Flint native Steve Banks has two accomplished careers and passions already. For 14 years, he’s been a public school teacher while also writing and recording music as rapper This Life. We Lead.
For the past few years, he’s been working on another. In a period of uncertainty at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Banks began channeling some of the deep feelings he was experiencing at the time into writing. First, that started through music and eventually evolved into a completely different style of writing for him.
“(The idea) really kind of came from just working in the school system and just seeing so much disruption in schools,” Banks said. “It started to attack me too, I had that same, I guess you could call it depression, just not seeing where my career would go. I started to think of the concept first as some songs because I was like, ‘I’m not well, I’m not happy.’”
Banks called his project, ‘Be Well.’ Feedback from friends and people who follow his music, as well as opportunities he saw for different artistic grants, inspired a pivot in how he began thinking about the story he was trying to get out. At first, he thought about writing a screen play, but eventually settled on trying a stage play.
“I just said, ‘I’m going to go about it a different way,’” Banks said. “I think I wanna write some type of a stage play using the music that I initially started to make for Be Well.”
The first thing he had to do, though, was familiarize himself with how to even write a play in a professional format.
“It was a learning experience for sure because musically, there’s no specific way (you have to write), it’s like you go record a song,” he said. “If you put it out, people like it or they don’t, right? With a script and a play, there’s a formula, a format that you have to do, you can’t cut corners, you can’t present something to producers or a theatre that looks like I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s not just about writing. It’s a proper format. And even with that, it’s like having to reread over and over and over. It’s a ton of work.”
Support From Local Resources
Banks received an Emerging Artist Fellowship from University of Michigan-Flint’s Riverbank Arts initiative and the Buckham Fine Arts Project in 2022-23. Through that program, he connected with Shelby Newport, chair of the Department of Fine and Performing Arts and coordinator of the theatre and dance program at the University of Michigan-Flint.
“As I worked with him it was clear to me that his talent in music, storytelling, and teaching would lead to a good play so I tried to give him the framework and basics of script analysis,” Newport said. “I loved witnessing his growth and willingness to express his story in a new way.”
Newport also works as a costume and makeup designer at several professional theatres in Michigan, and invited Banks to shows and talkbacks that included playwrights like Jeff Daniels discussing their writing process.
Banks’ initial work on the script led to a staged reading at Buckham Gallery in 2023, which gave him an idea at the time of what a performance of his script could look like. It also got his work on the radar of Daniels’ Purple Rose Theatre Company in Chelsea, Michigan. Rhiannon Ragland, a Flint resident, is an artistic associate at the Purple Rose and was already familiar with Banks’ music. She was also interested in the play he was developing based on Newport’s feedback about working with him.
The Purple Rose typically works with professional playwrights, but occasionally has the ability to seek out grant funding to support new writers. At the time of his reading in Flint, they didn’t have funding available, but kept the play in mind for a future opportunity because Ragland felt that the idea was compelling.
“We depend on referrals and references from people who know our company and know our mission and Shelby was one of those voices who worked with him early on and felt the same way about his work and who he was as a person and wanted to see him succeed, so she introduced us,” Ragland said.
Eventually, in late 2024, the Purple Rose had the chance to apply for an Ann Arbor Community Foundation grant that would support them working with a playwright to develop a script in 2025. Banks was interested – the only problem was that the story he wanted to tell had changed from the time he initially started writing Be Well.
“Essentially we started over,” Banks said. “That was the hard part because it was the same sort of concept but I was in a different place of mind mentally. When I first wrote it, my mindset was definitely like, oh my God, I can’t go to work every day. I was trying to truly escape. This time around writing it, I had to reflect more and sit back and think back. The initial play was more focused on the school system and what I was dealing with in that system. This time, I spoke on the system, but I made it more catered to the individual. He just happens to be a teacher.”
Now, the play focuses on a devoted teacher whose life begins to unravel. He begins questioning the choices that once defined him, the classroom no longer feels like home, and the future he’d imagined for himself becomes harder to envision. He grapples with whether his happiness lies in holding on or learning to let go.
