Molière in the Park’s ‘The Imaginary Invalid’ — A conversation with Sahr Ngaujah

For all the love that summer in New York gets, spring is really where it’s at. The weather is non-oppressive, free outdoors events have started to appear, and New Yorkers have already begun to light up the parks.

Molière in the Park checks all of those boxes. Since 2019, this world-class production house has brought the works of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, the 17th-century playwright, actor, and poet known as Molière, to Prospect Park. This year, from May 8–25, at the LeFrak Center, Molière in the Park is presenting the last work Molière wrote and performed in: “The Imaginary Invalid,” directed and translated by Lucie Tiberghien.

If the idea of getting steeped in classical French theater and comédie-ballet does not sound like an enthralling evening, au contraire, mon ami. Like Shakespeare in the Park, Molière in the Park productions are culturally relevant and designed to be accessible, whether or not you happened to have already read the play in question in preparation for an 11th-grade AP exam. Unlike Shakespeare in the Park, the language of Molière, at least the way it has been translated by Tibeghien, is modern and immediately accessible. Meanwhile, scoring tickets does not require a day-long excursion.

Most importantly, the show is a pure hoot. Not only is it socially insightful and raucously funny about things like the medical industrial complex and marriage, but it features show-stopping movement and vocal performances. Fearless in breaking the fourth wall, “The Imaginary Invalid” is intent on entertaining the audience, not condescending to it.

I had a chance to sit down with Sahr Ngaujah, who plays the play’s titular invalid, Argan, as part of a mostly Black cast. Ngaujah has had a long and distinguished career in theater and television, with his most notable credits being Tony-nominated turns in “Fela!” and “”Moulin Rouge” on Broadway. Having seen both “Fela!” and actual Fela Kuti performances multiple times myself, not to mention having attended a Mother’s Day evening performance of “The Imaginary Invalid,” I was particularly excited to chop it up with Ngaujah.

AmNews: First, let me just tell you that I saw you in “Fela!” In fact, I saw “Fela!” three times, and it remains the single most satisfying experience I’ve ever had on Broadway.

Sahr Ngaujah (SN): Oh, man. Thank you so much. Thanks for telling me that.AmNews: Your performance was not only mesmerizing, but you brilliantly captured Fela’s revolutionary bad-boy charisma. If you look at the trajectory of your career so far, what significance do you feel that role had for you?

SN: It was life-changing. Definitely career-defining. I went to see the premiere of Bill T. Jones’ [the dancer/choreographer who conceived, directed, and choreographed “Fela!” on Broadway] show “Still/Here” at BAM a few months ago. He did not know I was going to be in attendance, and I went to the reception and stood next to him. He was gripping my hand, holding me close, and said in my ear, “Sahr, I’m really happy to see you. That show we did together was the most powerful show I’ve ever done in my life.” Or something in that ballpark. My point is, if it was a big deal for Bill T. Jones, you can imagine that it was a big deal for me.

AmNews: You may be a little bit too young for this, but did you ever get a chance to see Fela perform yourself? How much did he figure in your life and imagination?

SN: He wasn’t performing while I was growing up, but he played a major role in my upbringing and in my understanding of music and of African music. My parents are music lovers and musicians in their own right. My father’s a West African man from Sierra Leone, and Fela is the poster child of cool, especially for guys of my father’s generation, so I grew up with that, and I was floored when I had the opportunity to participate in the development of the play. It was intimidating, but I worked as hard as I … could every single day. It’s a part of my life now and I’m still in touch and close with Fela’s family. They made it very clear to me that I would always be a part of their family, whether I liked it or not. And I do like it [laughter].

AmNews: You’ve been a bit of a globetrotter, right? You worked in Atlanta, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Johannesburg. How do you compare those theater experiences with that of New York?

