Tina Knowles-Lawson and Richard Lawson are co-producing a run of Richard Welsey’s play “Black Terror,” at the historic Newark Symphony Hall through their WACO arts center.

The couple spoke with ESSENCE about their passion for the theater project. “I connected with Black Terror so much because growing up in Galveston, Texas, this little Southern Texas town, it was a lot of racial tension, a lot of racial prejudice, and as a teenager, police brutality was a real problem in that town,” said Tina.