A new play and partnership with the Mark Twain House & Museum
The Delegation
A story about who gets heard, who gets counted, and how democracy actually works when the stakes are real. We’re partnering with Third Draft to support the development of The Delegation, with a staged reading at the Mark Twain House as the anchor moment.
PRESS RELEASE
Why Mark Twain, and why now?
Mark Twain spent his life exposing one of America’s most enduring contradictions: freedom as an ideal, hypocrisy as a practice. His satire cut through patriotic myth to reveal the uncomfortable truths that unite us all.
The Delegation picks up that thread at one of the most fateful and least discussed moments in U.S. history: Abraham Lincoln urging Black leaders to leave the very nation he was fighting to preserve. It is a scene that forces a fundamental question: who gets to belong in America, and on whose terms?
This question is not confined to the past. Today’s debates around citizenship, migration, race, and national identity echo the same unresolved tensions. Who is considered “American”? Who is asked to prove their loyalty? Who is told, explicitly or implicitly, that they would be better off elsewhere?
Revisiting this moment invites audiences to confront how these ideas were formed, how they persist, and how they shape our present. Supporting this project helps bring an untold chapter of American history to the stage, where it can be questioned, reimagined, and used to create space for honest, necessary dialogue about freedom, citizenship, and identity.
The backstory
In August 1862, in the thick of the Civil War and months before the Emancipation Proclamation was made public, Abraham Lincoln summoned five free Black leaders to the White House. His proposal was colonization, meaning resettling Black Americans outside the United States.
At that very moment, free Black Americans were laboring, paying taxes, raising families, sustaining the economy, and fighting for recognition as citizens. Instead of protection or belonging, they were offered exile. The political atmosphere in Washington, D.C. was consumed by this possibility. Congress moved quickly, allocating significant funding to support colonization efforts.
The Delegation re-examines this moment, giving voice to the men that history often flattened into compliance. By uncovering this chapter, the project exposes that emancipation was not our nation’s first idea of freedom, and celebrates the sophisticated diplomacy of leaders who stood their ground to defend their place in the American experiment.
Vision and tone
The Delegation is a dark comedy with a deeply human core where sharp humor and historical urgency live side by side. The play uses wit, absurdity, and emotional honesty to examine a moment when America was still deciding who it was, and who it was for.
Rather than offering easy answers or modern moralizing, The Delegation invites audiences into the room: to listen, to laugh, to feel the discomfort, and to recognize the contradictions that have always shaped American life.
Humor becomes a way in, not to soften the truth, but to make it bearable, intimate, and unforgettable. We want audiences to leave feeling unified in the sense of shared responsibility. More connected to the unfinished project of democracy that is America. More aware of how freedom, belonging, and identity have been negotiated, debated, and redefined across generations.
In a moment when national conversations feel fractured and absolutist, The Delegation offers something rarer: a space for complexity, empathy, and collective reflection. It reminds us that reckoning with our past is not an act of division, but an act of care, and that humor, humanity, and art remain among our most powerful tools for understanding who we are, and who we might still become.
Why this partnership
“Partnering with the Mark Twain House & Museum grounds The Delegation in a tradition of American self-interrogation. Mark Twain himself exposed the hypocrisies, moral shortcuts, and contradictions baked into the American experiment. This play operates in that same spirit: reverent toward history but unafraid to question it. The Mark Twain House & Museum is not just a historical setting that stood during the era of our story; it is an intellectual and ironically juxtaposed partner. We invite audiences to laugh, reflect, and reckon with the nation as it actually is, not as it prefers to remember itself.”
Why we’re asking for support
The Delegation is at a critical stage where thoughtful development makes all the difference. Your support allows us to build the work with care, fairness, and artistic integrity, ensuring the story is told with the depth and humanity it deserves.
Your donation directly supports:
- Artists and collaborators: paying actors, writers, and creatives fairly
- Workshops and rehearsals: time to explore, refine, and deepen the play
- Design and production development: creating a theatrical world that serves the story
- Community outreach and education: talkbacks, workshops, and events with students and young people that connect history, theatre, and civic dialogue
- By investing in this project, you’re helping extend the life of the play beyond the stage, bringing its questions into classrooms, community spaces, and conversations with the next generation.
Support bold new theatre. Help bring The Delegation to the stage and into the community.
Join the Founding List
Be the first to hear about development milestones, public programming, and staged reading details as they are announced.
Two ways to join:
Free: Sign up for updates and early access
Founding Citizen ($100): Support Phase 1 and be recognized as an early backer
Phase 1 donation tiers
$100 – Citizen
You help bring this story into the room.
Impact: Supports early archival research and development work. Helps underwrite public access to Phase 1 programming.
