It is the call that every playwright dreads. Jordan E Cooper, whose Ain’t No Mo earned critical plaudits on Broadway, was informed that his beloved show will close on Sunday – just 17 days after opening.
But instead of wallowing in self-pity, Cooper, the youngest Black American playwright to have a show on Broadway, is trying to fight back. He published an open letter urging people to buy tickets and give the production a stay of execution. His defiant stand has gathered support from actor and drag queen RuPaul and Hollywood stars Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith.
“I don’t think it got a fair shot,” the 27-year-old said to the Guardian by phone from New York. “If a play gets a fair shot and it doesn’t work it’s like, OK, I got a fair shot. But if the play feels like no, it’s so much bigger than what it’s getting right now, than the resources that it has right now, than the marketing that it has right now then I feel I have to stand up and fight because I think this play represents the future in a way. It represents other playwrights who are going to come in with plays that are just as challenging and might not have Denzel Washington to star in it.”
Ain’t No Mo premiered at the Public Theater in 2019. With a mix of sketch, satire, avant garde and drag, it poses a provocative question: what if the US government offered Black Americans one-way plane tickets to Africa? Jesse Green, theatre critic of the New York Times, described it as “thrilling, bewildering, campy, shrewd, mortifying, scary, devastating and deep”. Cooper, who is also a member of the cast, recalls that Steven Spielberg described it as the most cinematic play he had ever seen.
“It started off being an exploration of what it would be like if all Black people in America got an email saying that they have to go back to Africa. You watch all these different people around the country decide whether or not they’re getting on that final flight out. That came from my own kind of exploration of trying to find some way out; trying to find the light in the darkness; trying to find the laughter in the pain.
“Where that came from was seeing all these unarmed Black men and Black women being killed and murdered within weeks of each other. I was like, what if we all just left it behind? What if we just said bye, we’re not doing this any more. The play came from that idea and then, as I started writing it, I realised it wasn’t as easy as everybody thought it was and it wasn’t as romantic as we thought it was, so maybe it takes some work.”
The show’s transfer to Broadway was delayed by the coronavirus pandemic but it finally opened at the Belasco Theatre on 1 December before an audience that included Gabrielle Union (a co-producer), Matthew Broderick, Tamron Hall, Gayle King and Tony Kushner. Cooper describes the reaction from audiences so far as “mind-blowing” with people standing outside the theatre chanting: “Ain’t No Mo!”
So it came as a kick to the solar plexus last week when producer Lee Daniels announced that the show would have to go dark abruptly on Sunday after a meagre 22 previews and 21 regular performances. The entertainment website Deadline reported that last week the show took in only $120,901 at the box office – not sufficient to cover its running costs.
Cooper received a call from Daniels himself with the bad news. “I think he was trying to soften the blow a bit and I was shocked, not necessarily because I didn’t understand where it was coming from – it takes time to get an audience – but I just didn’t think that it would happen so quickly.
“We hadn’t necessarily gone through every route that we could to find an audience. We had no billboards; we didn’t have buses; we didn’t have subways; we didn’t have a TV commercial. Our marketing budget wasn’t huge because we were depending on people seeing the play and word of mouth. It just takes a little bit more time when you don’t have a celebrity lead or you don’t have IP that people recognise, especially on Broadway right now.”
He elaborates: “It’s hard for Broadway period after the pandemic but it’s even harder when you’re a niche show with not recognisable stars and material and you’re a show of colour, which is even harder, especially with a show like this that’s written for everybody but specifically for the Black community.
“A lot of people that watch me had no idea that it existed. We didn’t have any billboards on 125th and Malcolm X, we didn’t have any billboards in Harlem and Brooklyn and these places where I felt people who would enjoy the show but didn’t get a chance to know about the show. We didn’t have time to do any of that so it just came as a shock.”
But with a burning sense of injustice, Cooper refused to take it lying down. He published an open letter pleading for help, describing Ain’t No Mo as “a new original PLAY that’s BLACK AF, which are both things that make it hard to sell on Broadway”. He wrote that an eviction notice had been posted for 18 December “but thank God Black people are immune to eviction notices. The Wiz got one on Opening Night in 1974, but audiences turned that around and it ended up running for four years.”
He ended the letter by pointing out the average ticket price is $50 to make the show accessible. “In the name of art, in the name of resistance, in the name of we belong here too, in the name of every story telling ancestor who ever graced a Broadway stage or was told they never could, BUY A TICKET and come have church with us. Radical Black work belongs on Broadway too.”
The appeal struck a nerve. Co-producer RuPaul will host a special performance on Thursday. Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith bought out a performance this week to show their support as did Tyler Perry. Cooper was interviewed by civil rights leader the Rev Al Sharpton on the MSNBC network’s influential Morning Joe programme.
The pandemic caused the longest shutdown in Broadway history while the police murder of George Floyd, and ensuing Black Lives Matter protests, forced a racial reckoning for this industry as for many others. When theatres reopened in autumn 2021, there were a record seven works by Black playwrights. The current season includes The Piano Lesson by August Wilson, Topdog/Underdog by Suzan-Lori Parks, Ohio State Murders by 91-year-old Adrienne Kennedy and A Strange Loop, a new musical by Michael R Jackson that won a Pulitzer prize and Tony award but will close next month.
But in a blow to diversity efforts KPOP, a musical celebrating the popular Korean music genre of the same name with a predominantly Asian and Asian American cast, closed last Sunday after just 44 previews and 17 regular performances. It was Broadway’s first Korean-centered musical written by Korean Americans and the first with an Asian female composer. Overall ticket sales have still not recovered to pre-pandemic levels.
Cooper reflects: “We’ve come so far but we’ve got so far to go. The fact that A Strange Loop is on Broadway is amazing. The fact that it was a hit on Broadway is amazing. But also A Strange Loop is the only show to win a Pulitzer prize and win a Tony for best musical and close before playing a year.”
As for Ain’t No Mo, he will not go down without a fight. “I take a step back and ask myself, is this show good? I say it’s excellent. These performances that these actors are giving are not your normal Broadway performances. Literally six different people play like 20 different characters and they play them to the bone, they play them like full human beings and change in a matter of seconds. It’s masterful.
“I believe that people deserve to see these performances and people deserve to hear this story. It’s a truly wild and outrageous yet heart wrenching story. If there ever was an American play that deserves to be seen on a Broadway stage, I believe that this is the kind of story that deserves it. The plays and the playwrights that come after it in this lineage deserve that same right.”
