Sonny Kelly honors past and future generations through storytelling company

Sonny Kelly is “like magic," according to Christie Hinson Norris, the Director of Education for NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

“He reminds us that stories matter,” she said. “And his work elevating untold or unknown stories is a really powerful way to inspire us all.”

Norris first met Kelly when they were both at UNC — Kelly as a Ph.D. student and Norris as the then-director of Carolina K-12 — and was instantly blown away by his energy and ability to connect with an audience.

These are the skills Kelly uses on a day-to-day basis as the CEO of Legacy Heirs Productions, Inc., a company that aims to help individuals tell their stories and work together for positive transformation, primarily through performance.

Kelly has been involved in storytelling through performance since his friend and mentor Mitch Capel — who has his own company MGC Productions — invited him to perform in a two-man show called “The Color of Courage” in 2016. 

This show depicted the lives of Black soldiers in the Civil War, drawing from stories that were in historical archives and poems of influential Black writers like Claude McKay and Paul Laurence Dunbar.

It was during this experience that Capel inspired Kelly to think of himself as more than just an actor, but a storyteller. 

“Yeah, he had the gift,” Capel said when recalling this moment. “And, you know, he was very talented.”

While performing “The Color of Courage,” Kelly would tack on an additional story he wrote for his son, Sterling, to help make sense of the violence against Black individuals in America.

Capel thought that, though powerful, the story just wasn’t a fit for the performance's perfect ending that they had already developed, but Kelly didn’t want to discard this important piece he had started working on.

When he then attended UNC and started his work on his Ph.D. in the fall of 2015, he realized that he could turn this personal story for his son into a full-length professional show, now known as “The Talk.”

“The Talk” has since become Kelly’s flagship performance, where he performs a one-man show, embodying the role of 20 characters. Since its release in 2018, Kelly has performed the show across North Carolina and in other states, including New York.

From this performance, Kelly was inspired to create his company. He didn’t initially realize how popular his work would be, but he needed a way to handle all the business he was doing.

Kelly also felt a calling to this work and to build something that not only meant something to him, but that would continue to last for generations — hence the name “Legacy Heirs.”

“We are the heir to the legacy of our ancestors and we are leaving a legacy to our heirs,” he said.

The notion of story-telling through performance was also the cornerstone of Kelly’s Ph.D. dissertation, which is entitled “Pipelines to Pathways: Reframing and Reclaiming Black Youth Identities through Performance.”

For his thesis, Kelly worked with youth in Fayetteville over the summer, doing poetry and acting workshops and writing plays with the goal of empowering marginalized groups to break out of stereotypes.

“I learned that even just being a part of an ensemble performance, even if you're not on the stage, it does something,” he said. “It creates this collective sense of community.”

He found that through performance, people were able to express themselves more freely and find confidence to speak to a larger body and be heard.

He has also explored North Carolina's rich history. Though not originally from the state — he initially came because of his service in the Air Force — Kelly has experienced strong community wherever he goes and that’s something he wants to help build through his work.

“Maybe it’s this rare combination of his identities as a teacher, a preacher, a veteran and a performer, but he is able to bring people together — regardless of political affiliation or identity politics — and remind us that we all have more in common than not,” Norris said.

From his initial work with Capel to his work on “The Talk” to his experiences with North Carolina youth, Kelly has inspired his colleagues, his students and people who are able to experience his performances.

“I just want to come into communities and help them to engage, educate and empower so that we can be better,” Kelly said. “So I just hope that my legacy is one that helps people to feel like they can make a difference, and they can make a difference with each other.”

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