Jay C. Ellis on Juggling Words, Finding New Rhythms, and 'Freestyle Love Supreme'

EDGE caught up with Jay C. Ellis during a particular busy week, while "Freestyle Love Supreme" is was Seattle, following the launch of its current tour in San Francisco and dates in other cities around California. The tour heads to Boston next, where it will run from March 18 – April 4; after that, dates in Portland, Oregon, Washington, D.C., and half a dozen other cities around the country will follow.

Ellis and his castmates had entertained an audience of high-schoolers the day before. "We had a rare morning matinee," Ellis recounts. "You know, it's always really special to perform this for the youth. I got my start in freestyle rap around my high school lunch tables, freestyling with my friends, right? So when I look at those audiences – the high-schoolers – it's amazing. You look back and it takes you right back in time and you really can see a palpable catharsis knowing that you're doing something for people who are receiving it right in the moment that you received it."

What Ellis means is that "Freestyle Love Supreme" is an improvisational hip-hop show in which he, his castmates, a beatboxer, and the audience interact collaboratively to create an entirely new experience at each and every performance.

Starting in 2003, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Thomas Kail, and Anthony Veneziale would basically "Freestyle Love Supreme" to amuse themselves during breaks as they were working on "In the Heights." Now, "Freestyle Love Supreme" has grown into something of a juggernaut, taking Broadway by storm, launching the current tour, and even being the subject of a documentary on Hulu, "We Are Freestyle Love Supreme."

Ellis, an out Broadway veteran, came to the show after participating in Freestyle Love Supreme Academy, which offers two-day classes and seven-week courses to performers and the general public alike, as well as providing training for corporations. Ellis worked as a standby for the staff leading the corporate training sessions, subbing in when needed. Two years later, he auditioned to be part of the cast on Broadway, and now, he summarizes, "here we are on tour."

Jay C. Ellis explained how the show works and what it's like to be part of the touring stage production.

EDGE: "Freestyle Love Supreme" is a hip-hop improvisational show. People kind of throw words at you like you're a juggler, and you grab those words and juggle with them.

Jay C. Ellis: That's a great way to put it. We totally take what happened from the audience, and we juggle it. We also take their experiences, their life stories, and even their story of that day and weave it into our show.

EDGE: Do you have some kind of an outline, a general story that you're telling that you're weaving these into? Or you're just creating a completely new story with that audience?

Jay C. Ellis: We're doing a completely new story with the audience every night. Some nights we even do a different structure by adding in different games. You could think of it the way that a football team would think of practice: We don't know what the audience is going to add into the mix every night, but we can run plays and we have our playbook that shows us all kinds of different ways that we can respond. And we use that as a set structure, different plays and different games that we've memorized patterns for. We take all of the information from the audience, and we then create something brand new every night. If you come to the show the next day or the day after, we'll have a totally different [show] – the show is ever-changing, ever-evolving.

And also, there are seven of us, there are four MCs every night, including the beatbox, so three rappers and a beatboxer. We're always rotating, so you'll rarely even see the same configuration of people.

EDGE: The performances must feel like playing jazz. Even the title is a reference to a famous Coltrane piece, isn't it?

Jay C. Ellis: Yeah. Coltrane's "Love Supreme." It's a total homage to that, and it's definitely related to jazz and improvisational jazz.

EDGE: Do you feel sometimes like somebody's going in a direction you're not quite sure about, and do you just kind of do your best to play along?

Jay C. Ellis: The answer to that question is, both. And, truly, it does encapsulate the methodology of improv coined by Viola Spolin: "Yes, and." Saying yes to the unexpected, following the follower, being able to agree to given circumstances that you do not create, and adding your own artistic expression beyond that launching point.

I think that you totally say yes, and you go with it, and you try to respond as soon as you can. Sometimes you can preemptively understand or anticipate, or the moment is so connected through synergy that you're moving along with somebody, and sometimes they say, "Hey, we're gonna do our magic walk through the woods," and you say, "Alright, show me that magic walk," and you stand back a couple paces and figure out how to respond. But the real trick is to always remain present, and always remain committed to the bit.

EDGE: If you're doing a show with kids, like yesterday, and you're used to doing a show for adults, are you trying to self-censor, or does something come out here and there that's a little bit R-rated?

Jay C. Ellis: That's funny, because you're talking to the major culprit of that, right here. We do censor a bit when we do a high school matinee. We really prefer for children under the age of 14 to have pretty explicit adult consent, meaning their parent or guardian is there with them because of the nature of improv. We don't know what's going to be suggested, so discretion is definitely important when bringing youth to the show.

But I do believe that the youth are smarter than the adults these days, and there are very few topics that they don't understand. The beauty is handling those topics with truthfulness, with couth, and with a tact level that matches the appropriateness of the age group. We can talk about sex, we can talk about drugs, we can talk about violent moments and partition that healing, but we need to do it in a way that we aren't triggering trauma, and that we're not introducing something that hasn't been introduced [by the audience] as far as content. Sometimes we'll say we're going to make sure we make this show PG-13 because it's a youth matinee, and we'll aim for PG so that we're PG-13. Personally, I know I'm going to be PG-13 If I aim for PG. I normally give you a good NC-17 moment in the show.

EDGE: Is the audience pretty good about not getting too out-of-hand?

Jay C. Ellis: The rowdier the audience, the better the show! I say come to the show and get as out-of-hand as you'd like – in either direction. Sometimes we say stuff that ruffles feathers. We're very liberal. The majority of our cast are some sort of a minority – social, economic, gender, race, sexual orientation minority – and all of us are very forward-thinking and progressive. Our stuff reflects that at times, and on Broadway we've had a few people who didn't necessarily agree with what was being said in our province. They may have walked out. Of course, we don't like to see anyone be disturbed, but good trouble is good trouble.

