William Electric Black is well-known to the audiences of Manhattan’s East Village’s small experimental theatres. It’s also becoming more familiar to educators and law enforcement personnel who want to educate children about gun violence.
Electric, a former writer for Sesame street, is passionate about education’s role in reducing gun violence. Electric summarizes this educational philosophy by saying “go in, go early.”
Electric said, “You should start when they are 3 and 4. By the time they reach middle school, they will be thinking about getting a gun. This is the best time to show them that there’s another route.
William Electric Black, who wrote songs like “Pride” for Sesame street, won seven Emmy Awards.
Chauncey Parker (NYPD’s Deputy Commissioner For Community Partnerships) and Kristy de La Cruz (superintendent of Community School District 4) have been working together with Electric to establish a pilot program on gun violence at an East Harlem elementary school. It is hoped that it will begin in the 2022-23 school year. De La Cruz said that Electric’s experience on Sesame St. and his subsequent work creating educational videos about health issues makes him a good partner for such a venture.
She said that Mr. William Electric Black is a well-respected advocate for public health and wellbeing. He is deeply committed to the community. He doesn’t just bring his own ideas to the table. He is eager to work with the community to create lessons.
Electric said to NPR that President Biden had told him, “Do something.” That’s me. “I’m so devastated by the events, but you can’t allow it to control you and do nothing.”
He was born Ian Ellis James and created the stage name William Electric Black while he attended Southern Illinois University Carbondale for graduate school. William is a tribute to Shakespeare. Electric because he wanted to electrify audiences. Black as a nod towards his African-American heritage. Although he was offered a job as a teacher at the university, he couldn’t resist the sight of Confederate flags in Carbondale bars.
He returned to New York, and began writing and directing musicals in the East Village. One of them was called Doo Wop Dracula. Betty and The Belrays, another was about a white girl group. His 2005 musical Cellphones mocked soccer moms Michael Jackson and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Electric is known for his offbeat musicals. He also directed serious dramas of life and death, such as The Lonely Soldier Monologues which concerns the sexual harassment of female soldiers serving in Iraq.
Electric decided to create a play about gun violence in 2013, after he was overwhelmed by the seemingly endless reports of shootings in inner-city neighborhoods. Five of them he called his “Gunplays”
Welcome Home, Sonny T was the first play. It told the story about an Afghan vet who is killed on his way to his welcome home party. The tragic story of a high school student who was about to die in gunfire told by When Black Boys Die. His mother ordered his surviving daughter to keep a record of all subsequent homicide victims in their housing project.
The Faculty Room is what critics call thought-provoking, relevant. James Baldwin High School is under lockdown because one of the two rival girls’ basketball players brought a gun to school. A scene is shown in which a girl reads aloud an essay about a world without guns. She is referring to Sandy Hook and Marjory stoneman Douglas High Schools shootings, as well as the killing of Sean Bell, an unarmed man, by the Dallas police on his wedding day.
A New York Times reviewer saw The Death of a Black Man (a Walking By) in 2016. This was the last of five Gunplays that were staged at The Theater for New York City. The reviewer was curious if theater can stop gun violence. William Electric Black believes it does.
