Tuesday night Trevor Noah hosted Black Theater Night on Broadway at A Strange Loop. The television host loves the show and has seen it multiple times. “I’ve now been to A Strange Loop four times and it’s funny [but] every single time I come I feel like I’m focusing on something different, I’m learning something different and there’s a different part of the play that almost gets revealed to me” said Noah.  Playwright, Composer and Lyricist Michael R. Jackson, creator of A Strange Loop; Choreographer Raja Feather Kelly and Musical Director Rona Siddiqui joined Noah and cast members James Jackson, Jr.; L Morgan Lee; John-Michael Lyles; John-Andrew Morrison; Jon-Michael Reese; Jaquel Spivey and Jason Veasey for the discussion.

Noah also said: “What I find interesting about it, in particular, is the first time you watch the play, for instance, you may think, depending on who you are, ‘Oh, this is a play about Black and white.’ The second time you watch it you may go, ‘Oh no. This is a play about religion and how it controls people’s lives and how it tells us how we should be or shouldn’t be.’ Then it becomes about acceptance. Each time it feels like there is a different layer. And really, the more I watch it, I realize it almost feels like a commentary on all these little prisons, all these structures, all these systems and I guess the most confining one being our minds.”

A Strange Loop will play for seven more weeks before the final show on January 15th, 2023. Michael R. Jackson’s Pulitzer-prize-winning play centers around Usher who is a queer Black writer writing a musical about a queer Black writer writing a musical.

For more information and tickets check out A Strange Loop Musical. 

Tickets for Michael R. Jackson’s Tony and Pulitzer-prize-winning musical A STRANGE LOOP are back on sale until Sunday, January 15, 2023. A STRANGE LOOP opened at Playwrights Horizon in 2019 in association with Page 73 Productions. In December 2021, the show had a critically acclaimed run at Washington, D.C.’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company prior to coming to Broadway.

Jackson’s musical is semi-autobiographical as it addresses some of the challenges he faced coming out as a Black gay man with humor and truth. The Detroit native wrote A STRANGE LOOP over an almost 20-year period that started while he was an undergraduate student at NYU. The musical has played consistently to sold-out audiences with people like Jennifer Hudson, Whoopi Goldberg, Michelle Obama, Steven Spielberg and Queen Latifah amongst the crowd. Jackson became the first African-American to win a Pulitzer for a musical when he took home the award for Drama in 2020. A STRANGE LOOP was named Best Musical by the Tony Awards, New York Drama Critics’ Circle, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Drama League and Off-Broadway Alliance. 

For more information on A STRANGE LOOP visit https://strangeloopmusical.com/. Follow A STRANGE LOOP on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube at @strangeloopbway.

Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuff will have a Broadway revival next year. Tony Award nominee Camille A. Brown will choreograph and direct Ntozake Shange’s production which originally premiered on Broadway at the Booth Theatre in 1976.   Shange introduced the piece two years earlier at a Berkeley, California women’s bar. She called the work about seven women’s suffering under racism and sexism a  choreopoem. The play was the second one by a Black woman to be presented on Broadway after Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin In The Sun.  On March 4, 2022 for colored girls… will return to the Booth Theatre for the first time since its original debut. Brown shared her excitement in a statement: 

“Of all the shows to be given as an opportunity to debut as a first-time Broadway director and choreographer,for colored girls…feels like a gift. I’m thrilled that I’ve been entrusted to combine all the parts of myself—dance, music and theater arts—to shape and share this timeless story again with the world.”

Tyler Perry adapted Shange’s choreopoem into a film adaptation in 2010 and shortened the title to For Colored Girls. Tickets for Brown’s reimagination of the play go on sale December 9th at 10 A.M. ET via www.telecharge.com. Presale tickets are available now for Audience Reward members until December 6th. It is free to join the official rewards program for Broadway at www.AudienceRewards.com. For more information about the play visit forcoloredgirlsbway.com. Follow socials on Facebook,Instagram and Twitter. 

[youtube id=”56fUT3UQ-Zc”] August Wilson’s widow, Constanza Romero was interviewed by Blacktree TV. Ms. Romero talked about her late husband’s play Fences being brought to the screen and her reaction to seeing Denzel Washington saying his words.