But these characters also have flaws and vices, and they are singing songs and expressing life experiences that are universal – and in common with the kinds of experiences that are often documented in Black American urban spaces. Morality is part of the arc of the story.
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Thematically, a Chitlin Circuit show is typically a musical that centers Black life. And this is something that has caught on and has galvanized a lot of Black spectators in ways that we have not seen in the 20th and 21st century. These productions often go on tours that last for a year or two and they hit a new city every weekend. Sometimes audiences talk back to the performers on stage. These are events that take place in non-traditional performance venues that cater to sometimes thousands of audience members at a time, and are very lively. How would you define the 'Chitlin Circuit' or the 'Black Circuit' for those who don't know what it is? I think there's a vast range of subgenres within the category of musicals that Black performers have been practicing and embodying and engaging with for many, many, many decades. There's also, of course, the musical component of it – the presentation of Black bodies on stage singing, dancing, expressing joy, expressing melancholy. In Kennedy's play, she and her various selves are having these meta conversations, which really struck me as being part of Jackson's exploration in his musical – the ways in which we, as readers or spectators in the theater, are really witnessing a conversation of Usher with his many selves. I was also struck by the parallels that I found between this play and Adrienne Kennedy's 1960s play Funnyhouse of a Negro.
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Harris's Slave Play, in terms of the expression of a queer Black narrative, and also a play that centers Black experiences that are interwoven with sexuality, and sex, and identity, and history. This play's in conversation with Jeremy O. There's a current tradition that I think is present right now on Broadway that many theatergoers will tap into.
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It's a loop within a loop." What traditions do you think that this show is a part of? It's part of a tradition, but it's also opening the door for new traditions. Jackson was asked to describe his musical, and he said, " A Strange Loop is a big Black and queer-ass American Broadway show. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity. I sat down with McMahon to discuss the significance of A Strange Loop on Broadway, how the musical portrays Tyler Perry, and what it means to write "authentic" depictions of Black life. (Full disclosure – she was also my college advisor.) Her book maps the creation of the "Chitlin Circuit," a genre of Black theater which, she argues, A Strange Loop reimagines and subverts. Shaw McMahon - an Associate Professor of English at Wesleyan University, and the author of The Black Circuit: Race, Performance, and Spectatorship in Black Popular Theatre. I wanted to know more about how A Strange Loop fits into the larger landscape of Black theater. For example, sometimes the Thoughts will take the form of Usher's mother, urging Usher to write "a nice, clean Tyler Perry-like gospel play for your parents." Other times, like in the song "Tyler Perry Writes Real Life," they take the form of Harriet Tubman and Zora Neale Hurston, who urge Usher not to write like a white person, and to take his work seriously.
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These Thoughts pressure Usher to write like other Black playwrights-particularly, the renowned Tyler Perry.
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A six-person ensemble represents his "Thoughts" onstage, embodying loathing, self-pity, and societal expectations of how to conform to acceptable versions of Blackness and queerness. The show follows Usher, a Black gay man attempting to write a musical about a Black gay man. And it's now up for 11 awards at the 75th annual Tony Awards this Sunday.īut A Strange Loop is also breaking ground by restaging and subverting popular representations of Blackness. It broke ground as the first musical to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama before going to Broadway. The show has already made a big splash, both inside the theater world and out. Jackson which opened on Broadway at the end of April. So allow me to mix things up a little when I say this: I absolutely adore A Strange Loop, a musical by Michael R. But we usually don't sing the praises of theater, or talk about how the artform can make us think about race in exciting and unique ways.
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When Code Switch has covered the theater industry, it's often to call out some of the uncomfortable racial dynamics in the room-whether that's the unease of watching Hamilton with a primarily white audience, controversies surrounding Asian representation in Miss Saigon, or the complexities of teaching The Merchant of Venice in schools.