One of the first things that Kamilah Forbes did when she became executive producer at the Apollo Theater in Harlem was contact Coates, an old friend from college, and ask to adapt his award-winning memoir. “Book reading can be so solitary; we read our books by ourselves, and unless you’re part of a book club, do you really engage within the topics or in the actual writing or primarily the topic that the book discusses?” Forbes said. “The question was about how can we use theatre as this collective form of communication to have the broader conversation with the book.” – American Theatre