At 58, Clarence Maclin may be new to the large display screen, however the previously incarcerated stage performer turned film actor has spent many years honing his chops.
In director Greg Kwedar’s movie “Sing Sing,” which Maclin co-wrote, he performs a personality based mostly on himself — which isn’t to say he performs himself, precisely. As Divine Eye, Maclin anchors the fact-based movie as a gruff, standoffish inhabitant of the New York maximum-security jail, who finds a stunning calling by means of theater workshops and dwell efficiency. Oscar nominee Colman Domingo stars as playwright-performer Divine G, however the remainder of the solid is primarily made up of fellow alums of the particular Rehabilitation By way of the Arts program.
Consuming ceviche on a sunny rooftop in West Hollywood, Maclin sees his delayed path to stardom as something however inevitable.
Rising up in Mount Vernon, N.Y., Maclin had a creative streak, creating his craft by sketching and portray portraits. However environmental pressures nudged him away from his creativity. “I wanted to be in with the in crowd,” he says. “So I kind of suppressed my artistic endeavors. I was playing dumb to hang out with the dummies. I became something unfamiliar to what I was supposed to be.”
He finally landed behind bars, serving a 15-year sentence at Sing Sing. By way of an sudden encounter, Maclin found the RTA theater program. He was initially skeptical, viewing RTA as “something that brought civilians in so they could throw a pity party for the prisoners and then get a good night’s sleep or a tax break. I didn’t want to be part of that. I’m not a pitiful person.”
However an impromptu go to to one of many group’s performances modified every thing. “I started recognizing individuals onstage,” he recollects, “men that I respected in prison. And I thought, if these dudes can get up on that stage, I respect it, as I don’t think they are pitiful people either.”
Maclin needed to earn his stripes; he began out as a stagehand. “I didn’t come in as an actor,” he notes. “But then, one day, someone got in trouble and his role opened up. So, I was given the part. I didn’t have any lines. I’m up there just posturing, and I guess I must have postured really well, because the director gave me two lines. And that was it. I was hooked.”
“I started recognizing individuals onstage men that I respected in prison. And I thought, if these dudes can get up on that stage, I respect it, as I don’t think they are pitiful people either.”
— Clarence Maclin
Within the years that adopted, Maclin immersed himself in “Jitney” by August Wilson and Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex.” Shakespeare turned his guiding gentle. “Shakespeare opened me up to theater hard,” he says, eyes lighting up. “We had to get the Shakespearean concordance to figure out what he’s saying. Because the way I learn, I can’t go past a sentence or phrase that I don’t understand. That concordance was like a bible for me.”
Maclin was launched from Sing Sing in 2012. When Kwedar first approached him concerning the “Sing Sing” movie, the actor was working at Lincoln Corridor Boys’ Haven, a facility for at-risk youth. “I had gotten my bachelor’s degree in behavioral science while in prison,” he says, “and I wanted to use that to keep other people from going down the path I did. When I got out, I found that a lot of people glorified me for all the wrong reasons. And I needed to change that perception and do it right in front of them.”
It took a number of extra years to get the venture off the bottom. As soon as filming commenced, throughout a number of correctional services, Maclin collaborated intently along with his co-star Domingo. “One of the words he brought us was ‘tenderness,’” Maclin notes. “Even though, us as prisoners, we know what it means and we know how to express it, we rarely ever say it.”
Throughout a current screening on the San Quentin Movie Pageant, the primary movie competition held inside a jail, Maclin related with like creative minds. “Coming from the East Coast, we always heard that prisoners don’t watch prison movies,” he says. “But I found artists — painters, musicians. It’s got to be a universal thing in every prison. People who want to change their lives are going to be drawn to something that helps them do that.”
And now, on a press tour for “Sing Sing,” Maclin is eagerly partaking with the broader leisure world. Whereas attending the Academy Museum gala just a few nights earlier, he posted starstruck selfies with Demi Moore, Kerry Washington and Kim Kardashian. Assembly such Hollywood luminaries as Sharon Stone and Tyler Perry, he’s struck by their real curiosity in his journey. “It’s just real conversation,” he says with amusing. “And it’s crazy that it could go like that with these people. Because in my world, they’re a lot farther away.”
Maclin hopes to proceed appearing however has a transparent imaginative and prescient for the sorts of tasks he desires to pursue. “I would like to do movies that have a message and have some positivity and have some hope for people,” he says. “Even westerns … I want to do a western. However, I’m not trying to rewrite history. I’m not trying to say that things didn’t happen that did happen. I’m just saying, the movies that we make, whatever we create, should try to heal some of the things that happened before.”
