The Creative Team

Psalmayene 24 - The Playwright

Psalmayene 24 (a.k.a. Gregory Morrison) is an award-winning playwright, director, and actor. Psalm—as his colleagues call him—is currently The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Playwright in Residence at Mosaic Theater. He is the writer and lyricist of THE BLACKEST BATTLE (Theater Alliance) and the writer, director, and lyricist of the film THE FREEWHEELIN’ INSURGENTS (Arena Stage). Psalm has received commissions from the African Continuum Theater Company, Arena Stage, Imagination Stage, The Kennedy Center, Theater Alliance, Solas Nua, Mosaic Theater Company, and Theatrical Outfit. His one man play, FREE JUJUBE BROWN!, is recognized as a seminal work in Hip-Hop Theatre and is published in the anthology, Plays from the Boom-Box Galaxy: Theater from the Hip-Hop Generation (TCG).

Directing credits include FLOW by Will Power (Studio Theatre), NECESSARY SACRIFICES: A RADIO PLAY by Richard Hellesen (Ford’s Theatre), PASS OVER by Antoinette Nwandu (Studio Theatre), NATIVE SON by Nambi E. Kelley (Mosaic Theater), and WORD BECOMES FLESH—recipient of five 2017 Helen Hayes Awards, including Outstanding Direction of a Play—by Marc Bamuthi Joseph (Theater Alliance).

Psalm is currently the host of “Psalm’s Salon at Studio”. Produced by Studio Theatre, “Psalm’s Salon” is an interview-based series that celebrates and examines culture through a Black lens. He is one of the writers of Arena Stage’s coronavirus pandemic time capsule film, MAY 22, 2020, and he wrote “Double Entendre”, the fifth episode of Roundhouse Theatre’s ten-part pandemic influenced web series HOMEBOUND. His play, LES DEUX NOIRS (2020 Charles MacArthur Award Nomination for Outstanding Original New Play or Musical and Venturous Capital Grant recipient), is inspired by a legendary 1953 confrontation between famed writers Richard Wright and James Baldwin in a Paris café and received its world premiere production at Mosaic Theater Company. THE FREDERICK DOUGLASS PROJECT- his play inspired by Frederick Douglass’ 1845 trip to Ireland and co-written with Irish playwright Deirdre Kinahan- was produced by Solas Nua on a pier at The Yards Marina in Washington, DC and was the recipient of six 2019 Helen Hayes Award nominations.

Marcia E. Cole - The Dramaturg/Historian

Marcia E. Cole (Playwright/Poet/Actor/Author/Educator) - a native Washingtonian received her BA in Early Childhood Education in 2014 from the University of the District of Columbia (UDC). She has won the College Language Association Creative Writing contest across three genres: Drama (2008), Poetry 1st Prize (2011) and Short Story (2012). She is author of Light in Dark Places: History in Verse that covers America’s deep history (2018).

A Matter of Worth, her first play, was performed at libraries in DC: Smithsonian's Anacostia Community Museum and Univ. of DC. In 2015, as part of Washington DC’s 1st Women’s Voices Theater Festival, it received very favorable reviews. Ms. Cole starred in a new play reading about Maya Angelou And Still I Rise by playwright Rickey K. Hood at Anacostia Museum (2015). In collaboration with historian Dr. Susan Strasser, they present A Double Take on Lynching - Lecture and Poetry. Marcia served as script consultant for America’s Talking: A People’s Mosaic at Live Garra Theater, directed by Wanda Whiteside (2018) and is a member of FREED – Female Re-Enactors of Distinction.

William G. Thomas III - The Author

William G. Thomas III is an award-winning historian, author, and film producer. Thomas is the Angle Chair in the Humanities and Professor of History at the University of Nebraska. A native of Alexandria, Virginia, he writes about American history, law, slavery, and the Civil War. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a Lincoln Prize Finalist.  

He is the author of A Question of Freedom: The Families Who Challenged Slavery from the Nation's Founding to the Civil War (Yale University Press, 2020) about enslaved families in Maryland who sued for their freedom in the decades after the American Revolution. A Question of Freedom received the 2021 Mark Lynton History Prize and is a 2021 Washington Prize Finalist.  A digital media historian, Thomas was co-founder and director of the Virginia Center for Digital History at the University of Virginia and co-editor of the acclaimed digital project, The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War. He has published essays in the American Historical Review, Civil War History, Southern Spaces, Lapham's Quarterly, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.  

With partners Michael Burton and Kwakiutl Dreher, he is co-producing a series of live action animated documentary films. The first of these films, Anna, was released in 2018 and won Best Animation at the New Media Film Festival in Los Angeles. The second, The Bell Affair, is in production with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. 

He is a graduate of Trinity College (Connecticut) and received his M.A. and Ph.D. in History from the University of Virginia. He currently serves on the Board of Trustees of Trinity College and on the National Historical Publications and Records Commission of the National Archives and Records Administration. 

"A rich, roiling history that Thomas recounts with eloquence and skill. . . . The very existence of freedom suits assumed that slavery could only be circumscribed and local; what Thomas shows in his illuminating book is how this view was eventually turned upside down in decisions like Dred Scott. 'Freedom was local,' Thomas writes. 'Slavery was national.'"—Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times