Michael R. Jackson on “A Strange Loop,” His Black, Queer Coming-of-Age Musical

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 15 June 2022

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Michael R. Jackson’s Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical “A Strange Loop” features a Black queer writer named Usher, who works as an usher, struggling to write a musical about a Black queer writer. Jackson’s work tackles the terror of the blank page alongside the terrors of the dating scene, and it speaks in frank and heartbreaking terms about Usher’s attempt to navigate gay life among Black and white partners. Hilton Als talked with Jackson about how he found inspiration in his own experience seeking identity and community. “I started writing the original monologue—building a sort of life raft for myself—to understand myself,” Jackson said. “It wasn’t until I got to a place of understanding that in my life I was caught up in a loop of self-hatred, that I could see what Usher’s problem was, and therefore what the structure of the piece was that would lead him out of that and into a better place.” “A Strange Loop” is playing now at the Lyceum Theatre, on Broadway.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour.
0:11.2	Michael, oh my God, you're on Broadway.
0:17.0	Yeah, it's crazy, right?
0:22.1	That's composer and playwright Michael R. Jackson.
0:25.4	And he talked with the New Yorker's Hilton Halls in April when his musical A Strange Loop opened on Broadway.
0:31.6	A Strange Loop had won the Pulitzer Prize in 2020, and last Sunday, it also won the Tony Award for Best Musical.
0:39.0	A Strange Loop is about a man named Usher, who also happens to work as an Usher.
0:43.8	He's a black queer writer who's writing a musical about, wait for it, a black queer writer,
0:49.6	who is writing about a black queer writer.
0:53.0	Usher sings about the terror of the blank page and also the terrors of dating and sex,
0:58.3	in terms that are pretty frank for a musical.
1:01.7	Staff writer Hilton All's talk with Michael R. Jackson about a strange loop.
1:06.8	One of the things that is so extraordinary about this show is that we have never seen anything remotely like it on stage or in a book or in a movie.
1:21.0	There's just been nothing like it, Michael.
1:22.9	And I wanted to ask you for the folks out there, what was the genesis of you writing a play about
1:31.4	a gay musical theater playwright working as an usher, talking about his life while
1:39.8	trying to write a musical about AIDS, and among other things?
1:45.8	Well, it started as a monologue initially that I wrote in between graduating from
1:52.8	undergrad, playwriting, and going to grad school for musical theater writing.
1:58.3	At the time, I was about 22, 23 years old, and I was just very
2:03.0	uncertain of my place in the world and where I would go with a BFA degree.
2:09.5	Where had you studied? I studied at NYU in the traumatic writing program. And I had moved,
	...

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