Seeing Be Well Come to Life
As part of the grant the Purple Rose received, they were able to produce a live reading of Be Well in partnership with the Chelsea District Library earlier this month. The reading included professional actors K Edmonds, Krystle Dellihue, Henrí Franklin, Duane Shabazz, and Dez Walker, and allowed Banks to see how music he’s written for the production integrated with the script and acting.
“It’s still not a complete work, it’s not finished yet,” Banks said. “But to see what it could be, the potential, gives you more inspiration to continue.”
That willingness to try new things and perfect his story and craft is part of what made Banks and his vision exciting to work with.
“The first reading at Buckham I think gave him the sense of the scale of what this thing could be and I was so excited to have Rhiannon and Purple Rose to take it further,” Newport said. “His tenacity is so inspiring!”
Ragland was also impressed with Banks’ willingness to learn new processes associated with writing a script, revisit his work and make revisions, and take feedback both during the writing process and from actors and other theatre professionals during the actual reading and performance.
“I met with Steven before we had even been approved for the grant, just to see if we were a match because so much of the success of a project depends on the right combination of collaboration,” Ragland said. “Steven and I had candid and genuine conversations and decided if we did get the opportunity, that we did want to work together. Honestly, the whole process was a gift.”
The entire process so far has been eye-opening for Banks, and it has also made him hungrier to see how far he can take his idea as he continues to perfect his script.
“With me still, like, I don’t know what I’m doing here,” he said. “I’m not sure why anybody’s giving me a shot at this. And to be able to have an opportunity to get this far, I know it’s not a final stage play yet, but for me, I’m like, how am I still here? How is anybody taking me seriously? And I’m saying that in a positive way. I’m thankful for it. I’m not Shakespeare, I know that. But it’s like, hey, you got your toe in the water. Just keep working on it. And it does give me a goal in mind where it’s like, man, if I could just get one play produced in my life, you’ve done it. Because this is not something I expected to even have a voice in the room of.”
Always Take the Meeting
No matter what realm Banks is working in, that ability to battle through uncertainty and self-doubt are key tenets of his career in teaching and as an artist.
“My friends and I have a saying, ‘Always take the meeting,’” Banks said. “You never know what the meeting’s gonna lead to. If someone’s giving you an opportunity, see what it is. I just look at it like, if you told me that I can do X, Y, and Z, and you’re gonna give me the opportunity, why would I say no? It could change my life by the people I get to meet or the experience I get to have.”
That mentality has Be Well rounding into form and getting closer to a finished product. It has his music career growing – his latest album Good Morning, I Made You Coffee is streaming on all platforms and he has an upcoming live performance in Chicago on December 6. It even has him on TV. Banks is a cast member on the 11th season of Ready To Love, which airs on the OWN network, definitely a place he didn’t anticipate seeing himself.
“I went to my principal, I was praying that they (the school district) would say no because I didn’t want to do it,” Banks said. “When I told him, he said, ‘you gotta do it!’ I was like, ‘Please, somebody tell me no!’”
There’s a method to that madness of taking meetings, of trying new things, and being unafraid of opportunities. That mentality helps fuel his role as an educator in the classroom.
“I get to tell kids, and I can say it from my heart, you literally can do cool things if you put your mind and body into it,” Banks said. “I’m not saying it as a cliché. Like I have no business being here and I’m here, you know? You gotta take the meeting and if the meeting goes good, you go to the next meeting.”
Banks, who is active on Instagram and creates content on his ‘Teacher Stories’ TikTok, has also continued to perfect his craft as an educator and overcome some of the frustrations he had with the education system earlier in his career. He said that he’s learned to over-communicate with parents and he’s always focused on the best ways to meet the kids’ needs in his classes.
“I don’t care about grades, I care about the kid and the person and how to get them to think and dream and believe in themselves,” Banks said. “As an educator, that gets me more emotionally connected to the profession. I love showing them social studies, but more than that, I just want to teach kids they can focus and do the things they put their mind to. Being able to teach from that vantage point, that’s what inspires me to come into work every day.”
He also hopes that as he works on completing the Be Well Script, the story will eventually resonate with other teachers or people who serve their communities.
“The reading, this is just a first step,” Banks said. “That was like the seventh draft already, so if I could get to that point of this thing’s actually a funded stage play, and it speaks to whoever works in public service, then I’ll be super happy.”
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