The Oscar Micheaux Project
From silent pictures to the talkies, groundbreaking cinematic pioneer Oscar Micheaux battles the racism of Hollywood to bring Black stories to the silver screen… facing down censorship boards, financial ruin, and family betrayal. Micheaux’s legacy as America’s first major Black filmmaker comes to syncopated and soulful life in this jazz musical.
The Writers
Alphonso Horne (Music) is a composer, performer and educator. He is a two-time Grammy nominated trumpeter, named by Wynton Marsalis as a rising star of the next generation. Broadway: Orchestra for After Midnight and Shuffle Along. Music Director: Ziegfield’s Midnight Frolic, For The Last Time. Theater Composing: Paradise Blue by Dominique Morisseau (Long Wharf Theatre); the original musical Dee (New Dramatists); Antonio Award nomination for music in The Wedding Band (Theatre for a New Audience). He wrote and produced Mother Kofi: The Tale Of An African Princess, inspired by his family history. Florida State University (BM), The Juilliard School (MM). www.alphonsohorne.com
Jesse L. Kearney, Jr. (Lyrics & Book) is an award-winning playwright and lyricist. Honors: ASCAP Musical Theatre Workshop; Jonathan Larson Musical Theatre Fellowship through the Dramatists Guild; Lazarus Family Musical Theater Award; 2022 Johnny Mercer Writers Grove at Goodspeed Musicals. Works: The Little Playhouse (LCT Directors Lab); The Lion In Love (music: Brian Feinstein); book for The Blind Man (lyrics: Peter Mills / music: Deborah Abramson). Kearney was a co-founder and the General Counsel of The STAGE Network, a streaming media platform devoted to the performing arts. J.D.: New York Law School. MFA: NYU Musical Theater Writing Program. BA: Dartmouth. Member: Dramatists Guild.
Peter Mills (Lyrics & Additional Music) wrote music, lyrics and co-book for Off-Broadway’s The Hello Girls, nominated for three Drama Desk Awards and four Outer Critics Circle Awards. Other shows include Illyria, Golden Boy Of The Blue Ridge and The Honeymooners. He has won the Kleban Prize, the Fred Ebb Award, the Richard Rodgers New Horizons Award, the Cole Porter Award, a Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation grant, the Donna Perret Rosen Award, and received two Drama Desk Award nominations for The Pursuit Of Persephone. ASCAP member, NYU’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program alum and faculty, and a founding member of Prospect Theater Company. www.PeteMillsMusic.com
Cara Reichel (Book) has co-authored shows with Peter Mills including The Hello Girls (2019 Drama Desk Award nominations), The Flood, The Underclassman, Death for Five Voices and others. For Theatrical Rights Worldwide, she wrote The Olympians: A New Muse-ical, a female-forward jukebox show drawing on hits from the BMG music catalog. She is the bookwriter for Marion Adler and Peter Foley’s I Capture the Castle, and has developed work at the Goodspeed Johnny Mercer Writers’ Grove, Rhinebeck Writers’ Retreat, and the Bogliasaco Fellows program in Italy, among others. She is the Producing Artistic Director of NYC’s Prospect Theater Company. www.CaraReichel.com
Development History
March 2021: a 10-minute musical film, “Making Micheaux,” commissioned for Prospect Theater Company’s VISION series. May 2021: a livestream concert at the Triad Theater presented by 23Arts. November 2021: a Prospect developmental reading of act one, supported by a NAMT Writer Residency grant. January 2022: further script development at the Johnny Mercer Writers Grove at Goodspeed Musicals. March 2022: Concert at 59E59 Theatres in Prospect’s IGNITE series. December 2022: Prospect invited reading of the first full draft, presented at Ripley-Grier studios with the support of commissioning grants from the NEA and NYSCA.
Connect
Susan Gurman, Agent Gurman Agency LLC, susan@gurmanagency.com