Stagecraft: Charles Randolph-Wright on Duke & Roya

Summary

BroadwayRadio Podcast Summary

Episode: Stagecraft: Charles Randolph-Wright on Duke & Roya
Host: Jan Simpson
Guest: Charles Randolph Wright
Release Date: July 16, 2025

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Introduction

In this insightful episode of Stagecraft, hosted by Jan Simpson, Charles Randolph Wright delves deep into his latest Broadway creation, Duke & Roya: A Love Story. Wright, a multifaceted talent with experience in producing, performing, directing, and writing across film, TV, and theater, shares the journey of bringing this compelling narrative to the stage.

Overview of Duke & Roya

Duke & Roya: A Love Story spans nearly a decade, beginning in 2017. The story follows Duke, a top-tier hip hop artist, who travels to Bagram Air Force Base in Kabul, Afghanistan, to perform for American troops. There, he meets Roya, an interpreter responsible for translating for the stationed personnel. Their unlikely romance unfolds amidst the chaos of war, bridging cultural divides and personal transformations.

Notable Quote:
Charles Randolph Wright [01:40]: “This is a story... in the midst of war, that crosses cultures and boundaries and different journeys.”

Genesis and Inspiration

Wright's inspiration for the play stemmed from an article about young women in Afghanistan, which profoundly impacted him. Unable to shake the narrative from his mind, he pursued the story during his writer's residency at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C.

Notable Quote:
Charles Randolph Wright [02:27]: “I started pursuing it and I thought, how can I tell this? At that time, I was trying to travel to Afghanistan because I wanted to be authentic...”

Meeting a young Afghan woman studying in the U.S., who became a daughter figure to him, provided the emotional foundation for the play. This personal connection fueled Wright's dedication to authentically portraying Afghan women's experiences.

Production History and Evolution

Originally titled Love in Afghanistan, the play saw its initial production at Arena Stage but struggled to gain traction. It wasn’t until Warren Adams, then a co-choreographer at Motown: The Musical, advocated for the play that it began to gain significant attention. With endorsements from notable figures like Jay Ellis, Stephanie Nur, John Legend, and Kerry Washington, the project gained momentum.

Notable Quote:
Charles Randolph Wright [07:33]: “Warren Adams is now your director of your play.”

Over the years, Wright has reworked the play multiple times to reflect changing geopolitical landscapes, particularly the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan under President Biden. These revisions have shifted the narrative’s timeframe and deepened its relevance.

Notable Quote:
Charles Randolph Wright [08:04]: “...now it's Duke and Wyatt, which to me is a different play completely than what it was.”

Characters and Themes

The play features four central characters, each undergoing significant development:

• Duke: A hip hop artist whose public persona belies his complex character. Wright chose him as a vessel to explore themes of misogyny and cultural intersection.

  Notable Quote:
  Charles Randolph Wright [15:39]: “I was trying to find a way into this story... I immediately thought, okay, this is this world of women who are mistreated...”

• Roya: An interpreter who becomes Duke’s love interest, representing the resilience of Afghan women.

• Desiree: Portrayed by Noma Dumaswene, she is the vice president of the World Bank, a character inspired by real-life diversity yet enriched with fictional depth through interactions with a British Nigerian VP.

  Notable Quote:
  Charles Randolph Wright [10:07]: “She literally... there were only three women of color who were that.”

• Saeed: Roya’s father and an interpreter, whose real-life counterparts face dire consequences post-withdrawal.

Contemporary Relevance

Wright emphasizes the play’s heightened relevance in light of recent events, particularly the decline in women’s rights in Afghanistan. By aligning the narrative with current affairs, Duke & Roya offers a poignant commentary on American imperialism and its human costs.

Notable Quote:
Charles Randolph Wright [02:22]: “... it's time now even more than it was 10 years ago, because women there have far less rights than they had even 10 years ago.”

