‘A very special moment’
NSU Theatre Company to perform first-ever post-Broadway production of hit play
“Thoughts of a Colored Man” is the first play in Broadway’s 100-plusyear history to be written, directed and star Black men.
The show — which follows the lives of seven men in Brooklyn — touches on themes of gentrification, racial inequality and American masculinity. It is considered so significant to the advancement of American arts that a filmed performance will be archived in the Smithsonian Institution.
And while the show closed on Broadway last year, it will have its post-Broadway premiere Thursday by the Norfolk State University Theatre Company.
“It’s just a very special moment for the university and for Hampton Roads to be a part of this sort of landmark production that’ll extend this show into the greater American theatrical canon,” said Anthony Mark Stockard, the show’s director and company’s artistic director.
The play was never intended to be a linear story.
“Thoughts of a Colored Man” features seven allegorical characters: Depression, Love, Passion, Happiness, Anger, Lust and Wisdom. Each has its own worries, wants and desires.
However, Stockard said, each character ultimately paints a picture of what is
“basically a day in the life of a Black man living in Brooklyn.”
Although not a musical, the play includes a musical number in addition to weighty emotions, comedic moments, a “splash” of the “poetic” and addresses the core message — no one can always know what others are going through.
Characters speak and exchange ideas with each other in various locations throughout the neighborhood they live in such as a line outside of a store. One scene has them all meeting at a barber shop.
In 2021, the Washington Post theater critic, Peter Marks, wrote that while he could not “begin to know” the pressures of being an African America male in America, “I at least know more about their passion, love, anger, lust, depression, happiness and wisdom” after seeing “Thoughts of a Colored Man” on Broadway.
The same year, Tim Teeman, writing for The Daily Beast, called the play “unabashedly earnest” commenting on its direct treatment of speaking to an audience “about what
racism, inequality, aspiration, love, sexuality, tragedy, success, and happiness look like to a broad group of Black men in contemporary Brooklyn.”
In one scene, Anger, played by Jordan Hampton, a senior majoring in drama and theater at NSU, speaks about waking up to the distractions in his busy
apartment building. He used to pray for the people in ambulances that zoomed past his home. Until the frequency of sirens overwhelmed him. Anger’s counterpart, Happiness, played by NSU alum Corey Brown, is a corporate executive living in a high-rise apartment.
While Lust, played by
NSU freshman Justin Richardson, is preoccupied with the female body, his best friend, Love, played by NSU sophomore Adam Moskowitz, is more concerned with emotionally connecting with the opposite sex.
The characters come from different backgrounds but when their
perspectives are viewed as a whole, Stockard said, the play shows how they each face many of the same challenges and paints an insightful portrait of urban life for Black American men.