Say My Name

So I premiered a play Off Broadway recently.

That’s a sentence I never thought I’d write.

Excuse me for a moment… I did it! Sorry, thanks for the indulgence, I’ll try and behave from here on out.

 

Say My Name opened at the AMT Theater as part of the 10th Annual Broadway Bound Theatre Festival, and I’m still trying to process everything I felt that week. I don’t think I’ll ever forget those three performances.

 

A Play That Wouldn’t Let Me Go

 

I wrote Say My Name about a year ago, and it’s gone through more drafts than I can count. It began as a ten-minute play called Press Conference, which won a few contests along the way and is still licensed in that form by Tiny Scripted, a distribution company.

This was a story I couldn’t quite let go of. The characters kept talking after the curtain came down on the 10-minute version, so I expanded it into a full-length play and brought it to Working Title Playwrights in Atlanta for development.

 

That process reminded me of something I believe more every year: writing may begin alone, but good writing rarely stays that way. A good play requires collaboration; people who help you wrestle with the work, talented artists who help you bring it from the page to the stage.

Throughout the process, I’d send pages written on my phone or in my mancave at home.  My collaborators, first in Atlanta, later in New York City, asked hard questions. I’d process the comments and then rewrite. Then we’d do it all over again. It’s the kind of collaboration that keeps a writer honest, and it’s why I seek out thoughtful partners whenever I can. Writing is solitary work. It doesn’t have to be lonely.

 

A great dramaturg knows when to challenge you and when to step aside. He or she pushes you toward a better version of your play without ever forgetting that it still belongs to you.

 

But once a playwright hands over a script, something remarkable happens.

 

It stops being my play.

 

It becomes our play.

 

That may be my favorite part of theater. That’s when the fun begins.

 

Words that lived for months inside one person’s imagination suddenly belong to actors, designers, directors, stage managers, technicians, and eventually an audience. Every one of them finds something you never knew was there.

Say My Name tells the story of a 15-year-old boy who was shot and killed outside a school dance. I wrote the play to honor the memory of Jerrod Miller, a 16-year-old who was shot by a rookie police officer in 2005 outside the Delray Full Service Center. I was mayor at the time.

The tragedy left a hole in my heart and the hearts of many, many others. The loss has also been largely forgotten by many, something that didn’t sit right with me. I wanted to write something that forces audiences to stop and consider the names that scroll by on TV screens when violence occurs. It is not Jerrod’s story per se, but it is a composite of too many young lives lost in this country.

I sent it in for consideration to the Broadway Bound Theatre Festival, a prestigious event that celebrated its 10^th year in 2026. It was chosen and I was thrilled to lead off the festival which runs through August at the AMT Theatre in the heart of the NY’s theatre district.

I was fortunate to work with visionary Director Reena Dutt who saw things in the script that I hadn’t seen myself. Every conversation we had, every adjustment she suggested, every staging choice she made ultimately strengthened the play. It’s a rare gift to trust someone so completely with something so personal.

 

Working mostly from Florida, I leaned heavily on our extraordinary stage manager, Lauren Linsey, who somehow managed to make the distance disappear with grace, kindness, and remarkable organization.

Then there was the cast.

Watching actors breathe life into characters who had existed only in my head for more than a year was one of the great privileges of my life.

 

Acclaimed stage and screen actor Tim Redmond brought intelligence and warmth that audiences immediately embraced. Eric Ruffin told me he had read the script more than a hundred times and every ounce of that commitment showed in a performance filled with quiet gravity and extraordinary compassion. Veteran actor Guiesseppe Jones gave Reverend Clayton exactly the presence I had imagined when I first wrote him.

 

Jennifer Laine Williams did something I’ll never forget. Audience members told us afterward they had expected to dislike her character. Instead, they found themselves understanding her—perhaps even rooting for her. There may be no greater compliment an actor can receive than making people reconsider their own assumptions.

 

Imani Jones brought enormous tenderness to her role, often leaving audiences in tears. Craig Cartwright embraced one of the play’s most difficult characters with remarkable courage. Richard Yarrell III’s voice, by more than one account, was simply heavenly. And Amanda Bailey captured my heart on our very first Zoom encounter, became exactly the spiritual heartbeat I had imagined for the ancestors guiding Eric’s character Marcus. Her voice alongside Richard’s created moments I’ll never forget.

Actors are remarkable people. Impossibly dedicated, smart and passionate, they can make even a newbie like me look good.

 

The Hours Nobody Sees

 

People see opening night.

They don’t see the months that come before it.

For me, rehearsals began after my workday ended; night after night from seven until eleven, weekends included. Most of my work happened over Zoom before I finally joined everyone in New York for final rehearsals and tech. I was so happy to be with these people, even for a few hectic days. I savored every moment. It still feels like a dream.

There is something wonderfully surreal about the creative process. One evening you’re discussing where a scene should go and rewriting a speech alone at your desk. A few months later you’re watching an actor deliver those same words to a silent theater full of strangers, and they’re wiping away tears.

When the house lights dimmed on opening night, I realized there was nothing left for me to do.

For months I had rewritten scenes, questioned every choice, and obsessed over every page. Suddenly the play belonged to the people onstage—and to the audience sitting in the dark. For the first time since typing “END OF PLAY,” I was simply another audience member.

 

What You’re Actually Chasing

 

People sometimes think theater artists chase applause.

Applause is wonderful.

But that’s not really what we’re after.

When a play truly works, you can feel something move through the room. You hear people laughing or crying together. You feel something that can’t be described, energy, emotion, connection to a story. Then the lights come up, and nobody rushes for the exits. They linger in their seats. They gather in the lobby. They continued conversations they weren’t having two hours earlier on the sidewalk with the actors and each other.

That’s exactly what I hoped this play would do.

The cast got a standing ovation which they richly deserved for immersing themselves in their roles and telling a story that is important. The tears, and the generous applause were deeply moving, but the moments I’ll remember most happened afterward. I collected dozens of audience comment cards over those three performances. Nearly every single one praised the extraordinary work of the cast, the direction, and the production itself. More importantly, people wanted to keep talking. They debated. They reflected. They asked questions.

That was always the goal.

To help people feel something.

To help people think and remember.

And maybe, just maybe, to help them talk to one another again.

 

Full Circle

 

What made the experience even more meaningful was looking out into the audience and seeing people who had been part of this journey long before opening night.

Friends traveled from far and wide to support me.  A wonderful group from Delray Beach made the trip north as well, a reminder that while this play opened in Manhattan, it carries a great deal of Florida with it.

More people than I can count have told me they hope this story finds a larger audience.

I hope it does too.

If it does, I hope this same creative family is standing beside me again. I can’t imagine a better group of artists, or a more compassionate group of human beings, to continue telling this story.

At its heart, Say My Name asks us to do something both simple and impossibly difficult: to truly see one another, to love one another, and to remember our shared responsibility to serve and protect each other.

Reflections

Ten years of the Broadway Bound Theatre Festival.

And somehow I had the privilege of opening its tenth season.

I still catch myself saying it out loud every now and then, just to make sure it’s real.

I premiered a play Off Broadway.

That’s still a sentence I never thought I’d get to write.

I hope this story inspires you to try something you never thought possible.