Betty Goedhart tells the story of how a trip to the circus changed her life at age 78. Then Max talks with André De Shields about winning his first Tony Award at age 73 and why that milestone could not have come any sooner than it did.
Know someone who should be on 70 Over 70? We’re looking for all types of stories and people to feature at the top of the show. To nominate yourself or someone else, email 70over70@pineapple.fm or call 302-659-7070 and tell us your name, age, where you’re from and what you want to talk about.
transcription
[PRE-ROLL]
[OPENING MONTAGE]
Madeleine Albright: I know this program is 70 over 70, but I really wish I were younger. I wish I was 70 … but, I am ready!
[THEME MUSIC STARTS]
William: I’m 72 years old.
Paula: I’m 75, miraculously enough.
Sandy: I am 83 years old.
Betty: I am 88 years old.
James: You know, I’m here at 92.
Lucia: I’ll be 94 in May.
Donalda: I’m 101 years old.
Betty: My name is Betty Goedhart, I live in La Jolla, California, and I am 88 years old.
[THEME MUSIC FADES OUT]
Betty: When I was a kid, my parents took me to see some circuses in Kansas City where I grew up. And I loved the circuses, like all children do, but it was those women flying on that trapeze that really just amazed me.
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Betty: And that was kind of the end of that. Uh, never dreamt that I would ever do that. Well, I happened to mention that one evening at a--a dinner party. So, uh, one of my buddies gave me a ticket to go fly with Trapeze High so I went and, uh, had the time of my life.
Well, I was 78 when I started and now I'm 88 and so many people are so surprised. They’re always shocked when I say how old I am, but when I’m doing it...the rest of the world can fall apart because I don’t think about anything other than what I’m doing.
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Betty: First of all you’re 35 ft up and that first time you’re looking down--I don’t know anyone that isn’t scared to death but--you take that jump and--and you learn real fast that you’re safe. And then there’s your start, so... [laughs]
Honestly, if I could go back and tell myself anything, well you know, it probably is that age really is just a number. I think that’s all in your head.
[THEME MUSIC STARTS]
Betty: If you really want to do something, work hard, love it, and do it.
[THEME MUSIC CONTINUES]
Max Linsky: That was Betty Goedhart, and from Pineapple Street Studios this is 70 Over 70, a show about making the most of the time we have left. I'm Max Linsky.
My guest this week is André De Shields. André’s been an actor for more than 50 years, and over his career, he’s found a way to continually reinvent himself on the stage. And that’s been a choice. One of his early roles was as The Wiz, a hit show that he could have coasted on for decades, but he chose to leave. And then it happened again a few years later, when he starred in Ain’t Misbehavin’. He could’ve spent years touring the world with that show, but he decided to look for the next role instead.
Since then he has appeared in countless productions, including in quarantine — he was in Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical, and in February, he took the stage alone in an empty theater, his audience on Zoom, and performed a one-man show he’d created. It was called Frederick Douglass: Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory.
And that’s part of what I wanted to talk to André about, how he made a practice out of taking the riskier path, and whether he thought he had lost out in some way by doing so.
But there was another reason I wanted to have him on the show. After all these roles, five decades on the stage, André De Shields finally won a Tony Award in 2019 for his performance in Hadestown.
[MUSIC FADES IN]
Max: I wanted to know what that moment felt like, how getting that recognition at the age of 73 felt different than it would have if it had come earlier.
And I also wanted to talk to him about the acceptance speech he gave that night. It’s one of the all-time greats, and you get the sense listening to it that André had been thinking about what he would say for a very long time.
André De Shields is 75 years old.
INTERVIEW
Max: Hello.
André De Shields: Hello, good afternoon, Max.
Max: How are you?
André I'm well, thank you. How are you?
Max: I’m very well. I’m very very happy to be talking to you. I really appreciate you doing this.
André: How could I have said no?
Max: I was hoping we could start with your Tony speech, which I'm sure people ask you about all the time, and I wondered when the last time you listened to it was.
André: I have yet to listen to it.
Max: Really?
André: Well, I spoke it. I know what it is. [laughs] You think I sit at home and eat chocolates and listen to myself? No.
Max: No, no, I guess not. [André laughs] I--I just assumed that one way or another it would have come up for you.
André: Well, it does come up. It does come up, but it comes up in the way you just presented it. People mention it and then want me to comment on it, but I don't have to listen to it. It's in my heart. It's in my life. It came out of my experience in 50 years of being of service to my audiences. So it's etched in me.
Max: Well, if you're game, can we listen to it together?
