Jenkins: So this is the house where you was born and bred at.

Yeah, better than being born outdoors.

What a lovely background for your home life.

I wouldn't give it to my dog to raise fleas in.

So clean and nice and warmhearted.

First chance I get, I'mma burn the damn thing down.

[ Laughter ] ♪♪ Odom: Lin-Manuel taught me, if I didn't know it before, you're nothing without great writing.

I mean, that great writing is what powers the theater.

There is no better show, you know, for me to come back and for us to be a vessel for -- for Mr. Davis to continue to speak into a new generation across time.

He's speaking the truth.

Everything about this play applies to today.

The brilliance of Kenny Leon.

He's masterfully crafted a play without an intermission that is a wild joyride and just a moment for us to really, truly be together in a communal vibration in the theater.

And it's meaningful because it's the most ancestral thing that we do, is storytelling.

What better offering than Ossie Davis' words, produced in 1961, as-is, nothing has been changed or altered to the script.

Oh, uh, Missy, life is so good to us sometimes.

[ Laughter ] Oh, child, being colored can be a lot of fun when ain't nobody looking.

[ Laughter ] Ain't it the truth?

You know, I always said, "I'd never pass for white, no matter how much they offer me unless the things I love could pass, too."

Ain't it the beautiful truth?

The show has turned out so beautifully, even beyond my -- my wildest hopes.

And the audience seems to just be eating it up.

Ossie Davis, I mean, he was just a brilliant writer, and there's so much in the play that hits your ear and it might make you laugh.

And then the very next second you stop laughing and you think about it, and he was able to walk that line so ingeniously.

Every bit of cotton you see in this county, everything and everybody, he own.

Everybody?

You mean he owns people?

Well, look, ain't a man, woman, or child working in this valley ain't in debt to that old bastard.

-[ Gasps ] -Busted.

Buzzard.

Kenny said that -- and I love this.

He said, "We're not doing a revival.

We're doing a new play."

Because, for a lot of people, this is a new play.

And everything he said was right.

Everything he said has come true about this piece.

So I hope that's what people see and question, why is this piece still relevant all these years later?

What is wrong with our nation?

Why can't we just come together, as Kenny always says, bring love, you know, into this?

So that's what I hope people take away that we really got to figure this out, y'all.

We -- really, it's time to change.

Really is.

This piece takes apart a very difficult subject, which is race, racial division, the constant attempt to bring people together and understand each other.

I had not been aware how -- how deeply Ossie's ear for all of this would take us.

The rhythms alone of this show take us somewhere special.

Through the poetry of Ossie's vision, we can see each other and talk to each other, laugh at each other, and find our way forward.

Mr. Davis did that hard thing that writers do, which is lock themselves in a room alone and dig down and tell the truth, get vulnerable.

There's always a time for this kind of joy coming off the stage of Music Box, so that doesn't ever go out of style.

Purlie Victorious.

Freedom is my business, and I say that old man runs this plantation on debt.

The longer you work for Ol' Cap'n Cotchipee the more you owe at the commissary.

And if you don't pay up, you can't leave.

Now, I don't give a damn what Miss Emmylou nor nobody else says.

That's slavery.

I'm sorry, Reverend Purlie.

Don't apologize.

Wait.

Wait till I get my church.

Wait till I buy Big Bethel back.

Wait till I stand once again in the pulpit of Grandpa Kincaid, call upon my people, and talk to my people about Ol' Cap'n, that miserable son of a -- -Wait.

Wait, I say, and we'll see who's going to dominize this valley, him or me.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