Real-World Parallels

The play doesn’t just stay within its fictional boundaries; it reflects real-world issues faced by Afghan interpreters who assisted U.S. forces. Many of these individuals face persecution, and the play highlights their forgotten sacrifices.

Notable Quote:
Charles Randolph Wright [19:07]: “... sending them back to most of them to, you know, to death, to their demise or to prisons. They gave up their lives for us, and literally, we are sending them back.”

Themes of Survival and Identity

An intriguing aspect of the play is the incorporation of the practice known as Bacha posh, where girls are raised as boys to navigate oppressive societal norms. This theme underscores the lengths to which women must go to survive in restrictive environments.

Notable Quote:
Charles Randolph Wright [10:36]: “...the practice... is something that people did to survive.”

Conclusion

Duke & Roya: A Love Story is more than a romantic tale; it is a profound exploration of cultural intersections, gender struggles, and the often-overlooked human stories behind global conflicts. Charles Randolph Wright's dedication to authenticity and his nuanced character development make this play a significant contribution to contemporary theater.

Notable Quote:
Charles Randolph Wright [21:12]: “I appreciate you enabling me to voice what this is and the thrill of being able to tell a global story and to see four people together on stage, we have never seen on a stage, and that excites me.”

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For those interested in exploring the depths of modern stagecraft and the impactful narratives that define Broadway, Duke & Roya stands as a testament to the power of storytelling in bridging worlds and hearts.

Transcript

[Jan Simpson]

Every play, every musical begins with some writer putting words on a page. Hello, and welcome to Stagecraft, the Broadway radio podcast that talks to playwrights and musical book writers about the shows they've created. My name is Jan Simpson. My guest this week is Charles Randolph Wright, whose diverse career includes producing, performing, directing and writing for film, TV and of course, theater. His work on Broadway has included directing the Musical and Alice Childress Trouble in Mind. But his current gig is as the author of Duke and Royal A Love Story, starring Jay Ellis and Stephanie Knorr that touches on both feminism and American imperialism. It is currently running at the Lucille Lortel Theater, where it has been extended through August 23rd. Hello, Charles Randolph Wright. Welcome to Stagecraft.

[Charles Randolph Wright]

Thank you. Thank you for having me On Stagecraft.

[Jan Simpson]

We usually start these conversations with a brief description of what the show is about. So would you tell listeners who haven't yet had a chance to see it who Duke and Roya are and what their story is about?

[Charles Randolph Wright]

Yes, this is a story, actually, that takes place over about almost a 10 year period. And in 2017, Duke is a hip hop artist who's become the number one artist. And he traveled, travels to Bagram Air Force Base in Kabul, Afghanistan, to perform for the troops, where he encounters an interpreter who is Roya, who translates for the troops for people there on base. And the two of them end up having an unlikely love story. And a story that happens, obviously in the midst of war, that crosses cultures and boundaries and different journeys.

[Jan Simpson]

Where did you get the idea for this play? What's the genesis of it?

[Charles Randolph Wright]

