Michael R. Jackson What If

WRITER MICHAEL R. JACKSON’S ARTISTRY draws from many influences: musicals he saw as a kid, politics, films by Todd Solondz, music by Liz Phair and Tori Amos. The list goes on. These are all in some way mixed into his evocative musical A Strange Loop, whose title is a sly reference to the show’s premise: It’s about a gay Black man writing a musical about a gay Black man writing a musical. It premieres at Playwrights Horizons in late spring/early summer (May 24-July 7), marking Jackson’s Off-Broadway debut as a composer, lyricist, and bookwriter.

Jackson’s narrative journey began with soap operas, a form he’s loved since before grade school; as a boy growing up outside Detroit he watched them with his great aunt Ruth. Soaps weren’t just a connection to his aunt but a fundamental building block of his aesthetic. “I love the form of melodrama,” says Jackson during our conversation at the Pershing Square Signature Center’s Signature Cafe + Bar. “It was helpful for other writing I would do later. I could always go, ‘What