Montgomery On Flying To 'Dutchman'

Anthony Montgomery (Travis Mayweather) Monday spoke about his plans to spend his hiatus treading the boards in the critically acclaimed race relations play, Dutchman.

"I want to get onstage again," Montgomery told fans during a chat at StarTrek.com. "Anyone who doesn't know the piece Dutchman, it's a very intense play by Leroi Jones, a very intense piece. It's going to make the audience very uncomfortable. You'll hear things come out Anthony's mouth as Clay which you would never hear come out of Travis' mouth."

The one act play, which will run at Hollywood's Elephant Theatre from June 5 to June 28 (with the exception of June 26), revolves around a meeting between an African-American intellectual, Clay, and a white woman, Lula, on the subway (story).

"In a nutshell, Clay is minding his own business on a train, Lula engages him, excites him, propels him, ignites him," Montgomery said. "Keep in mind this is during a time when the world was in an even greater state of civil unrest, a time when blacks were not supposed to be conversational with whites unless they needed to be. All the tension that was of that time, there's excitement, there will be some laughs but it's not a comedy. It's very intense."

Montgomery will also serve as a producer on Dutchman. "This is the first thing I've produced in my life," he said. "And I love the theatre, I got my training in the theatre and that's where my heart lies."

In addition to Dutchman, the actor will be flexing his comedic muscles during the hiatus. "Because the piece is as heavy as it is, and my love of doing standup comedy, I figured let's go ahead and offset the weight of that and just have fun doing a standup comedy show."

When Montgomery returns from his working break, Enterprise will be in the Delphic Expanse. But the actor didn't give anything away about what the new arc has in store for the crew. "There's not a lot that they've already told us other than the fact that our show is going to be a lot edgier, which is ridiculous, because we've been pretty edgy as it is. You'll see Travis get to showcase himself more, within the structure of writing for his episodes. You'll see more confidence in Travis."

The full chat transcript, in which the actor also talked about directing aspirations, favourite books and the Mayweather action figure, can be found at StarTrek.com.

Discuss this news item at Trek BBS!
 Add TrekToday RSS feed to your news reader or My Yahoo!
Also a CSI: Crime Scene Investigation fan? Then visit CSIFiles.com!