André: What do you mean am I game? I'm here. Come on. Come on, Max!
Max: Uh, alright. I'll stop asking if you're game. You're here. Let's do it.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER FADES IN]
André (speech): I would like to share with you just three cardinal rules of my ability and longevity. One, surround yourself with people whose eyes light up when they see you coming. [applause] Two, slowly is the fastest way to get to where you want to be. [laughter and applause] And three, the top of one mountain is the bottom of the next, so keep climbing.
[AUDIENCE APPLAUSE FADES OUT]
André: I witnessed too many times colleagues of mine receiving an award and attempting to thank 100 people in 90 seconds. It's not possible. You get played off by the orchestra. This was my third Tony nomination, so I thought, perhaps, André, this is your time and it was my time. Now, obviously, that was the first time that that audience ever heard that, but it was something they needed to hear considering their response. My mantra is, if you know something, share something.
Max: Hmm.
André:I knew I wasn't going to attempt to thank everyone who had ever had my back. But I also knew that if I could somehow put together a wisdom bomb, like my own IED [Max laughs] and drop it on the audience, it would be appreciated because then each individual could take the information home [Mhmm] and then have it mean whatever was going to be significant for the individual's life.
Max: That's such an incredible instinct to me that you--you have this moment that maybe you had or hadn't been waiting for for a while, and the overwhelming human thing to do, which you've seen your colleagues do again and again is make that moment for themselves, and that you wanted to give a gift to the people who you were in that room with.
André: Well, there are two things working there. First of all, none of us has enough time. None of us is going to live long enough to make all the mistakes that would teach us that kind of wisdom. So look at the examples around you. Look at the examples that precede you and make your decision.
Max: Mm hmm.
André: The other is...my profession--the profession I chose and thankfully the profession that chose me in return, regardless of what people tell you, is about service. We performers, we act as activists. Because in this 21st century, you can't get away with saying I'm an actor. If you're on the living stage where a group of strangers come together and sit next to one another in a darkened atmosphere, they have come, although the audience will not articulate it this way, they've come to have a question answered. Antonin Artaud who is considered the innovator of the Theater of Cruelty, he realized early in this game people live more authentically in the theater than they do in their lives. That's why people go to the theater.
Max: Is that true for you, too? Do you feel that yourself when you're on stage versus when you're walking around town?
André: Yes. Now, it doesn't mean that I regret my life. It simply means that when I am advocating on the living stage, I am doing what I was put here to do. When I'm not advocating on the stage, I'm doing the laundry [Max laughs], I'm going to the post office, I'm answering more emails than I ever wanted to have received in my entire existence. [Mhmm] So that's why the living on the stage is more authentic than the delusion that we have become used to and call our lives. When we invented the clock, we should have put like 50 hours on the clock. [Max laughs] What's this with 24 hours and eight of them, you're supposed to be sleeping? How can you get anything done?
Max: Yeah, do you feel like you're running out of time?
André: No, I don't feel as if I'm running out of time, which is why my second cardinal rule is slowly is the fastest way to get to where you want to be.
Max: Can you help me understand what that really means?
André: Yes. Humanity in its evolution, of all of the species, is on a treadmill that's moving fast. And if you were to ask, where are you going? The answer might very well be, I don't know, but I have to get there quickly [Max laughs] because we have convinced ourselves, and I know you've heard this many times, that life is short. I don't buy into that. Life is long. It appears short because we are in a hurry to accumulate things. That is not the meaning of life. Life is for you to realize your purpose. I mean, look at the--the environment we are currently living in. Everyone talks about being frustrated, being depressed, being concerned, being out of sorts, wanting to get back to normal when indeed normal is through with us! Normal has put its foot in our butt and said, 'Get out of here,'--
Max: Yeah.
André: But we would rather act in panic and react in fear than do what is so obvious, and that is to go forward with purpose.
[MUSIC FADES IN]
Max: Mm hmm.
André: And joy.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
[MIDROLL/BREAK]
[MUSIC FADES IN]
Max: The clarity that you have about living with purpose, about [Right.] why people come to the theater--
André: Right.
Max: Have you always had that or did it--
André: Yes, yes, I've always been a black man. Come on, let's tell the truth. I come to this thing called life from a different perspective.
Max: How did that lead you so quickly to knowing what your purpose was?
André: When each of us is conceived in the meeting of those chromosomes is our purpose, is our destiny, is the journey we're going to walk. When I was studying for my master's degree at New York University, my professor, Dr. John Carroll, said to the class, ‘We know everything we need to know, we simply don't know that we know it,’
Max: Right.
