I had the opportunity collaborate with a phenomenal co-writer named Dr. Sam Kute who has a Ph.D. in Psychology and is a really amazing poet, novelist, and short story writer. He’s written several screenplays and acquired the rights to this story of Ira Aldridge, who is the first African-American actor famous around the world. He travelled the world and changed the way that African-Americans and black people were perceived at that time.

Ira Aldridge grew up in New York, but moved to Europe and studied in Glasgow. He had to overcome enormous odds to finally be able to tour in white theaters, and never really had the right or ability to play in a white theater in the United States. He had to go to Europe to play for a white audience, so it was really tough for him to kind of overcome that.

He ended up marrying a white woman and traveling to Russia and becoming best friends with a Tzar and freeing hundreds of thousands of serfs. He had an influence on the Tzar in telling him that slavery wasn’t right.  He respected him as a performer so much that it ended up in the eventual freedom of those slaves.

I think it’s an amazing story – very inspiring.

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