The last laugh

Kahlil Ashanti joined the US Air Force to escape an abusive stepfather and found recognition as a performer in Tops in Blue, an elite military entertainment troupe. Since then, the actor, comedian and writer has won several awards for his one-man show, Basic Training, which played this month in the UAE. He tells Lorraine Chandler about the healing power of laughter.

I've seen the promotional material for Kahlil Ashanti's one-man show and I reckon I'm looking out for a big African American with a very expressive face.

I find him waiting politely in the lobby, and not as intimidating as I'd imagined. Instead, he's as broad as he is tall with a pleasant face and one of the biggest smiles I've ever seen. Dressed ultra casually in a t-shirt and cargo pants, he looks more like an off-duty Marine than a one-man comedy show.

His expressions on his face veer from the tragic to the comic as he tells me about his abused childhood and his quest to achieve recognition as an actor, writer and comedian. In 1992, he started his working life as a mailman in the US Air Force, but by 1993, had made it into the elite performing troupe,

Tops in Blue, going on to sing, dance and laugh his way through 27 countries.

Ashanti is a consummate storyteller and soon has me in fits of laughter as he describes how he ended up doing a Japanese comedy and magic shows in Las Vegas from 1997 to 2000.

Determined to crack the big time, he then moved to Los Angeles, where he held down four jobs while auditioning for parts, including stocking shelves, breakdancing and performing magic shows for kids.

He found his vocation in December 2001 when he decided to write stories about his own life and turned his experiences into a stand-up routine. Initially called Father's Day, his show developed to become Basic Training, a story of his quest for fame and his fight against his personal demons.

He knew he had something special the first time he performed the show, and in 2004, he appeared at the Vancouver and Montreal Fringe Festivals and garnered awards at both events. The show blew everyone away with its delicate ability to laugh at tragedy and capture the power of the human spirit.

Hollywood writer and director Doug Atchison contacted Ashanti, saying, "We've got to make your story into a movie," but Ashanti wasn't sure if it would ever really happen.

In the meantime, he acted alongside Lawrence Fishburne in Atchison's latest film Akeelah and the Bee, which has just been released in the US. (Ironically, he plays a postman!) Atchison was still determined that Ashanti's story was a winner and managed to get him a meeting with top Hollywood producer Barry Josephson (Lady Killers, Hide and Seek) in May 2004.

Unable to get time off from an unsympathetic boss, Ashanti went straight from pulling out rabbits at a children's birthday party to acting out some scenes in front of 30 of Hollywood's top agents at Josephson's mansion. After his performance, the group stood up and applauded.

Josephson took Ashanti outside and showed him a signed poster of Whoopi Goldberg and said, "I took her to Broadway and I'm going to take you too. Do you want to do it?" Ashanti's eyes filled with tears. His years of hard work and determination had paid off.

In the meantime his one-man show has gone from strength to strength, performing in New York, Edinburgh, Melbourne, Brisbane and Wolverhampton. Earlier this month, Streetwise Fringe brought Basic Training to Dubai and Abu Dhabi. It's now set to be performed off Broadway.

Josephson, a former president of worldwide productions and vice president of production at Columbia Pictures is developing a movie about Ashanti's life, while a book is also under negotiation. His star is definitely in the ascendant.

While Ashanti is talented in his writing and performing, there's no doubt his life makes for rich material.

Still only 32, his story has so many different elements that you could probably make a series of based on his life, rather than just one film.

Born into a military family on an American air base in Germany, Ashanti moved back to the US at the tender age of 2. He only found out in later years that the man his mother had left Germany with was not his father and that his real father was unaware of what had happened to his sweetheart and his young son while he was away on training.

His mother married the man and Ashanti grew up believing he was his biological father. His stepfather was, in Ashanti's own words, "ridiculously abusive".

The oldest of four (half-siblings, as he later found out), Ashanti was forced to spend up to 10 hours a day washing walls and scouring toilets, all subject to military-style inspections.

He had to fold his underwear and t-shirts into section squares to pass muster with his demanding stepfather. On one occasion, he picked up Ashanti by the neck and threw him down the stairs.

From the age of 14, Ashanti did stand-up comedy, a diversion that helped ease the pain of what he was enduring at home. As soon as he was old enough (18), he left home to join the US Air Force in Los Angeles.

