Jordan E. Cooper Is Broadway’s Groundbreaking New Voice
A few years ago, Jordan E. Cooper was at a 7-Eleven getting a red Slurpee next to a police officer. As Cooper went to grab for the lever of the Slurpee machine, the officer reached for his gun.
“I just remember putting my hands up and then just backing up. And he just gave me a, ‘ha, kind of joking’ motion. And I went home thinking that I could have died over $1.75,” Cooper says.
More from WWD
It was late 2016 into early 2017, and the news continued to be full of stories of unarmed shootings of young Black people, and Cooper found himself thinking of his own worth and about walking through life so on guard.
“I have a dark sense of humor, so I always have to find something to laugh about,” he says. “And I was just like, ‘Well, what if everybody just left? What if we all said, ‘Deuces, no more?’”
That is loosely the premise of his play “Ain’t No Mo,” which opened initially at The Public before transferring to Broadway earlier this month (making Cooper, at just 27 years old, the youngest American playwright in Broadway history). In a series of vignettes, Cooper wonders what would happen if all Black Americans left on a plane for Africa.
“I just started to write from that place of like, ‘What if? What if that was the Promised Land and that was the thing that will solve everything?’ And then as I was writing it, I just realized that it wasn’t necessarily to solve at all,” Cooper says.
He began writing more for catharsis, without ever thinking it would reach much of a larger audience.
“I never thought [this show] would be on Broadway. It’s just so raw and so bold and big and crazy that I just wrote it for myself, originally. I never thought anybody else would really get it,” Cooper says. “And people got it, and they ran with it. It was really cool.”
Cooper grew up outside Fort Worth, Texas, in a big football-dominated community, and while he played sports growing up as well “I was a kid at basketball practice, reading Wicked [on the sidelines],” he says. He came to New York to study at The New School and remembers walking by The Public the day he moved to the city.
“I remember taking a look at a roster of the shows that was coming up, and I took a picture of it. And ‘Hamilton’ was on there, and I just remember being like ‘I’m going to come back and I’m going to watch some of these shows.’ And I could never afford them,” he says. Opening a show at that same theater then was a surreal full-circle moment, he said. “I want to make sure that I have things in place that would help me see the show that I wouldn’t be able to afford to see.”
In the days since WWD spoke to Cooper, it’s been announced that “Ain’t No Mo” will close earlier than expected, on Sunday. But hearing the list of things Cooper has in the works outside of the show, it’s clear this is just his beginning.
“I just have these stories inside of me, and I just wanted to share them with people. And I’m just grateful that I get to do something that literally just gives me joy. Literally just gives me joy,” Cooper says. “Because I love people, and I love showing people, people.”
Best of WWD
