Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner Michael R. Jackson is coming home to Detroit, the city where it all began for the playwright, composer, and lyricist. Jackson, who graduated from Cass Tech High School in the late 1990s, will speak on Tuesday, April 18, at 5:00 p.m., as part of the Arthur L. Johnson Urban Perspectives Series. The event will be held at Wayne State University’s new Hilberry Gateway at 4715 Cass Ave. on the corner of Forest Ave. in Midtown Detroit.
The Urban Perspective Series will feature Jackson answering questions about his life and career. John Corvino, Dean of the Irvin D. Reid Honors College and Professor of Philosophy at Wayne State will facilitate the interview.
“We are very excited to be bringing Michael R. Jackson to Wayne State,” said Corvino, “and especially excited to host him in our new Hilberry Gateway space. His work is groundbreaking, challenging, and inspiring—and I’m sure our conversation will be as well.”
While Corvino’s exact questions to Jackson won’t be revealed before the event, they will undoubtedly include inquiries about the playwright’s first 18 years of his life in Detroit in the 1980s and ‘90s. In previously published interviews, Jackson said that growing up, he loved reading and writing and could mimic what he read, saw, or heard.
“I grew up in a city I sometimes affectionately referred to as, “Black Mayberry,” Jackson said. “Once I discovered writing as an outlet, I used it frequently to escape from what seemed to be rudderless, ordinary, middle-class existence, where no one seemed to want anything and nothing of consequence ever seemed to happen.”
Jackson has said many times, in his youth, he loved watching the soap opera Days of Our Lives and subsequently became a fan of authors Jackie Collins, Stephen King, and Dean Koontz; all have influenced his writing. Musically speaking, Jackson has called singer-songwriter and pianist Tori Amos, “an artist of influence” for how she masterfully blends classical and pop music. A significant part of Jackson’s early music experience was rooted in a Detroit Baptist church, where his parents were members and officers. Young Jackson played piano for the church’s children’s and adult choirs.
After graduating from Cass Tech, Jackson attended New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where he earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in fine arts with concentrations in playwriting and musical theatre writing.
Jackson’s career as a playwright, composer, and lyricist is impressive. Among Jackson’s stage productions is the recently premiered Off-Broadway musical White Girl in Danger. Jackson wrote the book, music, and lyrics for the new musical. However, his “signature stage” musical to date is A Strange Loop, which premiered first off-Broadway in 2019 and later was staged in Washington, D.C., in 2021 before premiering on Broadway at the Lyceum Theatre in April 2022. The production won Jackson “Best Musical and Best Book of a Musical” at the 75th Tony Awards held June 12, 2022, at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.
A Strange Loop also won Jackson the 2020 “Pulitzer Prize Winner in Drama” – the first musical by an African American writer to ever win the prestigious honor. The Pulitzer Prize’s website described A Strange Loop as “a metafictional musical that tracks the creative process of an artist transforming issues of identity, race, and sexuality that once pushed him to the margins of the cultural mainstream into a meditation on universal human fears and insecurities.”
Longtime New York Theatre Critic Michael Dale wrote a review in Broadway World, calling Jackson’s A Strange Loop “a clever, tuneful, and gloriously neurotic mix of self-exploration and social commentary. A Strange Loop features bouncy and energetic theater-pop melodies, propelling lyrics infused with wittily expressed angst – sharp and funny.”
The Arthur L. Johnson Urban Perspectives Series, co-sponsored by the Irvin D. Reid Honors College and Wayne State University Alumni Association, began in 1992 and was named in honor of the civil rights leader and former Wayne State administrator after he retired. Over the ensuing decades, the series has featured noted corporate and civil leaders who spoke on various provocative issues, ranging from politics to business to law to the arts.
The newly constructed 550-seat Hilberry Gateway, where Jackson will speak, opened the first week of April and is the official performance home for Wayne State’s College of Fine, Performing and Communication Arts’ Maggie Allesse Department of Theatre and Dance and the Department of Music.
The up-close and personal event with Michael R. Jackson is free and open to the public. A reception will immediately follow the program. Seating is limited. Individuals interested in attending the event can RSVP at https://rsvp.wayne.edu/aljup-jackson-2023 or call 313-577-2300.
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