Actor, Director, Playwright - Maverick

I’m standing on the rooftop of a downtown Los Angeles high-rise with Colman Domingo, Emmy-winning (“Euphoria”) and Oscar-nominated (for his titular role in George C. Wolfe’s 2023 biopic “Rustin”) actor, deep in conversation about his latest cinematic endeavor, the heart-searing yet wholly uplifting drama “Sing Sing,” set inside New York’s infamous maximum-security prison on the banks of the Hudson River. Directed by Greg Kwedar, from a script based on the real-life account of inmates auditioning for Sing Sing’s RTA (Rehabilitation Through the Arts) theater program, “Sing Sing”—made independently on a shoestring budget of $1.5 million—has amassed steady accolades since bowing at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival, where it was swiped up for purchase by A24.

Domingo, who plays John “Divine G” Whitfield, a man incarcerated for a crime he did not commit and for whom theater functions as a salve amid the bone-deep pain of life behind bars, has likewise curried fervent critical favor, generating an enthusiastic wave of awards-season buzz. To wit: on Oct. 20, the “Sing Sing” star will be honored with the Maverick Award at the 25th edition of the Newport Beach Film Festival.

But awards are never what Domingo is focused on, not even today as he leaps toward the sunny L.A. sky dressed head-to-toe in designer duds and a magazine photographer trails his every twirl, angling to get the shot.

“I try not to think about it,” Domingo says of any impending Oscar recognition. “Even with ‘Rustin,’ I thought, well, I did the work, and I believe in the work, and I believe in the films that I do. That said, I love the fact that we’re in these Oscar conversations, because [‘Sing Sing’] is such a special, unique film. It wasn’t made with the thought of being a contender in any way—it was made with the essence of love and grace and tenderness. We just hoped that it would exist in the world. And now that it’s playing nationwide, people can discover it right along with, say, ‘Deadpool.’ And if we continue down this road with all of this Oscar buzz, I would love that. Because that’s what these honors are for, to help get more eyeballs on this kind of film. After some 30 years in this business, I consider that a blessing.”

Long before Domingo was courting industry kudos, decades before he was fielding Tony Award noms for headlining “The Scottsboro Boys” (2011), producing “Fat Ham” on Broadway (2023), and starring in the big-screen musical “The Color Purple,” the Philadelphia native was cutting his teeth on the San Francisco theater scene, performing three shows a day for young audiences at junior high schools in the Bay Area. It was there that Domingo met veteran actor-cum-playwright Sean San José, who co-stars in “Sing Sing” as Mike Mike, Divine G’s cellmate. (Domingo and San José currently collaborate, alongside co-founder and president Raúl Domingo, at Edith Productions, whose current slate includes the Sundance horror hit “It’s What’s Inside,” soon to drop on Netflix.) Domingo didn’t quite know it then, but reflecting on this professional chapter, namely bearing witness to the decay of theater education in the American public school system, would make even more evident the crucial need for films like “Sing Sing,” as well as funding for the arts.

“Our arts funding is always one of the first things to be cut, and it should not be,” says Domingo, who’s also an award-winning playwright and director. “The arts have been imperative to our growth as human beings since the Romans and the Egyptians and time immemorial. The arts have never been frivolous.

“I would go to these Bay Area schools, and I remember thinking, ‘Wait, there are no theater programs. What’s happening? Why are they cut?’ And as I grew up, I started to make the connection between the prison industrial complex and the lack of arts funding. Today, it feels very conscious to me. You harden people—you take out art.”

“Sing Sing,” featuring Oscar-nominated “Sound of Metal” actor Paul Raci as playwright Brent Buell, revolves around the reformative powers of dramaturgy and arts education. In the film, it is the process of creating, of manifesting art for the stage, that enables inmates to not only scribe meaning to one’s life, but withstand the harshness of the world. To flourish, to heal. Sometimes even to thrive. “Sing Sing” is a semi-fictionalized story, but it is rooted in heavy truth: The film hits hard because the RTA program has given real-life prisoners a reason not only to not die—but to live. We watch as their emotional growth unfolds before our eyes, and it’s a remarkable evolution made all the more poignant when you discover that real-life former convicts round out the film’s cast. Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin, Jon-Adrian “JJ” Velazquez—they are alumni of Sing Sing’s RTA program who returned to play stripped-down versions of themselves.

The result is so “raw and threadbare,” says Domingo, that he’s only watched the film once in its entirety. Otherwise, it would be too “emotional” an experience to be able to handle a talk-back and press junkets championing the film’s core importance.

“In making this film, I gave a little bit more than my soul because I thought it was necessary,” says Domingo. “I had to call on my skills as an actor in a different way, to blend in with these brothers and tell their stories in a deeply humanistic way. Finding all this tenderness and grace that these men have extended from themselves through this program of rehabilitation in the arts, all the healing work that’s been done—it not only taps into the characters that I care about in this film, but it also taps into something in me.”

Indeed, while making “Sing Sing,” several former inmates cast in the production told Domingo that if they had had access to theater classes growing up—be it Shakespeare or Ionesco or August Wilson—perhaps they would not have wound up in prison in the first place. The irony is that only when removed from society did these men find such an opportunity.

“They were only given permission to be tender in a program like RTA, because the system’s not set up for them to win,” says Domingo. “The system is set up for them to go back out and come back in and be a part of this prison industrial complex. But this program, this little gem, it helps these men find another way and another outlet to express that which has been repressed. These Black and brown men grew up probably being told they should not use their heart, that they should not be tender, they should not be soft, they should not be playful, that all of these things attack our societal standards of masculinity—and we know that that is false. We know that is a lie.”

But not all prisons are buildings with barbed wire, and human beings are forever struggling to escape from confined spaces—emotional, psychological, spiritual—sometimes of our own design. What makes the performances in “Sing Sing” so miraculous are the ways in which they collectively lay bare both the depths of sorrow and boundless joy of the human condition.

Domingo has never been incarcerated in Sing Sing, but for him, too, theater has been a lifeline.

“I didn’t find the theater for myself until I was in my second year of college, and what it gave me is something that I am still trying to articulate after being a theater practitioner for 34 years,” he says. “It gave me a sense of place and identity and purpose and community. Before I discovered theater, I was a different person. I didn’t know myself. I didn’t know who I was in the world. I wasn’t as vocal. I didn’t know all these complex feelings that I had. With theater, I have somewhere to place these feelings, to wrestle with them in a place where I am allowed to be soft, to be angry, to be hard, to be a villain. To go to the darkness, to go to the light. Theater is a safe space for all.”