Yahoo News LeBron James, SpringHill Set Opening for First Theater Production ‘Fetch Clay, Make Man’
Will Power’s Fetch Clay, Make Man is coming to Culver City thanks to LeBron James and Maverick Carter’s SpringHill Company and Center Theatre Group.
The play, focused on the unlikely friendship of legendary boxer Muhammad Ali and Hollywood icon Stepin Fetchit, will hit the stage at the Kirk Douglas Theatre from June 18-July 16 with Debbie Allen at the helm in her CTG directorial debut. Opening night is set for June 25.
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The story explores the bond that formed when the two met in the days leading up to one of Ali’s most anticipated fights, with one described as “a vibrant and audacious youth, the other a resentful and widely resented relic — each fighting to form their public personas and shape their legacies amidst the struggle of the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-1960s.”
Fetch Clay, Make Man has been produced in regional companies including the McCarter Theater, New York Theatre Workshop, the Round House Theater, True Colors Theater Company, the Ensemble Theater and Marin Theatre Company. The Hollywood Reporter reviewed the show when it was posted up at New York Theatre Workshop in September 2013. It cast Ray Fisher as Ali and K. Todd Freeman as Fetchit, and was described as “a crowd-pleasing production” that, at the time, seemed “a strong candidate” for a Broadway transfer.
“We’ve been eager to expand into the world of theater, but it was imperative to us that our first foray to the stage combines our pillars of creative excellence, empowerment and culture shifting content,” said SpringHill’s Philip Byron, who is serving as the lead producer on the production. He called it “only fitting” that the company would be telling a “fresh story” about Ali after having produced the 2020 Emmy-winning documentary What’s My Name: Muhammad Ali for HBO.
Byron continued: “We are equally excited that Will Power’s powerful play sheds a light on Lincoln Perry aka Stepin’ Fetchit, a pioneer in the entertainment industry who we’ve discovered is unknown by a younger generation. Collaborating with Debbie Allen is simply a dream come true, our design team is filled with aces and our partners at CTG are the best in the business.”
CTG’s associate artistic director Tyrone Davis said the partnership with SpringHill proves “just how important and vital theater is” to the larger entertainment ecosystem. “Center Theatre Group has brought to life many productions that are now part of the theatrical canon, but that can’t be done without partners like The SpringHill Company. As SpringHill navigates into the world of theatre, we are honored to be collaborating with them on their first theatrical production.”
Added Allen: “The play explores universal themes like racism, politics, sexism, and religion through a mythic realism that is certain to provoke much thought and debate from audiences.”
Power chimed in to note how his work highlights “the ebbs and flows of public personas and how one builds a legacy.”
“Fetch Clay, Make Man illustrates the vast tensions that exist between a celebrities’ public persona and the complexities of their true selves that bubble and brew underneath,” he said. “In that sense, it is a very Los Angeles story, as the struggle to craft ones’ own image that actor Stepin Fetchit, movie mogul William Fox and a soon-to-be-icon Muhammad Ali wrestle within the play, still resonate in the 21st century.”
SpringHill’s projects include The Shop, Space Jam: A New Legacy, Hustle, Turning the Tables with Robin Roberts, Recipe for Change, Top Boy, Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker, The Wall, an untitled Nipsey Hussle docuseries, The First One with DJ Khaled, Top Class and many more.
Award-winning playwright and performer Power has previously written such plays as Stagger Lee (Dallas Theater Company), Five Fingers of Funk (Children’s Theater Company), The Seven (La Jolla Playhouse), Seize the King (La Jolla Playhouse, The Alliance Theater) and Detroit Red (Arts Emerson). He was once dubbed “the best verse playwright in America” by New York Magazine.
Allen, an award-winning director, actress, choreographer and producer, has directed TV episodes of Scandal, How To Get Away With Murder, Jane the Virgin, Empire and Insecure. She currently serves as an executive producer and director of ABC’s hit Grey’s Anatomy, on which she also recurs as Dr. Catherine Fox.
Tickets for Fetch Clay, Make Man are currently on sale.
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