Larry Muhammad

Walker Pierce, Andre Miller and Reggie Nash are 70-something buddies enjoying well-earned retirement. They play golf and hang out at neighborhood bar Jo’s Tavern, morbidly joking about squeaky hip replacements, erectile dysfunction, memory loss, hernia repairs, dental implants and seemingly unavoidable surgeries that come with getting old. But the easy living is suddenly upended when Reggie gets rectal cancer after carelessly ignoring the symptoms, and Andre’s pension and Social Security payments abruptly stop when he’s mistakenly declared dead. Walker is absentminded after a bad fall but hatches a scheme to collect Andre’s life insurance and fulfill Reggie’s dying wish: That his corpse be dressed to the nines and taken to Jo’s one last time to show he went out in style.

Crusading black newsman during World War II dares expose racism in the American war effort. He is hounded by the FBI, loses advertisers and and the DOJ threatens to indict him for sedition. This boils into a classic First Amendment battle as he leads a press tour of segregated troops and writes an offical report that helps persuade President Truman to integrate the military.

TIME: Mid 1980s
PLACE: Upper West Side nightclub Mikell’s
SYNOPSIS: James Baldwin is writing himself into bad health.
After two heart attacks and being hospitalized for hepatitis the
globe-trotting author returns to New York City for some rest,
relaxation and much-needed TLC. First on his itinerary is the
iconic jazz club Mikell’s, a favorite hangout where he’s usually
surrounded by adoring fans and his brother David tends bar. But
things have changed since Jimmy last came home. To his surprise
Mikell’s is closing, and his entourage this night consists of
just Maya Angelou and Miles Davis, good friends who meet him
there because they also didn’t know. What’s intended as a
celebration turns into an Irish wake for the not-yet deceased,
instigated by Miles as Jimmy impulsively, on the spot, starts
writing an elegy to his beloved old joint, enabled by David,
while Maya tries to intervene.

a young theatre intern struggles to comprehend the artistic
metamorphoses of his hero, a great playwright at the pinnacle of
his powers. While the acolyte assists with play development, his
casual observations infuriate his mentor and the two heatedly
debate the fundamental questions of theatre, examine the
fungible nature of aesthetics, question whether artistic
expression is ever nonideological and weight the added
responsibility of artists of color.

Marine Corps veteran Leroy Brown is running to unseat his former field commander Pete Cantrell and become the first black elected sheriff in his hometown. But he is dismayed to learn that elections he fought to make free and fair in Iraq and Afghanistan are a dysfunctional sham back home in America. A fellow black Marine is denied the ballot after a dubious purge of voter rolls. Polling stations are arbitrarily relocated miles away from minority neighborhoods. To stay competitive Leroy hires a shady turnout specialist as Sheriff Cantrell confiscates a voting machine intending to steal the election outright.
An enthralling tale of resistance to our shockingly unjust electoral process and government-dictated suppression of the minority vote.

Unlikely heroes – members of a black streetgang – foil a
terrorist plot and set a hostage free in MURDER THE DEVIL,
involving an Al Qaeda reject who slips through Homeland
Security on a bloodthirsty mission, recruits treacherous
criminals but learns too late who is hustling who. Racial
animosities surface and heated disputes over killing in the
name of God as the fate of a hostage hangs in the balance.
A theological culture clash and audacious excursion into
the morality of violence.

Master magician Black Herman is a conjurer, voodoo priest and root doctor who wants to be like Moses using magic to free the Jews from slavery. Preparing to offer himself as a human sacrifice to undo the biblical curse of Ham, he hires a psychic who snitches to a vice squad cop targeting paranormal activity posing as magic. The trick under scrutiny is a buried alive illusion called Black Herman’s Private Graveyard, and it
fascinates the psychic. She resents being coerced into spying, comes clean to Herman’s wife and helps her foil the undercover plot. But is the buried alive trick the doorway to a mystical realm, a domain beyond magic, as Herman believes? Can he pull off the miraculous and cheat the grave? A spellbinding tale of
wizardry, intrigue and the history of great Black magicians filled with card tricks, floating objects, and other feats of the magical arts. Based on the career of Benjamin Rucker, stage name Black Herman, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Herman, a protégé of Marcus Garvey and Booker T. Washington who used stage magic to promote Black pride and racial uplift.
ABOUT THE TRICKS: All the tricks employed in the play are wellknown classics of the trade. Actors can master them with extra rehearsal time and help from a magic consultant. Contact International Association of Black Magical Artists, www.iabma.com.