André: And that is the way we're born, with all the knowledge that we're ever going to need. But as soon as we enter this world…
Max: Yeah.
André: We start to forget.
Max: But did you not forget, like, did you always know it?
André: Thank you for asking that question. In my adult life, I've learned what I just shared with you.
Max: Yeah.
André: I didn't know that the moment I was evicted from my mother's womb. But think of the many people who are adults and still haven't learned that.
Max: Well, you're--you're talking to one of them and and--
André: Oh oh [laughs]. Ok, alright. So as soon as I learned it, I realized, 'Oh, I now have to stop forgetting and get on the road to remembering what I already know,'
Max: And what was that moment for you? When--when did that happen?
André: Well, it wasn't an instant, it was an era of my life. I had just come back from Paris. I had done The Wiz. Do you know about The Wiz?
Max: I do.
André: OK. I had done The Wiz. And it was definitely, sometimes in subtle ways, sometimes in very direct ways, information for me to receive that I had been very lucky to have the opportunity to create the title role in The Wiz. Now I'm thinking, 'I'm on my job, I'm on my journey, I've surrendered to my destiny. What do you mean? I'm lucky,'
Max: 'I crushed that role,'
André: Yes! I killed it. I know, I'm the new kid on the block. I said, ‘OK, watch this,’ I didn't know what this would be, but... Ain't Misbehavin. So they said ‘OK, wait a minute, he's hit two balls out of the park now,’ [both laugh] and Ain't Misbehavin takes me on a whirlwind, delicious tour. I'm finally coming home in 1981 and I get another ask to do Ain’t Misbehavin and I'm thinking 'Oh, my detractors thought I would have to do The Wiz for the rest of my life,' but now I'm thinking, 'Am I going to do Ain't Misbehavin for the rest of my life?' I mean, I could.
Max: Right.
André: Right?
Max: Good life.
André: Yeah, exactly. And then it occurred to me that would require forgetting everything that I was learning, just sort of be content with that particular mountain I had climbed.
Max: Right.
André: But as I say, in cardinal rule number three, the top of one mountain is the bottom of the next. Keep climbing. So my decision was, ‘Ah, you've got your Bachelor Degree of Arts, but you don't have your Masters. It's time for you to become a master. It's time for you to study yourself.’ So did I get a master of fine arts in acting? No, I got a master in Black Studies because that's how I found out about myself.
Max: And were you still working during that time, when you went and got that degree?
André: Yes, I was carrying a full load and doing eight shows a week.
Max: And that experience going back, getting that degree, learning about yourself, can you draw a line between that and the life you've led since?
André: Oh yeah. Yeah. If I had gone on with Ain't Misbehavin, 40 years of my life would have just gone...
Max: Would have been one note over and over again.
André: Yeah.
Max: So you're saying you’d-you'd hit two home runs?
André: Two home runs, yes.
Max: The Wiz and Ain't Misbehavin'. You could dine out on Ain't Misbehavin for the rest of your career if you wanted to--
André: For the rest of my life. And then got fearful about the next time I was up at bat.
Max: You got scared?
André: Yeah.
Max: Scared that you'd strike out?
André: Yeah, because that's what--come on, you know. That's what--that's what your ego does to you.
Max: I know it’s just--it’s very hard for me to picture you being scared of striking out.
André: Every time you get up in the morning, your ego is standing at your bed like this, ‘Why-why-why are you thinking of getting out of bed? Ain't nothing for you to do. [Max laughs] You think you deserve something in this world? Go on back to sleep.
Max: You still having that conversation with your ego every morning?
André: Yeah. You're too tall, you're too short, you're too fat, you're too skinny, you're too black, you're too white. You’re too this. You’re too that. You're not worthy. Go back to bed. But I now--I now know how to overcome that.
Max: How do you do that?
André: Oh! [laughs] The ego wants to control us because that's how it will live. The ego is a virus and there is no inoculation against it. There is no vaccine. However, it does have an opponent that can take it down. And that is the small voice that lives at the core of our being. There is a small voice that lives there. And by small, I don't mean ineffectual.
Max: Right.
André: Because it tells us only the truth. It is on us to get rid of the distractions and hear what the voice is telling us.
Max: I mean, on some level that’s all three of those things you're saying in that speech, right?
André: Right. So when I received the award on June 9th, Sunday, 2019, I didn't know that I would be explaining it for the rest of my life.
Max: But there's also a reason that that, you know, you and I sit down to talk and that's the place that I feel like I need to start with because you did find...a wisdom bomb and it does take time to unpack those three rules and really understand them. Even though, you know, when you hear them that they're true.
