Miss Bling met up with Dennis, a playwright and actor, who had a great thirteen week stint in the Bill earlier this year. Dennis played some bad man character so I won’t get into it. But what I would like to say is that his acting was superb

Cola: Were you a barber before you became an actor and a playwright?

Dennis: No I’ve been acting for fifteen years and barbering for eight or nine.

Cola: Did you take up barbering as a profession?

Dennis: Yeah, well the thing I find with England in general is that acting is not for everyone, acting is only good for some of us. Some of us don’t necessarily get the break or recognition that we need, to pay the bills without signing on I just decided that I needed to compensate a bit career wise.

Cola: Now most brothers would’ve signed on, had the barber job and still pursued an acting career?

Dennis: I guess that’s how I was brought up really. You know I believe what goes around comes around. If you live your life a particular way, if you live your life true and in an honest way, then it will pay off in the long run. If people want to do what ever they want to do, then that’s up to them. But I believe in living my life on the straight and narrow.

Cola: As a judge what qualities would you like to see, feel and hear?

Dennis: Well you see now, honesty is what I have a problem with, not in terms of contestant, just in general. Once people are honest and true to what ever they do and true to who ever they are, then I’m down with that.

Cola: Who will you be choosing on the night?

Dennis: No, no, I would lean towards that person, because I don’t want to say otherwise and then everyone comes trying to be too genuine and mess everything up. But I would tend to lean to someone who is more genuine than someone more pretentious.

Cola: Who is your male icon?

Dennis: I have three male icons. Nester Marley, Marcus Garvey because I’m Jamaican I’m slightly biased, and then of course there is Martin Luther King.
A lot of people don’t know that Nester used to write his songs and then ride his bicycle to sell them and do radio interviews, that’s if he wasn’t banned from the radio station itself. People only know Nester or should I say Bob the superstar. The whole determination that he had as an artist and of course I’m an artist as well, I respected that a lot.

Cola: No time for the bling bling back then.

Dennis: Yeah, I mean dem man was just true to what they were dealing with. He was true to his believes, to his ideas of unity and self employment.

Cola: Marcus?

Dennis: Yes Marcus, for me he put the cat amongst the penguins, because at the end of the day we are all African, whether we want to go back then that’s a choice that we have to make. You see his believes wasn’t about repatriation parse it was about black unity, which is what I’m down for.

Cola: True, he said a nation without unity is a nation divided and without respect!

Dennis: That’s what I’m talking about.

Cola: Martin?

Dennis: Ah Martin Luther King the peaceful one. Marching and making a stand without violence. Very powerful.

Cola: He applied the doctrine of Ghandi into his freedom mission didn’t he?

Dennis: Yes and a lot of people forget that when he was fighting for freedom, black people were being thrown in jail and beaten up and treated in an in humanistic way. It could’ve been easy for Mr King and his followers to retaliate and use violence. But he didn’t and he won.

Cola: You’ve said that with so much pride.

Dennis: First they ignore you, then they gear you, then they laugh at you, then they try to fight you and then you win.

Cola: You only seem to take note of those who are morally correct?

Dennis: Well yeah, I have a problem with profanity. But lets get this straight, I’m about being true to the fact that there are different facets of the black society who keep on doing what they do whether we like it or not. There are good people there are bad people and I do write about them. I don’t necessarily write about good people all the time. I try to be true to life and character when I am writing or performing.

Cola: Who is your female icon?

Dennis: Maya Angelou.

Cola: Are you trying to get in touch with your feminine side Dennis?

Dennis: Maybe (Laughs a lot).

Cola: Tell me why you appreciate Queen Angelou?

Dennis: There is a lot going on in her mind. If the black race were to adopt and apply some of it into our culture, I think we could benefit tremendously.

Cola: What else?

Dennis: Ask me in six months I’ll be better equipped.

Cola: How do you measure success?

Dennis: Contentment. If a person is content with whom they are and what they are doing, then they is successful in my view.

Conclusion

Dennis is a gentleman with the power of knowledge, but refuses to bow down to the negativity of such knowledge, which is to allow the knowledge to become a chip on his shoulder. Instead he has utilised his energy into the knowledge and become a knowledgeable, empowered and worthy man.