Jordan E. Cooper wrote his play Ain’t No Mo’ after a bout of depression in the summer of 2016, around the time two Black men, Philando Castille and Eric Garner, were murdered. “I’m the kind of person who doesn’t like to sit in pain. I like to laugh through pain, I like to laugh over pain,” Cooper said in an interview. “And so I wanted to find a way to do that with my work. So I was just like, fuck it, we all going back to Africa.” In the show, which premiered at the Public Theater in 2019, he plays Peaches, the only check-in agent for African-American Airlines flight 1619, the last plane traveling from the United States to Africa. Peaches functions as the play’s Greek chorus, grounding the production as it flits from loosely connected scenes, such as one about two women in an abortion clinic and another about a Reality TV show called The Real Baby Mamas of the Southside. Cooper stars in the play’s broadway debut, which is produced by filmmaker Lee Daniels. —Jensen Davis