S2 E18 - Michael R Jackson

Ed talks with Tony award-winning playwright Michael R. Jackson. They talk about his play, A Strange Loop and how winning multiple Tony Awards for the play has changed his life. They also discuss why creating work about Black is so important to him and about being seen as a “representative” for the LGBTQ+ community

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Welcome to the latest edition of one hundred The Ed
Gordon Podcast. Today a conversation with Tony Award winning playwright
Michael R. Jackson. Jackson was one of this year's big
winners for his play A Strange Loop. The play is about, well,
I'll let him tell you. Strange Loop is about a young,

(00:42):
fat black gay man who named Usser, who is works
as an usser at a Broadway show. And it's writing
a musical about a young fat black gay man named
User who works as a sort of Broadway show who
is writing a musical about a fat black man who
works in Broadway show, etcetera, etcetera, and sort of cycling
through his self perception and self hatred. Got that the

(01:03):
play was nominated for eleven awards and took home two
of the biggest prizes on what is known as Broadway's
biggest night, and the rinner is and the toes to
A Strange looking for both Best Musical and Best Book.
Jackson has become a sensation on the Great White Way.

(01:27):
We started by talking about the huge attention that the
play's popularity and acclaim has brought him. It's been a
winding road, I am, you know, I started working on
a Strange Loop when I was about twenty three years old.
And when I started it, I had no ambition for

(01:47):
it to really go anywhere or be anything, and so
for it to have gotten the acclaim that it's gotten
in recent years is kind of mind blowing when I
really look at the bigger picture. Give us your road.
Often the media does this when someone has a you know,

(02:08):
extraordinary um project like you've had. They pick you up
from that day forward. Oh yeah, but there's been a
toll for you, um getting to that point. Give us
give us a quick tour of what you did prior to.
I used to try to make up little songs when
I was growing up. I had a really good ear,

(02:30):
I had perfect pitch um and I would and I
was improvising. I got to play at church. I played
for church choirs all through you know, sort of high school, UM,
and that gave me a real musical sensibility. But I
didn't know how to write lyrics. I didn't understand song
for him, and so then I sort of I went
to n y U for playwriting, although my dream was

(02:53):
to be a soa proper writer and um, I fell
in love with playwriting and I started writing plays and
that sort of thing, and still just messing around with
music just for me, but again not knowing how to
write lyrics. I go to grad school right after undergrad
and I sco to the n y U Grad News
Compater Writing program where I study book writing and lyric writing,

(03:18):
and then I sort of learned how to uh right, songs,
you know, lyrically. And but before that, right in between
going before I went to grad school, I had started
writing this monogue called Why I Can't Get Work, and
it was just about this I was twenty three, and
it was It's just about this young black a man

(03:38):
walking around New York wondering why life was so terrible.
And when once I've learned how to write um sort
of songs, a teacher of mindset off your lyricis who
has never written music, or a composer has never written lyrics.
You want to try it, go for it. So then
I decided to try writing my hand at writing my
own music. And the song that came out of it

(03:58):
was a song called Memories Song, and it went over
really well in my class, and my teachers and my
other another students encouraged me to continue writing music even
though I was in the program as a lyricist and
a book writer, and so I just started writing songs
sort of on my own, just for my own, you know, entertainment,
and a lot of those songs started to feed into

(04:21):
the monologue I had written a couple of years prior,
and then that with this director who I was working
with at the time, started to change into this one
man show called Fast flu Town. And then I performed
that in two thousand and six at a venue in
New York City, and I came away from it being like,
I want to keep working on this thing, but I
don't want to be in it, and I don't want

(04:42):
it to be like a cabaret act. And so we
started working with the music with a with a theater
company and on just developing the book of the of
what would become this musical, and in that period it
turned into what was now known as a strange loop.
I called up my friend Stephen Brackett, who had directed
a front of concerts of music that I had been doing,

(05:04):
because in the midst of all that I was still
writing music, and some of the songs from the show
he had heard, and so I called him up and
I was like, listen, I finally need to hear this
entire musical with the music to know what I had.
And so we did a reading in two thousand twelve
and Stephen sort of reading the material um asked me

(05:27):
what he thought of what I thought of the concept
of us uh cast met with all black and queer people,
which was very intriguing to me because it it's the
material sort of lent itself to that. So I started
writing for that concept. We did the reading twelve and
after that there was no developmental step in place, so