There he managed to get into the elite Tops in Blue, where he did a few tours of duty around the world, even winning the 1993 Air Force Worldwide Talent Contest. His one-man show, Basic Training, looks at how Tops in Blue helped turn his life around. It also shows the redemptive power of a spirit that refuses to give up.

I
I decided to write my own show because it gave me a vehicle to perform what I really wanted to, rather than being stereotyped like many black actors. I admire people like Don Cheadle, Will Smith and Samuel L. Jackson, who've managed to perform in many character roles. I admire Philip Seymour Hoffman (who starred in Capote) because he can disappear into a role and really make the audience think.

I've been doing stand-up comedy since I was 14, because people had told me I was so funny and that I could make some really comical faces. I started doing free five-minute stints at established comedy clubs and people really loved it. That's where I found the acceptance I'd always been looking for.

I always noticed a difference between me and my brothers (ages 23 and 30) and sister (age 22). I was more adventurous than them, more like my mother. She was always trying new foods and I remember having sushi for lunch as a child. I never knew why I was different until my mother told me about my real father.

I was about 11 when we joined Grandview Baptist Church in Quincy, Illinois, and that was my saving grace because I found a new sense of self there. Previously, my only role model was my stepdad, who was abusive and terrifying. Now I started to look up to, and confide in, youth leaders.

I ran away from home at 14, but I hadn't made any real plans to get far away. In a way, it was a cry for help. I joined the (US) Air Force 10 days after graduating from high school, and I vowed never to return home.

I travelled around a lot as a child because my stepdad was with the Air Force. After two years in Germany, we moved to Texas until I was six years old. Then we went to Japan, where we lived until I was 10. We then moved to Iowa in America's Midwest.

Me
Me and my abused childhood:
My childhood was hell. We would spend every day washing walls and cleaning the floor; my stepdad wouldn't let us use a vacuum cleaner and we had to pick up the pieces of dirt manually.
I used to play soccer at school as an escape (from the drudgery), but sometimes he stopped me going to practice or matches. I'd be in my strip ready to go and he'd say, "Where do
you think you're going?"

I used to go to school covered in bruises and swelling. He had a special trick he'd learned in the army where he'd hit you hard on your forehead with his palm and he also used to hit me on my chest with a fly-swatter so bad that I would bleed. Every day I would come home with a feeling of terror in my stomach.

At 16, I got a part-time job washing dishes in a restaurant. I'd put my tips in a closet but my stepdad would steal them. Then one day, I was getting ready for school and he burst in and asked my brother and me who had broken a light bulb downstairs.

We reckoned it was our younger brother or sister, but he said he was going to "beat the hell outta you both when you get back home tonight". I called my mum later and told her I wasn't going home if he was still there. She told me to go to her friend's house and that we would leave home. It was the best day I'd ever had.

She made him stay away for a few nights; he didn't take it too seriously. But while he was staying in a motel, she packed all our things and we drove off (from our home in Iowa) to Texas to stay with my stepdad's mother.

We left no note so he had to look everywhere until eventually his mum called him. We stayed in Texas the whole summer, the happiest one of my life, but he kept phoning, crying down the phone, until she went back.

As soon as I was 18, I left home to join the Air Force and I never looked back. My mother divorced my step-father shortly after I left; I think I was her support and when I was gone, she couldn't stick it out any more.

Me and my biological father:
My mother told me about my real father, Bushongo Ashanti Abu Bakar, the night before I left to join the Air Force. She was living with her family on the Landstuhl army base in Germany when she got engaged to my father, but when he went away for training, she fell for my stepdad.

She was only about 18 and he was 35. She ran off with him to the US the night before my dad
was due to come back and they were supposed to get married. He never knew what happened and spent years trying to find us, even hiring a detective.

After I knew about my real dad, I didn't feel any immediate urge to find him. But when I was around 28, my mother's brother, Tony, was looking up his old high school in Germany on the internet and he came across my father's number. The two of them had been good friends when they were young, and he gave me the number.

I was (drifting) between Seattle and Vancouver at the time, but was (about to move) to Los Angeles for work and was pretty broke so we didn't meet up, although he was just happy to hear from me.

Then at Christmas 2003, I was in an acting class and they had heard me talk about my dad, so they pitched in and bought me a ticket to Washington DC to visit him. So I went to see him.

