Profile of Playwright Will Power

By Adam Immerwahr and Carrie Hughes

“Every generation wrestles with what they will take from their fathers and mothers and what they will leave behind.”  -Will Power

Will Power is an artist fascinated with legacies—how one generation hands down its stories to the next. The multi-award winning creator of The Gathering, Flow, The Seven, and Five Fingers of Funk, and the founder of one of the first live hip-hop bands (“Midnight Voices”),  Will has made McCarter his artistic home as a Resident Playwright for the past two years.  Power’s work defies easy categorization. He has a fine ear for language, his dialogue is expressive, imaginative, and truthful, and his characters slip in and out of rhyme with ease. At the center of his residency has been the development of his new play Fetch Clay, Make Man, a complex exploration and imagining of the real friendship of boxing champion Muhammad Ali and disgraced actor Stepin Fetchit, each man struggling to create and shape his public image, his private identity and his historical legacy. 

When American Theatre Magazine asked Will to discuss his vision of theater twenty-five years from now he predicted “[a] willingness as a nation to look back to the past with a more critical and complex eye.  I feel often we treat a bit too lightly when telling of, say, the civil rights era.  We tread the period’s figures as either wholly villainous or completely heroic and angelic.  This has been a great opportunity lost.  Riveting theater, of course, must pulse with characters and storylines rich in the un-simplicity of chaos.  I can see more theater practitioners in the future unearthing the multitude of colors and contradictions that the past truly was.” 

In Fetch Clay, Make Man, Power puts this theory into practice.  In the days before one of the most controversial fights in boxing history,
22-year-old heavyweight champ Muhammad Ali formed an improbable bond with vilified former Hollywood star, Stepin Fetchit, Fetch Clay, Make Man is the story of these wildly different men. Fetchit’s prime is long passed—the first black Hollywood actor to become a millionaire, he has become a reviled symbol of an offensive and damaging stereotype. Ali has just joined the Nation of Islam, and is beginning to represent a fresh and vibrant new image for young African-American men. Pulled in different directions by the choices they face, these men are trying to shape their narratives. Clay has already chosen a new name, just as Fetchit did, and now each is forced to decide what kind of man he wants to be.  As with all of Power’s work, Fetch Clay, Make Man questions the evolution of culture, the lessons being handed down across generations, and the power inherent in reshaping ourselves from the images of our ancestors.

The world premiere of Fetch Clay, Make Man begins performances January 8 and will be directed by Stratford Shakespeare Festival artistic director and Tony Award winner Des McAnuff.  It promises to engage, captivate, and challenge.  In an interview with the PBS program Bill Moyers on Faith & Reason Will explained that he is “trying to use my words in the theater and in the stories to—whether it’s a tragedy or an uplifting piece at the end—move towards love and away from fear.”  Fetch Clay, Make Man will resonate across generations and we hope that the world premiere at McCarter will be the first of many productions across the country.