And what this person told me was that what you need to do is that, when you go to the White House, always say in the back of your mind that this may be the last time I’m going there because I might have to tell this president something he doesn’t like.

I think he was expecting someone with a more strident tone and antagonistic demeanor. I think he was surprised to find out that I’m a pretty likable person, and that despite out different views I conducted myself with a civility and grace of manners my mother always demanded of me. For myself, I found him to be a more likable person than I had imagined. And I certainly value and respect the contributions that he has made to the theater; our differences of opinion on black theater do not dampen my respect and appreciation, nor in any way invalidate the considerable contributions that he has made.

“David, you are going to walk among kings.” This was my mum’s prophecy when I was small. My father is from a royal family in Nigeria, so I interpreted it that way. Remarkably, she was right: I went on to play King Pelasgus, Henry VI, Martin Luther King and Seretse Khama.

There’s a few that are immediate, because he just drilled them into my head. One is “Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd.” Try as hard as you want to market something, get a crowd. That’s what actually matters. Another one that he still says all the time is, “You’ve got a violin, I’ve got a barn. Let’s put on a show. Don’t overthink this, just go.

I had an uncle that played a great role in my life as far as sports. Like I said, in the South we would always play like three or four o’clock in the afternoon. I would have to go to school, and he would do my chores. When I say chores, that means I had to cut the wood, I had to wash the clothes; I had to do everything that everybody in the house had to do. So he would do all that stuff for me, and I was very happy about it because I wasn’t about to mess my arms up and my hands, so I could go and play ball and didn’t have to do too much.

I was the first black in that particular league. And, we played in a town called Hagerstown, Maryland. ... I said to myself — and this is why Piper Davis came in — in my mind, “Hey, whatever they call you, they can’t touch you. Don’t talk back.”