It's so funny because everyone's seeing this, my friends especially, who are you? Where did this come from? I actually first read an article about women, young women in Afghanistan, and it floored me because I had no idea of what they experienced. And you will find out that more in the play. But when I could not get it out of my head. And at that time, this was 12 years ago, 13 years ago, actually, I had a writer's residency at arena stage in D.C. and I said to Molly Smith, who is my theater soulmate who ran Arena Stage, I have this idea and I just, I can't get it out of my head. I want to tell this story. So I started pursuing it and I thought, how can I tell this? At that time, I was trying to travel to Afghanistan because I wanted to be authentic, I wanted to experience it, which I was unable to do. But I remembered an old friend of mine actually taught Shakespeare in Kabul years ago. And I called him and I said, don't do I remember this correctly? And he said, yes. And then I said, I have this idea. I really want to. I have to. I have to exercise whether I actually complete the play or not. I've got to do this story. And he said, oh, I have a young woman for you to meet. And there is a young woman from Afghanistan who was studying in the States. And I went to meet her first in Boston, actually, and we just immediately bonded. She started calling me Baba, which is father. And she became like a daughter to me, which she remains. And so much of the inspiration in this story is based on her world. It's not her specific story. So she really inspired me to tell a story that I never knew, a story that I could not even imagine. And then in the midst of that, through her, through others, I started meeting different Afghans. So different aspects of this story all started coming around. And that's how then it came together. Originally it was called Love in Afghanistan. And that's how I worked on this at Arena Stage, where we did this in the cradle, they call it Arena. And then nothing happened with it. There are only four characters. I thought, oh, we'll do this everywhere. No one would pursue it. I know that Molly. I know that she sent it to other people and no one saw this. And I knew also at that time frame, I often said that this is not the type of story people expect me to write or they expect people of color to write. It doesn't deal with what you normally think and how it does it. And I just placed it on a shelf and didn't know when it would happen. And I guess now a shelf is the icloud, but I didn't know when it was the proverbial self, right? And I didn't know when, where, how it would happen. And. And when I first started writing this, I was actually in tech for Motown, the national tour, and Warren Adams was the co choreographer on Motown was like, what are you doing? Because I was looking up Dari and looking up things and looking at maps and just. And he said, you know, again, who are you? And I said, I'm working on this play. And I let him read the first 20 pages. And he. Literally every year since he came down to see the production that we did every year, he just said, you must do this play. You must do this play. And then in September, I think he called me and said, I want to run with this. And I said, sure. Not ever thinking anything would happen. And the next thing I knew, we had Jay Ellis and Stephanie Nur and John Legend producing and Kerry Washington producing, and people who would not even look at my play before. All these people were talking about this play and how important it was and. And how we must do this and where did. Where did this come from? And so it was a complete dichotomy of. Of the response I did not receive when I first did it and the response now. Of what. Of what the people who were involved in this, how they were responding, and now the audiences, how they have been responding to it. So it's. It's the ultimate lesson in when and how things happen. And also, it's time now even more than it was 10 years ago, because women there have far less rights than they had even 10 years ago. And then I thought it was abysmal. And the rights of everyone, right now, you know, all the rights of all kinds of people and how those rights are taken away, I mean, it's worse than it was then. So this is speaking on a level that's far more than I even knew when I was writing it. How's that for a long answer to your question?

[Jan Simpson]

It's a great answer. Warren Adams is now your director of your play.

[Charles Randolph Wright]

Yes. He is the turnaround and producer on this as well. I mean, he literally made this happen.

[Jan Simpson]

So I'm wondering, because that was 2013, this now 2025. Did you and he make any changes?

[Charles Randolph Wright]

Oh, absolutely, yes. It's a different play. First of all, the. First the change of the title.

[Jan Simpson]

Right.

[Charles Randolph Wright]

Because now it's Duke and Wyatt, which to me is a. It's a different play completely than what it was. I mean, some of the. The themes and the characters and all that, they are the same, but it's a very different world now. And the play is. Happens in present day and then goes back in time to 2017, when we. When we had a new regime in place here and what that did to the world. So it has a definite resonance. It's so interesting watching audiences, too, because what we're dealing with in 2017 and what we're dealing with right now, and you thought, wait a minute, what year is this? And so there's the play completely shifted. For example, I was talking about this last night. There's a character that Noma plays who is a vice president of the World bank, and she is British, Ghanaian. And I really wanted this global character in this position. And so I met different people at the World bank in D.C. to talk about what they did and what this was. And all of the people I met were white men. And so I created this woman, you know, I imagined this woman. And Noma remembered that she knew someone. And just before we started rehearsals or when we were first in rehearsals, she called me and said, I'm on a zoom. You've got to jump on. Can you jump on the zoom? And there's a woman who is British, Nigerian, who is a vice president, the World Bank. And I think she said there were only three women of color who were that. And she literally, I mean, in look, in sound, energy, everything about her was this woman that I created. And to actually have this conversation with her, and because of some things she said to me and told us, I actually incorporated those in the script as well.

