(AGENPARL) – mar 18 aprile 2023 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: APRIL 18, 2023
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ALI to Receive
Pre-Broadway World Premiere
in Muhammad Ali’s Hometown
Louisville, Kentucky in Fall 2024
Additional Creative Team Members Announced
Casting Search for Role of Muhammad Ali Underway
A New Musical Celebrating the Life of Muhammad Ali
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New York, NY – April 18, 2023 – Richard Willis, lead producer of ALI, the new musical celebrating the life and legacy of the heavyweight boxing champion and humanitarian Muhammad Ali, has announced the World Premiere of ALI will be presented in Ali’s hometown of Louisville, at the Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts, in Fall 2024. Additional members of the creative and design team have also been announced.
Willis said “We are proud to announce these extraordinarily gifted artists joining the ALI creative team. We look forward to the collaboration, as we build the most innovative and entertaining musical possible, in celebration of the great man’s life and legacy. We are also beyond delighted to announce the show’s world premiere will take place in the great city of Louisville, where it all began. It is going to be an incredibly special event for everyone involved, and we hope to bring joy and healing to all Louisvillians, in light of the senseless tragedies over the past week.”
Clint Dyer, ALI director and book writer, added “I am excited and inspired to be aligned with this incredible group of artists, and we are thrilled that a casting search for the role of Muhammad Ali is underway.”
Teddy Abrams said “I am absolutely thrilled that we will be premiering ALI in Louisville, the shared hometown of Muhammad and Lonnie Ali, the Louisville Orchestra, and myself! I am honored to be working alongside the exceptionally talented artists on our creative team and I can’t wait for us to share this production with the world. Muhammad cared deeply for Louisville his entire life, and I know that he would be very happy that we’ll be celebrating his story at the Kentucky Center in the fall of 2024!”
Joining the previously announced director and book writer Clint Dyer (Deputy Artistic Director of the National Theatre; Othello; Olivier Award®-nominated Get Up, Stand Up! The Bob Marley Musical; Death of England/Death of England: Delroy), and composer Teddy Abrams (youngest Musical Director to lead a major American Orchestra, Musical America’s Conductor of the Year Award for 2022), ALI will feature Choreography/Fight Choreography by Rich + Tone Talauega (MJ The Musical), Set Design by Anna Fleischle (Olivier Award® Winner, Tony Award® Nominee – Hangmen, Once Upon a One More Time, Time Traveller’s Wife), Costume Design by Emilio Sosa (Sweeney Todd, 2-time Tony Award® Nominee for Trouble In Mind and The Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess), Lighting Design by Jen Schriever (A Strange Loop – Tony Award® Nominee, 1776), Video/Projections/Media Design by Tal Yarden (Network – Tony Award® Nominee, Sunday in the Park with George) and Gino Ricardo Green (Get Up Stand Up, The National Theatre’s Othello), Sound Effects Design by Ben Grant (The National Theatre’s Othello, Get Up Stand Up). The Associate Director is Asmeret Ghebremichael (The Notebook, Dreamgirls), Creative Dramaturge is Fred Carl (Associate Arts Professor in the NYU Tisch Graduate School for Musical Theatre Writing), Special Boxing Consultant and Fight Coordinator is Michael “Silk” Olajide, Jr. (former Middleweight Champion; trained by Angelo Dundee, Muhammad Ali’s World Champion trainer; Blade to the Heat; Fetch Clay, Make Man), and Casting Director is Jim Carnahan. Additional members of the creative and design teams will be announced soon.
ALI is produced by Richard Willis, Brook T. Smith, David & Michelle Campbell, and TheTribecaWorkshop in collaboration with ABG Entertainment in partnership with Lonnie Ali. In telling Muhammad Ali’s story, ALI will utilize the musical theatre medium to explore the life of the man who overcame tremendous odds to become the G.O.A.T and who used his platform to become one of the most influential and inclusive civil rights leaders the world may ever know.
Deemed “The Greatest of All Time,” Ali was born in 1942 and raised during the early years of television and the American dream. His childhood in Louisville, Kentucky, along with the love and devotion from his mother (and later from his wife Lonnie), set the stage for him to become not only the greatest boxer of all time, as well as an activist, entertainer, artist, and philanthropist. Ali’s combination of courage, confidence, swagger, compassion, humor and optimism united people during The American Civil Rights Movement, and his vision for a world without hate inspired generations of activists who continue to inspire today’s generation.
Biographies:
Clint Dyer (Writer/Director/Actor) was appointed as Deputy Artistic Director of the National Theatre in 2021, where he recently directed Othello, the first Black director to do so at the theatre. He directed the Olivier®, Evening Standard, and WhatsOnStage-nominated show The Big Life at Theatre Royal Stratford East, which become the first Black British musical to go the West End. He went on to write and direct Sylvia Plath and direct the award-winning The Westbridge at the Royal Court; Roy Williams’s hit play Kingston 14 at Theatre Royal Stratford-East; write Starter Motor for the BBC’s “Soon Gone: A Windrush Chronicle” monologues; and write and co-direct with Simon McBurney The Happy Tragedy of Being Woke for Complicité. Clint Dyer reopened the National Theatre in 2020 with Death of England: Delroy, which won Best Play at the Visionary Awards and was directed and co-written with Roy Williams. It was the sequel to the celebrated Death of England (nominated for Best Director, Black British Theatre Awards). This made him the first Black artist to act, write and direct at the National Theatre. Death of England: Face to Face, his feature-length film for the National Theatre and SKY TV, was nominated for Best Single Drama at the BAFTA TV awards, Royal Television Society Awards, Broadcast Digital Media Awards, Broadcast Awards and C21 International Awards. Clint Dyer directed Get Up, Stand Up! The Bob Marley Musical, which received four 2022 Olivier Award® nominations including Best New Musical and won Best Original Score/New Orchestrations, was nominated for 10 WhatsOnStage awards, had two nominations for the Best Musical and Best Actor at the Evening Standard Awards and won for Best Actor in a Musical and Best Musical Director at the Black British Theatre Awards. As an actor, his work includes Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Best Actor, I.A.R. Awards) at the National Theatre. Over the course of his extensive acting career in theatre, film and television, he has worked with heralded directors Mike Leigh, Dominic Cooke, Ian Rickson, Simon McBurney, Michael Attenborough, and Alejandro Amenábar. He has won many acting awards most notably for his starring role in the film SUS. Clint Dyer was recently nominated for Best Actor for Ferryman at the Alberta Film Festival.
Teddy Abrams (Composer). Named Musical America’s 2022 Conductor of the Year, Teddy Abrams is the widely acclaimed Music Director of the Louisville Orchestra. In his ninth season as Music Director, Teddy launches the Orchestra’s groundbreaking Creators Corps–a fully-funded residency for three composers–and the Orchestra goes on tour across Kentucky in a first-of-its-kind multiyear funding commitment from the Kentucky State Legislature.
Abrams’s rap-opera, The Greatest: Muhammad Ali, premiered in 2017, celebrating Louisville’s hometown hero with an all-star cast that included Rhiannon Giddens and Jubilant Sykes, as well as Jecorey “1200” Arthur, with whom he started the Louisville Orchestra Rap School. Abrams’s work with the Louisville Orchestra has been profiled on CBS Sunday Morning, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, PBS’ Articulate, and the PBS NewsHour.
Highlights of the 2022-2023 season include guest conducting engagements with the Cincinnati, Kansas City, Utah, Colorado, and Pacific Symphonies, a return to conduct the the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, and his debut with the Tiroler Symphonieorchester Innsbruck.