Ten Million Black Republicans is a comedy about politics.  James Kilroy, an ambitious, yet conservative, lawyer of African-American descent is in pursuit of the Republican nomination for Congress in Westchester County.  Julie, Jim’s wife, has evolved from an impassioned former radical into a woman emotionally fatigued by life’s demands, who wants to create a secure home and find peace of mind with her new husband.  Having passed through the scrutiny of a rigorous screening process by the local party machinery, Jim prepares to mount his campaign; Julie, main support and mastermind to Jim’s emerging candidacy, secretly writes his speeches.  The Republican leadership, thrilled to have these attractive and, apparently, staunchly conservative African-Americans in their midst, and itching to regain the power seat in Congress, looks forward to showcasing them as symbols of a newly all-inclusive party.  However, a time bomb, in the form of Julie’s less than politically-correct past, begins ticking away when Dennis Pearson, a disillusioned social worker and Julie’s former comrade-in-arms appears at her doorstep threatening to expose her radical past, compromise her carefully reconstructed life, and derail her husband’s electoral chances. 

A comedy of circumstance where strength of character is put in play by the allure of privilege and the temptations of power, Ten Million Black Republicans presents a portrait of an upwardly-mobile African-American family on the threshold of a breakthrough, who learn that the choices from one’s past painfully inform the options for one’s future.  Through its theme and story, the play addresses issues of importance within our evolving multi-cultural communities and the political infrastructure which they support:  the line between the assimilation of disparate cultures and the preservation of cultural integrity; the challenge of maintaining an objective distance while pursuing a subjective end; the tension between the expression of individual personality and the creation of a political identity; the conflict between need for personal recognition and need for institutions to perpetuate themselves; and the ever-present potential for political expediency to overpower the goals of enlightened political leadership.

The emergence of an African-American identity forged by the legacy and ideals of Martin Luther King, Jr. echoes through the themes and issues presented within the story of Ten Million Black Republicans.  The play focuses on an educated and enlightened African-American middle class couple, enfranchised by the victories of the modern American Civil Rights movement and nestled within a secure suburban lifestyle, whose stability is suddenly compromised by the unhealed wounds and hidden secrets of its own racist past.  In sharp contrast, the smoldering and unresolved racial prejudices of an arrogant, white, and all-powerful Westchester County party membership bent on maintaining the status quo while increasing its political power base and strengthening its influence is exposed when the shallowness of its tolerance of racial differences is revealed as the mechanics of its own nominating process begin to unravel.

Steve Gold
Steve Gold is a native New Yorker who first became seriously interested in the theatre during the late 1980s.  While serving as an artistic apprentice with the Seventh Sign Theater Company, he wrote his first play.  In 1991, Steve formed the Enigma Theatre Company, an outlet for producing new work by emerging playwrights.  The early productions of the Enigma were seen at the Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church, on Manhattan’s upper west side.  Later plays of the Enigma Theatre Company originated from Alice’s Fourth Floor, located on New York’s Theater Row.  Most recently, Enigma has been producing at Theater 22, in Chelsea.  Enigma has presented nine showcase productions.  The Heights Players, in Brooklyn, has mounted workshop productions of a number of Steve’s one-act plays.  In recent years, Samco Productions produced Master Race, a full-length play, at the American Theater of Actors.  Steve’s dark comedy, Our Kind of People, is currently in development with Stageplays Theatre Company.

 

Tom Ferriter
For the stage, Tom has written Ten Million Black Republicans (with Steve Gold), a comedy about the Congressional nominating process, A Howling Wilderness, a military court-martial drama during the time of the Philippine Insurrection (with John Chodes), and co-authored the book of a new musical, BELL (with Michael Treni), based on the life of Alexander Graham Bell and the American dream.  He is currently working with Taylor Hallman on Thunder & Lightning, a morality tale set in the Negro Baseball Leagues on the day Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in major league sports, and also adapting Santa.Com, John Kallas's play about the down-sizing of Santa's workshop due to the internet shopping craze, into a new musical for families.  Tom has authored six original motion picture screenplays:  Songs Without Words, a coming-of-age story set within the music industry; Mother-in-Law (with Taylor Hallman), a saga on racing and race relations during the early days of the American Civil Rights movement; Crossfire, a story of innocent bystanders caught up in the urban drug wars, adapted from the play by John Walsh; Florida, a story of the tapestry of life on the Mississippi Delta during the twentieth century (with Narroyl Parker); Love Object, a film noir thriller about love unattained (with James MacGuire); and Low Tide (with Bernard Mendillo), an investigative drama about illegal aliens, the drug trade, and corruption within the HSA. 

Tom Ferriter directed and produced the world premieres of Kathleen Anderson Culebro's The Crying Woman/La Llorona, a cross-cultural drama on international misunderstandings, Off Broadway at the Beckett Theatre, Paul Enger's In The Air, a love story during the Great Flu epidemic of 1918, Off Broadway at Theatre 315, James MacGuire's Nanny (also co-producer), an American comedy of extended families at the Nottara Theatre-Bucharest, and the European premiere of Harding Lemay's From A Dark Land, a World War-II drama of complicity, at the National Theatre of Romania-Craiova (co-producer), after having produced and directed the premieres of Marlene Shyer's First Wife, at the Emelin Theatre (Mamaroneck), Diane Leslie's and Mary Orr's family musical, Enchanted Afternoon, and Frank O'Donnell's Twisters, Off Broadway at the Nat Horne Studio Theatre on New York's Theatre Row. Tom is a member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, Actors' Equity Association, the Screen Actors Guild, and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, and is a graduate of the Commercial Theatre Institute's Master Producing Class.

Tom Ferriter has been a visiting professor to the Academy of Theatre in Bucharest, and a guest professor at the Academy of Theatre in Oslo. He was Performance Coach to America's Health Network, a 24-hour cable TV network transmitted by satellite to more than 10 million households across America, and was a member for three years of the faculty of The Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, where his classes included Acting for Film and Television, TV Commercial Acting, and Basic Acting Techniques. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in International Business Management from California State University - San Francisco and an Associate of Arts degree in Economics from Santa Barbara City College.