Najee A. Brown’s Stokely & Martin imagines a pivotal dinner conversation between Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and leaders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) — Stokely Carmichael, Cleveland “Cleve” Sellers, and Willie Ricks — in 1966, at a moment when the civil rights movement was fracturing over questions of tactics, philosophy, and the meaning of Black Power.

Brown, the Artistic Director of the Multicultural Arts Center, wrote and now directs the production. The script comes with an imprimatur of authenticity: The dinner table conversation (a “strategy room” session, Brown explained during our interview) is informed by interviews Brown did with Willie Ricks, who attended just such gatherings. “They knew strategically what they had to do,” Brown notes, “and they did more planning than they did marching. Now I feel like we do more marching and maybe some planning that I don’t know about, or no planning at all.”

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