[Jan Simpson]

And we're talking about the actress Noma Dumaswene, who plays the character of.

[Charles Randolph Wright]

Plays the character of Desiree.

[Jan Simpson]

Yes. Yes. I have so many questions. I don't even know where to go.

[Charles Randolph Wright]

It's a lot. It is a lot.

[Jan Simpson]

One of the elements that motivates the play is this practice of. I don't know if I'm going to pronounce it correctly. Bacha posh. Is that how it is?

[Charles Randolph Wright]

Yes. Which I normally try not to tell people what that is. So they're surprised by that.

[Jan Simpson]

Okay.

[Charles Randolph Wright]

But it is. It is. It is a practice when families, Middle Eastern families, specifically here asking families is, you have no honor unless you have a boy in your family. And women have no rights. They even have less rights. I mean, now, literally, if you're walking down the street and you hear a woman's voice from inside of their house, they can be arrested. I mean, the. There was. At the time of the Taliban, there was no education for women, so young girls could not go to school. They could not walk down the street by themselves. So the practice that you're referring to is something that. That people did to survive. And. And it was something that just fascinated me because I'd never heard of it. I could not imagine it. So I don't. I don't. I don't talk too much about it because I love audiences experiencing how that happens and why that happens.

[Jan Simpson]

Right.

[Charles Randolph Wright]

It is. It is a survival for young girls in that. In that environment where literally they have no rights.

[Jan Simpson]

When you went back to the play, had the US Withdrawal from Afghanistan under President Biden, had that happened.

[Charles Randolph Wright]

There were two steps. After I first did this, I was again with Motown. I was in London, and I had told our casting director about the play, and she read this and said, you have to do this play. So I ended up doing a reading in London because I just wanted to hear it, which ironically, the actress Noma was doing Harry Potter in London at that point, and we were friends and she came to see it and here she is now playing this role. But I did a reading of it and to prep for that reading, I decided to change. I. This originally was during the Obama administration, and then I changed it to 2017, right when the administrations changed. So that's the first time that I went in and reworked what that was. So I made it a few years later than originally when I wrote it, which changed obviously many things in the script. And then again, as I said, I did not touch it until fall of last year or late early winter last year, where I then decided to make it present day and starts present day and it goes back to 2017. And then you take this journey. So in the story, eventually 2021 happens with. With what. What happened. So I guess it was sort of, in a way, three. Three iterations. The very beginning when I wrote this, then how I changed it a bit and fast and fast forwarded it a bit to make it present day when I was. Which was really 2016, 2017, and then now again making it present day, but now going back in time, realizing that things are even worse now than they were then.

[Jan Simpson]

I don't want to give anything away.

[Charles Randolph Wright]

So I will not, especially this one thing.

[Jan Simpson]

I will not give the ending away. But I will ask, did you change the ending when you were going through your revisions?

[Charles Randolph Wright]

Yes. And it's so interesting too, because I don't know if I've ever written. Well, I have. I. I always have different relationships and projects, but this is. This is definitely a love story. And I have because of that. What that is and how that love story happens, how it evolves, what that is. That was an evolution for me in writing it as well and of played around with. With different endings and what would happen to these characters and what. What that is and. And also experiencing now experiencing audiences and their reactions to that and my friends all over me about what it is that that's been. It's. It's very. It was. It was so exciting to create this and then gratifying in what. What it did evolve into, how it did become, what it has become. I'm trying to say that without. Without telling what it is.

[Jan Simpson]

Now, we've talked a bit about Roya and we've. We've talked a little bit about Desiree, but we haven't really talked much about Duke. And I'm interested in why you made Duke a rapper. And without again, spoiling things too much. Why you gave him the background that you gave him.

