At age 12, I turned my love of theater into a career. As the youngest reporter chronicling what happens on the stage, what I’ve learned is that for much of Broadway’s history, Black artists fought for a seat at the table. But today, they’re building entirely new tables. We’re in a Black theater renaissance, and it’s reshaping what stories get told, who tells them, and who finally gets to see themselves up there on stage.

Many never imagined a Broadway piece could be called Slave Play, but there is. Written by Jeremy O. Harris, the award-winning production debuted on Broadway in 2019 and asked audiences to sit with its raw confrontations of race, sex, power dynamics, trauma, and interracial relationships.

Just as people were catching their breath, Jordan E. Cooper’s Ain’t No Mo’ hit the stage in 2022. This eight-part saga about Black people boarding a flight (No. 1619) to return to the motherland — for good — used satire like a scalpel to say something devastating about who America has never really made room for.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins has reimagined the Great American family drama, a form long dominated by white playwrights. As a new voice on the contemporary American family experience, he uses it to dig into legacy, faith, and, in the case of Purpose, a political dynasty coming apart from within. The play won both the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, making this a dinner table where we pulled up a chair.

The leaders of this movement are as diverse…

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Read Full Article by Joel Crump at www.ebony.com
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