Tag: social capital
Michael R. Jackson’s Subversive Vision of the American Musical
In the summer of 2020, the playwright Michael R. Jackson received an unusual message from a fan of A Strange Loop, his musical about a gay Black man’s path to creative self-awareness through the process of writing a musical about a gay Black man’s path to creative self-awareness. “Can I buy you a bulletproof vest?” the fan inquired over Instagram.
Jackson, who had just won a Pulitzer Prize for A Strange Loop and lived on a perfectly safe
The New Case for Social Climbing
I was born to be a social climber. The Evita score was ever present on my grandparents’ stereo when I was growing up, and I idolized Eva Perón, who made her way from poverty to the highest echelons of government and society. She was a woman who, at least from the musical’s point of view, saw clearly where she was in life and decided she wasn’t going to stay there. What did a tiny thing like class background matter to