‘‘No, no, no,’’ Jackson squealed.
‘‘I won’t say that out loud, but tell
me I’m wrong,’’ Feather Kelly said,
grinning.
‘‘I won’t tell you you’re wrong,’’
Jackson replied, cackling.
The most interesting comparison
Jackson identifi ed was between him-
self and Tyler Perry, whose artistic
work seems to exist at the opposite
end of the spectrum from the play-
wright’s: Perry is a multimillionaire
who boasts about producing fi lms in
fi ve days, and Jackson, who is not
wealthy, spent 20 years working
on one project. In his dramedies,
Perry often features Black arche-
types without complicating them
— the stalwart matriarch (exem-
plifi ed in his Madea character);
the ‘‘strong Black woman,’’ usually
portrayed as unhappily lonely; the
relative addicted to crack cocaine;
the closeted gay Black man. Many
of his gospel plays, TV shows and
fi lms feature a consistent message
about the power of prayer.
Perry’s work is referenced a few
times in ‘‘A Strange Loop,’’ as a par-
agon of commercial success and an
object of Usher’s ridicule. In one
of the show’s most biting, farcical
numbers, ‘‘Tyler Perry Writes Real
Life,’’ Thoughts masquerading as
notable Black historical fi gures like
Harriet Tubman, Marcus Garvey,
James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston
and someone called ‘‘Twelve Years
a Slave’’ castigate him for disliking
Perry’s work. Eventually, though,
Usher relents to a Thought play-
ing his agent and ghostwrites the
ridiculously derivative gospel play,
‘‘Show Me How to Pray,’’ for Perry.
Perry’s stage plays were a staple
for Jackson’s mother, who’s still a
fan — ‘‘If Tyler does it, she’s on it,’’
he told me. He always felt that Per-
ry’s work wasn’t for him but really
started to reject it after watching the
2013 fi lm ‘‘Temptation: Confessions
of a Marriage Counselor,’’ in which a
young woman contracts H.I.V. after
a period of sexual exploration. Jack-
son has loved ones who died of AIDS
(‘‘A Strange Loop’’ is dedicated to ‘‘all
those Black gay boys I knew who
chose to go on back to the Lord’’) and
knows other people still managing
the illness. He found the fi lm toxic and
stigmatizing. Still, although Jackson
thinks Perry’s work is ‘‘intellectually
lazy,’’ he values the joy his Madea fi lms
and stage plays bring to his mother
and other family members.
One day in late February, Jack-
son and I sat down in the confer-
ence room of his production offi ce
to watch ‘‘A Madea Homecoming,’’
Perry’s latest Netfl ix feature, which
premiered only days before. We
could hardly get from one scene to
the next without pausing the fi lm to
unpack some narrative error or slap-
dash prop. ‘‘These wigs are terrible... I mean, and consistently terrible
... he just does not give a damn about
the wig work,’’ Jackson said, with an
air of resignation. ‘‘I wonder, do any
of the actors think this is dumb, or
are they all just excited to be there
because it’s Tyler?’’ he asked.
Although he lambastes what he
calls Perry’s ‘‘simple-minded hack
buff oonery,’’ he also worries he might
be capable of something like it, deep
down. While working on a horror
fi lm for A24, Jackson told me, he
compiled a list of his fears to share
with the fi lm’s producers Ari Aster
and Lars Knudsen. ‘‘This fi lm is about
my fears, and so I have to write all
of them down. Even if those things
don’t make it into the movie, they
will be in the subtext of it.’’ One of
his fears is that he’s not as advanced
as he thinks he is, and that he might
not be insulated from the kind of
artistic foibles he criticizes Perry for.
‘‘Sometimes I worry that I’m a coon.
That I think I’m this progressive, free-
thinking blah blah blah, but really I’m
just a coon.’’ Jackson was referring to
a worry shared by many introspective
Black people that they are inadver-
tently performing for a white gaze.
‘‘Freedom starts in here,’’ he said, and
pointed to his temple. ‘‘I don’t want to
live in fear. I can’t live like that. I don’t
have a man at home to hug up with.
I have to wake up every day alone in
my bed and get up out of bed and
make something happen for myself.
I don’t have generational wealth, I
don’t have all this stuff , which means
if I want to live, I have to be free.’’
He can even allow himself to
embrace the little overlap that exists
between him and Perry. Jackson,
too, aspires to a kind of populism.
