.
I had always been enthralled with his performances. I was captivated by him. But I didn’t know him. I didn’t have an easy introduction or middle man that I knew of that could connect us, and I wasn’t just running into him at a show during the pandemic.
So, as I was creating my list of people to ask to participate in the final stage of the project, his name came up and I just bit the bullet and found his email address. I am so glad I got over my lack of good southern introduction and just asked him because I am so inspired by his self-discovery and determination.
We were both able to open up and create what I hope is a mutual understanding that I think he is great and that he thinks I’m not a completely crazy person.
Interviewed 2.20.21
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Casey: So first and foremost, how are you?
Enoch: I'm good. I'm just busy starting a couple of different projects, so you caught me at a good time. Two weeks ago, it may have been like, "Yeah, I'm fine. I'm OK. I'm just sitting there not doing anything." But I'm good right now.
Casey: Good! How has it been over the last, you know, year?
Enoch: I think it's been traumatizing on a lot of different levels. When it first happened, when we shut down in March, I talked to one of my direct friends and said, "Oh, man, we'll be back." And he was like, "No, that's not happening" Then April went through and I was like, "Yeah, it's not." And then May, June, and I'm like, "What's going on?" So I say traumatic in terms of coming out of it and being like, "Oh, this feels weird to me." Interactions feel weird to me — talking to people, even seeing friends on the set. This feels weird now. I don't know how to do this like I used to. I'm starting over. It's been an interesting experience, coming out of it.
But I also have learned a lot of stuff about myself. Really, really, really great stuff about the things that I stop myself from doing and the reasons why I stopped myself from doing them. Having that acknowledgment helps me to move forward and push forward.
Casey: Would you be comfortable sharing one of those things? Like...
Enoch: When it comes to further progression in my career, on different levels I know that I get in my head a lot of times and I procrastinate. I wait until the last minute of the last second of that audition. And it's like, "Why do you keep doing that? Why do you keep doing that? Why do you keep doing that? You've been doing that forever. Why do you keep doing that? What are you afraid of?" Because that procrastination has to come from fear. It's like, "Oh, you're scared. You still think you can't do this?"
So I gotta talk to that inner self, that little inner me. And, you know, we talk rough sometimes, we talk cool sometimes. I go, "You can't do that. You can't dictate how these things move now." I think it was a lot of recognizing that the reasons why I moved the way I moved were based on fear. I've moved like this or I respond like this because I'm afraid. I jump at this job or this opportunity because I'm scared that I won't have money. Or I jump at this opportunity, or I'll stay in this situation, or talk to this person because I'm scared to be by myself. …
A lot of discoveries came from that initial one. In May, I was driving and I was trying to figure out, “Why are you afraid? Something happened. Where did it come from? Why do you do this when you get afraid? Where is it? Where is it? Where is it? Oh! When you were in school. When you were in school, going to the cafeteria, just everywhere, you never wanted to be seen. You were afraid if you got seen, then you would get attacked because you were always that fat little kid. So you would walk and sit in the cafeteria and everything was always closed. Everything you do is always closed. That's why you talk so low, because everything is always closed.” And then I was like, “Aw, man. We got to break that thing.”
Casey: That's incredible, that you discovered all this.
Enoch: Yeah, it's kind of in one way feelin' like you're forced, but in another way feelin’ like — that's the other thing: the quarantine. I felt like we were moving, moving, moving. And I felt like the universe was like "Aight bro. There's something that needs to stop. Something has to stop."
I think a lot of us experienced things we never experienced before. It got quiet and we had to hear us. I think hearing us was one of those moments we go like, "Oh, you're hurting. Oh, I thought we were OK." It's like, no we weren't. We weren't OK. What do we do now? Now I hear you because I'm not confused by all the bustle, not confused by, “Let me hurry up and get a job.” I'm not confused by, “I got to go out there and perform for the people.” Not confused by all the other stuff that's going around. Now I'm hearing me. I'm still hearing those things but they are further away. I think that's a beautiful thing. I think a lot of people had those moments, and then what you do with those moments? Taking your moment and being like, "I need to do this," and what that does to people, and the ripple effects that it creates. It's something that's feeding you, and you're feeding other people while feeding yourself.
Casey: I am just so excited by this thing that you've discovered in yourself. For folks of our generation that kind of grew up without this silence, without this stillness, without this time to reflect because we've always had phones or TVs or whatever, it's incredible that you had to break it down all the way back to grade school. You know?
Enoch: Yeah.
Casey: That's crazy.
Enoch: There was a lot of things that happened to me as a kid. I got bullied and you don't know why. When those things happen and you don't know why, those moments affect you.
Casey: Yeah. Of course.
