Nija Okoro, Brandon Gill, Kai A. Ealy, Gerald C. Rivers, Alex Morris, Jessica Williams, Veralyn Jones and Briana James
Photo by Craig Schwartz
Kai A. Ealy understands displacement from the inside out.
The actor, who plays the tormented Herald Loomis in August Wilson’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” at A Noise Within, spent seven years living in his father’s basement while he tried to restart a career—roughly the span Loomis endured on Joe Turner’s chain gang.
“I feel like Herald Loomis and my journey are kind of meeting at a crossroad right now,” he said.
A Noise Within continues its traversal of Wilson’s American Century Cycle with this production—its sixth staging of a Wilson play—running Oct. 12 through Nov. 9 under the direction of Gregg T. Daniel.
The 1911-set drama follows a man, newly freed after seven years of illegal enslavement, searching for a wife he hasn’t seen since his capture, and searching, too, for himself. Daniel’s history with Wilson at the company is deep; he has previously directed “Gem of the Ocean,” “Seven Guitars,” “The Piano Lesson,” “Radio Golf,” and “King Hedley II.”
That longevity shows in the room, Ealy said: “He knows what this text is saying and he’s able to explain it to his actors in a way that makes sense and is easy and it is right and it feels right every time.”
Ealy returns to A Noise Within after last season’s “The Piano Lesson,” where he played Boy Willie—impetuous, hungry, always surging forward. Herald Loomis moves differently. He is spiritually frozen, a man whose trauma has leached the light from the day.
“Boy Willie was more of a gung-ho ‘go at it head first’ type of guy, very mad and out loud about his differences,” Ealy said. “Both of them are totally different. They do have similar experiences, but definitely different outlooks on life.”
Both characters served time—Boy Willie for three years, Loomis for seven—but only Loomis left behind a wife and daughter.
“Having everything taken away from you, and then to go on this journey after seven years to look for your wife for another four years, has taken a different type of toll on his mind than Boy Willie,” Ealy observed.
The toll is something Ealy recognizes.
“When I moved to Chicago, I lived in my father’s basement for seven years, and through that time and that struggle of being in my early thirties, starting a new career, there were many ups and downs and there was a lot of loneliness, that I had to face,” he recalled. That isolation—compounded by uncertainty—helped him find Herald’s inwardness.
Wilson threads the play with a recurring idea: each person must discover “their song,” the inner sound that sets them right with themselves and the world. Ealy takes that literally and metaphorically.
“For me, the metaphor about the song means finding your inner light, the light that shines within you,” he said. “There are so many ways to do that, and in this play we find out how Herald Loomis finds his.”
The boardinghouse world of the play—strangers cross-currenting until they become a makeshift community—has echoed in rehearsal conversations. Ealy noted he met Pasadena residents affected by recent fires, and their stories sharpened his sense of Loomis’s loss.
“I met a few people who have lost everything in the fires and every time when that subject comes up, you can kind of just see the pain in their eyes,” he said. “I want audiences to know that Herald Loomis has a pain as well, but inside that pain, there’s a light that should be shown so other people can be lifted through the trauma looking for the silver lining in things rather than leaning into loss, because there is joy in the morning, for sure.”
For Ealy, A Noise Within is more than a gig; it’s an artistic home. After seeing Daniel’s “King Hedley II” there with his girlfriend, she asked if he could picture himself on that stage.
“I was like, ‘Yes!’” he said. What sealed it was the building-wide welcome:
“Everybody, from the house manager, Melody Moore to the casting director to the marketing team, everybody’s just so warm and welcoming and easygoing,” he said. “The resident dramaturg, Dr. Miranda Johnson-Haddad is one of the most intelligent dramaturgs I’ve ever worked with.”
Ealy’s résumé slips easily between stage and screen—Steppenwolf, “Chicago Fire,” “Chicago P.D.”—but he returns to theater for the irreproducible charge of a live night.
“Every night is different. And that moment that happens in that scene, it’s never going to happen again. It’s never going to happen the way it did at that moment,” he said. “That’s what’s really, really special about theater. It’s live. There are no pauses, there are no redos. It’s right there, right now, in your face.” And when it lands, he added, something tangible shifts between audience and actor. “That connection of feeling rearranged is real.”
At A Noise Within, he is betting that Herald Loomis will rearrange something in the room—not just by naming a wound, but by sounding a song.
A Noise Within is presenting August Wilson’s play Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, running from October 18 through November 9, 2025. The production takes place at A Noise Within theatre, located at 3352 East Foothill Boulevard in Pasadena, California. For ticket purchases or additional details, call 626-356-3100 or visit their website at: www.anoisewithin.org/play/joe-turners-come-and-gone.
