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Prospect Musicals recently received a generous $30,000 matching grant from Leonard Majzlin to support the company's 2025 staged workshop production of this impactful new musical, which must be matched 1:1 with other contributions. This workshop will have 8 public performances from June 13 - 21 at Baruch Performing Arts Center in NYC. It will allow us to:

Develop the performance with an on-stage jazz band and cast.
Explore dynamic choreography and movement to tell the story.
Bring preliminary video projections and visual design concepts to the stage.
Share this new work with public audiences, receiving valuable feedback to help us shape the show.

As we continue our journey, we ask for your support to help us bring to life this important story!

Music by Alphonso Horne
Co-Book & Co-Lyrics by Jesse L. Kearney, Jr.
Co-Lyrics & Additional Music by Peter Mills
Co-Book by Cara Reichel

Choreographer - Chloe Davis
Director - Kimille Howard

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 new jazz musical.

WINNER: 2024 Pipeline Arts Foundation, Inaugural Michael Friedman Award

Prospect Musicals is dedicated to fostering and showcasing today's new voices shaping tomorrow's musicals. We are proud to have commissioned (in 2021) and to support the ongoing development of the original jazz musical, The Oscar Micheaux Project, by this dynamic creative team!

FROM THE WRITERS:

The Oscar Micheaux Project brings to light a major piece of American and cinematic history that not many people know about. As America’s first major Black filmmaker, Oscar Micheaux left a legacy of over 40 films – from the silent era to the talkies. He lived a truly remarkable life, and his pioneering struggles and groundbreaking successes are a dynamic story that needs to be told.

Our show uses the immediacy of jazz music to connect with Oscar’s energy at the heart of the story through an onstage band of jazz musicians! Oscar triumphed through many hardships by improvising and innovating new approaches to film and storytelling. That’s why jazz, blues, and improvisation played by a live jazz band onstage is quintessential to this piece. We want to find ways to break down the traditional divide between actors and musicians, and explore how Oscar’s power of self invention can be expressed in the flow between musicians and performers on stage.

We envision an exciting design world for the show, and visual storytelling that makes use of projections and choreography at crucial moments. As a next step, we’re excited to experiment with ways to interweave imagery from Oscar’s movies and other period films with various forms of dance and movement.

Development History

March 2021: a 15-minute musical film, Making Micheaux, premiered for Prospect’s VISION series.

May 2021: a livestreamed concert at the Triad Theater presented by 23Arts.

November 2021: Prospect developmental reading of act one, supported by a National Alliance for Musical Theatre (NAMT) Writer Residency grant.

January 2022: further script development at the Johnny Mercer Writers Grove at Goodspeed Musicals.

March 2022: Work-in-process Concert at 59E59 Theatres in Prospect’s IGNITE series.

December 2022: Prospect reading of the first full draft, presented with the support of grants from the NEA and NYSCA, and the Shen Family Foundation.

October 2023: A featured selection of NAMT's Festival of New Musicals in NYC at New World Stages.

Summer 2024: Developmental reading at the Village Theatre's Festival of New Musicals in Issaquah, Washington.

Next up: June 13 - 21, 2025 Workshop in NYC!

The Oscar Micheaux Project - Matching Grant Fund

By Prospect Musicals

The Oscar Micheaux Project - Matching Grant Fund

A New Jazz Musical

Team Members