Enoch: But you get older, you can joke about it. "Yeah, man! I got beat up in the bathroom one time." "By who?" "I don't even know the guy!" But I looked at the events that I remember, that were there and then just went away, and I was like, "I remember. Oh, man. I remember when I'm not around my friends, being in the cafeteria and being scared, like, please don't anyone pick on me."
Casey: How is that going to change how you move forward when we do have all of these things rushing at us again? How do you hope to change your interactions with people as you go back to work?
Enoch: It makes me more comfortable. The quarantine did one thing, in that it makes me have a certain reaction when I'm around a large crowd. You do that now when you be like, "Oh, something's not right about this. No! We all should be here. Go home!
Casey: Get away from me! 6 feet!
Enoch: "Get away!" But the other thing is, it let me know what the fear was and where the fear came from. It let me know that fear is me, in me, and it also let me know the reason why I was scared, the reason why I was afraid, and the reason why I felt down, the reason why I felt bad. It branches out into other areas of my life and branches out into relationships. It branches out into me feeling attractive, and branches out to me feeling okay with things I think like, "Oh, nobody will like that, or these, or this, you know?" Now, I know what it is. It doesn't mean that the journey is over. It means the journey has begun, but now I know what it is. So when that happens now, and when those initial things come up, then it feels like an alarm now.
Casey: Some awareness, it sounds like.
Enoch: Yeah, because before it used to be, “Here is this feeling.”
Casey: Why do I feel this way?
Enoch: Not even a why. I'm just going to go with the feeling. I'm going to respond to it. But now when the feeling comes I go "OK, wait a minute. Why am I feeling?" That's when the questioning comes. And I love that because it kind of halted me in moments when I needed to halt myself and be like, "OK, wait a minute, where is that coming from?"
Casey: You can make a different choice.
Enoch: Because you know what the truth is. I think with fear, a lot of times it's trying to tell you things that aren't true. I get scared, but then I go, "Well, that's not true. That's not true. That's not true. All right. OK, thank you for the warning." Because I know it's a warning.
Casey: Yeah, it's a survival mechanism.
Enoch: Career-wise, it's just opened me up to other opportunities that I normally may have been afraid of or even tentative to take. Like yesterday, I was talking to somebody at True Colors and they asked me about a gig working with Atlanta Opera, and I told my best friend Cynthia, I was like, "Yo, I don't know." She said, "Would you have not said yes?" I said "No. I was going to say yes. It's hard to explain. I felt different in that whole conversation. I felt like calm and in control in a way that I haven't really felt." It's hard to find the vocabulary. The only thing in my head is the start of "Defying Gravity," like "something is changed within me. Something is not the same." Yeah, I'm like that.
Casey: That's going to be amazing when we all get back and everything's open up again.
Enoch: It's going to change a lot of different things for me in terms of who I'm working with and what I'm working on. I think I just desire to be around energy that is feeding, and now I recognize what feeds.
Casey: How have you been filling your creativity cup during all of this when we haven't been able to necessarily work the way that we were working before?
Enoch: I've done a couple of readings. I did a reading with Dominion Entertainment, did a reading with Soul-stice 2.0, I believe it is.
I went to Florida to play George Bailey in "It's Wonderful Life," which was a lot of fun because I've never seen the movie all the way through. So I got a chance to see the movie all the way through, and I was like, "Oh, George was rough! This movie is different than I thought it was. And I love it." And that's beautiful because he wasn't just sweet. One of my favorite lines of his is, "Why do we have to have kids?" And I love that line!
I also picked up a camcorder because I want to continue to hone that actor thing with TV and film. I'm just sitting there learning monologues, man. I hunger for the work. But I'm hungry to get better even if the work isn't there. I was talking to Eugene Russell yesterday and he was like, "Man, I love how we're just finding new things, man. I love being an artist. I love how we find that creativity." And I just appreciate that, for real. We expand our art. This is why I love this because this is an expansion of your art, of the creativity that you have. How it comes and stuff like that is a story within itself that can be creative. This is something wonderful.
Casey: I'm glad that you're still working. I'm glad that you’re still developing and doing monologues. I talked to a lot of people who are like, “I've been just taking a complete break from it because it was draining.”
Enoch: Yeah, I did that as well, especially in the beginning. I'm aware of it now so I take moments where I go, "Let me step out of this."
Casey: You can come back to it with a little more intention instead of stressing about like needing it for an audition.
Enoch: I know for a lot of people it becomes not fun, and I hate that. I hate when it's not fun or just being in a show where you're like, "I don't want to be here."
Casey: I think hopefully there will be less of that when we all go back. The people who would have been not happy to be in the room will hopefully just not be in the room.
Enoch: I think things did this *explosion noise,* and most people are watching the explosion and being like, "This is gonna be some change!" And I'm like, "Yeah, that thing that blew up? The ashes are still covering what we're looking at. This shit ain't changed."
