Abubakr Ali on Character Transformation During Previews in DAKAR 2000

During previews, it is typical for a new play to undergo some cuts or revisions. But how often does a show’s narrator—and in this case, one half of a two-character work—completely transform following a show’s second performance?

That’s the surprising challenge that faced Abubakr Ali on Dakar 2000, a gripping world premiere thriller from Manhattan Theatre Club. It sounds, perhaps, like an actor’s nightmare. But for breakout star Ali, rethinking his whole character overnight was, actually, a thrill. 

Ali stars opposite Obie Award-winner Mia Barron in Rajiv Joseph’s tense, witty and surprisingly sexy two-hander, now running at New York City Center through March 23. Tautly directed by May Adrales, Dakar 2000 follows Boubs (Ali), a Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal who finds himself pulled into a shadowy operation by State Department operative Dina (Barron). Joseph, a Pulitzer finalist, drew inspiration from his own experience in the Peace Corps. 

A graduate of the Yale School of Drama, Ali starred in Billy Porter’s Anything’s Possible for Amazon. He also made history as the first Arab Muslim to lead a comic book adaptation in Netflix’s (later abandoned) series Grendel. On the New York stage, Ali most recently appeared in Toros at Second Stage Theatre. 

Theatrely spoke with Ali about fast-changing scripts, re-focusing on theater, and the biggest question of all: is Rajiv Joseph actually a spy? 

How did you first get involved in Dakar 2000?

Rajiv saw me in Toros and cast me in a one-day workshop of this play, last March. I freaked out, because I’ve looked up to Rajiv since I was in high school. In my brain, I bombed that workshop—no-one could have failed harder that day. Then, a couple weeks later, they asked me to do a second workshop and the production. 

Were you always opposite Mia Barron?

Yeah. Before I was involved, there was a draft with a third character, who is now only mentioned in the play. A character played by Tony Award-winner Kara Young! And Rajiv had to go to her like, “You are amazing, but this is a two-person play.”

You are a theater guy originally, you studied at Yale, but film and TV snapped you up pretty quickly. How did you end up refocusing on stage work–first with Toros last year and now this play? 

I got out of school and I got pretty lucky, I got sucked into the TV and film world, and that was the thing up until the pandemic. But when the strike happened, I jumped on it and said to my reps, “I really want to do a play.”

Going into Toros, I was super nervous, because you have to remind yourself: “I have a body.” Like, my whole body is being perceived, not just up here [indicates a camera frame over his face]. It’s a very different beast. 

What was the preview process like for Dakar 2000?

I have never been part of a process where so much of it was finding and developing the play as we’re doing it. Rajiv has an incredible mind. He’s constantly changing things. Sometimes we’d show up the next day and he’s like, “Here’s forty new pages, let’s try it out.”

Oh, God.

Well, it’s funny—saying it out loud, that sounds like a miserable ordeal. But it wasn’t, it was so much fun to be part of that and to have our input be so readily welcomed. For the first two previews, I was playing a different character. Like, literally a different human being, almost. Boubs was a loud, boisterous, obnoxious, very arrogant guy, a guy who knows that he’s right and is fucking with Mia’s character the whole time.

By the time I saw it, Boubs was a bit more naively optimistic. He does manipulate Dina at points, for sure, but he’s not wise to the world. So what changed?

The thing that we clocked is that in order for the audience to believe him and fall for him, he has to be this person who you believe can never do wrong in this world. An angelic being who would not hurt a fly, but who gets caught up in some things, and then you see what he becomes at the end of the play. He turns into a very different person, someone who weaponizes that charm to survive.

It was a really fun shift. The first show we tried that, we just jumped in. Like, we’re just going to try him as this totally different person in front of an audience. It shifted the audience’s relationship to everything going on in a really beautiful way. 

That’s a big shift. Did you have a moment of, “What the hell, I’ve been developing this guy as one thing and now you’re telling me he’s another?” 

You know…my New Year’s resolution this year was, “Work on something where you let the story be the most important thing.” So for me this was kind of a blessing, because it was a way to practice that. To just say: whatever we’re done up until now, the way we’ve rehearsed it, none of that matters. Let’s just see if this serves the story.

Boubs and Dina end up developing a friendship…with potential to grow into something more. But there’s always this uncertainty about how genuine it is from either side, about who’s playing who, or what’s really going on. How much are you thinking about that?

Not at all thinking about it. The second we start playing into it, the audience gets ahead of it. But Rajiv has that hovering, and that tension is really helpful in this play. You need this constant question of, “What is actually happening here? Who is holding the power?”

The play is also set on the eve of Y2K, and the characters are grappling with this impending feeling of doom or apocalypse. 

Most people would say that feeling is incredibly present right now. There’s this palpable feeling of: “Is this it, is this the end of the timeline?” So the play is looking at how we as people deal with that. Is it through lying to ourselves about what’s happening? Or is it through accepting what’s happening, and then dealing with our own complicity in it? 

You said Rajiv Joseph is an idol of yours. What has it been like to work with him, and also to maybe, sort of play him?

He’s so collaborative, so open, so interested in what you have to say. He’s just a really cool guy. I’m just like, “I want to be cool like you, my man.” Even just as a brown person in the world, his work was something that I’d always seek out, because it represented aspects of my experience.

I didn’t stress about whether I was playing him. If I’d gotten too heady about that, I would have imploded. But that low-key worked out, because his piano teacher, from when he was like seven, came up to me teary-eyed after a show and was like, “You reminded me so much of little Rajiv!” Which was lovely to hear, though I genuinely made no attempt to play Rajiv. 

Right, you just played Boubs.

Who incidentally, I guess happens to be little Rajiv.

Except for the part about being a spy. Or who knows, maybe Rajiv Joseph is a spy?

That’s the question we all are asking right now. We’re like, “Hey Rajiv…are you a spy? Bro, be real for a second…we know you spend a lot of time in Eastern Europe. Let us know?”

DAKAR 2000 continues at New York City Center through March 23rd. Find tickets here.