by Nancy E. Oates
Everyplace needs art, says Thaddaeus Edwards. Even UNC’s School of Social Work. Even its IT department.
Edwards, an accomplished actor, storyteller and improv instructor, also works full time in the school’s Computer, Information and Technology Unit (CITU), dedicating much of his time to initiatives of the Behavioral Health Springboard. His two career arcs, which seemingly tap into opposite sides of the brain, interact to inform and enrich his work in each field.
As a CITU technician, Edwards edits videos and audio files, supports online courses and hybrid events, runs the sound booth and sometimes steps in to do voiceovers. The job demands flexible hours — events to record and post or livestream frequently occur after regular business hours, and a video editing application may run overnight — and enables Edwards to rearrange time blocks he can use to audition, rehearse and perform as an actor.
“Doing the different things I do, I get to use all these different parts of myself that feel fulfilling — storytelling, acting, directing, writing,” Edwards said. “Working in IT at the School of Social Work, there’s a lot of fulfillment in helping people who want to help people and being part of that chain.”
School of Social Work Dean Ramona Denby-Brinson said making it possible for Edwards to pursue his passion fits in well with the school’s mission. “We try to model living life fully,” she said.
The Behavioral Health Springboard provides professional development and training to clinicians, such as addiction and problem gambling specialists and therapists working in children’s mental health and facilitating peer support. The training can be in-person, synchronous (like a Zoom call or interactive webinar) or asynchronous (a pre-recorded online course). Edwards brings his years of experience on stage to advise on lighting and set design for an online presentation and to help a presenter or professor with delivery to make the material come to life, especially when there’s no immediate feedback from listeners. He excels at training because he knows how to connect with an audience.
“He’s really good at what he does,” said Phil Kaufman, who has been Edwards’ direct supervisor at CITU for the past six years. Then he paused a beat and quipped, “Or maybe he’s not, but he’s such a good actor, I’d never know.”
Kathryn Hunter-Williams, professor and chair of the department of dramatic art at UNC, directed Edwards in To Buy the Sun and considers him “an extremely talented actor.” In the three-person show, Edwards performed all of the male roles, some 50 to 60 characters that he had to land quickly and move to the next. He exhibited a chameleon-like ability to take on multiple characters with precision.
“It was very tricky to do,” she said. “It required dexterity and a facility with language.”
To portray a character accurately requires more than just memorizing lines. An actor must understand who the character is and know the character’s life, even if no background has ever been written about these fictional people. As a man of color involved in the LGBTQ+ community, he has a keen sense of challenges society imposes. Through his work on the Behavioral Health Springboard training materials, Edwards has learned more about the various mental health issues and vulnerabilities people face.
Some years ago, Edwards starred in Every Brilliant Thing at the Justice Theater Project, playing the part of a young man whose mother suffers a suicidal depression. Hunter-Williams said Edwards brought an awareness of the complexity of the role, perhaps because of his work at the School of Social Work.
“He showed great sensitivity and talent that made the message accessible to people,” Hunter-Williams said. “It enabled people to talk about a difficult issue. We had strong audience interaction.”
Edwards was born and raised in Rocky Mount. After high school, he enrolled at N.C. State University with a plan to pursue a degree in landscape architecture and design Disney theme parks. But after a few semesters, he left school to put all of his efforts into establishing himself as an adult. He assessed what skills he had and which he could use to make money and stay afloat. He noticed a strong market for temporary IT help and recognized that he already had the skills to make himself marketable.
“People apply a mystic quality to technology,” he said. “But computers are hilariously simple: They follow the instructions we give them without understanding them.”
Edwards’ acting career has deeper roots that date back to performing in Christmas and Easter pageants at his church as a child. In high school, he acted in every play his high school staged and once was assistant director.
After leaving college, he thought about acting professionally. He read every book he could find on acting as a business and filmmaking. He talked with performing arts professionals who delivered a consistent message of the inherent instability of life in the performing arts industry.
“The specter of instability unsettled me,” Edwards said. Even though moving to New York or Los Angeles would put him in a market with more opportunities, he decided he’d rather launch a theater career in North Carolina, where his family and support network were close by.
“I’ve consumed amazing art in the Triangle,” he said. “It didn’t make sense to say if I want to make art, I have to go somewhere else. I want to be part of an artistic community every place deserves to have.”
Twenty years later, he’s still contributing. He performs regularly, and sometimes has overlapping gigs. A couple of days a month he takes on the role of a patient at Duke University medical school to give medical students a chance to practice interacting with real people, not just textbook cases, a crucial point in the training of medical professionals.
But earning enough to pay his living expenses solely through acting is almost impossible.
“Everyone does something else to support their acting career, or they have family wealth to fall back on,” he said.
Hunter-Williams said aside from the fact that actors spend more time auditioning than performing — “Your main job as an actor is looking for your next job,” she said — North Carolina is a right-to-work state, which limits the powers of unions, such as Actors Equity. Because an Equity contract is based on the size of the theater, it likely still wouldn’t pay a living wage in the Triangle where the cost of living is high.
There also are fewer independent theater spaces now, in part because performance venues are at a premium as gentrification pushes up the price or real estate. Manbites Dog Theater operated successfully in Durham for 31 years before selling its building in 2017 and using the proceeds to become a grant-making nonprofit. But actors need venues to perform in.
“Theater is a gathering space, a community space, a service, a necessity of life,” Hunter-Williams said.
Beyond entertainment, theater is a way to start community conversations. As UNC’s Race, Memory and Reckoning Initiative was forming, PlayMakers Repertory Company staged a production of Native Son. Edwards organized a discussion with School of Social Work faculty to help theater-goers gain a deeper understanding of racial issues.
Last fall, Dean Denby-Brinson invited Edwards to participate in the Arts Everywhere program that aims to make the arts a fundamental part of the University culture and daily life on campus. He was particularly successful because he understands the healing power of the arts and the importance of giving voice to people.
“He can help bridge an understanding of complex social problems and how that relates to what artists do,” she said.
Artistic performances can be restorative to clinicians as well as their patients, said Sarah Reives, director of Behavioral Health Springboard. “Artistic expression is a way individuals with behavioral health challenges are able to cope,” she said. “Clinicians look for things that are artistically engaging to help relate to their clients and rejuvenate themselves as well.”
Edwards said he’s drawn to stories that are underrepresented on stage, “communities of color, queer characters, anything that feels fresh and new,” he said. “I’m interested in finding and telling stories we don’t know.”
While he understands the value of “comfort art” — seeing a play or movie you know well — he urges people to “check out something where you only know the title.”
“Live performance is about discovery of the moment,” he said. “There’s magic to be had sitting in a crowd, having something unfold in front of you.”
And quite likely, it’s a way to support local artists like Edwards, who enrich our lives through their talent in their “day jobs” and on the stage.