Casey: So you think we'll go back and things won't be as different as you want them to be.
Enoch: They never are because the changes that people talk about happening, especially in the theater community, have to be within the institutions. When everything happened over the summer, with theatre companies being taken to task about Black Lives Matter and representation, they had a session with some theatre companies in Florida that they asked some actors to be a part of. … One of the things I said was, “I love hearing what the artistic directors think is cool, but I want to hear what the board thinks. Because the board is where the money is and I'm not hearing the board.
Casey: No, you're not. You're hearing the mouthpiece.
Enoch: I never hear the board.
Casey: So the town halls that we had in Atlanta were not necessarily as effective as you would have wished?
Enoch: No, the town halls were absolutely effective because the town halls allowed for people to voice the things that they have been feeling and to let these companies know that what you thought was happening in those moments wasn't happening in those moments. So those town halls were absolutely effective in terms of that. If you're talking about everything that I said before, the change? The changes that need to happen in those companies have to happen within. So you can shout "Black lives! Trans lives! We love everybody. We're going to make these changes." The problem I have is — all that stuff was happening and you needed somebody to be like, "Hey, this is not cool." That's my problem. My problem is you were just completely cool with it! You were completely cool with doing all-white casting. You were completely cool before any of this came about. So, when somebody voices their opinion about it, one, you're going to get defensive or, two, you're going to be like, "Oh, no, but really? Let me check. Wow! You're right. All white.” That's the problem.
Casey: Do you think any of the stuff that happened this summer and any of the things that the theatres have said, do you think any of it will have any sort of lasting change?
Enoch: Absolutely. I absolutely think it will, because I absolutely recognize that the artists are changed. Being in a theater now is going to have a lot of very a lot of extremely varying emotions. On the one hand, I'm excited just to be able to stand on the stage. I can get emotional even thinking about it, just standing on the stage and performing for people again.
On the other hand, it's like, "OK, you have heard. There are a lot of artists who know that you know now, as the institutions. We're walking in here and it's different now, and I hope this wasn't just for play for you. Because if this quarantine has taught any of us anything, it's that I can't do that. I can't. I have to guard this. I have to protect my whole essence. I have to protect all of me.
I'll walk away. There is a strength and encouragement that a lot of artists have — the awareness that I can walk away. There's people who want stuff to burn down. I'm not for that. I want to see you change. Because if you burn it down, what comes after that? Be better! Be better. I know it's hard.
Casey: What do you miss about before?
Enoch: That there was a before. Covid-19 is here, there is no getting away from that. Do you watch movies sometimes and see people hugging and think, "Damn! They do that, huh? Wow. We used to just be in the club. Wow!"
Casey: People just used to hook up with somebody.
Enoch: Yeah! Or after a show, it's just a crowd of people and I go, "Wow. That's not, going to happen. Not for a long time." So I miss that. I think I just miss the before.
Casey: Do you think you miss the closeness or the kind of lack of worry of being close to people?
Enoch: The lack of worry because it's always in your head, even now. You can mask and everything is six feet, and even though Covid tests are a part of my routine now … you can do all of that and still get it.
Of course, I miss performing. I miss being on stage. I miss being able to interact. The theater industry, it's changing, it's going to change with this Covid stuff, and it's going to shift the kind of shows that people do. I'm going to miss that because I don't see an end where we're able to fully do what we normally do until like 2023, 2024. That's just reality.
Casey: As we approach a year ago, what do you find yourself thinking about? What do you find yourself reflecting on about Covid?
Enoch: The future. I'm encouraged. I'm very encouraged by a lot of things. I'm encouraged by people who are being like, "I'm going to protect myself and I'm going to protect the people around me." Even as things have gotten more banded out and more vaccinations and stuff, in terms of Covid, a lot more people are being like, "Nah, I'm still going to make sure I'm taking care of myself." So I'm encouraged by that. And I'm more encouraged by myself just in the new way I'm trying to approach things.
Casey: Yeah. You got a whole new frame of mind.
Enoch: Yeah. My head told me, "Listen, if you make half an effort in what you're doing, you could fly to the moon. You can go." There's something about recognizing that the only thing that's stopping you is you. It does something different for you. And you go, "Oh, it's me? Oh, I need to get out my way then." Knowing that you were scared of success or scared of failure. No, not “or.” And. Scared of success AND scared of failure AND scared of being seen a certain way AND scared of, "If you get it, you won't know how to talk," AND scared of, "If you do this job, you won't be able to do that job." All of these “ands” and all of these fears. … I'm not going to apologize. I'd rather apologize to my inner self for still going out there and making that thing happen and failing at it, then sitting and agreeing with him and not doing it. I recognize I've done that for a lot of things in my life, and I was like, "Eh. I don't want to do that no more."
