In a career spanning more than forty years, André De Shields has distinguished himself as an unparalleled actor, director, choreographer and educator. He is the recipient of the 2009 National Black Theatre Festival Living Legend Award, the 2009 AUDELCO Award for Outstanding Performance by a Lead Actor in a Musical/Male (Archbishop Supreme Tartuffe), and the 2007 Village Voice OBIE Award for Sustained Excellence of Performance. In observance of Black Heritage Month 2009, he created his very first solo performance—MINE EYES HAVE SEEN THE GLORY: From Douglass To Deliverance, which has evoked powerful emotional response from audiences in New York at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Labor Center, and at The Yard on Martha’s Vineyard. Costarring with Jeremy Irons and Joan Allen, he garnered considerable critical acclaim in the roles of Chiambuane and Mr. Linder in the world premiere of Michael Jacobs’ new American play, Impressionism. He made his New York Shakespeare Festival debut as Teiresias, the blind prophet, in the Public Theater’s production of Euripides’ The Bacchae, directed by Joanne Akalaitis, with a score by Philip Glass, at Central Park’s Delacorte Theatre. A second debut was marked at The Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, GA as Robert in David Mamet’s A Life In The Theatre.

However, Mr. De Shields is best known for his show stopping performances in the original Broadway productions of four legendary musicals: The Full Monty, for which he received Tony, Drama Desk and Astaire Award nominations, in addition to both the Outer Critics Circle and Drama League Awards; Play On! (Tony nomination), Ain’t Misbehavin’ (Drama Desk nomination) and The Wiz (title role). He created the role of Graham in the world premiere of Mark Medoff’s Prymate at Florida State University, and revisited that role in the short-lived yet controversial Broadway production at the Longacre Theatre (Drama Desk nomination). At the behest of its Cultural Foundation, Mr. De Shields has twice performed his tribute to Louis Armstrong, Ambassador Satch, in the United Arab Emirates.

At the Classical Theatre of Harlem, he has participated in five remarkable collaborations with its former Artistic Director, Alfred Preisser—as Makak in Derek Walcott’s Dream On Monkey Mountain, in the title roles of Archbishop Supreme Tartuffe, Caligula and King Lear—resulting in a co-production with the Folger Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, DC during its 2006-2007 season, commemorating its seventy-fifth anniversary—and Langston Hughes’ Black Nativity (Lucille Lortel, Drama Desk and Drama league Award nominations/Outstanding Leading Man in a Musical). He received the 2007 Classical Theatre of Harlem Award for Sustained Excellence in the Theatre.

...photo by Lia Chang

New York theatre audiences have witnessed Mr. De Shields’ distinctive talent in other productions as varied as Cato at The Flea, Haarlem Nocturne at Broadway’s now defunct Latin Quarter, Neil Simon’s The Good Doctor at the Melting Pot Theatre, Let Me Sing at The George Street Playhouse and Lonnie Carter’s The Gulliver Trilogy at La MaMa E.T.C.

Regional audiences have witnessed his precedent setting performances as Robert in David Mamet’s A Life in the Theatre, Henry Drummond in Inherit The Wind, Willy Loman in Death Of A Salesman, Sheridan Whiteside in The Man Who Came To Dinner, Scott Joplin in Tin Pan Alley Rag, Vladimir in Waiting for Godot, Jacob Strand in Ibsen’s Ghosts (starring Jane Alexander), and the Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. In 2008, under the guidance of Artistic Director, Wendy Taucher, he performed as the Moor of Venice in The Othello Project at The Yard, a performing arts colony in Chilmark, MA, on Martha’s Vineyard.

His film and television credits include Extreme Measures with Hugh Grant, Prison with Viggo Mortensen, "Rescue Me," "Life On Mars," "Lipstick Jungle," "Sex And The City," "Law & Order," "Cosby," "As The World Turns," "Another World," the NBC movie-of-the-week, I Dream Of Jeannie-15 Years Later, as Haji, King of the Genies and two PBS Great Performances—as Tweedledum in Alice In Wonderland and Ellington-The Music Lives On. He received an Emmy Award for his performance, as the Viper in the NBC Television Special of Ain’t Misbehavin’.

...photo by Walter McBride

His other accolades include Chicago’s Black Theatre Alliance Award, two Joseph Jefferson Awards, five AUDELCO Awards and Distinguished Alumni Awards from both New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study (MA) and the University of Wisconsin-Madison (BA), which alma mater bestowed upon him the degree of Doctor of Fine Arts honoris causa on May 14, 2004. His adopted alma mater, the State University of New York-Buffalo State College, followed suit with a second Doctor of Fine Arts on September 23, 2004. André also has been educated at Wilmington College in Wilmington, Ohio, and the Internal College of Copenhagen in Denmark. In April 2001, he was honored with his very own portrait in the gallery of caricatures at Broadway’s world famous Sardi’s Restaurant.

