Ain't No Mo'

Ain't No Mo program. If you can, read the notes on the left side. They are brilliant.

Wikipedia article on Ain't No Mo'

Ain't No Mo' is a play written by Jordan E. Cooper, a native Texan from Ft. Worth.  It was first staged Off-Broadway at the Public Theatre before the pandemic in March 2019.  It re-opened on Broadway in December, 2022 and ran for 28 performances. That production starred Cooper as "Peaches" and was directed by another native Texan, Stevie Walker-Webb, a noted MCC alum from Waco whose work was seen frequently at Jubilee Theatre. Ain't No Mo' is significant in that it made Cooper the youngest Black playwright (27) to get a show produced on Broadway as well as the youngest to be nominated for a Tony. This is the Texas premiere of Ain't No Mo' presented by Soul Rep Theatre.  This is the second production I have been to see by Soul Rep.  The last one was Do No Harm, which also starred MCC alum, Whitney Coulter.  Whitney is the reason I drive all the way to DFW to see plays because she is that good and I love her and would go anywhere to see her act or to see her costume designs.  Whitney never got the leads that she deserved while at MCC, until Tartuffe, so it's great to see her success.

As a white person, I knew going in that this play was not written for me or about me.  I was getting the privilege of a small peek inside what it has been like to be in this country as a person of color from 2008, when Barak Obama was elected.  Like the opening vignette, I too, thought that things were finally going in the right direction for Black people and as the optimist that I am, really thought that we were finally becoming an anti-racist society.  Ha!  Little did I know what would come at the end of the 2016 election cycle: Four years of the most racist, misogynistic, hate-filled, ignorant, "alternative facts", fake news bullshit. Although this play was written before Hillary lost to Trump it was clear that Cooper could see the writing on the wall in a way a lot of white people couldn't.  His play was prescient then and even more so four years later, now that we have refused to elect a white woman and a Black woman to be our president.  Kamala's name was clearly worked into the existing script to reflect the recent events of the last election, which made it all the more gut-wrenching.

The play supposes, What if the government emailed all Black people a free ticket back to Africa?  Would they use it and leave?  Would they refuse and stay? If you are unaware of history, this is actually the plan that a lot of abolitionists, including Abraham Lincoln, had for Black people post civil war.  They didn't like the idea of slavery but that didn't mean they wanted Black people to stay here and have equal rights.  There was a huge segmant of the population that felt the best solution was sending them all on a ship back to Africa, even most of the enslaved population hadn't been born there and didn't speak the language.  They would have been competely at a loss for how to function in a country they had almost nothing in common with. Sound familiarly like what Trump is doing with Dreamers and other children of immigrants right now?

The play is told through short scenes that are a snapshot of ordinary Black people and what their lives have looked like up to this point.  In one scene, Cooper explores the effect of gun violence on young Black men, lack of support services for children and single mothers forcing them to choose abortion now rather than giving birth to sons that will eventually be murdered by cops. In another scene, Cooper shows us an insider view of reality TV with a interview with the stars of The Real Baby Mamas of the Southside. During a question and answer session as things are escalating between two rival Baby Mamas, a PA shouts "Cut" and it is revealed that 3 of the 4 "baby mamas" are anything but ghetto and one doesn't even have any children.  The whole thing is fake, especially Rachonda, whose real name is Rachel and who is transitioning from white to Black and has mis-appropriated Black culture to be on the show.  The three Black women are angrily confronting her about this when they get their plane ticket notification on their phones and immediately leave the taping, while Rachonda doesn't understand what just happened, not her white privilege, her cultural mis-appropriation, nor where everyone went.  She is left there alone.

The third scene deals with a rich Black family discussing the free plane ticket and whether or not they should take it.  The matriarch tells them that their deceased grand-daddy didn't work hard his whole life to leave all their success and status behind.  The family is at the point of agreeing when the personificaton of "Black" (played by Whitney Coulter) breaks out of the basement she has been chained up in for the last forty years to convince them to go back to Africa.  Their patriarch has deprived his heirs of being Black in order to assimilate and be accepted by his white neighbors.  As the family attempts to murder Black, her presense imbues them with a more authentic version of their own culture.

The fourth scene is set in a women's prison.  Everyone is being freed so they can get the last plane out. One of the inmates is excited to see her child, she has been in prison for two years and has missed her baby. Her monologue is sad but joyful and she leaves hopeful.  The very last inmate, played by Whitney Coulter, has a different reaction. When she is given back her possessions, she realizes that the bag is light and does not contain, as promised, everything she came in with.  She is missing her joy, self-respect, love for her children and the world, her trust, her hope, and she refuses to leave without it.  The matron comforts her and tells her that she may not have those things right now, but she can make more of them on the outside.  It won't be the same, but it will be something worth having.

The last scene is our airline hostess Peaches, a trans woman, who is scanning everyone's boarding pass and telling them to "Enjoy their flight!" When it is time for her to close the gates, she must bring the Miss Bag, the representation baggage of Blackness with her so her people won't forget their past in their new home.  However, Miss Bag is too heavy to lift. In her vain struggle to get the bag on the plane, she misses her flight. We were warned at the beginning of the show that anyone who remained behind would be immediately turned into a white person, like the infamous pillar of salt in the Bible.  The rest of the actors come out and strip her of her drag--wig, dress, bra, and heels--leaving her revealed as male, half naked, exposed, and alone. It is a stunning ending and a powerful message. My only regret is that the run was so short, only one weekend, that I couldn't get this written and published in time to encourage anyone else to see it before it closed.

If you want to read a review of the show by a Black author, who definitely understood it better and more viscerally than I did, I have included the link to Rickey Wax's eloquent critique below.

Rickey Wax's Review of Ain't No Mo'

Rob, Whitney Coulter, and me after Ain't No Mo' at the Kalita Humphrey's Theatre in Dallas.