Jordan E. Cooper is an Obie Award-winning playwright and performer who was most recently chosen to be one of Out Magazine’s “Entertainers of the Year.” Last spring's run of his play Ain’t No Mo’, a New York Times Critic's Pick, sold out. Jordan created a pandemic centered-short film called “Mama Got a Cough” that has been featured in National Geographic and was named among the "Best Theater of 2020" by The New York Times. He is currently filming The Ms. Pat Show, an R-rated "old school" sitcom he created for BET+, which will debut later this year. He can also be seen as Tyrone in the final season of FX’s Pose.
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Ain't No Mo'
PEACHES
If you are one of those people who come to shows just so you can cough your way through them, please take this time to unwrap your cough drops and remind your body to shut itself the fuck up. However, this is still a show that you are allowed to be a part of. If you feel like laughing, laugh. If you wanna shout, bitch, shout, we will gladly hold your mule. Talk to us if you want. This is your church. And for those of you who are quiet, obedient and unresponsive in your church, consider this yo black church, yo sanctuary, yo juke joint, yo kitchen table, yo trial shaker, yo money maker, yo elevator, yo resuscitator.
Ain’t No Mo’Premiered in2019 -
Ain't No Mo'
KEISHA
What about you, Blue? Who’s picking you up?
BLUE
The rest of my life.
KEISHA
You don’t have no family or nothing?
BLUE
I’ve got blood somewhere but no family. My baby been dead eight years, got shot under they watch, and this old bitch was still stuck in here, barely breathing herself.
KEISHA
I’m sorry.
BLUE
Ain’t no sorries to give. Cause let me tell you something, as soon as I step my foot on the rest of that earth, I am going to live. Live enough life for the both of us. Live enough life that even God will turn sour over the sound of my breath. Shit, Imma live so much life that life won’t have shit left to live.
KEISHA
This prison gone fall without all of us keeping these walls together, huh?
O. BROWN
They gonna try and find somebody else to hold up them bricks, trust me.
Ain’t No Mo’Premiered in2019 -
Sweet Chariot
DAYVON
When was the last time you asked him how he was? Or how he felt about his daddy or how he felt about the world?
TRINA
I listen to him.
DAYVON
No you don’t.
TRINA
You been here 24 hours, how would you know what I do and don’t do.
DAYVON
His eyes tell on you.
TRINA
What?
DAYVON
Just like mine used to with mama and mama’s do on herself.
TRINA
I am not mama.
DAYVON
The boy is already scared, Trina. He can’t even hear his own thoughts over the sound of his fears.
TRINA
I ain’t raised that boy to be scared of nothing.
DAYVON
Well let’s start with you, he scared of you.
TRINA
I ain’t raise that boy to be scare of nothing but me.
DAYVON
And that don’t make no sense.
TRINA
It makes all the sense in the world, Dayvon. You don’t have a fraction of a clue what it’s like to bring a black boy into this world, always worried about who gone shoot the first bullet and how he’s gonna dodge it. I don’t have the fucking luxury to listen to him talk cause I got too much shit I’ve already been given to say. You think I want to hear the sound of my own voice yelling at him day and night? No I don’t, but I’d rather yell my voice into the boy’s ear than into the grass covered dirt of a grave.
Sweet ChariotPremiered in2018
“. . . nothing less than a spiritual portrait of black American life right now, with all its terrors, hopes and contradictions.” —Jesse Green, The New York Times [on Ain’t No Mo’]
"[Ain’t No Mo’] is at once unapologetically Black and queer af, challenging audiences to take a look at themselves through an immersive experience they’ve surely never experienced in New York theater." ―Tre'vell Anderson, Out
“Ain’t No Mo’ spirals into the kind of absurdism that, in frighteningly absurd times, feels like a mirror up to nature: It’s dead funny, but it’s no joke.” —Sara Holdren, Vulture
Hilarious, bombastic, electric, Jordan Cooper’s plays celebrate spectacle and explode conventions, mixing the taboo with the silly, the profound with the profane. This mordant yet exhilarating work raises a glorious cry of anger. Soulful and richly characterized, it is full of tender beauty and terror and joy. His plays dwell both in the real world and the beyond, a reality in which anguish and hope coexist in equal measure.