YalePlaywrightsWilding, interesting perspectives.
I too am a Black gay male, but in my 30s. But where you saw a lot of the show as problematic, I saw it as an honest exploration. And the Broadway mount is MUCH better than Playwrights. (I didn't love it there but respected the original effort. The new lead and tweaks to the script grabbed my heart on Broadway.)
I totally see and understand your critiques, but actually, I think this is the most respectable Black show that has been on Broadway in a while. I don't believe in Black suffering being the only narrative of Black-made/centered theater. (Not a fan of a lot of Black "classics" and a LOT of new stuff by Black writers for this very reason.) But this show is not even based in real life — it's all in Usher's head.
This is true because he has many, many conflicts with the thoughts throughout the show. The Tyler Perry part is most notable: Where Usher's tearing down Perry, his "thoughts" are lifting him up. And remember, the thoughts, though realized by other actors, are still Usher. Whatever they are doing or saying is another perspective from Usher.
The thoughts also recall Usher's memories/traumatic moments. This is a human experience anyone can relate to, but it's very specific to Usher, a fat, Black, gay 25/26-year-old that has come from a very "urban" (I'm Black, so I'll just say it, and with love, "hood"
environment. This is my story too. I understood everything Usher was struggling with.
As we know, when you come from challenging environments, urban or not, maybe people accept that "it is what it is" no matter how wrong/damaging they intellectually know it is. But to change that, to dream something wildly new and better for yourself and your family, seems quite unfathomable to many in that position. So the cycle/loop continues. Throughout the show, Usher is trying to be the one who breaks this cycle for the future of him and his family.
Maybe if he were to do something difficult for him to imagine, like make his play happen in a splashy way, it will inspire his family to reach new heights too? Or at the very least, through his success, he can give them resources to try.
The longing for a sexy white boyfriend and the sex scene with the white guy (one a fantasy, another a memory) is necessary because it wakes Usher up to how toxic white gay men can be and also why Black gay love is powerful and important. He powerfully denounces his embarrassment and prior longing for white d**k at the end of the show.
As for white audiences consuming this, overall, I believe the joke is on them. The show is not for them ultimately, although it allows them to find space to connect on a very surface level through their own experiences. But I imagine most will be confused about many of the references.
To sum up, the show isn't asking anyone to leave changed or anything. It's asking audiences to think about why they see and navigate the world in the way they do, and to question when that perspective is toxic to yourself and (especially for white folks) others outside of yourself, continuing a strange/toxic loop. (We see this now politically and socially, and it will continue until the majority decides to step out of the loop and stop doing the same mess that continues to create division.)
A Strange Loop is an introspective experience. It doesn't care how it looks in front of non-Black people because it's all his wild, messy, honest thoughts and memories. And any non-Black person finding pleasure in Usher's reality or longing to be his white savior should reconsider their worldview. Usher isn't asking to be embraced by them; he only really cares about saving his Black self and possibly, one day in his future, his Black family — hoping to live in the world as freely as white people unconsciously, often times in a toxic way (like on this board lol), do.
(This is made very clear in "Inner White Girl," where he drags the privilege that white folks, in the form of white girls, "have wielded since birth." He knows he deserves that same type of freedom though he's denied it as a Black person, but still desperately longs for it.)
Also, the Broadway ushers in some theater in the past, actually did dress that way, as evidenced by Michael himself lol: https://twitter.com/thelivingmj/status/1523328970141274113?s=21&t=VDWIBSH1Lb4IoeFt5IpNFg
Updated On: 5/18/22 at 02:30 PM
