AIN'T NO MO' at the Public is an in Your Face Satire about Race by Jordan E. Cooper

AIN'T NO MO' at the Public Theater is by playwright Jordan E. Cooper.  Cooper in his early 20s has thrice received the NAACP's Playwright Award.  The play is broken into several skits meant to be both hilarious & profound.  There's an incandescent brilliance to Cooper's ideas but many are rehashed tropes of discrimination, mass incarceration, rampant killing of black men and the fathering of multiple children with numerous baby mamas.  The conversation brought forth of race is carried on in an illuminating style with the offer of return airfare passage for blacks to the African continent; a return to the continent of their ancestors.  The boarding gate # 1619 at the airport refers to the year slaves were first brought as unwitting cargo to the US through Jamestown, VA.  The play questions what it would mean to deport all black Americans and with them exhume the rich heritage intertwined in our nation of music, comedy, literature, resiliency and the foundations which were built upon on the backs & blood of slaves.  Cooper disparages whites for their oppression of blacks and makes it clear blacks have never had it easy.  He also despairs over the unfulfilled promise for a brighter future beginning with the Presidency of Obama, a lighter black man.  Some of the satires paint a grotesque view of blacks appropriating outlandish white culture in a skit aimed at spoofing "The Real Housewives of Atlanta" and the dinner set in an aristocratic black family left without their help who chose a one way passage back to Africa.  A former slave arises through the dining table to disrupt the genteel blacks and winds up being lynched by the wealthy black homeowners.  The most sombre skit is in the waiting room for abortions where the mirage of a black man riddled with bullet wounds pleads with his girlfriend not to abort his child.  The hands up imagery is very haunting and effective.  The segmented skits idle and then take off with fierce velocity.  The rapid fire conceits are served up fast & furious leaving me baffled & off-balanced.  Perhaps, that's Cooper's intent but it left me feeing apart from the conversation.  I would advise staying for the talk backs following the play.  The program note from Oskar Eustis  praises Cooper's extraordinary writing.  Eustis suggest saving the program.  "My bet is you'll want to prove you were here for many years to come."  I'll bet there's plenty more to come from this promising and talented playwright on the horizon.