On the concert stage, André has twice collaborated with American composer William Bolcom: as J. J. Fergesen in Casino Paradise and as the Rock Singer in Bolcom’s musical illumination of William Blake’s Songs Of Innocence And Experience with the St. Louis Symphony at New York’s Carnegie Hall and the BBC Symphony at London’s Royal Festival Hall. In 1999, he toured as Narrator with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in both Stravinsky’s L’Histoire Du Soldat and Wynton Marsalis’ companion piece, A Fiddler’s Tale, and with The Peabody Trio in Aaron Jay Kernis’ Le Quattro Stagioni Della Cucina Futurismo (The Four Seasons of Futurist Cuisine).

In a more popular vein, De Shields created six original theatrical concerts, which—during the decade of the 70’s, when New York City reigned as the world capital of cabaret—won the crown as King of Cabaret for him. They are Have You Ever Been Kissed By Lightning? Starring Mau Mau The Zulu Vampire, Half Man-Half Cadillac, The Insatiable Mechanical Monster (Gypsy’s), Uptown Sunday Night and Maximum Contrast (the Grand Finale), Black By Popular Demand (the Horn of Plenty in Greenwich Village, Greenstreets in SoHo, Joe’s Pub, Queen’s Theatre in the Park and the Capitol Theatre in Madison, Wisconsin), Haarlem Nocturne (the Club at La MaMa) and Midnight (in New York at Reno Sweeney’s and Les Mouches, plus the Back Lot Theatre at Studio One, Los Angeles’ preeminent nightclub, the Alcazar Theatre in San Francisco and Maunkberry’s in London).

Mr. De Shields began his professional career in 1969 at the Shubert Theatre in the Chicago production of Hair, The American Tribal-Love Rock Musical, directed by Tom O’Horgan and choreographed by Julie Arenal. After fifteen months of “beads, flowers, freedom, happiness,” he assumed the role of Clorox in The Me Nobody Knows, choreographed by Patricia Birch. His Chicago experience led to membership in Stuart Gordon’s Organic Theatre Company, where, in 1971, De Shields created the cult villain, Xander the Unconquerable, Ruler of the Sixth Dimension in Warp: The World’s First Science Fiction Epic Adventure Play In Serial Form. Mind you, this feat was achieved fully seventeen years before Star Wars. In 1973, De Shields debuted on Broadway in Warp at the Ambassador Theatre, where New York critics summarily dismissed the show. In quick succession, De Shields was chosen by Peter Link to perform as a lead vocalist in his summer concert at the Delacorte Theatre, Please Don’t Let It Rain, along with Irene Cara—who would later costar with De Shields in the Off-Broadway production of Ain’t Misbehavin’— cast by Dania Krupska as the Pharaoh in the American premiere of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Joseph And His Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat at the Playhouse in the Park in Philadelphia; cast by Ron Link as the “Negro from Oh, Ocho Rios “ in Paul Jabara’s Rachel Lily Rosenbloom (And Don’t You Ever Forget It). Guess what? It was forgotten. Ultimately, André was invited by Ellen Stewart to make the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club his artistic home in New York.

As an educator, Mr. De Shields has served as Adjunct and Distinguished Visiting Professor at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, where he taught Shakespeare, and designed the Interdisciplinary Arts Workshop, EXTREME PERFORMANCE: From Ancient Africa To Post-Modern America. He was the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr./Rosa Parks/Cesar Chavez Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, where he directed a multi-ethnic, pan-historical production of Euripides’ Trojan Women. He was the Algur H. Meadows Distinguished Visiting Professor of Theatre in the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University, where he directed A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, The Threepenny Opera and a workshop production of Saint Tous, an original dramatic musical inspired by the life of Haiti’s revolutionary hero, Toussaint L’Ouverture.

For two years, 1992 and 1993, he served as director of Carnegie Hall’s JAZZED—an educational strategy for restoring the Arts to New York City’s public schools. In 2006, he was the Harold Clurman Visiting Professor at the City University of New York-Hunter College, where he directed Vincent J. Cardinal’s King Dusyanta: A Tale From Kalidasa. In January 2008, he conceived and directed the inaugural observance of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day at the South Carolina Governor’s School of Arts and the Humanities in Greenville, SC. And during the spring semester of 2008, he was the Artist-in-Residence at the State University of New York-Buffalo State College, where he directed a fortieth anniversary production of Hair.

photo by Lia Chang...

His union affiliations are Screen Actors Guild, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society and Actors’ Equity Association, where he is currently serving his second five-year term as a member of the Eastern regional Board, and as a Principle Councilor on Equity’s National Council. From 1996 to 2001, he chaired Equity’s Committee for Racial Equality—now the Equal Employment Opportunity Committee (EEOC), and coordinated the annual celebration of Black History Month, jointly produced from 1994 to 2002 by Equity and NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study.

On Monday, February 9, for Black History Month 2009, the EEOC presented his solo tribute to Frederick Douglass, MINE EYES HAVE SEEN THE GLORY: From Douglass To Deliverance at the Service Employees International Union in New York City.

A triple Capricorn, Mr. De Shields is the ninth of eleven children born and reared in Baltimore, Maryland.

Namaste!