New One-Man Play Brings Together Acclaimed Detroit Talent with Extra Mile Playwrights

DETROIT, MI — What brings a legendary Black singing cowboy back to Detroit's famed Gotham Hotel on the eve of its demolition? That mystery unfolds in The Bronze Buckaroo Rides the Gotham Hotel, a new one-man play by New York Times bestselling author and award-winning songwriter Alice Randall, directed by Lynch Travis and starring Edmund Alyn Jones. The reading will be hosted by Extra Mile Playwrights Theatre, a Detroit-based playwrights group, on Wednesday, October 21, 2026, at Live6 Alliance, a nonprofit community organization.

Set in 1963, in the hours leading up to the demolition of Detroit's historic Black-owned Gotham Hotel, the play follows Herb Jeffries, the Detroit-born entertainer who headed to Hollywood in the late 1930s to become the Bronze Buckaroo, starring in a series of groundbreaking Black singing cowboy films. In the 1940s, Jeffries toured the country singing with Duke Ellington's orchestra. Now, years later, he has returned to his hometown and broken into the shuttered Gotham Hotel on a peculiar mission.

Drawing on Randall's acclaimed novel Black Bottom Saints and her memoir My Black Country, the

play explores Detroit history, Black entertainment, memory, and cultural legacy.

Randall is the first Black woman to write both a No. 1 country song and an Academy of Country Music Video of the Year winner. Born in Detroit, she credits the city's Ziggy Johnson School of the Theater as the most influential educational institution in her life.

Director Lynch Travis is an award-winning Detroit-area actor and director who serves as Workshop Director at the Detroit Repertory Theatre. Edmund Alyn Jones is a Detroit actor, writer, comedian, and producer with deep roots in Mosaic Youth Theatre of Detroit. Award-winning poet and University of Wisconsin professor Nate Marshall serves as dramaturge.

This one-nigh-onty performance debuts Wednesday, October 21 at 6pm. For more information visit extramilept.carrd.co.

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