(05:48):
it kind of went under my bed for three years.
He would pull the work back out and travel along
and bumpy road, tweaking it along the way from the
play would have a number of iterations, stops and starts,
and a number of different directors, but that long and
winding road would lead to Broadway, where the play premiered

(06:10):
in April of two. That represented about an eighteen year Yeah,
you know, it's great to tell that story in the
in the sense of people often lose their dreams because
they don't continue to travel the road. Jackson grew up
in Detroit. In the nineteen nineties, he attended the Fame

(06:30):
Cast Technical High school. Also, by the way my alma mater.
My experience of growing up was I had a pretty
normal kind of just very middle of the world. I
would say that I was described in my upbringing as
middle middle class, like just like right, like there's nothing

(06:50):
kind of there's no crazy thrills about it. And it
wasn't like I had everything that I needed essentially. Um,
My father was a police officer for ray seven years.
My mother worked for General Motors for you know that
time or longer. UM. I went to go lightly educational
center as a kid. I went to cast Tech as

(07:11):
a high schooler. UM, I went to First Glory and
Missionary Baptist Church. Like I just had a very ordinary
kind of experience. And so because of that I think
I had there was Uh, I had the freedom to
sort of pursue the arts, which my parents sort of
kept me busy because they didn't want me to get
into any sort of trouble me and my brother. And

(07:33):
so my whole sort of middle school in high school
life was like quite in all city choir, the Brazilian
our youth kerl, piano lessons, dance class, acting for a
bit child acting. Um. Then when I was in high school.
I really I took an interest in creative writing, and
so I did that all four years of high school.

(07:54):
Plus I took a private write and workshop outside of
uh my high school with one of the resident the
artists and residents who came into the high school. So
I you know, I was, I had no idle hands whatsoever.
Detroit has always you know, been kind of an arts hub,
at least is in my lifetime. Um, whether it was

(08:18):
music or visual arts. Um. And and it's certainly theater.
A lot of theater and TV and film people came
out of a lot of the schools there. Um, you
know either at our you know my cast, like we
have David Alan Greer, Ellen Burston, Lily Tomlin, Kenya Moore,

(08:38):
if you're you know a Housewids fan like so many people. UM,
I just think that, you know, probably even just having
the legacy of Motown starting there probably laid the groundwork.
Like one of them, I took a cast, I took
Heart for a year as one of my electives. And
Patricia Terry Ross who was the harp teacher, they was

(09:00):
like a session player for Motown the whole time. Um.
So like I just think that it just was in
the water. Uh and and and and because there were
so many of those artists who were there, they were
able to pass that down two students in one way
or another. I tell people all the time who say

(09:21):
to me, you know, what was it in the water
at cass What made you, uh, you know so prolific
in terms of the people you turn out? And I said,
you know, I think it is just expectations. You know,
cast set a certain expectation for you that you were
supposed to be, you know, able to do. Yeah. I
mean when people talk about, like nowadays they talk about

(09:43):
black excellence, I have a different conception of what that
was when I was growing up than what I sometimes
feel like it is now when people use that phrase,
because I felt like when I was in middle school
in high school in detro It, it was like they
kicked your butt like you had to be good, Like
you actually had to be good. It wasn't just like

(10:03):
a label, because if you had to live up to it,
and you and you wanted to, like, you wanted to
be great at whatever it is that you were doing.
And I think that that is how I sort of
always think of my childhood is a Black excellence when
I think about that that Black Excellence was awarded tenfold

(10:24):
with a strange loop. Many have wondered how much of
the play was drawn from real life experience. While you've
said that this is not autobiographical, it's certainly mirrors um
your journey to a great degree. Yeah, So I always say,
if I had to use the word autobiographical, I would
describe it as emotionally autobiographical, which used to say that

(10:45):
I have felt everything that the protagonists, as Sir has felt.
I lived a version of that UM as a younger person.
The show sort of is frozen at a young man
who's going on, I'm forty one now, UM, and I
drew from personal experience to tell uh the show. But

(11:07):
like it's I always say, the reason why don't call
it an autobiography is because it's not as simple as
a one to one ratio events of my life. It's
about a young person who has a certain distorted point
of view about himself and distorted perspective and everything gets
refracted through that, and so I don't know, like is

(11:30):
that the truth? I don't It's it's hard to say
because like everything is like the world is horrible, and
but he still has this weird brain of hope inside
of that and that you know, it was definitely my
truth as a young person. But once I got a
certain distance from that experience, it was different than like

