Jordan E Cooper on "Morning Joe" this morning

Jordan E Cooper - billed as the youngest Black American playwright on Broadway - did an interview with Willie Geist and Rev Al Sharpton this morning. He's trying to save the show from closing this Sunday.

Jordan said Broadway has to be strategic in putting 'black shows into black neighborhoods'. He said a lot of Black folks don't think Broadway is 'for us' - 'because we're not always inviting'. People didn't know about the play because they didn't have the budget to advertise in black neighborhoods.

Cooper claims part of the reason his show is not failing is because they don't have a 'name' star - no Denzel Washington, etc - because they don't have the budget. Also said he didn't write this show for people who wanted to see Bette Midler in 'Hello Dolly', even though Broadway marketed his show to those people.

Cooper is a very passionate guy - hope he has luck in the future.

David10086 said: "Jordan E Cooper - billed as the youngest Black American playwright on Broadway - did an interview with Willie Geist and Rev Al Sharpton this morning. He's trying to save the show from closing this Sunday.

Jordan saidBroadway has to be strategic in putting 'black shows into black neighborhoods'. He said a lot of Black folks don't think Broadway is 'for us' - 'because we're not always inviting'. People didn't know about the play because they didn't have the budget to advertise in black neighborhoods.

Cooper claims part of the reason his show is not failing is because they don't have a 'name' star - no Denzel Washington, etc - because they don't have the budget. Also said he didn't write this show for people who wanted to see Bette Midler in 'Hello Dolly', even though Broadway marketed his show to those people.

Cooper is a very passionate guy - hope he has luck in the future."

It's unclear how luck is going to help him.

He's basically saying he wanted to create a Broadway show for people who don't go to Broadway. To be commercially successful, you have to know your audience.

ive totally lost the plot on what points youve been trying to make here Hogan.

Im glad Cooper was on Morning Joe--im glad he went, im glad they had him. But I genuinely dont get what his point is anymore. Broadway isnt inviting to Black audiences? Check. So now theres a play on Broadway that is FOR Black people (acc to him), and no one is coming to see it. OK. So hes mad at the producers for not marketing it properly? Fine.... how should they market it? I dont know- does he? Does he think Morning Joe is it? And if you boil all of his prior tweeting and speeching down, hes mad at.... Black audiences for not showing up?

I might try and see this over the weekend if I can, but I hate feeling like i HAVE to, if that makes any sense.

@PHP I certainly don't think you have to see it. I think I have been relatively consistent. I think a lot of people posting (especially) in the latter part of this thread don't like (and don't want to like) the show. (See, e.g., JSquared2: "Dude needs to quit bitching and moaning and move on (and maybe write a better play next time)?) Gee, guess what, a lot of respected people think it is a very fine play. JSquared2 doesn't. Fine. How is that relevant? I don't like The Music Man and it's doing great. I also think a lot of people posting in this thread don't want to engage on the issues before them. And I don't think a lot of people in this thread understand that this is not a simplistic uni-directional topic nor do the understand what Cooper is doing now or was doing when he wrote this piece. It's a shame but it makes the quality of this board on subjects like this extremely disappointing. Others in this community are having more intellectually sound discussions about all of this.

HogansHero said: "Phillyguy said: "To be commercially successful, you have to know your audience."

“If the Mountain won’t go to Mohammed, then Mohammed must come to the Mountain”

If the arts had to rely on the sort of thinking exhibited in this thread, "performance" would still consist of banging on the walls of caves with rocks."

There are many shows on Broadway right now addressing class, race, and gender that are doing better.


Knowing your audience doesn’t mean retreating to the Music Man or Funny Girl (both of which are phenomenal), but you need to know how big of an audience you would have before deciding to put a show on Broadway.


If you are on loud speaker telling the traditional Broadway audience that this show is not for you, then they will go somewhere else. There are so many shows on now (and with inflation), people are selective about which shows to see. No one is saying this isn’t a good or worthy performance, it’s just not on people’s top 3.


I’m actually sad it’s closing. I’ve seen 9 shows in 3 trips to NYC in the past few months. This is next on my list for next week.

Phillyguy said: "
If you are on loud speaker telling the traditional Broadway audience that this show is not for you, then they will go somewhere else. There are so many shows on now (and with inflation), people are selective about which shows to see. "



Exactly!



This reminds me of when Whoopi Goldberg went to see 'A Strange Loop' about a month after it opened this past Fall. Overall, she seemed to have liked it She gave her review for the show on 'The View', apparently thinking it would be helpful with 2 million viewers watching. Yet in her review she said (paraphrasing) "Just so you know, there are parts of this show that are disturbing and will make you feel uncomfortable. It's supposed to make you feel uncomfortable. " Should the marketing team used this as 'pull quotes' for their advertising ?

Not many successful Broadway productions are noted for being disturbing and making the audience feel uncomfortable. She was being honest, but did she have to include that in her review ? In my opinion, she did more harm than good. I wasn't surprised to hear it posted it's closing notice a short while later.