DG National Report: Kentucky by Nancy Gall-Clayton
@dramatistsguild @nancygall
Sixteen years ago, Larry Muhammad took up playwriting and joined the Dramatists Guild.
The motivation behind his first play was an assignment from his then-employer, the Louisville Courier-Journal, to write a Black History Month story about Frank L. Stanley Sr., (1906-1974), a crusading civil rights activist and long-time senior editor and publisher of the Louisville Defender.
Delving into Stanley’s papers, which had just been donated to the University of Louisville Archives, Muhammad realized Stanley’s life could be portrayed well on stage.
Double V was the result. The title references the World War II campaign for victory overseas and against discrimination at home, apropos since Stanley had been part of a group that convinced President Harry S. Truman to desegregate the military.
Muhammad uses the pen name of Cisco Montgomery for his “edgier urban plays,” including Murder the Devil, about an Al Qaeda reject who slips through Homeland Security on a bloodthirsty mission that goes awry.
The playwright’s real name appears on his history plays, and Muhammad has established Kentucky Black Repertory, a nonprofit organization, to produce his scripts about African American Bluegrass history and heroic figures. The company produced Jockey Jim in 2016 and Buster! in 2015.
Jockey Jim, which a reviewer found “finely crafted” and a “compelling piece of theater,” is about Kentucky native Jimmy Winkfield (1882-1974), the last African American jockey to win the Kentucky Derby. Winkfield won in both 1901 and 1902. After placing second in the 1903 Derby, he moved to Russia and later, France, winning every important race in Europe. He returned to this country after Nazis requisitioned his stables during World War II.
When he retired as a jockey, Winkfield had won more than 2,600 races, but in 1961, success on the track wasn’t enough for someone of his skin color to enter through the front door of Louisville’s fashionable Brown Hotel for a banquet being held in his honor.
Buster! was praised as “entertainment of the highest level carrying its message with force and clarity.” Buster! takes its title from the nickname of Louisville’s gadfly activist Reverend Louis Coleman (1943-2008).
Coleman and his trademark bullhorn were seen daily at the courthouse, city hall, a building site where minority contractors were underrepresented, and anywhere else he believed raising his voice would make a difference.
At one time, Muhammad thought Coleman’s style was less than effective, but he changed his mind after poring over 1,200 stories in the Courier-Journal’s files and interviewing several dozen people when doing research for Buster!.
Muhammad came to admire his subject deeply, realizing Coleman was like Don Quixote. In an interview shortly before the play’s premiere Muhammad said, “He’s like a bumbling idiot who turns out to be wiser and more courageous and more hopeful and open hearted than the people around him.”
How does one go from journalist to playwright with nine plays being produced and having staged readings in four states? Muhammad credits attending and reading plays to study structure and stagecraft. In addition, he found several books valuable including The Dramatist’s Toolkit by Jeffrey Sweet, a lifetime member of the Dramatists Guild Council.
Mentors also have been integral to Muhammad’s success. About his friend William McNulty, an actor with more than 150 credits at Actors Theatre of Louisville, he says, “Bill has read and critiqued all my plays and jokes that he’s my personal dramaturg.”
Another mentor is William P. Bradford II, a nominee for a Tony Award in Excellence in Theatre Education, who directed both Jockey Jim and Buster!
Muhammad is currently at work on a musical about James Herndon, better known as “Sweet Evening Breeze,” a pioneering and openly gay transvestite in Lexington, Kentucky, in the mid-twentieth century.
For more information about the playwright and his work, please contact Larry Muhammad on Facebook or kyblackrep@gmail.com.
Keep up with Kentucky members and submit your own news by joining our Facebook page Dramatists Guild-Kentucky Region.
Larry Muhammad
Gregory Rahming as Louis Coleman in the musical Buster!
