Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride: This statement could easily describe being black in America, and Jordan E. Cooper brings this journey to life on Broadway for another week after a successful social media campaign.
His song “Ain’t No Mo'” offers a glimpse of what happens when black people are given the option of leaving America with a one-way ticket to Africa. Exploring race, class, incarceration, abortion and other issues, the production is about “sketch, satire, avant-garde theater and a dose of drag,” according to its website. At times, “Ain’t No Mo” is laugh-out-loud fun; other times, audience members might shed a tear.
Cooper plays Peaches, a flight attendant on the final journey of African American Airlines Flight 1619. “Ain’t No Mo'” made him the youngest black American playwright in Broadway history at just 27 years old.
But on December 9, Cooper published online that his play received an “eviction notice” from Broadway just a week after opening. The news meant “Ain’t No Mo'” would have its final performance on Sunday, Dec. 18, the playwright said.
“It’s an original new play that’s BLACK AF, both making it a hard sell on Broadway,” Cooper wrote in his post, adding that fans have described the production as “the best theater experience of their lives.”
Cooper launched the hashtag #SaveAintNoMo to raise awareness of the impending closure and drum up support for the show. In response, celebrities love it Jada Pinkett Smith, Will Smith, Tyler Perry, Gabrielle Union, Dwyane Wade and Shonda Rhimes everyone bought shows to ‘Ain’t No Mo’.
Emmy winner Lena Waithe, meanwhile, helped host the show this week. Waithe recently joined the powerful list of producers behind ‘Ain’t No Mo’, which also includes Lee Daniels and “Slave Play” writer Jeremy O. Harris.
Then, in an update on Thursday night’s show, Cooper announced that the Broadway production’s run has been extended, according to Deadline , meaning audiences now have until Dec. 23 to see the show.
“Ain’t No Mo” premiered in 2019 at The Public Theater in New York and earned Cooper an honorable mention at the Obie Awards, which recognize off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway productions.
Years earlier, Cooper had a run-in with the police that left him questioning his worth in America. He walked into a 7-Eleven store to buy a Slurpee when an agent made him think twice about his next move.
“I remember getting a red slushie and the police officer there cocked his gun and winked at me,” Cooper said, recalling that the incident occurred around the time Alton Sterling and Philando Castile they were together, shot by police in July. 2016.
“If black people give so much to this country, then why are they considered worthless?” he said he wondered at the time.
Black people have always “possessed the ability to turn shit into sugar,” Cooper said. So he wanted to spread humor in tumultuous times with “Ain’t No Mo.” He described the song as a “love letter to black culture”.
Cooper set out to create a space for black Americans, and not one that was necessarily acceptable to other races.
“Black people have been dragged into this country, stripped of our identity and forced to build our culture with sticks and stones,” Cooper said. “We must laugh in the face of our pain and use dark comedy to find light in those painful moments.”
