Ava & Nicholas Jenkins (Dynamic Duo)

They are two phenomenal actors on the rise. A mother and son duo. They did a play together called… I lost my heart in Haiti. This play is what made Nicholas want to become an actor. At 10 years old, he’s been inducted to win an Audelco Award for stars on the rise, which is called “The Rising Star”. An award which was won by both Kerri Washington and Denzel Washington as children. Three Audelco awards among them. What’s next?

Hey little Nicholas.. Do you remember the play “I lost My Heart In Haiti? What was your role?”

Nicholas: Yes I do remember the play. I played the boy. My only line was “Mommy. Mommy.”

What about the award your winning? Did you know Denzel Washington and Kerry Washington both won one of those awards as children. Are you excited?

Nicholas: No comment. I mean I feel a little bit of fear and I’m excited at the same time.

Ava, tell me something about the Audelco awards you’ve won.

Ava: The first Audelco award was as an ensemble. It was for a play called Playing with Heiner Muller. He is a German playwrite who died in the 1990’s, but they still do his plays today. They took excerpts from ten of his plays and merged them together. There was five of us in the cast and we played a total of seventy-six characters.

The play came out in the winter of 2011. We have done 15 shows and in September of 2011, we found out that we were nominated for the Audelco award. We weren’t sure we were going to win but, when they called our name, we all screamed and went up there to get the award. We actually got enough votes to win that award.

Within that nomination there were four other shows which was nominated in our category. It was five plays all together. We beat  out the four other shows and won. It was great! I played a drunk Joseph Starling. I played a Russian woman called Dasha. I also played a dog. When I tell you the costume changes was like a mad house, it was a mad house back stage. Because, there was five of us playing 76 characters. It was so confusing sometimes.. We went back and forth. This play was five hours long. Each night we did act one but then we had to alternate between act two A and Two B. So everyone who came to see the play for the first time had to come to the play to see it again. That’s how long the play was.  It was insane.

In 2012, I played Sally Hemmings in a play called Sally and Tom – The American Way. We were nominated for five Audelco awards for that play. That was my first solo nomination for Outstanding Female performance. We swept all five nominations. We were really excited. Yeah.

Nicholas. I heard you can speak Yiddish.  Is that true?

Nicholas: It’s true and not true at the same time. It’s true because I did speak Yiddish because of my lines in the play. It’s not true because I cannot speak it fully. I only learned the lines for the play. I can say something in Yiddish for you “ ‘yk t’an nyt wwysn h’r “ which means, I don’t know sir.

What other plays have you been in?

Nicholas: Let’s see. The first one I’ve been in was “I Lost my heart in Haiti.” To be honest, I kinda like the play and kinda didn’t because I only had one line and that was at the end. The next play I was in was Snow White and the seven dwarfs. I played one of the seven dwarfs whose name was Captain. I was also in  The Wizard of Oz as a flying monkey. The play I was in when I spoke Yiddish was called; Waiting for the GODOT. I played the messenger that told a guy how “Mickey was not going to come.”

Do you guys get to travel all over the world?

Nicholas:  I’m only ten years old and if I travel anywhere, I am with my manager.

Ava: Actually, I am his manager and we’ve travelled out of state before but, this would have been the first time we’ve travelled out of state to Inner Finland Ireland.  We stayed out there for fifteen days. We do so many plays. So we try to get away when we can. I usually tell people we have to de-tox from the play, so that we can get away for a little while. Usually the best place we like going to is Orlando only because of Disney World.  When we’re there, we are resting and having fun at the same time. Other time’s when we travel, we may go home to family in Maryland. We have a great time there also. I stay so busy, I don’t even have time for a real relationship. So, it’s just a bunch of friends and loved ones I get to spend time with. It’s just hard to find someone when your in this business. You would want someone who can love and appreciate the business like you do. So If I decide to get involved with someone it has to be someone in the same business as I am.

What about you Nicholas. Do you have a girlfriend?

Nicholas: I don’t have a girlfriend. No not yet. The girls just love my hair. They play with my hair all the time in school. The school I go to is Harlem Academy. It’s an independent private school. It’s on 111th street and 5th avenue in Harlem. I’m in the 5th grade right now.

Tell me Ava and Nicholas, What’s next? Are you guys working on a new project?

Ava: Well, since “I Lost My Heart In Haiti”, we’ve been doing separate things. Nicholas always came with me to all the plays I’ve been doing. He knows all the songs and the lines because he was always there with me.

Nicholas: Well I know my mom lines because her lines are repeated a lot. That’s why I know them.

Ava: I’ve been in a few plays since 2012. I’m in the proverbial Lunes which is an improvisation show. We always have a show the first Saturday of every month.  We’re always performing. The show is not scripted. So every show is different. It’s a comedy, which is great.  We invite two audience members to the stage and we ask them questions about their personal lives and then we ask them to sit back down in their seats. And based on what they told us, we create a musical about them.  It’s hilarious. We always put a crazy spin on everyone.  We make it funny.

Right now, I’m in rehearsal for a play that opens in January. It’s called “Home in your Heart”. It just me and one other co-star. It’s just the two of us.  The set is London 1939. I’m a black pianist who comes from new York and I’m playing for a white male lesbian impersonator. We’ve been in a relationship for three years and because of World War II which is about to happen, where we are living, I have to go back to New York. My character is afraid to go back because she’s in love with this woman. She grew up in New York with her family and her church. She know they are not going to condone what she is doing. She is in a relationship with her lesbian lover. Yeah. So, it’s a real push and pull kinda play. It’s really good. It’s awesome.

