- By Jordan E. Cooper
- Directed By Lili-Anne Brown
- In Association with Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company
Fasten your seatbelts— it’s going to be an outrageous ride. Jordan E. Cooper’s masterful no-holds-barred comedy is a surreal journey through Black America as Peaches, a narrator and flight attendant, invites Black Americans to board African American Airlines’ one-way Flight 1619 back to Africa for a mass exodus. She guides the audience through a mosaic of vignettes that use satire, allegory, and speculative fiction to explore the value of Black lives in a country so intertwined with them in this “campy, shrewd, mortifying, scary, devastating, and deep” play (The New York Times).
DOWNLOAD PROGRAM
Jordan E. Cooper, Playwright
Jordan E. Cooper is an OBIE Award winning playwright and performer who was most recently chosen to be one of OUT Magazine’s “Entertainer Of The Year”. Last year, he starred in a sold out run of his play Ain’t No Mo’ which was a New York Times Critics Pick. Jordan created a pandemic centered short film called “Mama Got A Cough” that’s been featured in National Geographic and was named ‘Best Of 2020’ by The New York Times. He was also featured on the final season of FX’s POSE as “MC Tyrone”. He recently created and Executive Produced his first Television project “The Ms. Pat Show” which is an R-rated ‘old school’ sitcom that premiered to record breaking numbers on BET+.
Lili-Anne Brown, Director
Lili-Anne Brown, a Chicago South Side native, works as a director, actor and educator, and has performed in, directed and produced many award-winning shows in Chicago and nationally. She is the former Artistic Director of Bailiwick Chicago, where she focused programming on Chicago-premiere musicals and new play development with resident playwrights. Recent directing credits include School Girls, or The African Mean Girls Play and the world premieres of Ike Holter’s I Hate It Here and Lottery Day (Goodman Theatre), Once on This Island (Oregon Shakespeare Festival), Acoustic Rooster…(Kennedy Center), Spunk (Roundabout Theatre virtual), Wally World (Steppenwolf Theatre audio), Put Your House in Order (La Jolla Playhouse), The Color Purple (Drury Lane Theatre). She is a member of SDC, AEA, and SAG-AFTRA, a resident director ofVictory Gardens Theatre, and represented by William Morris Endeavor. www.lilbrownchicago.com
Rated M for Mature Audiences
This belly-laughing, pearl-clutching, scathing comedy contains strong language (including racial slurs), references to racial stereotypes and sexual acts, as well as depictions of racialized violence – with an eye toward using unapologetic satire to confront the complexities of being Black in America.
This production includes use of strobe lights and gunshot noises.
2022/23 Season Sponsor