André: Let me tell you something and this is no way--I'm not being ungracious, but the best way to unpack that wisdom bomb is to look in yourself, not at me.
Max: Mm hmm.
André: I've done what I'm supposed to do. I delivered the package. Amazon! [Max laughs] Here’s what--here's what you ordered. Do I have to unpack it for you, now? No. You take it home, you unpack it and you live with it, until you get from it what you ordered.
Max: Can we go back to, um, that small voice?
André: Mhmm?
Max: Has your relationship to it been a steady one, like are you--are you more in touch with it or does it go up and down? Do you lose--
André: It's steady.
Max: It's been steady. That voice has just been clear and clearer throughout your life.
André: Well, it's-it's-it's the addiction that doesn't kill you, listening to that voice. And believe me, I have experimented with some things that could have killed me.
Max: Is it a practice to listen to that voice?
André: If you mean if you mean do I have to sit in the corner with my legs crossed? Meditate. No, no. It's a tool.
Max: I guess I mean, is there some version of that for you or-or does it just happen?
André: No, it doesn't just happen, although the voice--the small voice--is never silent. It's the noise that we deal with that grows in decibels. So that's what I have to deal with.
Max: Right. The work is about clearing the noise.
André: Right, exactly.
Max: Not about listening harder.
André: Right, exactly. And I'll give you--let me give you an example of that. One night ago, I finished my performance as Frederick Douglass for Black History Month. You hip to Frederick Douglass?
Max: Yeah. Yeah, I've seen the--um, I've seen the pictures of you. It's incredible.
André: That was 48 hours ago. 48 hours ago, I had another reminder while I was onstage that I need to continue remembering what I've spent 50 years forgetting.
Max: What happened?
André: Well, what happened in the middle of my performance, I got better.
Max: How? Like I have...I have no idea what it's like to be you on that stage.
André: Well, the moment was I'm on stage for the first time in my life alone. And in the venue is not that audience I spoke to you about, there's no one here looking for an answer to a question. There's no one here looking for a resolution to a crisis, etc. etc. etc. Now, that isn't what's supposed to be going through my mind. I'm supposed to be delivering Frederick Douglass. So I had to respond to that interruption because on one very specific level, I'd forgotten why I was there. Probably was just 10 seconds, though, but 10 seconds on stage seems like 10 hours. On the other level, I was being nudged to remember what I had forgotten, and that made my service as a solo performer even more radiant. All of this, especially the term authenticity, is about being the best André De Shields that I can be.
Max: And it was that.
André: And it was that. So that’s what we must do in our daily lives, we must feel--we must feel the earth moving under our feet because it is.
Max: It's being open to that movement, [Yes.] even if you happen to be onstage.
André: Yes and responding to it and not trying to save it for a more appropriate moment. No, it's now. It's now André, it's now, Max!
Max: And you don't get to choose when it happens.
André: No, you don't. But you get to choose how to respond to it. You see? You just said it. It's not about the decisions you make. It's about how you deal with the consequences of whatever decision it is that you make.
Max: Mm hmm.
André: That's what be--living in the moment is. That's theater, that's not television, that's not film. They're all great forms of art, but the only place you have to live, act in the moment, is the living stage! Because people are sitting there going, 'OK, what-what? What you got? [Max laughs] I came here for something. You either gonna serve it or not?’ Right? Otherwise, at intermission what I'm out of here'
Max: Right. Can't flip the channel. They're not on the couch.
André: Right. That's why I was happy to explain to you about my wisdom bomb. I was in the business 50 years. I had 50 years to think about what I was going to say if I ever won the Tony. See, that was--that's why I started with The Wiz.
Max: Right.
André: ‘Oh, he thinks he's going to win a--no. I didn't think I was going to win a Tony for The Wiz.
Max: The other two times you were nominated...
André: Yeah.
Max: Do you think what you would have said would have been different?
André: Oh yeah. Believe me. Believe me. We made a huge mistake when we put such a limited definition on the concept of time. Time existed before we came out of that first portal that we call birth. And time will continue to exist when we go through the final portal, which is called death. So when we come in and say, ‘OK, let's make a clock,’ and time is like, ‘oh no, not these fools again.’ [both laugh]
Max: I'm just going to keep going whether or not they make a clock.
André: [laughs] Right, right, exactly. Exactly. So what I'm saying is, it happens when it is supposed to happen. So people say, ‘how do you know?’ Well, if you're listening to time, if you are experiencing time, you will know when it conspires with you. So you won't be jumping the gun and you won't be late. You will be what?
