Arkadie, Kevin 1957–

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Kevin Arkadie 1957–

Theater and television writer, producer

Moved from Urban to Suburban Setting

Created Meaningful Black Roles

Returned to Theater

Selected writings

Sources

Growing up in the early 1960s and watching television, Kevin Arkadie hardly knew that he would one day write and produce shows for major networks. But he did hope that his work would involve self-expression: “I wanted to do something creative, something a little different,” he said in an interview with Contemporary Black Biography in January of 1998. Thinking back on his formative years in Washington, D.C., he believes that being around a lot of adults was the source of his later focus on drama and family relationships, as well as his keen sense of dialogue. Though his mother had a career in civil service with the now-defunct federal Health, Education and Welfare department, she also worked weekends as a hair stylist. “Our house was full of women all the time,” Arkadie told the Los Angeles Times in July of 1997. “I’d just come in and I had a quiet place in the kitchen where I’d sit. I was a smart kid and my mother’s friends liked me because I could hold conversations. All that helped my writing.”

Further adding to Arkadie’s sense of community and history were the yearly summer trips his family would take to visit relatives in West Virginia. “My grandfather was a coal miner, and he worked his whole life in the mines,” Arkadie recalled for the Los Angeles Times. “He died of black lung disease. My grandmom took care of the house, played the numbers, fought with my grandfather, and raised seven kids—that was her life.” Getting to know the lives of his rural cousins who never wore shoes, spending time exploring the wilderness, and observing family dynamics were all experiences Arkadie would draw on later in his writing career.

Moved from Urban to Suburban Setting

When Arkadie was 13 his family moved to Dallas, a suburban setting very different from that of urban Washington. A number of reviewers have noted the varied influences in Arkadie’s writing: “His work reflects his exposure to both urban and suburban environments,” one Los Angeles Sentinel writer commented in April of 1997. “It is this multifacetedness that has made him one of the most sought-after writers and producers in television today.” Apparently, though, not all those experiences were positive. Arkadie later described to the Los Angeles Times the kind of abuse a black teen in Texas had to deal with, even from the police: “I got sick of looking down the barrel of cops’ guns, sick of getting pulled over and shook down. I could see what the hell was going on.”

Arkadie stayed in Dallas and ended up going to college there at Southern Methodist University in 1975. He studied acting and began working on his writing as well, taking classes in the English department. One summer he got an internship in New York City at the Circle in the Square Theater, which was good experience in an important theater city. When he graduated in 1978 with

At a Glance…

Born on December 10, 1957, in Washington, D.C.; son of Melvin and Mary (a federal government worker) Arkadie, Education: Lakeland High School, Dallas, Texas, 1974; Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, BFA, 1978.

Career: Theater and television writer/producer. Actor in New York City, 1978-86; playwright in New Tork City, 1983-86 (Statues, 1983; A Life Like the Rest, 1986); freelance television writer in Los Angeles, 1986-97 (Nightwatch, 1988; Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman, 1994; Law and Order, 1994; Homicide: Life on the Street, 1995); story editor, I’ll Fly Away, 1990-92; writer, The Vernon Johns Story, 1994; co-creator, New York Undercover, 1994; writer/producer, Chicago Hope, 1995-96; supervising producer, high Incident, 1996-97; play wright, Up the Mountain, 1997; supervising producer, N.Y.P.D. Blue, 1997-98; instructor, U.C.L.A. Extension, 1997-98.

Awards: Finalist for the Humanitas Prize; nominated for Outstanding One-Hour Drama by the Writers Guild of America.

Member: Trustee, Humanitas Prize; Writers Guild of America.

Addresses: Office—c/o Steven Bochco Productions, 10201 West Pico Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90035. Phone: (310) 369-2400.

a B.F.A. in theater arts he moved to New York to begin his acting career in earnest. It was a difficult time financially, as the young actor took whatever odd jobs he could find to support himself. “I’d do anything—cleaning toilets, cleaning buildings—it didn’t matter because I knew it would be temporary,” he told Contemporary Black Biography. But Arkadie found that there were very few roles for young, black actors and that the ones that existed were shallow: “Angry, one-dimensional characters,” as he later described it to Back Stage West. “Like the young kid with a chip on his shoulder or the ethnic kid who can’t speak English.”

Created Meaningful Black Roles

Arkadie began writing his own roles, finding support in classes at the Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center, the Warren Robertson Studio, and the Negro Ensemble Company. With inexpensive workshop fees, and scholarships often available, the young talent was able to get practice writing and make contacts with other artists. In 1983 Arkadie got a grant from the Philadelphia Drama Guild to write a play. He worked for nine months and produced “Statues,” a play about a suburban mother who realizes after years of marriage that she is gay. The work was well-received at a reading at the Guild. Arkadie wrote another play, “A Life Like the Rest,” which had a showcase run at the Judith Anderson Theater in 1986. Set in Virginia in the 1980s, the drama centers on two mentally retarded parents whom the state wants to sterilize. It has the legal authority to do so, but their children fight against it. Reflecting on the theme of family interaction that is very prominent in the writer’s work, Arkadie told Contemporary Black Biography, “I wanted to look at how a family pulls together when faced with a crazy situation like that.”

Shortly after “A Life Like the Rest” had its 20-performance run, Arkadie moved to Los Angeles to try to write for television.” My goal is to come out here, make some money, get some success and put it back into theater,” he told the Independent Weekly in 1997. “Basically, I’m doing what I set out to do.” His initial success getting work in Hollywood was as a freelance television writer, where he penned an episode of Nightwatch in 1988. In 1990 he landed his first staff position in television as a story editor on the series I’ll Fly Away. Set in the late 1950s and early 1960s and starring Sam Waterston as a southern lawyer, the show was nominated for Emmy Awards for outstanding drama in both of its two seasons on the air.

