Each year the Virginia Film Festival showcases talented actors, writers and directors in various venues around Charlottesville. This year, the theme of the festival is "Kin Flicks." In keeping with this theme, festival director Richard Herskowitz and friends have brought back an alumnus of the U.Va. family, Sean Patrick Thomas.
"I love coming back," Thomas said. "[U.Va. is] where I started everything, as far as my career. It's always great to come back and sniff around."
Thomas is best known for his role as a bright, inner city high schooler alongside Julia Stiles in Save the Last Dance. Thomas was in the midst of pursuing a career in law when he took up acting by chance during his time at the University. His first performance was in Richard Warner's production of A Raisin in the Sun.
"I was taking a class in the [drama] building at the time and [Warner] was holding auditions for A Raisin in the Sun," Thomas said. "He didn't have enough African-American actors ... to choose from in the building. I was in one of his classes briefly, and he just let me know that he had an audition and that I should come give it a shot. And that was pretty much it, I went in there and I got the role."
Thomas held the part of Joseph Asagai in U.Va.'s production of the play. Though he would go on to act in several more U.Va. drama productions, this would be his favorite. He recently wrapped up production on a made-for-TV movie version of the play, this time taking on a different role.
Along with this most recent rendition of A Raisin in the Sun, Thomas just finished The Burrowers, a western/horror flick. In the movie, Thomas plays a former slave in search of travel companions for a cross-country trip when he stumbles upon a search party looking for a kidnapped girl.
For Thomas, it's the nature of the character that attracts him to certain projects.
"It's important to me to feel like my character has a direct and pivotal impact on the story," Thomas said. "If I can tell where and when my character makes a decisive shift in the events in the story, that's what excites me."
But as a black actor in Hollywood, this is a complicated endeavor.
"Most roles that are written black ... they're written for what somebody's impression is of a black person instead of just a person," Thomas said. "They're always kind of trying to scrape away at that b******* veneer of what a black person supposedly acts like or talks like or walks like or whatever... That makes it kind of difficult."
Thus, his role in The Burrowers was an opportunity to show viewers a different angle on a figure fraught with historical complexities.
"[It was] an opportunity to do more than just shuffling and Bojangling," Thomas said.
Acting has given Thomas many opportunities, including the chance to work with greats such as Danny Glover and Charles Dutton in Honeydripper, which will show on the festival's opening night.
"It's been great," Thomas said of his involvement in the production. "It's always my goal to work with people I can learn from, who are smarter than I am, who know more than I do. And that's the case when working with people like John Sayles and Danny Glover and Charles Dutton."
Although this won't be Thomas's first homecoming to Charlottesville, it will be the first time one of his movies is shown in the Virginia Film Festival. Thomas sees the festival an achievement both for Charlottesville and Virginia as a whole.
"I think [the festival's] great," Thomas said. "It either wasn't there or was very small when I went to school. ... When you have a great filmmaker like John Sayles that's coming, it shows the growth of the festival itself. I'm just proud that Virginia's put itself on the map, with serious, big films."
You can see Sean Patrick Thomas at the presentation of Honeydrippers Friday at The Paramount.
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