“戏剧表演是我的初恋. Dance, all the things that you can think of across the art spectrum, really. I was this big ball of creative energy,” recalls 创意写作 MFA grad Lucien Christian Adderley. “From there, my mom was like, ‘Hey, we're going to channel this thing.’ She did re搜索 and found a middle school with a magnet theatre program.

As Lucien explored the world of theatre and entertainment, he found himself repeatedly drawn toward narrative writing, particularly writing stories that reflected his own reality. “I always try to find those stories that I connect to on a human level, 那些与我的文化有关的故事, those stories that speak to or speak in a similar voice that I have.

“我真的很热爱写作, 我在写作方面一直很有天赋, 然而, 我不知道格式. 当我发现满帆, one of the things that stuck out to me was the fact that they allow for you to understand and learn formatting in different mediums, 而不仅仅是一个,毕业生说。. “是的, I really wanted to do things within film and in television, but they were also teaching me how to write narratives for video games and things of that nature.”

完成学位后, Lucien bet on his creativity and newly equipped skills in narrative writing, 离开他的家乡佛罗里达来到洛杉矶. 后 有祸了, a short film he made with his writing partner Richard “Byrd” Wilson got some impressive recognition – including being picked up for actress and writer 伊萨·雷的短片星期天 – Lucien returned to Florida to workshop with one of his former middle school teachers and actress Tanisha Cidel.

Tanisha, who had recently worked on Academy Award Best Picture winner 月光, was impressed with Lucien’s writing and connected him to Oscar-winning director and writer, 塔雷尔·阿尔文·麦克雷尼. “我发现了我和塔瑞尔之间的联系,吕西安说 of a script he was asked to review in the interview process for a series Terell was developing. “A lot of these things and these references are coming from the theatre world, 我说, 哦,酷, 我自动连接到他们.”

Not long after, Tarell tapped Lucien and his writing partner to work on 大卫造人 for OWN, with the two featured as writers in the series’ second season. 故事发生在南佛罗里达， 大卫造人 is the coming-of-age tale of a young Black prodigy attending a magnet school and working toward a way out of poverty, a set of circumstances not unfamiliar to Miami-bred Lucien.

However, network television isn’t the only place Lucien is amplifying the voices of Black men. “I look at different lanes and try and figure out well, who has not got a chance to tell their story? 为什么他们没有机会讲述自己的故事? 我们如何讲述他们的故事?”

这种方法让吕西安有了一个新项目， 的拦路抢劫的强盗, the true story of a collective of 26 African American landscape artists who traveled Florida from the mid-1950s through the 1980s. “This story is so similar to our own in terms of this group of people traveling throughout Florida using their art and their abilities to reach a large range of people and to change the lives of the people within that group,吕西安说.

“It feels really, really good to not only just tell the story but to tell the Florida story. 这是一样的 大卫造人, it's near and dear to our heart to tell the story about somewhere where we're from. And then about some of the same challenges and traumas that we've dealt with as young Black boys growing up in this community. 在这方面它真的很特别.”