[Charles Randolph Wright]

Yes. First of all, I was trying to find a way into this story, a way into someone dealing with young women who had no rights. Because I was unable to go there. I had to come from the outside. I couldn't tell it from a perspective. Obviously, being male and not being of that culture, I couldn't tell it from that. So I thought, how can I tell this from another perspective? How do I find a way in? I immediately thought, okay, this is this world of women who are mistreated. And I. And I thought, hmm, who's. Who's the most misogynistic character I could think of? And I went, oh, rapper. I know. So that's it. Literally, that was my thinking. And as I say that, what is our perception of the most misogynistic, weak person we can think of? And again, everyone in this story has different perceptions and different sides. And what I am proud of is that things shift in a way that, that I hope are unexpected. Things shift in a way that you, you have this character that you assume. What. This is one of my favorite things. The first night, a friend of mine said she was in the. In the ladies room and actually bathroom's generic, so she was in the generic bathroom. And this woman was saying, I only thought about the soldiers in Afghanistan. I never thought about the people. And it just, I, you know, if no one else ever saw this play, to have this happen from someone who lives here, who's very secure, because, you know, that we think of, of other places, especially Afghanistan is over there. We don't deal with them, we don't deal with their lives, their world. And the idea of that does not affect us. Well, anything human should affect us. It should affect everyone. And hearing that woman say that just. It thrilled me. And I thought through Duke, the character of Duke, who is this hip hop artist, we get to discover him, finding out what this world is, but also finding out about who he is as well. Because so many of our artists are not what they pretend to be and, and not what they. The Persona, the character that they portray, it's dealing with that. It's being able to allow us to see different sides of someone we assume is a certain thing.

[Jan Simpson]

Well, this is a four character play. And I would dare say that where we think these characters are going to go and who they are at the beginning is very different than how they develop throughout the play and even a bit how they end up at the end of the play.

[Charles Randolph Wright]

You did that very well.

[Jan Simpson]

There's a lot for people to chew on in this play, and I want to thank you for sticking with it.

[Charles Randolph Wright]

I think that's the journey for any writer to say, just keep telling your story, your stories. Who knows when that time comes, and it may not even come, but then when you're able to be able to put that forth. One. One other quick thing. The character of Saeed, who is Roya's father, is a translator, you know, an interpreter at Kabul. And we had. So we had thousands of interpreters that we worked with that we promised visas to the United States, promised visas to these interpreters. And. And we have forgotten them. And many of them have been killed. Many of them. They have targets on them. And now many of them who did finally get visas and escaped here are being sent back. This happened last week. There was a video of this one character. One. One person who. And I say character because there's a video of this person saying words that I have written in my play. And it just. It just. I. It shook me to my core to see this happening, what's happening to all these people, because we have forgotten them, and we are. And we're sending them back to most of them to, you know, to. To death, to their demise or to prisons. They gave up their lives for us, and literally, we are sending them back. That's also underneath this story because the lawyer's father is also this interpreter who has been trying to get his family out of Kabul.

[Jan Simpson]

As I say, this play works on so many different levels. Unfortunately, it is still a timely story, as you just note. Fortunately, it has been extended, and so people still have a chance to see it. And we want to thank you for taking this time from your very busy schedule, because you're a very busy man for taking time to talk with us about it. We greatly appreciate it.

[Charles Randolph Wright]

Oh, and I appreciate you enabling me to voice what this is and the thrill of being able to tell a global story and to see four people together on stage, we have never seen on a stage, and that excites me.

[Jan Simpson]

Thanks again.

[Charles Randolph Wright]

Thank you.

[Jan Simpson]

And thank you for joining us. We hope you'll come back next time and that you'll listen to all the other Broadway radio podcasts, which you can find on broadwayradio.

[Charles Randolph Wright]

Com.