(11:53):
my quote unquote life. It was like a it was
a portrait of a portrait. Um, it was like, you,
I'm not Picasso, But it was like when Picasso does
like these crazy self portraits where everything is like all
jagged and like it's not it's not that it's not
like a naturalistic um things. So it's about what it

(12:14):
feels like, what it felt like to be that aige
and to feel those feelings so intensely and to be
grappling with those emotions over time until he gets to
a point where he's like, oh, maybe I'm actually not
like the lowest life form on earth. And that's the story.
You know. Yeah. Interestingly, uh you know, as I as

(12:37):
I watched of the journey, particularly around the Tony's and
certainly have read up on you. Uh you know, you
spoke for and many people said this for so many
people and their feelings and you know what they lived
as well. It was, um, you know, a cry to
many of those people to say you're not alone and
that you know this is normal to a great degree. UM.

(13:01):
Let me ask you this. And I had this conversation
with someone, UM, and I'm wondering where you said, if
you if you've had these feelings. So it was a
gay young man who is also in the arts, and
he said, it's been difficult in this way. He said,
I don't know some days where I fit because there

(13:26):
is still too much homophobia in Black America. UM. And
I grapple with that. His family had embraced him, but
a lot of the surrounding extended family and others still
had issue. Uh. He said. While I've made it in
this industry, and he is has done things on Broadway

(13:47):
as well as an actor, he said that while the
Broadway community embraces my gay side, they don't always embrace
my back side in a way that I think they should. Um.
Have you have you felt that? And is it's still,
after all these years, difficult to find, um, a steady

(14:11):
place for you to feel. And I don't want to
put this on you. I'm asking comfortable and whole. That's
a really good question. UM. I think it's complicated for
me personally. UM. I know everybody has their own experiences
of this because for me, I've been asked about sort

(14:31):
of like homophobia in the black community. And I guess
the place I've actually landed after thinking about this for
a while is that I think that there's a lot
of homophobia and religious families, and if those religious families
like happened to be black, they're like, it can manifest

(14:54):
in a particular way and in a way that I
know it's very familiar to many many, many many black
queer folks and black a men in particular who go
through what that feels like, which is very can be
very difficult. Um uh. And so I actually would be
curious to talk to black game folks who did not

(15:17):
grow up in religious families to see what the experience
was like if their families didn't accept them because of
sort of like gender norms and and masculinity or whatever
and didn't have a different like flavor to it, then
if he grew up like in a Baptist or Projic

(15:38):
or Pentecostal home or Catholic or whatever. Um. And with
regard to sort of the being black on on Broadway,
you know, I just I mean a strangehoop is unique
in that it was like the first thing that I
ever did publicly, and or like in that when I
did other stuff, you know, outside of that. But so

(16:00):
my experience, I think is a maybe an outlier. I've
had like a pretty great time, which is to say,
I think because I spent so much time working on it,
but a time it got to off Broadway or off
Broadway or on Broadway, it was kind of undeniable, like
nobody could really tell us anything, like we we we

(16:24):
were doing it, and I had a lot of partners
to help me tell the story that I wanted to tell,
both on stage and in the marketing and everything. And
also the world had sort of shifted in some ways
from when I had been working on it for many
years in an environment, in an environment that was a
lot more conservative and was would not have allowed a

(16:48):
strange to pierce through the veil at those earlier times.
Is it tiresome sometimes to talk about being gay? Um?
The media is often so fixated on that. Um, not
just obviously with you, but we still have this sense

(17:08):
of if you were interviewing me as a straight man,
I don't get the question of my sexuality, you know,
I can just deal with the project. I mean, I
would say that, like, I don't I don't mind talking
about it. It's just sometimes people don't like my answers.
You you you know what I mean, because like, for example,
like I can't tell you the number of times through

(17:31):
this whole process that people are like, what did your
parents think? What your parents think because they had this?
I mean, I think it's because they see what's in
the show, but they can't. It actually goes back to
this something I've been talking to the lead of our show,
Jack Quo, about, is that there's this weird stereotype that
whatever you're seeing on stage is not art. It's like

(17:56):
it's it's just real. It's just like black realness. It's
just like I opened up a vein and I bled
on the page, and I and and that's all that
you're seeing. That there was nothing that's made about it,
and so and I and and and I have to
be fair to the people who do this, is that

(18:16):
because there's this weird blend of life and art in it.
I know why people might be like, oh, my god,
your parents are parents. But on the other hand, it's
like you can't objectively look at what you see on
stage and go, oh, there's probably something that's a little
fictional about this. It's like very clear to me. Um,
And so I don't get tired of talking about it,