A number of other freelance writing assignments on popular shows followed, including Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman and Law and Order. For his Dr. Quinn episode, “Buffalo Soldiers,” Arkadie wrote about a group of black soldiers in the 1870s West who try to capture renegade Indians and are willing to kill innocent people to do so. The show aired in February of 1994. In March of that year, a Law and Order episode, “Wager,” aired, featuring an Arkadie script about the killing of a star athlete’s father which is linked to gambling debts and threats against the baseball player’s family. That same year Arkadie wrote the script for a two-hour TV movie called The Vernon Johns Story, about the pastor who was a predecessor of Martin Luther King, Jr. and laid a lot of the groundwork for Dr. King’s accomplishments in the Civil Rights movement. The movie, starring James Earl Jones, is replayed every February during Black History month.

By this point in 1994 Arkadie’s name was becoming better known in Hollywood and his agent was having an easier time getting him work. When big-time crime show producer Dick Wolf (Miami Vice, Law and Order, Feds) was looking to create New York Undercover for the Fox network, he tapped Arkadie as co-creator. “They wanted to do a ’90s version of Miami Vice,” Arkadie told Contemporary Black Biography, “and they were looking for someone with experience writing for black characters. Cops and music was the basic idea for the show.” Filmed on location in New York City, New York Undercover stars a black lead, Malik Yoba, as the head of a group of undercover detectives. Each episode opens with a musical sequence, which is then continued throughout the show, lending a youthful, urban feel. Arkadie wrote the initial teleplay and remained on the show through its first full season.

Continuing his success with writing for cop shows, in 1995 Arkadie sold a script for an episode of Homicide: Life on the Street. Airing in December of that year, the episode, “Heartbeat,” involved detectives investigating a murder like the one described in Edgar Allen Poe’s story “The Cask of Amontillado,” where a murder victim is bricked up in a wall. In the show the detectives use a suspect’s fascination with the famous writer to solve the crime. That same year Arkadie landed a spot as a writer and producer on the highly successful hospital drama, Chicago Hope. The series received numerous Emmy Award nominations including one for outstanding drama series for the 1995-96 season, and actor Richard Pryor was also nominated for his role in an episode written by Arkadie. The episode, “Stand,” which aired in November of 1995, featured Pryor as a multiple sclerosis patient who talks a doctor into giving him an unconventional treatment. Arkadie ended up writing five episodes of Chicago Hope that season.

For the 1996-97 TV season, Arkadie moved to the ABC/DreamWorks SKG collaboration High Incident as supervising producer. Asked what this title means, he told Contemporary Black Biography, “It involves increased responsibility. The higher you go from producer to executive producer, the more control you have over various aspects of the show, like cast, storylines, etc.” Created by Hollywood mogul Steven Spielberg, the series featured a fast-paced look at life for the officers of the El Camino (California) Police Department. While the show was critically acclaimed, its ratings were not high enough to keep it on the air for more than two seasons.

Returned to Theater

Following the cancellation of High Incident, Arkadie moved to one of the most popular shows on television, N.Y.P.D. Blue, again as supervising producer. In an interview with the Press-Enterprise he said that he wanted to work on developing the character of the show’s black lieutenant, Arthur Fancy. “There’s some controversy on how little he is used,” Arkadie told the paper. “And I think it’s been a valid accusation that the black characters on the cop shows are mostly supervisory personnel who send the other guys out into the action. That’s the result of a huge fear among networks to have black leads in dramas. They say it doesn’t exist, but it does. Once you get past Oprah and Denzel Washington you find it.” Asked halfway through the 1997-98 season whether he had been able to deal with such issues, Arkadie told Contemporary Black Biography that is was not always easy with a number of different producers on a show. “You suggest something and the others either say ‘no,’ or ‘go try it and we’ll see how it works.’”

Between High Incident and N.Y.P.D. Blue Arkadie took some money he’d saved from his TV work and used it to produce a play he had been working on for six years. While on the set of Chicago Hope, the actor Dan Lauria asked Arkadie about a script he had heard read in New York a few years before. When Arkadie said he was still working on it—he ended up doing almost thirty rewrites before it was finished—Lauria invited him to workshop the play, Up the Mountain, at the Playwright’s Kitchen in Los Angeles. There Arkadie not only got the script into shape but found a director for it—the workshop’s director, Michael Hanley. The play’s five-week run at the Theater Geo in Los Angeles was a success, receiving a critic’s choice review in the Los Angeles Times, which called it, “… a richly complex portrayal of child abuse, the legacy of racism and the healing power of family.” Set in West Virginia, Up the Mountain is modeled on events in Arkadie’s own family history. In the play three black sisters return to their childhood home after the death of their parents to decide what to do with the house. Memories of their threatening father and passive mother infuse the drama with emotional power as they argue about which course to take.

Arkadie described to the Los Angeles Times his preference for theater over television: “I think I can vastly mature during the course of writing a play. And I can come to some deep understanding. In television you only have a certain amount of time to tell your story—just 44 minutes. But in theater, no matter what position you take, or what argument you have, somewhere in the foundation of the play you must establish a basis for counter-argument.” So as he continues to progress in his career, Arkadie hopes to write and produce more plays and even independent films as a way to have more control over a project and take on work that has the most personal meaning to him. He is also teaching writing courses at U.C.L.A. in the extension program. When asked what lessons he would impart to others following his career path, Arkadie told Contemporary Black Biography: “Turn yourself into a commodity. You have to have something—skills, talents—that somebody wants. Being an artist is fine, but you also have to have something that can sell.”