William Electric Black
Conversation with William Electric Black
Moderated by Judy K. Tate
WILLIAM ELECTRIC BLACK
William Electric Black, aka Ian Ellis James, is a seven-time Emmy Award winning writer for his work on "Sesame Street" between 1992 and 2002. He also wrote for Nickelodeon's "Allegra’s Window" and Lancit Media’s "Backyard Safari." His children’s television show - “Rap-U-Cation” was recently optioned by FarView Entertainment. In a series of multimedia projects with Doug E. Fresh, Chuck D, and Artie Green, he has campaigned for exercise and good nutrition for young children, prescription drug awareness and obesity prevention. Recent awards include: La MaMa Regional Theater Tony Award, 2018. NY State Assembly Citation - Charles D. Lavine, Member of Assembly, 2018. He has received a Bronze Apple (National Educational Video Award) for directing. He has also received several Best Play Awards and has been published by Benchmark Education, The Dramatic Publishing Co. and Smith & Krauss.
He has been a faculty member at NYU’s Tisch School (Dept. of Dramatic Writing and NYU’s Summer High School Program) for some 20 years. He has also taught at The Collegiate School, The Riverdale Country Day School, Southern Illinois University, 92nd Street Y, Teachers & Writers and TheatreWorks USA. Electric's record with "activist" plays is admirable. In 2009, he directed Theater for the New City's sensational and serious "Lonely Soldier Monologues: Women at War in Iraq," a staged series of monologues based on a book by Helen Benedict. The play earned widespread notice and significantly helped the issues of America's female soldiers to be widely recognized for the first time. His series of plays re; gun violence - (Gunplays: Five Plays on Inner City Violence and Guns), was recently published by Applause Books. He is also the author of a series of Pre-K, early reader books re: gun violence awareness - A GUN IS NOT FUN. These early childhood books, written to combat gun violence awareness and prevention, are part of an in-school pilot program he is developing along with Dana Whitco.
Gunplays
FIVE PLAYS ON INNER CITY VIOLENCE AND GUNS
by WILLIAM ELECTRIC BLACK
Gunplays is a series of five plays by William Electric Black addressing inner city violence and guns. The idea of these plays is to generate understanding of the social inequities and disparities behind this plague that our society has so far been helpless to resolve. The debut productions of all five plays in the series were presented by Crystal Field, executive director, at Theater for the New City in New York City.
Black launched the Gunplays series in 2013 with “Welcome Home Sonny T,” a drama that spotlighted two significant forces driving the 21st century epidemic of American gun violence: the social impact of alienation and unemployment on young black males and the declining influence of black ministers as a force of stability in affected neighborhoods. The second play in the series, “When Black Boys Die” (2015), is a family drama in which a teenage girl tries to understand the madness of gun violence that has killed her brother and consumed her mother. The third, presented by Theater for the New City for 2016 Gun Awareness Month, is “Death of a Black Man (A Walk By),” a play with hip hop verse, chanting, songs, and poetry in which the audience moves through a neighborhood that experienced gun violence. The fourth, “The Faculty Room” (2017), is a drama that swallows its audience into a schoolhouse in a mandatory lock down because of an imminent gunfight between two students. The final play, “Subway Story (A Shooting)” (2018) combines music, poetry, dialogue, movement, and immersive theater in a way that makes it the most unique staging in the series as a teenage girl rides the subway looking to buy a gun as a means to deal with her abusive mother.
A GUN IS NOT FUN
by WILLIAM ELECTRIC BLACK
A GUN IS NOT FUN seeks to be a national campaign to save lives in cities across America.
"I wrote this book because we are losing too many young people of color to gun violence," said Black, aka Ian James, who received seven Emmy Awards for his work as a writer on "Sesame Street." "It is a plague facing our nation and something must be done so I decided to use the 'Sesame Street' target audience and start educating them about this timely, and too often deadly, issue."
There Are No Guns on the Moon
by WILLIAM ELECTRIC BLACK
THE ECLIPSE WAS BEAUTIFUL BECAUSE THERE ARE NO GUNS ON THE MOON...ONLY ON EARTH. DO WE NEED SPECIAL GLASSES TO SEE THIS?
Betty and the Belrays
BY WILLIAM ELECTRIC BLACK
"Willam Electric Black presently developing a 60s white girl group musical set in 1963 - Detroit, during the Civil Rights Movement. The white teenagers, known as Betty & The Belrays, face many challenges when they try to get signed by a Black record label. Finally when they start climbing the charts with a hit song - WHY OH WHY MUST WE DO THE SEGREGATION, Betty & The Belrays find success. But white America quickly turns against them. Betty heads south to join the Civil Rights Movement only to be killed along with other Negro protestors.”