Max: On time.
André: On time! [Max laughs]
Max: So it doesn't-- it doesn't matter what you would have said in those speeches, because it was at the time.
André: Right….no, let me correct that it isn't that it wouldn't matter what I said. It is that I could not have said anything else.
Max: But there was something André that I was really struck by as I was preparing for this interview, which was that it wasn't until 2019 that you publicly said that you've had HIV for 30 years. That was something that you kept for yourself for so long. Why is that something that you hadn't talked about until then and then what changed in 2019?
André: The reason that I shared it in 2019 is because I became a public figure. I was not a public figure until I got the Tony Award. Now, I don't mean to say that I didn't have a public life. I don't mean to say that I didn't have any celebrity. What I'm saying is--I will say what I learned from listening to Sammy Davis Jr. A celebrity signs two contracts, one with his employer, one with his public. So when I got the Tony Award, I realized that I was being owned by a public, who had made this journey with me, who had my back who had been the wind beneath my wings, and now's the time to be grateful, answer questions if there are any, and those other things I said resolve crisis, etc. etc. etc. And heal.
Max: Was there anything about that process of accepting that contract, of opening up for that public that felt like accepting the risky path?
André: No not--well, it was a risk. I have the award, but I'm really like you. That's when you have to say that.
Max: Mm hmm.
André: But remember I said it's not about the decision you make, it's about how you deal with the consequences of the decision you make. I forget which publication it appeared in, but one publication referred to me as Broadway's deity. Now, I know they were playing on the idea that I was playing the god Hermes, but that's when you have to go, ‘Oh, OK. I got it. Thank you very much. But I really am--I'm just a regular guy,’
Max: And is part of the reason that you felt so strongly that you had to do that, that you had seen people get their version of the award and forget themselves that they were a regular person?
André: Well, I've seen that. But that isn't what I was thinking about at the time. What I was thinking at the time was awards say you have information.
Max: Mm hmm.
André: Awards say you know something that nobody else does. Otherwise, everybody would have an award but as Sly in the Family Stone said back in the 60s, everybody is a star, but nobody believes that. And then Joni Mitchell said it in the 70s, We are stardust, we are golden. We are 100 million year old carbon and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden. Now, if people would take that seriously, we could all meet on this level playing field that we're always talking about. But no, when we start playing these exceptionalism games, so-and-so gets the award, not you. Well, what's wrong with me? That's that ego, don't get out of bed. You're not getting an award today.
Max: Right.
André: But you have to get up every day and play the game. And it is a game.
Max: And go look for the next mountain.
André: Yes, yeah, that's not a game, though.
Max: Do you know what that is for you? Do you know what the next mountain is for André?
André: I can put a general label on it, but I I don't know specifically what it's going to be, but service, it's going to be service wrapped in education.
Max: And does that come through the stage?
André: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The stage is my conduit now, but it has always been my conduit. That's why, that's why the acceptance speech is about sustainability and longevity.
Max: And also not rushing.
André: Don't we know about the tortoise and the hare, [Max laughs] come on, and what do our parents always tell us? Haste makes waste.
Max: Well, I know, uh, I know the time is just continuing. It doesn't matter exactly how we mark it, but um this time with you has been really, really meaningful.
André: Well, I'm glad I said yes to this opportunity.
Max: Me too. Me too. I can't thank you enough.
André: This will be my valediction, we so often use the term namaste, which I think many people understand is the--the divinity in me recognizes and salutes the divinity in you. I'm going to use a term that's borrowed from the network of Bantu languages spoken in the south eastern geographical areas of Africa. The gesture is the same, this term is 'ubuntu'. It's very appropriate for our conversation because it means I am because you are.
[MUSIC FADES IN]
André: Ubuntu.
Max: Ubuntu.
[MUSIC CONTINUES]
CREDITS
Max: 70 Over 70 is a production of Pineapple Street Studios and it’s produced by Jess Hackel.
Our associate producer is Janelle Anderson. Our editors are Maddy Sprung-Keyser and Joel Lovell. Research and additional reporting by Charley Locke.
Our mixer is Elliott Adler, and Jenna Weiss-Berman and I are the executive producers.
Our theme song is Like a Dream, by Francis and the Lights, and the music you’re listening to right now is by Beverly Glenn Copeland. Original music by Terence Bernardo. Additional music by Noble Kids and music licensing by Dan Knishkowy.
Our cover art is by Maira Kalman, and our episode art is by Lynn Staley.
Thanks to our guests Betty Goedhart and André De Shields.
I'm Max Linsky. Thanks for listening.
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