Fela! Star Sahr Ngaujah on His 'Holy Sh*t' Moment

Age: 32

Hometown: “Atlanta, Georgia. But my family is from the Sierra Leone in Africa, and I’m from everywhere.”

Currently: Winning over critics and audiences as real-life activist and Afrobeat pioneer Fela Anikulapo Kuti (a role he originated off-Broadway) in Bill T. Jones’ art-meets-music brainchild Fela!.

Artlanta: Fittingly, triple-threat Ngaujah (son of a former DJ and Sierra Leone native who met Sahr’s mother while she taught choir in Africa as a missionary) riffs on his unlikely journey from the south to Broadway like a jazzman, sharing highlights (growing up with future stars like SNL’s Keenan Thompson and hip-hop’s Andre 3000 and Big Boy) and sliding over personal details (“I won’t get into talking family, man, but I have one!”) with casual coolness. “Music and art were everywhere when I was coming up, man, and that’s all I did,” he says of childhood, which included dance, music and acting with Atlanta’s Freddie Hendricks Youth Ensemble. Ngaujah’s mother supported his passion; his father was more difficult to sway. “It’s hard for many African immigrants to understand how the first generation of kids born in this country would want to pursue anything besides fundamentals like finance or medicine,” Ngaujah recalls. “He said, ‘What can you do for our family by being an artist?’”

“No” to New York: Ngaujah continued performing, studying and “gigging” in Atlanta through his teens, eventually landing a full-ride to the Juilliard School—a scholarship he turned down. “I went to look at the school and just realized, ‘Damn, I’m not interested in a conservatory. I don’t want to just act. I want to do everything,’” he recalls. Instead, Ngaujah continued working on professional stages in Georgia while attending community college. After earning his associates degree, the young artist headed to NYU to study theater. “I made it to Christmas break and then left!” he laughs. “I couldn’t take it—it was too small; everything felt wrong, artistically.” Ngaujah was home just two months before a connection at his childhood theater landed him a new gig—in Rotterdam.

European Staycation: Overseas, Ngaujah starred in a two-man adaptation of The Eternal Curse on the Reader of These Pages, a novel by Kiss of the Spider Woman author Manuel Puig. “I was 19, and it ended up being my first taste of international theater and working that hard,” he explains. The show was a success, touring Rotterdam, Amsterdam and London, and its star fell in love with European theater. “I planned to stay [overseas] for two years and stayed for eight!” he exclaims. “I missed the Dark Ages of America—9/11, George Bush, all that. Coming home to visit during that time was bleak because my country had changed. I finally understood what going ‘home’ must have been like for my father.” Ngaujah spent almost a decade immersing himself in the Euro scene as a successful director, writer and actor, returning to the United States when Fela! came calling.

Feeling the Afrobeat: While visiting home during his “Rotterdam years,” Ngaujah stopped in New York to audition for modern dance legend and Tony Award winner Bill T. Jones. When Fela! later began development, Ngaujah’s name topped the list for the title star: “Bill called me in Amsterdam and said they were working a piece about Fela Kuti. All I could think was, ‘Holy shit!’” Having been exposed to Kuti’s music by his father, Ngaujah enthusiastically made his way back to New York to begin the long process of developing the show’s swaggering, sexual lead character. “We did almost eight different workshops before the show really took shape,” he says. “I was back and forth between Amsterdam and New York constantly.” The musical finally opened to critical acclaim off-Broadway in September 2008, winning Ngaujah an Obie Award and transferring to Broadway in November 2009.

Broadway “Originality”: Ngaujah insists that Broadway, which has received the somewhat avant-garde Fela! with open arms, was the last thing on his mind when he took the role. “I let dreams of Broadway go when I was 19,” he says. “As a child I always thought I’d be here, but once I hit Europe that kid’s dream was over. It goes to show you can’t predict how long seeds planted take to grow.” While the role of Fela demands nearly two straight hours onstage (and a monastic lifestyle to maintain health and voice), Ngaujah relishes the challenge and opportunity to bringing his story and music to the masses: “I love the audience interaction, especially when they realize they should interact. And the team of people who’ve brought this together onstage and off are brilliant. I’m quite happy that this character is how I got to commercial Broadway.” And what does Ngaujah’s father think of his son’s art now? “Once he read The New York Times review of Fela! he got it. He’s so into it now, man!”