George C. Wolfe made his mark in the theater world before turning to movies, running the Public Theater in New York from 1993 until 2004 and winning two Tony Awards for directing “Angels in America: Millennium Approaches” and “Bring in ’da Noise/Bring in ’da Funk.”
Growing up gay and Black in Frankfort, Ky., and finding himself in New York, he knew of Bayard Rustin, an openly gay Black man and former Broadway performer who became one of Martin Luther King Jr.’s most trusted advisers. Rustin’s chief accomplishment: organizing the March on Washington in August 1963.
But Rustin has been largely forgotten and Wolfe hopes to change that with “Rustin,” which stars former San Francisco theater actor Colman Domingo as the charismatic leader. It opens Friday, Nov. 3, in theaters and will debut on Netflix on Nov. 17.
“In the ’60s he was comparatively well known,” Colman, who presented “Rustin” at the Mill Valley Film Festival in October, told the Chronicle by phone from New York. “It’s in the times since that he’s been erased. He did receive a posthumous award (the Presidential Medal of Freedom) from President Obama, but each year his memory and his contribution and his significance has diminished.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: What was your childhood like in Frankfort, the capital of Kentucky?
“Rustin” (R) opens Friday, Nov. 3, at Landmark’s Piedmont Theatre, 4186 Piedmont Ave., Oakland, landmarktheatres.com; and 3Below Theaters, 288 S Second St, San Jose. 3belowtheaters.com; opens Wednesday, Nov. 8, at Vogue Theatre, 3290 Sacramento St., S.F. voguemovies.com. Streams on Netflix starting Nov. 17.
A: It was beautiful, and it was very small. It was an interesting complication of dynamics in that the state government is there. There’s also a Black university there. It was segregated for the first six years of my life. I have very specific memories of that. But I was very insulated from that by my community. So I never felt there was never any danger to me whatsoever and I was part of an environment where I was nurtured and fed. I didn’t feel denied anything.
Q: You were 8 years old during the March on Washington. Do you have any memories of it being on TV or hearing about it at the time?
A: No. But there was a March on Frankfort that happened in 1964 in which Martin Luther King came and marched, and my grandmother took me out of school, and I held her hand as we marched with a crowd of people which ended up at the Capitol. And Peter, Paul and Mary sang there.
But a lot of my memories of history in the 1950s and ’60s were from Life Magazine.
Q: What were some of your favorite works of art as a kid?
A: I was obsessed with Disney. I wanted to create my own version of Disneyland. I was obsessed with “Babes in Toyland” (1961). And any sitcom that was about New York and people working in New York or doing things connected to the entertainment business — everything from “The Dick Van Dyke Show” to “That Girl.” I loved them.
Q: What was particularly fascinating about Bayard Rustin?
A: He was a Northerner, when many of the people who were part of the Civil Rights movement were Southerners. He was a Quaker, and many of the people who were part of the Civil Rights movement were Baptists. He was openly gay. He was a pacifist and he introduced to Martin Luther King teachings of passive resistance and nonviolence.
He was a singer and appeared briefly on Broadway in the chorus, and a star athlete and a valedictorian in high school. He was a charismatic figure. He was tall and handsome and commanding and smart and articulate and funny.
Q: Talk about casting Colman Domingo. You worked with him before; what made you think he would be a perfect Bayard Rustin?
A: The collaboration that he and I started on “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” (2020) carried over to this. He has an incredible degree of charisma and a commanding presence. He put in a lot of work and research; Colman is a baritone and Bayard was a tenor, so he figured out how to alter his pitch.
I frequently say with absolutely 100% certainty I believe an audience can tell when they are in the presence of a truth which is discovered just for them, and they can tell when they’re in the presence of a truth that was recycled from some other project. So we were all very invested in understanding the truth of each scene, moment by moment. That magic is found not just in an individual performance, but the intimacy, the texture and the vulnerability and the rawness that exists between the cast.
Q: What do you hope young people who might not have ever heard of Bayard Rustin get out of your film?
A: What I hope everybody gets out of it: a sense of empowerment. Bayard stood in defiance to anybody who tried to put him in a box. He had a sense of strength and defiance and celebration of self, but also cultivated a muscularity of thinking and ideas. I hope people are more reflective of the way the world should be.
Reach G. Allen Johnson: ajohnson@sfchronicle.com