At the age of 30, I finally met my father. It was pretty amazing to see him. We looked very similar and we found we had the same walk and the same laugh. He had kept in good shape and someone actually asked if we were brothers. Yet we didn't have too much to talk about.

Me and the Tops in Blue:
When I joined the Air Force in 1992, the recruiter told me about the Tops in Blue, an elite military entertainment troupe that tours the world. She told me I probably wouldn't be funny enough (to make the grade) so I thought I might as well use my time to train as an architect, instead. However, I ended up spending a lot of time working in the mailroom!

In October 1992, I competed to get into Tops in Blue but didn't make it. During that year, I did some work in comedy clubs in LA, so that by the following year, I managed to get in. I also won the 1993 Air Force Worldwide Talent Contest, which was exactly like winning an Oscar.

I toured with Tops in Blue as a comedian, dancer and actor in 1994 and 1995. I visited 27 countries; I loved Aviano, Italy, Kunsan, Korea, and the Azores Islands and sent my mum postcards from everywhere I went.

It was the closest thing to being famous. I felt like everything I'd gone through had prepared me for this moment and that maybe even my awful experiences had been worth it. It was
 a once in a lifetime opportunity.

In 1996, my four years in the Air Force were up. I'd got a lot more out of it than I'd expected but I decided to pursue acting in LA full-time. Then I got a call asking me to work as an assistant tour manager for the Tops in Blue, so I did that for three months.

Me and fame:
I then spent about four months doing auditions, sleeping on people's couches. Then I heard about an audition for a comic/magic routine at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. I did my routine and then I asked, "How about if I do it in Japanese?"

You see, I lived in Japan from age 6 to 10, and had kept the language up. They took me on and I ended up doing a special Japanese act, bringing in lots of Japanese. I worked there from 1997 to 2000 but I wanted to go there on and look for more opportunities in LA, where I ended up doing four jobs while looking for (acting and comedy) work.

In December 2001, I started writing stories about my life and turned these into a stand-up routine that I called Father's Day, which I performed in May 2003. I decided to set up some performances that I paid for myself. Because I had no money, I ended up homeless and living in motels.

Doug Atchison, a writer and director, had seen my shows and contacted me. A year later (2004), he was making a film called Akeelah and the Bee and was marketing the idea around town.

The producer, a big guy, Barry Josephson, wasn't interested in that film but wanted me to come and show him my work. So I got an appointment to go see him and some of the biggest agents in town at his home.

It was a mansion in Pacific Palisades, next to where Steven Spielberg lives. I turned up in a little car and two Mexican valets took my car.

I felt like I was in playing a part in the movie Trading Places. Barry turned up with about 30 people and when I finished my act, they all stood up and applauded.

I had already arranged to do the Fringe Festivals in Montreal and Vancouver and I did really well at them scooping a whole load of awards.

Meanwhile, I acted in Akeelah and the Bee and then went on to participate in Fringe Festivals (in 2004) at Edinburgh, Melbourne and Brisbane, where I also got lots of awards. Now I have a couple of movie projects in the pipeline, including one based on my life and I am also going to write a book on my life.

Myself
Your show is based on your personal experiences. Do you want to move beyond
that to explore other topics?
Yeah, I'd love to! I'm working with Barry (Josephson) now on a film about (soccer legend) Pele. I'm helping to write the story. Theatre is my foundation but my ultimate goal is movies and my portrayal of characters is a natural progression from the work
I do already.

What motivates you to go out there on the stage and bare your soul to the audience about your personal life?
Every time I go out there it's a chance to prove to my stepdad that I can do it. I just love performing.

Is it hard work or talent that gets people to the top in show business?
In this business, everyone's got talent. That's not enough. You have to have a talent for talent. My work ethic has got me to where I am. Every now and then you get lucky, but that doesn't last for long.

Is acting the most important thing in your life?
The most important things are my personal life, my fiance and my relationship with God - that's probably (why) I'm normal. It's not a coincidence after all I've been through.

What do you think gives different people different experiences of life, even if they start off in similar circumstances?
I think your expectations of life are reflections of what you think of it. I've been blessed with supportive friends, and that's one of the reasons I've been able to make it this far.

People can be very superficial in this business. I'm very conscious that I don't suddenly start wearing sunglasses indoors or carrying a dog in my bag. I want the best out of life, including good health, good friends and a family one day.