Recognition: Name listed on The Delegation website. Digital thank-you letter from the creative team. Early access to project updates and development milestones.
$500 – Witness (50 available)
You help return a buried moment to public consciousness.
Impact: Supports early dramaturgical research and archival consultation. Helps underwrite community access to the staged reading.
Recognition: Name listed on the website and printed programs. Invitation to the public staged reading at the Mark Twain House & Museum. Invitation to an opening night celebration following the staged reading, bringing together donors, historians, and the creative collective to celebrate the project’s launch.
$1,500 – Steward (30 available)
You help safeguard the integrity of the story being told.
Impact: Directly supports script development and writer commissions. Helps fund historian and artist participation in post-reading conversations.
Recognition: All Witness benefits. Acknowledgment in donor communications and talkbacks. Early access to Phase 1 development updates. Signed and framed staged reading playbill, commemorating the initial Phase 1 development.
$5,000 – Delegate (10 available)
You take a seat at the table where history is examined.
Impact: Supports rehearsal and production costs for the staged reading. Advances development of the A Paradise Elsewhere installation. Helps anchor Phase 1 public engagement programming.
Recognition: All Steward benefits. Seat at the Frederick Douglass Period Dinner, an invitation-only salon recreating the spirit of a night when Frederick Douglass was welcomed into the home of Mark Twain. Prominent recognition in programs and digital materials.
$10,000+ – Architect (8 available)
You help shape the next chapter of the American story.
Impact: Anchors Phase 1 development and positions the project for full 2026 production. Enables expanded educational outreach and institutional partnership cultivation.
Recognition: All Delegate benefits. Preferred seating at the Frederick Douglass Dinner. Recognition as a Phase 1 Lead Supporter. The “Drafting the Room” Session: an invitation to a private creative workshop where the collective walks you through the archival research and dramaturgical process used to write a specific scene. VIP “Front Pew” seating at the staged reading for you and a guest.
$25,000+ – Producer Circle (4 available)
You follow the project as it grows.
Impact: Serves as cornerstone support for Phase 1 development. Strengthens viability for full production and national partnerships. Enables continuity between development, institutional alignment, and future production phases.
Recognition: All Architect benefits. Recognition as a Producer Circle Supporter (producer-credit adjacent; non-contractual). Ongoing insider updates. Invitations to future readings, workshops, and institutional conversations. Continued acknowledgment as the project moves toward full production in 2026 and beyond.
The Twain–Douglass Archival Dinner (private experience)
A rare, intimate and invitation-only private evening inside the Mark Twain House, where history is not explained, but encountered.
This Producer Circle only experience includes:
Exclusive access to rarely viewed archival materials from Mark Twain’s private collection
Live readings of original correspondence between Mark Twain and Frederick Douglass
A period-inspired dinner and wine service designed to reflect the intellectual and cultural world of the 1860s
A private, after-hours tour of the Mark Twain House & Museum
Each Producer Circle supporter receives four seats, one for the supporter and up to three guests, creating a thoughtfully convened table of approximately 12–16 participants.
Interested in the staged reading or student programming?
We’re also building interest for staged readings and educational programming. If you’d like updates or want to explore a partnership, tell us below.
Creative team
Tony N. King
Creator of The Delegation | Co-Writer & Creative Producer
Tony N. King is a New York-based multi-disciplinary theatre maker, actor, writer, and producer whose work interrogates history, power, and the irony embedded in the stories we choose to preserve. He works across stage, screen, and development, bringing characters and ideas to life with both emotional precision and intellectual rigor. On television, King recurs in the Amazon Prime series The Chosen. He is the creator of The Delegation, a new American stage work developed in partnership with the Mark Twain House & Museum that reexamines a pivotal 1862 White House meeting between Abraham Lincoln and five Black leaders through satire, archival inquiry, and civic dialogue.
Melat Ayalew
Co-Writer & Creative Producer
Melat Ayalew is a writer and storyteller whose work explores power, identity, and the tension between ideals and reality. She earned her BFA from Greensboro, North Carolina, and has since worked in television and film writing for Fox Entertainment, contributing to scripted projects across genres. The Delegation marks an exciting step in her creative journey as a chance to bring a vital historical moment to the stage, one that challenges audiences to look at the present through the lens of the past.
Lex Kimbrough
Co-Writer & Creative Producer
Lex Kimbrough is a two time Emmy nominated filmmaker and writer whose work lives at the intersection of history, power, and human contradiction. After beginning his career in television, Kimbrough moved behind the camera to craft intimate, visually driven stories that explore identity, belief, and the absurd contradictions of power. The Delegation marks his expansion into stage storytelling, bringing cinematic rhythm, irony, and emotional precision to live performance.