‘‘For me, I’m always trying to mix
high and low, Black, white, what-
ever. That’s sort of what I’m inter-
ested in is like, everyone is invited
to come into this. The piece can be
as entertaining as it is intellectually
challenging.’’ Of Perry, he said,
adjusting his glasses, ‘‘To me, he’s
like a right-wing artistic populism,
and I’m more of a left-wing artistic
populism. I think. I think. I’m mak-
ing this up,’’ he fi nished, cautiously.
‘‘A Madea Homecoming’’ and its ilk
make him ‘‘want to double down on
what I’m doing, in trying to make
art that is Black and nuanced and
that doesn’t have sacred cows, that’s
emotional, that’s intellectual, that’s
silly, that’s all the things.’’
When Jackson won the Pulitzer,
Perry called and playfully threat-
ened to beat him up. Later, Perry
texted Jackson a screen cap of the
‘‘Strange Loop’’ cast album as a
gesture of support. Jackson texts
Perry holiday greetings. The men’s
polite acquaintanceship seems like a
model for how to disagree about art.When I fi nally went to see the show,
on a Saturday afternoon in April, I
was surprised by how it destabilized
me. I stumbled out of the theater
bewildered, remembering the bawl-
ing of a man who sat behind me.
Blinking in the sunlight, I eventually
made contact with other wide-eyed
women. ‘‘That was overwhelming,’’
one lady told me. ‘‘Now, it’s going to
make me ask so many questions of
my nephew. Like, oh, my God, what
is your experience of our family, for
real, for real?’’
At some point, I saw Jackson
standing under the Lyceum mar-
quee. I told him that I’d purchased a
refrigerator magnet from the merch
table, so that every time I walk by
it, I can remind myself to question
the narratives that run through my
mind, my own strange loops. ‘‘We all
have them,’’ he said. Right then we
ran into a woman I’d met years ago;
by sheer coincidence we had both
been at the show. She asked Jackson
if he planned to do a performance
just for a Black, queer audience. He
explained that he’s open to Black
theater night, where Black people
are specifi cally invited and encour-
aged to attend, but he didn’t want
to do a ‘‘Blackout’’ night, where the
audience is exclusively full of Black
patrons. ‘‘I believe that it’s important
to have as many people as possible
with as many diff erent perspectives
as possible,’’ he told her.
Later, on the phone, I asked him
if he could elaborate. He’s OK withit if the audience is organically full of
Black patrons, like if a church wanted
to come and see it. ‘‘But I just strug-
gle with the idea that like I’m sup-
posed to create a quote-unquote all-
Black space. And yet what I observe
is that these all-Black spaces, to me,
look like they all sort of come from
the same class, and I don’t sense a
ton of diversity within the Blackness,
which then makes me question the
intent of it. I could be looking at it
in the wrong way, but I’ve seen the
push for a lot of these events, and at
the end of the day, they’re just not in
the spirit of what I think ‘A Strange
Loop’ really is, which is both Black
and expansive.’’ He paused. ‘‘I’ve
been asked in interviews recently,
what do I want audiences to take
away from the show, and my answer
always is, ‘I want them to be thinking
about themselves.’ ’’
The week before opening, Jack-
son shared with me a few lyrical
tweaks he’d made during previews,
to make a coda easier for the actors
to sing, and to make it clear that
his critique of Perry’s work is not a
personal attack. But when the play
offi cially opened on April 26, Jackson
and company ceased being able to
make any changes. The show had to
‘‘freeze.’’ I asked Jackson what it was
like for a person who’s worked on
a show for 20 years, whose creative
philosophy is predicated on resisting
being locked in, to freeze? He was
sanguine about it, explaining that it’s
part of the process. ‘‘I think the show
is good regardless of whether I get
every little thing that I want in there
before we freeze, but I’m just trying
to get it to be the best that it can be.’’
When I consider the heretofore
living, breathing document of ‘‘A
Strange Loop’’ frozen, I imagine
Jackson holding notes for the next
restaging, while also hoping the
show goes on a long time — that
whatever adjustments he has will
be superseded by the revolutions
in his thinking that will surely take
place during its Broadway run, how-
ever long it is. The strange loops will
continue. ‘‘I have a lot of opinions,’’
Jackson told me, ‘‘and my opinions
change, and sometimes I don’t
know, and sometimes I’m wrong.’’
He half smiled, showing the gap in
his teeth. ‘‘But I feel like the world
has made it so that, how can I just
adhere to one thing?’’§The New York Times Magazine 43