August 5, 1965. Trailblazing attorney Alberta Jones is brutally murdered while driving home from a late-night meeting. Hours later her body is pulled from the Ohio River and a homicide investigation begins. Alberta’s death had all the markings of a civil rights-era tragedy: dedicated activist, young, gifted and black, killed in a Southern town with her assailants never brought to justice. Inquiry into the killing proceeded virtually nonstop. But through it all Alberta’s own story was never fully told. Until now. Now a riveting docudrama brings her vividly to life on stage: Alberta in protest demonstrations; Alberta crusading for voting rights; Alberta the first black woman to pass the Kentucky bar; Alberta the first lawyer for Muhammad Ali; Alberta the fierce advocate for a disabled child; Alberta Louisville’s first female prosecutor. Her slaying and its aftermath received nationwide attention. Now the play WHO KILLED ALBERTA JONES? acquaints us with remarkable life that she lived. Before.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberta_Odell_Jones

Coal miners are trapped underground after a methane explosion in DERBY MINE 4, a reflective new drama about the mining life during the coal industry’s decline. Mining coal is a family tradition for each character in the play, and it addresses safety concerns relevant to a mine disaster near Harlan, Kentucky, in 2006 that left five miners dead. In the play however miners have survived the blast unhurt and huddle in a safe room devising an escape, playing games and singing to pass the time. But tempers flare as differences inherent in the group’s diversity test the unity they need to survive. Becky, a white trainee, questions the black team leader’s ability while fending off sexual advances from Dan, also white, who suffers early-stage black lung and is annoyed he has to babysit the new hire. Lee is rare as an African-American coal miner, painfully conscious of the racism his black predecessors endured in the pits but a company man butting heads with Proctor, an old white union organizer blaming management for the disaster that threatens their lives. Desperate circumstances make them function as a team nonetheless, crawling miles together in the dark to avoid rescue drills they fear will cause a further collapse.

A tribe of 20-somethings celebrating a friend's birthday in Berkeley, California, 1969, smoke pot, get naked, conduct a seance and burn the flag in a hapless romp assessing the costs and benefits of a turbulent decade.

Black jockeys are a rare sight today, but they dominated the
formative years of the Kentucky Derby, winning 15 of the first
28, including the inaugural run May 17, 1875 and establishing
the Run for the Roses as the world's premier horseracing
event. One of the most illustrious was Jimmy Winkfield, Derby
winner in 1901 and 1902 and member of the National Museum of
Racing and Hall of Fame. He racked up 2,600 racetrack victories
from Moscow to Warsaw to Paris, helped evacuate the racing
community from Russia during the Bolshevik revolution, married
an heiress, retired a prosperous trainer in France after
escaping the NAZI invasion in World War II. Based on the amazing
career of the first American jockey to become a globetrotting
superstar, the play is a fascinating horseracing saga spanning
two continents and six decades. Fifteen costumed actors bring
the tale vividly to life with dazzling portrayals of Winkfield,
his aristocratic wife Lyddy, their celebrity expat friends Paul
Robeson, Josephine Baker and Bing Crosby, Russian and German
military officers, wealthy Polish and Armenian backers, U.S.
stable hands and a bigoted horse farm owner. Audiences hear turf
strategy, feel the prerace excitement filled with backside
intrigue and fortunes changing hands against the backdrop of 20th
century war and upheaval.

A celebrated slave guide at Mammoth Cave in the 1850s, miscalculates the limits of his fame in a life-and-death quest for the freedom promised in his late master’s will. Internationally renowned for his showmanship and underground exploits, he was first to cross the dangerous chasm called the Bottomless Pit, discovered eyeless fish and other exotic species adapted to total darkness, was handpicked guide for Charles Dickens, opera star Jenny Lind and other dignitaries visiting the Cave. But the authority he commands underground is invalidated by the harsh antebellum realities on the surface as the Civil War approaches. He watches helpless as a villainous master drags away the preteen daughters of a friend to the slave market for sale. He is powerless to protect the Cave from a dangerous and potentially disfiguring commercial development planned by management. Ahead of his time, out of step, a slave tragically alienated from a demeaning life of servitude, he makes a fateful climactic bid for the dignified manhood so long denied. Based the remarkable life of Stephen Bishop, a slave who spoke Greek and Latin, confounded scientists with an incredible knowledge of geology and became a legend in his own time, only to die mysteriously at age 37, a year after he was freed. Run time: 90 minutes