Nicholas: I’m about to be in a Peter Pan play in December. Even though I sing, I will not be singing in this play. Actually I have not sung in any of the plays I’ve done except  “I Lost My Heart In Haiti”. We all sung as an ensemble.

Ava… What’s your aspirations in life? And… What’s TODAH

Ava: Well, TODAH is a Hebrew praise word which means; Give Thanks to GOD. It’s one of my favorite praise word. I had a publishing company before. It was TOWDAH publishing company. I launched it in the 1990’s. I told myself whenever I have a company, it will be called TODAH company. So, my company name is TODAH Unlimited Production.   What do I do at TODAH? I work with independent artists of play writes and authors. I turn whatever their book is about into a theatre play. I wrote a play two years ago called: Forbidden Fruit. And now I’m putting up a campaign launching it so I can have it on stage by next year. I want it to be launched by the end of spring and have it on stage. It will have to happen because the play that I am in will end by spring.   Right now, I’m looking for the venue and looking for donors. I already have a cast. We did a reading of it last year and it was amazing. I composed the music and I wrote the play.

I’m writing my second play as well, it’s Called “Loud Silence”. That should be finished by next year also. I’m taking my time with this one. I always give myself a time limit. I always finish before time but, by giving myself a time limit, I won’t have to rush. I should be finished writing this play by March of next year.  I want to make sure that Nicholas have everything he needs. Whether he want to be a performer or whatever he wants to be, I want to give him that avenue so that he can just branch out into different things instead of one thing. Right now, it’s just acting for him but he may want to do something else in the future. I have him doing so many different things right now so that he has a choice.

For me, my aspirations is to just get my company to the place where I can work with anybody in any type of art.  I want to make sure that they are seen. A lot of time in the black community, if you don’t have your name out there, no one knows who you are. No one want to give you a chance. That’s what my company is for. I work with independent artists. If they are an author, you can put your book on my website and you can sell it there or you can turn your book into a theatre play. I want people to say, Ohhh… this is a hot play. And I would say, If you think the play was hot, you should read the book. It gives those independent artists a chance to have their work viewed or seen by others.

Who or what inspires you?

People like Frederick Douglas inspires me. Maggie L. Walker inspires me. She was the first black woman who owned a bank. The school system doesn’t teach you that. The thing that got me inspired about history was when I played Sally Hemming.  No one ever taught us about her. No one ever told us (as black people) that she was in a 38 year relationship with the third President of the United States. They had seven children together. And he loved her. She was his dead wife half black sister. So he actually fell in love with his sister-in-law. Yeah!  But no one would tell you that. There was a big debate about Thomas Jefferson. People wondered and said, he would never sleep with a slave, but he did. And he never called her a slave because she wasn’t. Her children were the only family that had their own name on his plantation. They lived in the house.

Sally Hemming was 14 years old when she went over to France to take care of his daughter and he just fell in love with her. They named their first child Tom.  Their love just grew. She was a free black person in France. When the war started in France, he had to come back nto Virginia because of two things.   He missed Virginia and 2. The war was starting in France.  They had to come back and she didn’t want to come back with him because she knew she wouldn’t be free in Virginia. But he told her, if you come back with me,  I will make sure that all of your children are free at the age of 21.  He kept his word about her children but, he could never free her. She had to have papers showing she was free. So on his death bed, he told his daughter to make sure that she is free. He told her to give her the Manumission papers. From that story, is where I began reading a lot of slavery books. In fact,  I post history from one of the slavery books up on face book as I am teaching people about history on Face Book every morning. The response have been phenomenal.

I also did a play about Jackie Robinson. We did that play last year. It was funny because we launched the play in April, and that was the same time the movie came out. So it was a big thing. People saw the movie and then they wanted to see what the play was about. We had a packed house every night. I played five characters. It was the same character but she was different people in Jackie Robinson life. She had the same name throughout the play. Her name was Sojourner. In one character she was Sojourner the prostitute; the timid waitress; Black Panther; Reporter  in the 1980’s and then she was a hard core waitress.  At the end of the play, Jackie Robinson realized that she was the same person all along.

Nicholas, what other characters have you played in the plays you did.

Nicholas: I played Michael in the Peter Pan play. He is an energetic kid who sometimes had problems. He would sometimes get a little too excited or scared or bored and he would do things he should not do. He had a random personality. My character got along with a character who played my brother john, my sister Wendy and my friend Peter Pan. We also got along with the rest of the lost boys. My character was taken to the Never land along with Wendy.  Wendy started taking care of the lost boys just like a mom would because they never had a mom.

What’s next Nicholas?

Nicholas: I don’t know. I’ve done a video at the  New York Times last summer during the first show of Waiting for Godot. It’s in the new York times website. I went to a reception at the Irish consulate penthouse this spring. We was raising money for our trip to Ireland. I’m looking forward to the Audelco awards.

Ava: What’s next for me? The next thing is to launch my play but, I know that’s going to take a little while I also want to finish the second play or finish my third book. It’s just so much going on right now.  Between all of that, I want to manage our careers.  We’re always busy. We’re always running. We’re doing something every day. But, that’s what it takes.  Nicholas and I take classes at the Harlem school of the Arts. Nicholas takes voice lessons, piano and guitar. I take voice lessons and piano. We both are involved with karate. We are constantly busy.

SKII: And that they are. Always involved with something. Constantly on the move. They both won three Audelco awards between the two of them and  I’m sure it won’t be the last. See you guys at the next Audelco awards show.