SITTING IN THE DOWNTOWN OFFICES OF THE WESTCOAST BLACK THEATRE TROUP [WBTT],founder Nate Jacobs is tired. It’s mid-January and he’s just spent four days in Washington, D.C. working with his brother Michael to complete the “first final draft” of WBTT’s March show, The Sam Cooke Story, a musical revue and retrospective on the King of Soul, created in collaboration with screenwriter and author B.G. Rhule. Administrator and artist, Jacobs writes and directs at least one production per season, alongside myriad duties as the troupe’s artistic director. “Typically, I have many pans in the fire,” he downplays, and Sam Cooke has been cooking for about a year, i.e. rolling around in Jacobs’ head while he makes mental notes. “I get little snippets of pictures that appear before me,” he says. “And these little pictures begin to connect like a puzzle and end up a full show.” Only Jacobs will know when the time is right to sit and write, and by then, he’ll have something of a map to follow in his head. But the pictures keep coming and it’s not uncommon for Jacobs to be hit by sudden inspiration and rush off, even with actors onstage, only to come back an hour later with another scene prepared. “Music is always my main inspiration, though,” says Jacobs, harkening back to his first shows with WBTT, when the theater lacked the funding to acquire published shows. “So I had no choice but to write an original something for us to present to the community,” he recalls. The resulting Cotton Club Cabaret became the first in a long line of musical productions from Jacobs’ pen, celebrating the likes of Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway and a place he calls “the first significant platform for black artists of world renown.” With The Sam Cooke Story, Jacobs hopes to celebrate another icon who played an important role in the history of American music and in Jacobs’ own life, despite the performer’s violent and dubious death at age 33. And it’s the former that the production will explore. “You shouldn’t be judged by the tragedy of your life,” says Jacobs. “You should be judged by the contributions.” And with the discovery of Cecil Washington, Jr. onstage last season at WBTT in The Color Purple, the writer finally has the star he needs, someone who can capture the iconic. “He’s a strong actor, a strong vocalist and I know he’s going to knock the socks off of Sam Cooke.”