In Jordan E. Coopers bawdy Broadway debut,Aint No Mo, no one is safe.
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Jordan E. Cooper is a hustler.
Straight-up, ten-toes-down, got-it-out-the-mud key in shit.
Yup, Cooper wasthatguy.
Now, at 27, hes the youngest Black playwright topremiere work on Broadway.
Cooper stars as Peaches, a beat, bedazzled flight attendant escorting the last Airbus out.
But I had a great night.
A dap and a joke about Colored People Time and his smile was back.
And it aint always pretty.
But its not a roast; its a romp.
One thatll have you shaking your ass and your head in equal measure.
I was in the front watchingSpongeBob,and in the back I just hear cackling.
Im like,What the hell?
It opened up a world for him.
So people actually do this with lights, sets, and costumes?
Shell be knitting and then be snapping, like, Oh, fud.
I dont know why you told him that.
You see niggas in cat-daddy hats with they side pieces.
You see people coming in with Solo cups.
Cooper has a real penchant for situating certain Black experiences where weve been told they shouldnt be.
TakeThe Catch,his first professional production, written when he was around 16.
I always describe it as FencesmeetsRent, he said, laughing.
He wrote it with a heavy chip on his shoulder, placed there by someone who told him no.
Im gonna get the cutest white boy in this school to play your husband.
Cooper played their son.
I made her $600 off of $2 tickets in one weekend, he said.
What if we just got the fuck out?
Before hed figured out the full story, Peaches popped into his consciousness.
I just kept hearing these characters, he said.
Like,Its this drag queen, and shes in charge of everybody onboard.
Cooper said he always felt ostracization with Blackness and queerness in the sense that you couldnt be both.
The process empowered him.
I realized I was afraid because I hadnt completely come to terms with my own being, he said.
Lee Danielscame on as a producer in 2018 when Coopers show was in its initial run at Public Studio.
So I went to New York and sawAint No Mo, he recalled, and Cooper was just daring.
He didnt think inside the box.
Daniels threw Cooper into the writers room for the seriesStar,then gave him a job helmingTheMs.
Pat Showas it was starting to kick off; simultaneously, Cooper prepared hisAint No Moscript for Broadway.
What Daniels does well is sell.
Skin shone under marquee lights like dreamcoats.
Making us comfortable with the bops before the mordant story poked, praised, and punctured us.
By us, I meanuss.The bloods.
This is the world Cooper wants his people to believe is possible on Broadway.
But dont expect Cooper or the crowd to attend to whiteness or its concerns.
I wanted to write as if there were none there.
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