(18:37):
but I do sometimes just I wonder why people can't
sort of see a little bit beyond what's just the
obvious thing in front of them. Um. So I don't know,
like it it's but you're I mean, you're you're, you're right,
Like no one will ask you about like your straightening

(19:00):
and and like really like put a magnifying glass to it.
But they do want to know, you know, particularly if
you're like a black game, Like I want to know
all about the struggle. It's all about the struggle, the
struggle and the pain and the and and the trauma
and all of that. And like I had those things,
but I also had other things, Like if you watch
the show User ends in a pretty in a in

(19:22):
a not perfect but like a decent place, And that
was important to me in the storytelling that you watched
like somebody black go through something difficult but come out
on the other side. So often in these narratives that
we see in stage and film and TV, it's always
has to end in either some sort of calamity or

(19:43):
some like hyper you know, joyful explosion, you know. Um,
and I just wanted to create something that was real
that like I felt just like people could relate to
of like sometimes it is stucked up, but then you know,
you move on with your life, or like and it
still might be sucked up, but you you keep going.

(20:05):
That's that feels real to me. I remember doing an
interview and someone asked me about, um, whether I felt
the need to do stories all the time about the
black condition or about black folks, or about etcetera, etcetera. UM.
And I remember when I first went to NBC, A

(20:28):
lot of the black reporters didn't want to do black stories.
They didn't want to be quote pigeonholed, where I took
the other uh road. I felt like, well, you're not
doing them often enough, so I want to do them. UM.
I'm curious when you look at what you want your
future works to be, would you always have an element

(20:51):
of making sure that there is a through line of
gay or queer people being put in it? Or do
you just want simply to do good art? So I
don't necessarily think that I mean this and that could
be proven wrong with this. I don't necessarily think that
there will always be gay or queer through line. But

(21:16):
I do think that pretty much there will always be
a black through line because that's I've been writing stories
since I was like eleven years old. And the world
that I grew up in in Detroit, I went to
I came from a black family. I went to black schools,
I went to black churches, incasing Bible school, Like everything

(21:40):
that I did was black. I had black teacher like it,
and I learned art from black teacher and also from
my teachers. But like my my consciousness as an artist
is very much comes from thinking of black is the
default condition, and that default condition is multiplicity and can

(22:02):
do anything. And so I feel like I'm invested in
weaving black life through all kinds of stories that sometimes
they're like for example, in White Grown Danger, the protagonist
of White Grown Danger is gonna trigger some people because

(22:23):
she she's a social climber and she will do whatever
she has to do to get what she wants, which
means that she often will stab people in the back.
It means that she like is kind of becomes kind
of a monster, but she's also like, you know, the
one to watch, and so I'm interested in. That's as

(22:47):
a through line of like a blackness is being kind
of unstoppable and an undeniable no matter what is happening. UM,
which also means that sometimes it has to it can
be unpleasant, and that I have to not be afraid
to show that in front of an audience that is

(23:08):
not black, which I'm not, and that's you know, on
a strange loop. Has certainly been true and and some
of the criticism that I get every once in a
while was like, how why are you showing that in
front of them? Well, the answer to that is because
I'm not afraid of them, and I can't be as
an artist especially but also in life, I'm not afraid
of there. Let's talk about UM, what must have been

(23:32):
a magical night for your eleven nominations you win for
Best Musical and Best Book. We should note for those
who are not UM play or Broadway aficionados, when you
talk about the book, that is what goes along and
a musical that isn't being sung, you know there there
has to be a quote unquote conventional play that that

(23:55):
goes along with that. UM. When you have that kind
of success, it makes it even more difficult, I think,
or at least certainly puts um pressure not necessarily self
imposed on the next thing. Oh yeah, what are you
feeling as you walk into whatever the next thing is? Um?

(24:19):
You know, I feel my next project is real crazy.
It's like a lot. It's like a big splashyt like
big swing. It's a big swing. I'm taking a big
old swing with my next piece. And I feel terrified
and I feel excited, like, which to me tells me
that I'm doing the right thing by working on it.

