Will Power

PLAYWRIGHT/RAPPER/INNOVATOR

PLAYWRIGHT BIOGRAPHY

Will Power is an internationally renowned playwright, performer, lyricist and educator. His plays and performances have been seen in hundreds of theaters and concert halls throughout the world including Lincoln Center (New York), The Public Theater (New York), The Battersea Arts Centre (U.K.), The Sydney Opera House, as well as numerous venues in Asia, Africa, Europe and throughout North America.

Called “The best verse playwright in America” by New York Magazine, Mr. Power is an innovator and dramatic explorer of new theatrical forms. He is known as one of the pioneers and co-creators of hip hop theater, a late 20th Century art form that led the way for future iconic works such as Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, as well as dozens of hip hop education programs being established throughout the country. Power is also a master craftsman of traditionally based plays and musicals. His straight play, Fetch Clay, Make Man, has been produced in various LORT theaters and regional companies including the McCarter Theater, New York Theater Workshop, the Round House Theater, True Colors Theater Company, The Ensemble Theater, and Marin Theater Company to name a few. Other plays include Stagger Lee (Dallas Theater Company), Five Fingers of Funk (Children’s Theater Company), The Seven (La Jolla Playhouse, New York Theater Workshop, Ten Thousand Things Theater Company), Seize the King (La Jolla Playhouse, The Alliance Theater), and Detroit Red (Arts Emerson). Power’s collaboration with Anne Bogart’s SITI Company and composer Julia Wolfe resulted in the performance piece Steel Hammer (Humana Festival, UCLA Live, Brooklyn Academy of Music, plus World tour).

Power has received numerous awards for his work as a writer and performer in the field including The Doris Duke Artist Award, an Andrew W. Mellon Playwright in Residence Grant, a Lucille Lortel Award, a United States Artist Prudential Fellowship, an NEA/TCG Residency Grant, TCG Peter Zeisler Memorial Award, a NYFA Award, a Joyce Foundation Award, and 2020 Elliot Norton Award (Outstanding New Script, Detroit Red).

Power is also a passionate teacher of writing and performance. He has held fellowships, residencies and faculty positions at the City College of New York, Princeton University, Wayne State University, The University of Michigan at Flint, the University of Massachusetts (Amherst), and Spelman College. Currently, Will Power is a Professor of theater at Occidental College in Los Angeles.

A PLAY BY:

Will Power

Set on the eve of the Cassius Clay―Sonny Liston rematch and based on the friendship between the actor Stepin Fetchit and Clay―soon to become Muhammad Ali―Fetch Clay, Make Man is a play that explores how each handled a life in the public eye as black men in their respective eras―Hollywood in the 20s, where a black actor’s career depended on playing caricatures, and the mid-60s, after the assassination of Malcolm X. With “incisive characterizations, crackling dialogue and generous doses of dark humor” (Hollywood Reporter), Fetch Clay, Make Man audaciously recreates this improbably friendship and, through the relationship, digs to the heart of race relations during the highly charged days of 1960s America.

With themes of identity and conflicts faced by African-Americans in a world dominated by white culture, Mr. Power’s play sets up lots of topics for contemplation. Ali wants Fetchit to give him the secret to the “anchor punch” made legendary by black boxer Jack Johnson. Fetchit wants Ali to make a movie of his life, using Fetchit in a way that will restore his non-existent career. He also wants Ali to acknowledge the foundation he, and others have laid. “I snuck in the back door so you could walk in the front,” Fetchit tells him. Rashid wants Ali to speak more about the Nation of Islam in his press conferences. Sonji wants to be free to be herself, and when Ali demands the truth, he can’t accept her answer. Fox needs Fetchit until he can’t use him anymore. People build on the past of others, acknowledged or not, creating their own story, making adjustments based on the advantages gained and obstacles either overcome or gone around.

(The play) "invites us to examine how black public figures have had to craft their public identities in response to the violence of white supremacy. It asks us to look deeply into questions of agency and power. It challenges us to explore our own choice to understand, erase or embrace our elders who lived in profoundly different times and made choices that we now find problematic.” Kevin Moriarty

FETCH CLAY, MAKE MAN IN THE CLASSROOM

Will Power's use of historical events and figures makes this play an essentially learning tool for History or English classes alike. Builidng on themes of identity, leadership, nationhood, religion, power and racism, the play can be used to discuss a number of socially relevant issues.

ACTIVITY

Discuss the lives and impacts of both Stepin Fetchit and Ali during the 1920's and 60's and use their stories to highlight historical moments in our country centerd around race, film, sports and politics. Peform a selected five to ten page scene from the play in front of class. Have the class discuss themes that are common today and the role we each play in helping shape a better society. Use the following discussion questions to further conversation:

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

• Write a couple of words or a small statement that immediately came to your mind after reading the play.

• The statement, We stand on the shoulders of those that came before us, is often times thrown around with little regard. What does this statement mean to you and how do you feel about it?

• How do you feel about writers using real life characters in plays or movies to address issues that reach beyond the characters life spans or eras?

• If you have heard of Stepin Fetchit before how does reading the play make you visualize and interpret him differently?

• Muhammad Ali has always been labeled as a larger than life super star. How did reading the play make you visualize him as a regular man?

• What did you think of Ali’s wife Sonji? How does Power use her character to make statements about The Nation of Islam and its followers? What about Identity?

ADDITIONAL WORKS

DETROIT RED

The decision you make in a moment can change your life forever.

The world forever knows him as Malcolm X, but when he lived in Roxbury, they called him “Detroit Red.” Internationally renowned playwright Will Power combines the accuracy of a historian with the lyricism of a poet to shine a contemporary light on a pivotal coming-of-age moment in the celebrated, controversial civil rights leader’s life.

