Episode four of Bite-Sized Broadway is out, and that uncomfortable feeling you’re getting from the title is intentional. It’s story time!
About six years ago, comedian/actor/executive Jamil Ellis brought me on board to add some music to a one-man show he’d written called The Magical Negro Speaks, interrogating and exploring topics of racism, identity, and media representation through the storytelling trope of the “Magical Negro”, which is a wise one-dimensional Black character who exists solely to help and advise a white protagonist (think Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost, Will Smith in Bagger Vance, or Morgan Freeman in basically everything). The character’s whole M.O. is making the white audience comfortable.
Amidst the BLM protests in the summer of 2020, Jamil and I started talking about writing a sequel together, exploring this moment where white people were fumbling around and desperately trying to do something about racism (or look like they were doing something). Amidst all the tension and tragedy, there was something very farcical about the whole affair - all the empty gestures, all the oversteps, all the performativity. Everyone wanted easy and simple solutions.
The sequel wrote itself: a mediocre white man hires a Magic Negro to teach him how to end racism. And things go awry.
Jamil and I wrote the piece in a mad dash, and our producers assembled an INCREDIBLE cast. AJ Holmes revels in the mediocrity of Chad Sullivan and Darryl Jovann Williams is an exceptional musical chameleon and a fearless performer. The surprise stars of the piece are the two-member ensemble of Simone Zamore and Anthony Chatmon II, who play the other 20+ characters like SNL veterans.
What are you waiting for? Check it out!