(24:41):
We just actually finished the workshop of it yesterday. Um,
and we're sort of slowly moving toward a production at
the top at the first quarter of next year hopefully
and off Broadway. And um, I and I do sort
of you know, especially because a strange Loop is a
piece that has been that so many people have felt

(25:04):
like affirmed and like validated by that. Like in some ways,
at least in this moment, I am sort of perceived
is like this like maker of a warm bath, or
or of a you know, or something that's like makes

(25:25):
people feel snugly inside or whatever. I mean. I'm being
a little facetious, but but that's generally like when I
interact with people. That's and when I hear people talk
about the show, that's what they feel. Whereas my next
piece is I think it also has any an emotional
colore that it gets too, but it also is a

(25:46):
little pointed. It's like pointing. It's a little bit pointing
outward at the world, because it's a piece that is
in some ways about my working through what this world
has been over the last couple of years. And I
say a couple of years, meaning both the last three
years but also the last you know, ten years. The

(26:09):
last It deals a lot with race and class and
um these what we call equity, diversity and inclusion, and
my sort of complex feelings about what that is and
how I have experienced that and seen it and seen
people talk about it, and like how then that then
gets his his ricocheted out into the world. Um And

(26:35):
and so I, pardon me, is a little worried that
people are going to really throw tomatoes, But I'm also like,
maybe that's part of the art as well. It is
like the tomato throwing in this next piece. So I'm
excited and terrified. That's the that's like a long the
sort of it, you know, I'll give people a peek

(26:57):
at your sense of humor and also utilized as as
as maybe some forethought for you as you move into that. Um.
Your handle on Instagram is the Living Michael Jackson. Oh yeah,
what I got before the Michael Jackson people started to
come after me. Yeah, but I thought it was great
to me. It's like I've never been able to go

(27:17):
through the world without Yeah. Yeah, So I think that
it's like homage. Dare That's the way I took it
out loud, you know what I mean. But that's the
way I took it. Oh, how disrespectful? How dare you?
But those people are no different to me in some
ways from like in the in the musical. Strangely, like
the ancestors they have, they come out of the grade

(27:40):
to like admonish us or for how dare you, like
say bad about Howler Perry, how dare you? You know,
and like and then they like they like beat his
butt for that, And so it's fine. The Michael Jackson
people can be mad at me. So I remember talking
with him as Bad came out, and he talked about

(28:04):
the idea. This was maybe a month after came out,
and it was a huge success, but it wasn't thriller
in terms of the sales um and he talked about
the idea that he had to find a way to
understand that he probably wouldn't see another thriller, though the
work after that could be amazing, as it was often. Um,

(28:28):
have you resigned yourself to the fact that maybe and
I know it's horror when it's the first thing, But
maybe strange Loop becomes something that you'll always chase or
is it that thing that motivates you to get past it?
You know? I I do access that, Like you know,

(28:48):
probably a strange Loup will always be the thing that
people most sort of associate me with, and that UM
will be on my you know, and obituary, like it
will say, like Strangely creator Michael hard Jackson died in
fiery plane crash. You know what I mean. At please
don't universal let me die in a plane crash. That's

(29:09):
like my Worth's fear. But like, um, but it will
say that, and I and I'm so proud of that.
I mean, I worked so hard on a Strange Loop
and it was such an unlikely success that if that
was all I ever was known for, I would be
so happy. But like but as an artist, I don't
have that view. I mean, as a person, I had

(29:31):
that view, but as an artist, I don't have that view.
I have to keep climbing and I have to keep
chasing after the things that confused me, that bother me,
that thrilled me. UM and White Girl and Danger, which
is my next musical. Um is the one at this
moment having sort of completed in a certain way, the

(29:51):
journey of a Strange Loop. It's the one that I'm like,
have an existential like need to tell this story and
I and I and in my own little artistic naive mind,
that's my my best thing. They I would say that
you're it's good at your next thing, And to me,
my next thing is White Girling Danger, which I think

(30:13):
is an awesome, it's exciting musical that I've always wanted
to do something this sort of grand and ambitious, and
I'm gonna keep doing that every time I go to
a new piece. I want to keep topping myself and
like finding a new lens and a new way to

(30:34):
thrill audiences as best I can. Michael again, man, congratulations
for you know all of what Strange Loop has done
for you and Um, you know We certainly look forward
to that being the first of many many accolades that
you will receive for your work. Brother, and just keep
it up man. Thank you, thank you for this conversation.

(30:58):
I really enjoyed speaking with you. Another big thanks to
Michael R. Jackson. His Tony Award winning Leah Strange Loop
is on Broadway at the Lyceum Theater now one hundred
is produced by ed Gordon Media and distributed by I

(31:20):
Heart Media. Carol Johnson Green and Sharie Weldon are our bookers.
Our editor is Lance Patton. Gerald Albright composed and performed
our theme. Please join me on Twitter and Instagram at
ed L Gordon and on Facebook at ed Gordon Media.