A Strange Loop follows Usher, a 25-year-old New York transplant from Detroit that has dreams of having his plays hit Broadway. Usher (Kyle Ramar Freeman), who works as a Broadway usher at the theatre, struggles with his own identity as a Black queer man and can’t hear his own voice over the sounds of his cumbersome thoughts. A Strange Loop, created by Michael R. Jackson, follows Usher as he tries to pave his own path while everyone around him pulls him in a different direction.
Usher doesn’t know whether to please himself or his God-fearing mother, Sarabi, who thinks a gay spirit infiltrated her son and it can be prayed away. He despises Tyler Perry’s work but is consistently encouraged to follow his lead by his mother. If Sarabi had her way, he would be working on a Tyler Perry-esque gospel play instead of a “radical” musical about a fat Black queer man writing about a fat Black queer man. Usher turned down the chance to ghostwrite a play for Perry and explained why in one of the musical’s numbers, “Tyler Perry Writes Real Life.” He sang, “Nothing that he writes seems real to me” and called his work “just simple-minded hack buffoonery.”
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tanay hudson, the journalist & therapist 