Meet Jordan Cooper, the Broadway’s youngest Black American playwright. In May of this year, he was nominated for six Tony Awards for his play “Ain’t No Mo,” including “Best New Play,” “Best Featured Actor in a Play,” and “Best Featured Actress in a Play.”
The play is a collection of short comic skits set against the backdrop of a bizarre future. The website for the play poses the startling idea, “What if the United States government offered one-way tickets to Africa to Black Americans?”
As the satirical comedy rushes over the tumultuous skies of being Black in today’s America, the play is supposed to go quicker than a transatlantic jet airliner. Cooper’s play was supported early on by “big time” producers such as Dwyane Wade, Gabrielle Union, Lee Daniels, and RuPaul Charles.
The show faced closure around one week after opening on December 1, 2022, and it needed a social media campaign to get it operating again on December 23, which Cooper described as a “frustrating experience.” Despite its brief Broadway run, the play is one of the top Tony-nominated plays of 2022. It also garnered a lot of positive feedback from viewers.
Cooper began writing plays when he was just six years old and couldn’t even wield a pen properly, according to the Star-Telegram. One of his first plays featured a dialogue between Santa Claus and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. He wasn’t sure what he was doing, but he knew something was wrong.
“Each one of us has some kind of light to make this world a little bit brighter,” Cooper said. “Some people don’t discover that light and I’m just so grateful that I’ve discovered that light and now I get to show it to the world.”
Cooper knew he wanted to be an artist since he was six years old, which startled his parents. Despite his parents’ reservations about his job goals, they supported his desire to be an artist.
“As parents, that’s something you need to do,” his mother, Angela Cooper, said. “You need to nurture; you need to feed your children when you see that they are interested in something because you just never know where it goes.”
He polished his craft at L.D. Bell High School, where he studied theater. A few days after graduating from high school, he directed his own play at Fort Worth’s Jubilee Theater. In addition, as part of his aim to become a playwright, he attended college at The New School of Drama in New York.
After moving to New York from Texas, the Hurst native made his breakthrough. Cooper’s agent had lunch with Academy Award nominee Lee Daniels, and the agent showed Daniels some of Cooper’s work.
Cooper would later receive an email from Daniels asking him to share an early version of “Ain’t No Mo’.” He shared. Daniels loved it and subsequently came on board as a producer.
Fast forward to 2022, “Ain’t No Mo’” opened on Broadway in December of that year at the Belasco Theatre.
Cooper, 28, is now an Obie Award-winning playwright and performer who was once named OUT Magazine’s Entertainer of the Year. Obie has given him a particular mention for his piece “Aint No Mo.” Cooper recently created and executive produced his first television project, “The Ms. Pat Show,” which critics have termed “one of the most radical sitcoms in the modern era,” according to Broadway.com. He is also the youngest Black showrunner in television history, as well as the youngest Black American author on Broadway.
Cooper has one bit of advice for people looking to push boundaries: ignore the hardship. He attributes his success to “ignoring what people say can’t happen just because it’s never happened before.” Cooper has been named to Forbes’ 2024 30 Under 30 Hollywood & Entertainment list.