Though Coates said he was “really tired and kind of suspicious” as the book became a bestseller and cultural touchstone in 2015 – and he resisted his friend Kamilah Forbes’ ideas about turning it into a staged performance – he eventually gave her the stage rights and stepped away from the project, which runs at the Apollo and the Kennedy Center this week. “It won’t quite be a play or a straight recitation of the celebrated book, which won the National Book Award and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Excerpts and fragments will be read either solo or in groups by a cast that includes the actress Angela Bassett and the rappers Common and Black Thought. Projections visualizing Mr. Coates’s vivid imagery will tower behind them, and the jazz musician Jason Moran will perform a live score with a trio.”