Boxed in by race and class in 1940’s Boston, he transformed from a rowdy teenager into a street hustler. Detroit Red vividly brings this world to life, depicting a brutally honest, human portrayal of the future activist as he navigates street life and the criminal underworld, taking the first steps in his quest to define the type of man he would eventually become.

This amazing play, Detroit Red uplifts Malcolm X’s under-examined, life-shaping experiences as a young man who called Boston home.

“A verbally and visually poetic invocation of Detroit Red’s thoughts and experiences."

― WBUR

STAGGER LEE

To Power, Stagger Lee was the prototypical rebel, a hard guy who didn’t take any guff. If you’re younger than 40, odds are, you’ve never heard the name. Older than 40, you may remember Stagger Lee from Lloyd Price’s 1959 song (“Stagger Lee went home / And he got his .44 / Said, I’m goin’ to the barroom / Just to pay that debt I owe / Go Stagger Lee!”).

That #1 hit single was only one of a dozen versions — by the Grateful Dead, Wilson Pickett, Woody Guthrie, even James Brown. All of them were spawned from the same historical event. In St. Louis in 1895, a black Texas gambler named Lee Shelton shot another man named Billy Lyons. No one knows for certain who wrote the original song, but in some versions, “Staggerlee” is a cold-hearted killer who’s sent to hell. In others, he’s a heroic outlaw, defying the authorities. Either way, Stagger Lee became an African-American folk figure.

It’s this figure who lives again in the show, Stagger Lee, a rare, ambitious, new musical because it was created entirely here from scratch.

It was the idea of Will Power, the company’s artist-in-residence, to devise a show about 20th-century African-American life. He’d use Stagger Lee as one of several mythic figures who’d be ordinary people quarreling and struggling and seeking better opportunities for themselves over the years. For these African-Americans, Stagger Lee would be both a bully and a blessing, a threat and a source of strength.

COMPREHENSIVE LIST OF WORK

DISCOGRAPHY

With Midnight Voices- Albums:

Dreams Keep Blowin' My Mind

Late Nite at the Upper Room

Howlin' at the Moon

As a member of the Omar Sosa

Sextet-Free Roots

Spirit of the Roots

Bembón

Prietos

THEATRICAL

2017, Cure No Cure

The Gathering

Flow (Original music composed by Will Power and Will Hammond)

Caliban Return

Blessing the Boats

Seize the King

Honey Bo and the Goldmine

Fetch Clay Make Man

Steel Hammer (with Carl Hancock Rux, Kia Corthron, Regina Taylor, and SITI Company)

The Seven - Composed by Will Power, Will Hammond, and Justin Ellington

Five Fingers of Funk - Composed by Will Power and Justin Ellington

Stagger Lee - Composed by Will Power and Justin Ellington

PUBLISHED

Fetch Clay Make Man (Overlook Press,2016)

Theater and Cultural Politics for a New World (Routledge Press, 2016)

Steel Hammer, Humana Festival 2014: The Complete Plays (Playscripts, Inc)

Selection from Fetch Clay, Make Man, 2014 Monologues for Actors of Color (Routledge Press)

Selection from Fetch Clay, Make Man, "The Best Stage Monologues of 2014)

Five Fingers of Funk, "Fierce and True, Plays for Teen Audiences" (University of Minnesota Press, 2010)

Flow, "Plays from the Boom Box Galaxy: Theater from the Hip Hop Generation" (TCG, 2009)

AWARDS AND NOMINATIONS

2016 Doris Duke Artist Award

2015 Duke Foundation Building Demand for the Arts Exploration Grant

2013 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Playwright in Residence

2012 TACA Donna Wilhelm New Works Family Fund

2012 NEA Arts Works Grant

2012 Fadiman Award (Center Theatre Group)

2011 Meadows Prize (Dallas Theater Center/Southern Methodist University)

2010 Aetna New Voices Fellowship (Hartford Stage)

2009 Edgerton Foundation New American Play Award

2008 United States Artists Prudential Fellow

2007 NEA/TCG Theatre Residency Program Grant for Playwrights

2006 Lucille Lortel Award (Best Musical)

2006 TCG Peter Zeisler Memorial Award

2005 New York Film AcademyNYFA Fellowship

2005 Joyce Carol Thomas Award

2004 Jury Award for Best Theatre Performance at the HBO US Comedy Arts Festival

2004 Drama Desk Nomination for Best Solo Performance

2004 Drama League Nomination for Distinguished Performance

2004 AUDELCO award Nomination for Best Solo Performance

2002 Black Theater Network Pathfinder Award

2001 San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award for Best Book

Trailblazer Award from the National Black Theater Network

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dawkins, Sydney-Chanele. "The Playwright's Playground: Legacies and Storytelling - An Interview with Playwright Will Power of 'Fetch Clay, Make Man' - DCMetroTheaterArts". Retrieved 2017-09-09.

Dunning, Jennifer (2006-02-10). "He's Taking Aeschylus Hip-Hop". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-09-09.

"Fetch Clay, Make Man". "Production Website". Retrieved 2015-02-17.

HowlRound. (2017) "Residence". HowlRound.com. Retrieved 2017-09-09.

Playscripts, Inc". (2017). "Will Power". www.playscripts.com. Retrieved 2017-09-09.

"The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and HowlRound Announce $5.58 Million in Grants through the National Playwright Residency Program". mellon.org. 2016-04-05. Retrieved 2017-09-09.

**BIO extracted from author's website: WILLPOWER.TV

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