Sarasota's WBTT profiles two iconic Americans in New Playwrights Series

The lives of two iconic Black Americans from the worlds of entertainment and sports – Nell Carter and Muhammed Ali – are featured in Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe’s New Playwrights Series in May.

“Birmingham to Broadway,” written by and starring Tarra Conner jones, and “Float Like a Butterfly,” starring Darius Autry, are each one-act, one-actor plays that bring to life two people who “carved their own identities,” in the words of Nate Jacobs, WBTT founder and artistic director, who is directing both shows.

Jacobs, with his brother Michael, wrote “Float Like a Butterfly,” and served as mentor to Conner jones as she wrote “Birmingham to Broadway” during the pandemic.

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“Those stories are both so inspirational,” said Jacobs. “They knew what they were sent here to do and they focused on that, totally. They found their niche and they charged forward. And the world is better for it.”

Conner jones, a Florida native who moved to New York to pursue her acting career about five years ago, was resistant to comparisons of her looks and her voice to Nell Carter for most of her life. Carter, who earned a Tony Award for her role in “Ain’t Misbehavin’” on Broadway, rocketed to national fame during her six years on the 1980s NBC sitcom “Gimme a Break!” She died in 2003.

“All of my life I’ve been compared to Nell Carter. During that time when ‘Gimme a Break!’ was on TV, all the time people would say, ‘You look so much like Nell Carter,’” said Conner jones, who finally embraced the similarities when she began auditioning for roles in New York and repeatedly heard the same comparisons.

“‘Do you know who Nell Carter is?’” she recalled. “I’m like, duh, I absolutely know who Nell Carter is.”

Conner jones has been a frequent star at WBTT, with leading roles in productions of “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” and “Black Nativity,” wrote “Birmingham to Broadway” at Jacobs’ urging, but said it wasn’t until theaters went dark in March 2020 due to the pandemic that her schedule suddenly opened up enough for her to really dive into the project. She workshopped an early draft with Jacobs in the fall of 2020.

“The more I researched her life, the more I became enamored of her,” Conner jones said. “She has such stick-to-it-iveness. She was a leaper, a person who will take a leap of faith. She reminds me of myself.”

Carter was born in 1948 in Birmingham. She left the South when she was just 19, already a mother, and took whatever work she could find until she finally found success on the stage.

“Broadway was still very much the Great White Way, and someone who looked like Nell Carter was not supposed to be a success on Broadway,” said Conner jones.

Conner jones’s depiction of Carter’s big Broadway voice stands in contrast to what Darius Autry will do to flesh out through story and song the life of boxing’s “champion of the world,” Muhammed Ali. Autry will perform about half a dozen original rap songs – a musical style ideally suited to Ali’s signature delivery of his political and personal points of view.

“I like to say he invented modern-day rap,” said Autry. “If you put a beat under it, it would be a song.”

Autry is a newcomer to WBTT’s Main Stage.

“One, I get to step into the shoes of an individual who is one of one. And two, who wouldn’t wanna come work with WBTT?” he said. “I’ve been friends with Nate for almost a year now. I’ve seen some of the productions over the past year. How could I turn that down?”

He’s preparing for the physical side of portraying Ali by running and jumping rope for about an hour a day.

“I’ve always been a boxing fan,” he said. “Muhammed Ali is the ultimate entertainer, the ultimate promoter, and such a sensitive human being.”

THEATER PREVIEW

“Birmingham to Broadway” and “Float Like a Butterfly,” New Playwrights Series, Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe. May 4-29 at the Donnelly Theatre, 1012 N. Orange Ave., Sarasota. Tickets $47, $20 students and active-duty military. 941-366-1505; www.westcoastblacktheatre.org.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Sarasota's WBTT profiles two iconic Americans in New Playwrights Series