A Strange Loop is a musical written by playwright Michael R. Jackson which premiered on off-Broadway stages in 2019. The play shortly grew in popularity, earning a Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2020 and eventually landing on Broadway at the Lyceum Theater in April of 2022. The musical received 11 Tony Award nominations in 2022. Jackson has an awarded history prior to A Strange Loop, including writing On Children and Teeth. Jackson, a black gay man, has incorporated several biographical elements into A Strange Loop including his own education at NYU and his previous work as an Usher. However, in an article with CBS News, Jackson shares that the musical is an emotional autobiography rather than a factual one, touching more on the emotional and affective aspects of his life and identity.
Jacksons´A Strange Loop is a musical about a black gay man writing a musical about a black gay man writing a musical, and so on and so forth. The protagonist is accompanied on stage by six of his thoughts, that reflect his memories, emotions, fears, and come to represent his family members and sexual partners as well. The cover art for the text, as seen on Slide 3, demonstrates the search for the main character’s, Usher, identity leads him to discover that he is a multiplicity of things (like the accumulation of all his diverse thoughts and feelings), and that “‘I’ is just an illusion” (98).
The play deals with intersectionality, almost explicitly, Thought 6 speaks about the play: “...Why not make it be about slavery or police violence so the allies in your audience have something intersectional to hold on to?” (30). Intersectionality is a theory developed by Kimberlé Crenshaw which explains that various different factors (or identities) constitute individual identity, and these multiple social and political identities are related to systems of power and discrimination. As you can see from slide 5 there are 12 identities, many of which are discussed explicitly in the musical: Education, Race, Culture, and Sexual Orientation.
These inner identities have complex relationships within the work. For example, in terms of Education, Usher is riddled with guilt and embarrassment that following his NYU education, he is just working as an Usher in New York City. The criticism of his southern family only depends on his shame and frustration.
His racial identity is pivotal to the piece, Usher’s blackness is something he is always struggling with. For example, he calls himself a race traitor for for not fitting into traditional conceptions of blackness and for his sexual and submissive relationships with white men, he degrades himself for these relationships, calling himself a “n*gger”. Questions about culture revolve around black culture and what it means to be black.
The play also focuses heavily on Usher’s identity as a gay man. His sexual orientation is not only a point of self-loathing for himself, but a point of contention with his christian family, who deny his true identity. His family love him dearly, but their bigotry is obvious, even threatening him that God will punish him by infecting him with AIDS (75).
The question of AIDS is interesting, and today HIV is not a death sentence as it was in the 80s, but is still a reality for straight and queer people. In the 80s, HIV was a health epidemic effecting marginalized groups, especially black and queer communities and ignored by public health initiatives and outreach, which increased the amount of the needless loss of black, brown, and queer lives. While, PrEP, explicitly mentioned in the play, and other treatments and preventions for HIV are available today, pain and shame are emotions still prevalent in communities that lost many to the AIDS epidemic. Usher’s family is an example of a community not only still suffering the pain of the loss of Darnell, who had died due to Aids, but also a people who have made sense of his death through a bigoted form of Christianity.
The play also features two very rich processes: one of which is intertextuality. The work explicitly engages and dialogues with other pivotal works, particularly that of black artists, The work of Tyler Perry, Tanahesi Coates, and Michelle Alexander presents rich material for consideration. Metafiction and metatheatre are also present in the work, which refer to the process of writing itself, which allows one to consider the role of the writer in narrating themself.
The KU and Lawrence community has a lot to gain by bringing this production to Murphy Hall. As we have talked about in this class, representation is incredibly important and institutions like KU must make an effort to feature and stage black and queer stories and to represent not the U.S. population, but K.U. and Lawrence’s own population. In addition, like we have discussed in class, members of the hegemonic identity (in this case those who are white and heterosexual) benefit from consuming media that representents (in quality) experiences and identities different than their own.
A Strange Loop in particular, goes beyond just representation, and interacts explicitly with themes of identity and intersectionality. These topics are not only incredibly relevant now in terms of academic scholarship but are important tools in ensuring diversity, equity and inclusion for all people. Truly coming to understand and empathize with people who differ from us, is the foundation for valuing diversity and working toward equity and inclusion.
Lawrence and KU, in particular, have a duty to engage in these topics, one because of it’s queer population and student body and the mission it upholds to serve and advocate for queer students, as exemplified by The Center for Sexuality & Gender Diversity.
Queer individuals on campus, and in Lawrence, and beyond, are in a precarious situation. Despite the progress in equity made by legal marriage being federally legalized in 2015, LGBTQIA+ individuals still face discrimination, hatred, and bigotry. Kansas is home to the Westboro Baptist Church, a Christian group, pictured in slide 17, that has lead the movement in persecuting queer individuals and communities, which makes this play a particularly useful educative tool and act of resistance here in Kansas. Additionally, since discrimination laws very from state to state and now that post-Roe, some Supreme Court judges have encouraged revisiting the federal protection of Same Sex marriage, it is incredibly important to stage and validate these queer stories.
As we have discussed in our course, systems and processes of racism and race formation are very much alive in our country and front and center of social discourse following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers in 2020. KU’s own student body has been outspoken against racism, especially the women’s basketball team who has led a Black Lives Matter march here on campus, as. KU, an institution that heralds diversity, has a duty and responsibility to its students to participate in conversations regarding racism, and that can be accomplished through art such as A Strange Loop.
Outside of Lawrence, Kansas has its own history with racism. While lauded as an abolitionist free state, Lawrence is not free from racism. It was just 140 years ago that 3 black men, Pete Vinegar, Isaac King and George Robertson, were lynched in Lawrence. Around a dozen towns throughout the state have histories as “sundown” towns, places historically unsafe for black Americans after dark, and a “racism in Kansas” search in Google produces a discouraging amount of recent news stories chronicling systematic racism in schools, police forces, and hate crime incidents. While Kansas has a plethora of resources to chronicle landmarks in the civil rights movement and abolition movement, as demonstrated in slide 19, there is always more to be done. KU has a unique opportunity to positively equip our students and educate our citizens to combat these systems by using art as a small stepping stone toward discussion, understanding, and equity.
KU has a particular ability to make an impact by critically engaging the audience in a talk back following the production. Scholars of black history, sociology, and American studies here at KU can give audiences the knowledge, tools, and framework to understand the importance of the themes of race, sexual orientation, and identity, and how to move forward and be active in working towards equity.
Works Cited
Jackson, Michael R. A Strange Loop. Theatre Communications Group, 2020.
“‘A Strange Loop’ Playwright Michael R. Jackson on His Emotional Autobiography.” Edited by Steven Tyler, CBS News, CBS Interactive, 5 June 2022, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-strange-loop-playwright-michael-r-jackson/.
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