SN: I was involved with a troupe. At the time, it was called the Freddie Hendrix Youth Ensemble of Atlanta; now it’s the Youth Ensemble of Atlanta, but it was based in a theater called Seven Stages. Seven Stages was the hub of international theater in Atlanta and it was deeply steeped in Theater of the Absurd, highly experimental theater, so I was completely immersed in that world at the age of 15, until I moved to Europe. [I] was exposed to companies from all over the world. We would do workshops and engage in the techniques and the practices of those theater companies.

The work in Johannesburg also happened at a very early age — I was in my late teens — but of all the companies that were coming through Seven Stages, the Dutch theater for me was the most fascinating. There was something about the way they dealt with scenic design or architecture and with design in general — the way costumes were constructed, the relationship to the audience, to the fourth wall, to story, and how a story was built or constructed or deconstructed. There was something that was just light years away from everything else that I saw. I said, What in the world is the starting point? And what are they drinking there? What are they eating? What are they smoking …

AmNews: And where can I get some [laughter]?

SN: Right [laughter]. I ended up living in the Netherlands for almost all of my 20s into my early 30s, until Bill T. Jones brought me to New York. I didn’t really have any intention of coming back to the States. Honestly, I had a different trajectory in mind, but he got me back.

I’ve been in New York now for almost 20 years, but that [international work] had a massive impact on me. I worked as an actor and collaborator with a few very important theaters, but also began directing theater there. I became known there more as a director, theater maker, and eventually as a party promoter, rather than an actor, because I was quite busy with finding ways of bringing codes of theater, concert, club, and film environments into the same space.

AmNews: How did you bring that sensibility and approach to the United States?

SN: What we used in building the “Fela!” production has now become an industry standard, as in we offered the commercial theater industry a new tool that didn’t really exist before, which has brought the music industry and the commercial theater industry together. Now there is a template or a basis for how to tell the story of a music artist or a group of music artists, and you now have shows like “MJ the Musical” and “Buena Vista Social Club.” Much of that came from the construct that we created to build “Fela!”

AmNews: How did you get to “The Imaginary Invalid”? What was it about the script and role that intrigued you? How did you get involved in the production?

SN: I got a phone call and an offer. First of all, I don’t live far from Prospect Park and the spring is a very special time. I have a son who is almost 5 years old, so it’s our backyard and it’s an incredible place to spend time. I’d heard of Molière in the Park. I never saw a show or a reading, but I thought it was really cool that Brooklyn has Molière and Manhattan has Shakespeare.

When they called me, however, I had been on a two-year hiatus from theater work, partly to focus on raising my son and being available to my wife and my family. I hadn’t read “The Imaginary Invalid” at the time. I listened to an audio reading of it, and I started watching tapes of many different productions of it, from all over the world. I fell in love with the story, and took a deeper dive into Molière’s life than I ever had before, and became completely captivated by him and his journey.

There was not a lot of time between getting the offer and starting rehearsals. I got the call about two weeks out from the start of rehearsal, and I was like, “Which role do you want me to play?” When they said, “Argan,” I was like, “Whoa, wait a minute, there are 50-plus pages of lines here, man!”

But I took it anyway. I have a lot of respect for what Lucie is doing — the fact that she’s offering free theater in Prospect Park. Molière’s work and the placement that it had in France, when he made it, made it also feel like it was important to play a part in bringing this work to the city of New York, the borough of Brooklyn, and Prospect Park.

AmNews: The character of Argan, whom you play in “The Imaginary Invalid,” [is] a pretty extreme character, right? I mean, he’s not only a severe hypochondriac, but he’s domineering, he’s gullible, he’s foolish, he’s stubborn. In fact, he’s arguably lovable because he’s so ridiculous.

As an actor, how do you approach a character like that? How do you try to locate his humanity and try to find something that the audience can empathize with? Or do you just embrace the ridiculousness as much as possible?

