As theatre companies create virtual versions of stage performances, multi-talented DC artist Meshaun Labrone has signed a partnership with film producers to turn two stage plays into fully enhanced films, aimed directly at world wide audiences via a brand name streaming service.
Labrone has signed a production deal with Flying Scoop Productions for his most famous plays, SPOOK, about a convicted cop killer awaiting execution, and Power! Stokely Carmichael, about the Civil Rights organizer.
The productions will be produced by Flying Scoop’s, Mark Finkelpearl and Nate Starck, who will serve as director. Jennifer Knight has come on board as co-producer. Knight has been working with Labrone since the beginning, directing Power! and was dramaturg for SPOOK.
Labrone, a former DC police officer, is a celebrated actor, writer, musician. He has performed at Tara Theatre, Off-West End in London after he gained huge traction for his excellent performance as legendary rapper Tupac Shakur. He won a huge number of fans for his acclaimed play Power! Stokely Carmichael which played at the 2015 and 2016 Capital Fringe Festivals and at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture’s Oprah Winfrey Theater, where it was a sold-out show in 2017. He curated the soundtrack for SPOOK and released his debut single in 2019, titled River of Deceit.
Power! Stokely Carmichael is about the beginning of the new civil rights cry, “Black Power”! The phrase was coined by the new civil rights and SNCC president Stokely Carmichael. The year was 1966 during The March Against Fear. Emily Crockett wrote “Power! pulls no punches. It refuses to let you forget that Carmichael’s battles against systemic racism are the same ones we are waging today — from voting rights, to violence against people of color, to the everyday spoken and unspoken prejudices that help turn Black Americans into second-class citizens.”
SPOOK has been said to be one of the most revolutionary acts of theater to ever come out of Capital Fringe. John Boulton, writing of the 2018 Capital Fringe production, wrote “Labrone wrote a play about a cop gone wrong — one who murders other cops gone wrong – and dedicates it to “all those members that served with Honor and Integrity within the Metropolitan Police Department. The play probes deep into an open wound that is as relevant to the real world we live in as anything you’ll see along the Wharf throughout the Fringe Festival.”
SPOOK begins filming today, September 11. Power!’s shooting is scheduled for October. Labrone believes that during the global public outcry of Black Lives Matter, the world is catching up with his work and major streaming services will be clamoring for these projects.
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