EDGE: So, maybe don't take the show to Alabama?

Jay C. Ellis: I think that's who needs it most, and I can't wait until I'll be on the plane to Mobile!

[Laughter]

EDGE: Thomas Kail directs the show, but how do you direct an improvisational experience?

Jay C. Ellis: As I talked about before, we have sets of patterns and games. We'll do those as standalone segments – we'll run them [in rehearsal] with different suggestions. Receive notes. Try it again. Pause. Let's try doing this here. Pause. This isn't working. Let's run back and try this again. We call it reps and sets, like we're working out. We want to try to get as many reps in there as we can so that we've prepared for all kinds of hypotheticals that can happen. Essentially, it is his overall view of the stage picture – how we should be painting this canvas for this specific segment or game – and then, what personal things we can do to add strength to it. He's just brilliant at communicating more of an ethereal idea in a very action step way, which is just so amazing. Tommy is great at helping us find that and guiding us to it.

EDGE: Say you're dealing with an audience that's upset about world events, like what's happening in Ukraine, for instance. Or maybe after two years of COVID they've got a lot of pent-up energy to vent. Do you help guide or shepherd the audience's energy?

Jay C. Ellis: I always say this in our talkbacks when we're speaking to people about our show – it's from "Passing Strange," and the narrator of the show, Stu, says, "Life is a mistake that only art can correct." I really like to take that idea into my show every single night.

We totally offer moments of therapy, specifically in a part called "True," where we take a word that's suggested from the audience and we use that word to tell an actual true story that all of us have been through, and we use that time to make a heartfelt moment. It can be funny but isn't necessarily rooted in comedy. It's a great moment that we use to handle the gravity of situations, like the situations happening in the world and a lot of the troubles and woes that are going on.

And then also we find ways to do a comedic read. There's a section of our show called "Pet Peeves," where we ask the audience what things that they're hating right now. Of course, right now we're getting lots of things like Governor Abbott in Texas, Vladimir Putin, you know, Russia and Ukraine. Lots of things like that. It gives us an opportunity to do it in a more jovial way; we'll say, "Alright, we hate that too. Let's tear it to shreds." You've seen rappers battle each other; we battle that specific idea that's really grinding the gears of an audience member.

We structure the celebration, and we also give truth, in voice and space, for the lamentation of everything happening in reality. We use our art to correct it and create that sunshine in that cathartic, beautiful dome that we like to do in theater, even if it's just for the 100 minutes that we have you in that theater. If we can acknowledge the reality [of what's] happening, and still choose to create some sunshine there, I think that's the aim of it.

EDGE: You started this tour in San Francisco, and you're in Seattle now. Next, you'll be going to Boston. Have you noticed the audiences responding differently in the different cities?

Jay C. Ellis: Oh, yeah. I totally think that each cultural geography zone of the U.S. has its own kind of audience culture. For example, on Broadway – we're New Yorkers, we hoot and holler, the audience is screaming back at us. We have to actually get our audience to come down more than to hype it up. That's the culture of the audience there, [to be] very vocal back at us.

When we got to the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, the audience was not as verbally responsive right away, but I felt that they were listening so intently. It's like the audience there have been trained to take more of a backseat approach, where they're taking everything in and forming opinions in more of a retroactive way, versus the excitement of New York, which throws a proactive energy, and then we spitball that energy back. In Seattle, I'd say it's a little bit of an amalgam of the two.

I think that it's cool to see those different areas and see how [the show] is received. But I also think it's great to realize that our perception of what the audience is drawing, based on response, is not the reality, even to the point where in a theater that's shaped differently, I can hear different sounds. I think that the trust is that what we are doing is helpful, and actually coming from the heart and the mind of the audience.

The biggest thing to remember there is, "Hey, I can't deduce what the audience is taking away in the very moment, but trusting that the love that we're creating and the light that we're shining, doing its job is what I think is best." And honestly, I've received so many wonderful messages on tour already, from people expressing how much they've taken away from the show. And it hasn't necessarily been screamed back at me in the theaters out West.

EDGE: Wherever you're going, what do you want to be sure to bring to the audience and to the show?

Jay C. Ellis: I always want to make sure that I'm able to use my experience as a gay man and especially as a gay Black man in our country, to share that with our audience.

EDGE: You've been partnered for some years. What's it like being on tour and away from your guy for so long?

Jay C. Ellis: It is a work in progress. Keeping a long-distance relationship, specifically one on the road like this, it's not the easiest, but then neither is anything worthwhile – except hitting the lottery, and you still have to pay for that too.

I think the biggest is communicating where you are in your personal journey, and what you want, and listening, as well. A lot of the same attitude I take on stage, I apply to this as well.

And making time! My mom would always say, "You have time for what you make time for." We watch "RuPaul" together every week. We get on the phone, and we click play on our streaming service at the exact same time, and we watch our TV show together. You just have to make things feel as normal as possible – I put him on FaceTime, and then set him on the table while I'm doing stuff around the house. Think about how much cohabitation is unspoken words, like it's a kiss on the forehead, and then it's back to doing the dishes. Creating that has been a relationship-saver because we can be in the same room and not feel like we're forcing a phone conversation when we want to be doing other things.

"Freestyle Love Supreme" plays at the Emerson Colonial Theater in Boston March 18 – April 4. For tickets and more information, follow this link.

Check out the website for more on "Freestyle Love Supreme," including tour dates.