SN: That’s a great question. I did watch a number of productions, and a lot of people played it as broad comedy. Fortunately, I did some Zooms with Lucie before I even agreed to take the role, to try to get into her headspace and understand what she’s looking for. Early on, she said, “Look, I want this thing to be very much grounded in practical reality. I’m not looking for Argan to be a comedy guy. If people find him funny, it’s not because you’re trying to make them laugh.” That was wonderful direction and it was very clear, and that’s how I approached developing the character.

But like you said, he’s a very extreme guy. To access his humanity, I had to make my own backstory. It’s a direct translation from French, which Lucie did herself. We are also standing in a modern context in terms of what we are wearing, where we are — literally, in Brooklyn. We are not wearing 1600s dress or feigning to be in the 1600s; however, it’s still a direct translation, so there is some space left to the imagination in terms of where are we? and who are we? We are in France, but we’re also in Brooklyn.

I had to make a very hard decision, and a very quick one. How can I account for this extreme nature? I assumed that he has some extreme anxiety issues, and I also decided to allow him to be one who is maybe experiencing the first indications of some sort of mental fog or confusion that can come along when you might be on your way down the road to dementia. The first whiff of early onset, I imagine, can be very scary. And it might be that the person who is experiencing it notices it.

To the point where he notices it, first, he’s terrified, and he overcompensates as a result. He has temper tantrums, which might be because of his anxiety, but also because of the fact that he’s losing control, and wants to hold onto control.

That set up the entire world for me. He’s astute in managing the affairs of his estate, up to a point. He has married a woman who obviously wants him for his money and he’s sort of aware of it, but he doesn’t want to admit it to anybody and doesn’t mind being a little delusional about it, so he’s devastated when he really hears the truth.

He takes himself seriously, completely seriously, and I think that’s a part of what makes it funny. On the MTA here in New York City, there are a lot of people [who] are as serious as a heart attack, saying some of the funniest stuff you could ever hear come out of a human being’s mouth. But you look at their face — they’re not joking at all. Some things are ridiculous. I think Argan falls into that category.

AmNews: I want to lean into what you were saying earlier about doing this in Prospect Park. You’ve been in high-budget productions all over the world, and yet this play is free to the public. It’s in the middle of a public park. The performance area is at the tail end of a skating rink and, the night that I attended, there was actually someone walking outside with a boombox turned up to 10. I don’t even know if you noticed that or not.

SN: Oh, I noticed [laughter].

AmNews: There were some distracting moments, right? How do you compare this kind of production with others that you’ve been in? What are its charms and its challenges?

SN: It’s funny that you were there that night. It was full-on. I think we had just come off of maybe three days of rain, downpours, and that night was rather gorgeous, and it was Mother’s Day, and we had a quinceañera behind us. There was a South Asian wedding to our right. There were scores of children a little closer to our right, and the boombox, you know, passed through the space and then another boombox was in the roof area. Yes, those are the types of challenges that we encounter, especially on a beautiful day in Prospect Park.

You can’t really stop people from living their life, you know, and people are going to do what they’re going to do. Fortunately, I think New Yorkers are used to focusing through distractions and hearing or getting what they want despite that, but Godspeed to everybody who was trying to listen when that boombox was going.

AmNews: Well the boombox only lasted a minute or two, but it was definitely challenging for us in the audience. And it was also part of what made the night so special.

SN: There are also hordes of mosquitoes that descend from the lake behind us, so when you’re on stage and stop moving long enough, they take a bite. Some [of the performers] have been stung on their faces.

But it’s such a beautiful, beautiful place to work. And the challenging aspects of it really dissolve when compared to what is so lovely about it. We’re talking about being in the middle of almost 600 acres of green space. Everything is in bloom. Birdsong is the backdrop of our soundscape. There are nests in the lighting rigs. I rescued a turtle from the stage mid-performance a few days ago. The challenges are environmental, and what’s really fascinating is since rehearsal, there are some regulars who have been standing outside the performance area looking in. They usually stay up on the roof, or fans and lovers pass through and sit on the picnic tables nearby. Sometimes, they’re not watching the show at all. We’re just the backdrop to their lives.

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