Ain’t No Mo’
Description
An uproarious play comprised of vignettes that deftly satirize post-“post-racial” America.
Jordan E. Cooper’s Ain’t No Mo’ is a hilarious satirical odyssey that needles post-Obama racial realities of life in the U.S. The time is the near future, and a giant plane has been chartered to take Black Americans “back to Africa.” Hurrying passengers down the runway is Peaches, a flight attendant (played by a performer in drag) who is organizing the boarding process. Within this frame, Cooper examines lives torn apart by gang violence, the aspirations of a Black middle class eager to leave behind those they feel are beneath them, and the equally delusional aspirations of some white Americans to “transition” into Blackness. Ain’t No Mo’ is a laugh-a-minute comedy that doubles as a serious investigation of the ways that Blackness in America has always been both a burden and a prize.
Reviews
“Ain’t No Mo’ wrangles rhetorical fantasy into a rollicking, high-concept sitcom, mining dark comedy from the horrors of racism and the particulars of Black life. Explosive as a hand grenade of laughing gas, it’s heady and hysterical and fearlessly provocative. Its keen observations about race as both social construction and lived reality crackle like a lit fuse.”
- Variety
“It’s a delight to have Jordan E. Cooper kick down the door of Broadway in heels and storm onstage with something as raucous as Ain’t No Mo’. The show’s whirligig satire seems to gain momentum by sending up its very environs, a series of sketches built around a recurring conceit wherein Cooper, in drag as a flight attendant named Peaches, desperately tries to coordinate the onboarding for a government-funded flight taking Black Americans back to Africa.”
- Vulture
“Ain’t No Mo’…bursts with confidence. It is confident in its voice, in its beliefs, in its artistry, in its wicked humor and angry pain—or pain-laden anger.”
- New York Times