For the past seven years, Psalmayene 24’s effort to craft a musical about John Lewis — the “conscience of Congress” himself — has required no shortage of soul-searching.
The D.C.-based theater-maker set out to write a play focusing on the late Georgia congressman’s early life as a civil rights activist. When workshopping the material, however, Psalmayene 24 could feel Lewis’s life begging for a melodic treatment and pivoted to a musical. Then, after Atlanta’s Theatrical Outfit mounted the world premiere in the summer, the playwright realized there was still work to be done. So he decided to shake up the sound and bring in a new composer to rescore the show ahead of its D.C. debut.
“It was really an exercise in faith,” Psalmayene 24 says, “and in remaining present in the moment and not locking myself into the past.”
Featuring a book and lyrics by Psalmayene 24 and a score by D.C. hip-hop artist Kokayi, “Young John Lewis: Prodigy of Protest” is running at Mosaic Theater Company through May 3. Reginald L. Douglas directs the D.C. premiere, which has arrived in a capital unmoored by sociopolitical concerns — the war with Iran, the deployment of National Guard troops and President Donald Trump’s efforts to remake the city.
“We miss leaders like John Lewis right now,” says Douglas, Mosaic’s artistic director. “I think all of us in Washington could use a reminder of his kind of leadership, which was leading with love and truth and courage.”
It was Theatrical Outfit artistic director Matt Torney, formerly of D.C.’s Studio Theatre, who pitched Psalmayene 24 on telling Lewis’s origin story. But for all of Lewis’s accomplishments — leading the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; manning the front lines of Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama; helping orchestrate the March on Washington; serving 17 terms in Congress; coining the mantra “good trouble” — Psalmayene 24 acknowledged being initially unaware of the civil rights icon’s outsize influence.
“The image I had of him in my mind back then was not that of a radical figure, but it was more of a person who sort of meekly did what he had to do,” Psalmayene 24 says. “But I agreed to do the piece, and then, as I did my research, I found out that actually John Lewis was arguably one of the most radical figures in American resistance history.”
In addition to absorbing many a book, essay and article, Psalmayene 24 interviewed Lewis’s fellow activists, a staffer from his congressional office and others who helped unpack his humanity. Eventually, Psalmayene 24 decided to bookend the musical with two seismic tragedies — the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till and the 1968 assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — while focusing on Lewis from age 15 to 28.
“I think so often the heroes and icons of history, we see them as fully formed adults who don’t make mistakes or don’t have fears,” Douglas says. “They often become not human, and Psalm, by looking at a teenager — a young man growing into his advocacy and growing into his activism and discovering his voice — it meant we had a really human protagonist to follow.”
Eugene H. Russell IV composed a hip-hop score for the Atlanta production, but after Psalmayene 24 decided to take the show in a different direction, he asked Kokayi to provide a more distinctly D.C. sound for the Mosaic production. Although musical theater composers may work on a show for years before it sees the light of day, Kokayi found himself shaping an entire score around Psalmayene 24’s lyrics in a matter of months.
“I thought about, ‘What was the protest music of that time?’ ” said Kokayi, a 2009 Grammy nominee for best urban/alternative performance. “And then, ‘What would that protest music look like in the ’70s and the ’80s and the ’90s and the 2000s and the 2010s and ’20s? How could we make this an homage to protest music and Black music throughout the diaspora?’ ”
The result is a genre-defying, time-transcending sonic aesthetic that blends hip-hop, reggae, jazz, R&B, gospel and funk. Gamely executing the lion’s share of the songs is Michael Bahsil-Cook, the Atlanta actor who has reprised the role of Lewis from the summer premiere while navigating a radically reimagined score.
“Because I still have the show in Atlanta in my body, I think it’s been a shift of, ‘Okay, I have to, in a way, let go of it,’ ” Bahsil-Cook said. “I can still hold my Atlanta family dear in my soul and in my heart and in my spirit, but also know that as it grows and as it elevates, I have to grow with it.”
Psalmayene 24 also fine-tuned the musical’s book for the D.C. production, giving Till (Christian Emmanuel) a more prominent role in Lewis’s story and reworking the show’s ending. And Douglas brought in DJ Jabulani to spin tracks as the audience arrives, creating a vibrant preshow atmosphere.
“Right away, we’re telling you, ‘This is not your grandmother’s biopic,’” Douglas says. “This is [the civil rights docuseries] ‘Eyes on the Prize’ with a beat drop and bass.”
Mosaic has complemented the production with community-engagement events — play readings, poetry nights, hip-hop classes and more — in each of D.C.’s eight wards. Those events are centered, as Douglas puts it, on the idea “that we all need good trouble right now more than ever.” Although the show has been gestating for the better part of a decade, there’s a sense that “Young John Lewis” came to fruition at an opportune moment.
“It feels,” Psalmayene 24 says, “like the hand of destiny is guiding the musical.”
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