For Jason S. McKinney, playing the title role of Porgy in the coming production of “Porgy and Bess” at the Skylight Music Theatre will be a homecoming.
This singer and actor was born and raised in Milwaukee. He is the son of Harriet Schachter McKinney, executive director of the Milwaukee Area Jewish Committee, and a graduate of Hillel Academy and Whitefish Bay High School.
And he has had a long relationship with the music of the show’s great American and Jewish composer, George Gershwin (1898-1937).
“When I was young, we had a collection of Gershwin records in my home,” McKinney said in a recent telephone interview. “I used to listen to them, and marvel at the unique sounds which Gershwin was able to attain.”
He will be making his hometown opera debut as Porgy, which is one of the more demanding roles in musical theater.
The character not only has many of the show’s best tunes (“I’ve Got Plenty of Nothing,” “Bess You Is My Woman Now”) and is the focus of much of the action, but he is supposed to be physically crippled.
“Playing Porgy is one of the great joys of my professional career,” McKinney said. “The difficulties in creating a relatable character, and the physical demands of the role have made me grow as an actor, singer, and stage performer.”
“Porgy” has generated controversies since its premier in 1935. People have argued over such issues as, whether it is truly an opera, if it promulgates racist stereotypes, and whether its white and Jewish composer could authoritatively and authentically compose music about African American life.
McKinney has a deep love of the show, and has performed smaller roles in it previously. He downplays the controversies, preferring to approach the show “as a musician, with no pre-conceptions.”
He views the characters as, “people with flaws, not as stereotypes,” and maintains that Gershwin “had no intention to stereotype Americans of African descent. He knew plenty of black New Yorkers at the time, and it is hard to believe that the characterizations of Catfish Row were his only opinion of Negro life in America.”
The opera is set in an African American neighborhood in Charleston, S.C., called Catfish Row. As McKinney said, it “has all sorts of people, not just drug addicts and prostitutes, but hard-working and religious souls… The snapshot of life we see in ‘Porgy and Bess’ shows the audience of 1935 the plight of oppressed people, but also shows the humanity of people who strive to make their lives whole.”
He also believes that, “Gershwin used his musical vocabulary to create a gift for the African American community. He incorporated his seasoned jazz voice, and his admiration of the western operatic style, to bring a new voice to the African American experience of 1935, and also to the operatic stage.”
McKinney earned his music degree from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, where he was awarded several scholarships for musical excellence.
He has performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.; The Semper Opera House in Dresden, Germany; Massimo Bellini in Catania, Sicily; and the Theatre Carre in Amsterdam, Netherlands, among other opera houses. He has also been a concert soloist, in Europe, Mexico, Australia, and throughout the United States.
When not on the road, he serves as a cantor in his synagogue in Spartanburg, N.C., and has composed liturgical music for Temple Emmanuel in Winston-Salem.
“Porgy and Bess” is based on the best-selling 1923 novel “Porgy” by the southern writer DuBose Heyward. Heyward’s writing was drawn from his observations of some African Americans and their local community, which he encountered when working on the Charleston wharves. George’s brother Ira Gershwin and Heyward served as lyricists for the piece.
The Skylight production of “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess” will run May 17 to June 9 at the Broadway Theatre Center, 158 N. Broadway. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit skylightmusictheatre.org or call 414-291-7800.
Nancy Weiss-McQuide is dance instructor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and a local actor, director, and choreographer.
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