Death of a Salesman Stars Andre De Shields and Wendell Pierce Discuss The Dark Shadow Cast Upon The American Dream

As the cast of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman prepares to make the move to Broadway, Olivier Award nominee Wendell Pierce and Tony Award winner Andre De Shields hit up the BroadwayCon First Look Performances panel to share why the play has continued to entrance audiences for 73 years. Now for the first time on Broadway, the show will be told from the perspective of an African American family.

Wendell Pierce takes on the role of the titular salesman, the insecure Willy Loman, and found himself reflecting on his own life during the process of finding his character. “Acting to me is the closest thing to psychology. It’s creating a world so strong that it induces the behavior,” Pierce shared during the panel, as he looked back at his own life. “Were my best days behind me? Have I fulfilled my dreams that I wanted to fulfill? Have I disappointed those I loved? You start to reflect on that at a certain age and you say maybe I have failed. You have to look at your failures.”

“I allowed that information, [that] characterization, to fuel me,” Pierce continued. “To find some redemptive quality in the journey that I have to take. In the words of Arthur Miller: ‘The life of an actor is to cast a shadow on a person who is not yourself. To givve them that voice. To know that unsung heart song.’”

Meanwhile Andre De Shields who recently left Broadway’s Hadestown takes on the role of Willy Loman’s successful, albeit long dead brother, Ben. He represents Willy's idea of the American Dream, although as De Shields suggests, that idea may be antiquated in 2022. “The reason Death of a Salesman has been notoriously successful on the West End and is now being transferred to Broadway is because we have not learned our lesson about the pandemic that has recently visited us. Death of a Salesman at its core is about realizing the American Dream and, in Willy Loman’s case, it’s about not realizing the American Dream,” De Shields said at the panel. “A century apart the American Dream has not changed. That’s why we’re in trouble. We’re trying to achieve something that no longer exists. The lessons you will learn from witnessing Arthur Miller’s Death of A Salesman is going to rock your boat.”

“The universe noticed that we had broken our covenant to be good husbands to the Earth,” he said about why the world has been dealing with a pandemic. “But the universe is giving us another chance and we still ignore it. Now you’re going to have to go to one of the three places of healing that still exists in this world: the Church, the Temple, and the Theatre.”

De Shields continues with a metaphor about the balance of light and dark in the world and in the story of Death of a Salesman. “[Shadows are] the one thing that we live with all the time, whether you see it or not. No one can separate himself, herself, themselves from their shadows,” he said. “ In the character of Willy Loman, Wendell Pierce is not only the protagonist, but he is the antagonist because he spends that night dealing with his shadow.”

Without darkness, there can be no light, and vice versa. “You can’t spend your life, all of it anyway, in the sun. The sun has to set. Why? Because then the other 50 percent of knowledge, which is available to us, comes with the night, the shadow. There would be no stars if the sun shined all the time. You have to have this contrast,” shared De Shields. “Against this velvet sky you finally see the phenomenon, the wonder, the awesomeness of the creation.”

Broadway previews begin September 17 for Death of a Salesman, with the show running for 17 weeks only.