In ‘Thoughts of a Colored Man,’ the inner turmoil, joy, potential of Black men is personified on stage

Featured photo: A shot of the show from the Broadway run (courtesy photo)

Lust, Love, Depression, Happiness, Anger, Passion, Wisdom. These are the thoughts of a colored man.

Inspired by a Tyler Perry film, For Colored Girls, Thoughts of a Colored Man, performed by Norfolk State University Theatre Company at this year’s International Black Theatre Festival, provided insight into the obstacles Black men face today: police brutality, feeling overworked and undervalued at work, trying to start a family, being the sole provider of a family, and so much more. The show, which premiered in 2019 and is written by Keenan Scott II, follows seven Black men living in Brooklyn; each of the characters in the show personified a different emotion, a different thought.

According to a Penn State University release, it is the first Broadway show to star and be written, directed and lead-produced by Black artists.

As the show progressed, a mutual understanding could be heard from the audience; “Mmm,” the crowd responded in multiple scenes. “Amen!” exclaimed a woman in the front row.

“The key takeaways depend on the person,” says Justin Richardson, a junior at Norfolk who played the personified character of Lust. “If you’re a person of color, I would love for you to resonate with what you’re seeing and have a sort of healing from it because a lot of stuff we talked about hits your heart really bad, you know? Now if you’re not of color, I want you to understand what we go through, see what we go through and change for the better.”

Richardson had anxieties prior to performing. The audience were all older people of color and he was always taught to respect his elders, but his character had a foul mouth. When he recited his first couple of lines, the crowd gasped in shock.

His character wore a No. 13 navy-blue Yankees jersey over a multi-colored hoodie, black skinny jeans and Timberland boots, sported locs and was loud, vulgar, short-tempered. He failed to express his feelings towards women as respectfully or poetically as his best friend, Love, a nerdy boy dressed in a green vest and a black crossbody bag.

Watching the show, audience members slowly discovered why certain characters are the way they are, including Lust, who later revealed that his existence was a byproduct of rape.

“I have to remind myself day by day how hard it is, that the world is already going to prepare my son, who’s five, that they’re going to judge him just by the small things that he does before he can even make an identity for himself,” says Marissa Gainey, a single Black mom, after viewing the play. “They’re always asking, ‘What is the label that we can bring to you?’”

While the characters each personified a different kind of label, the actors playing them told TCB that they often related to emotions opposite their characters.

Actor Aaron Tyler played Happiness, a hardworking, upper-middle class, young man whom the others in the show labeled as privileged. Happiness had recently moved to the community for a new job opportunity and seemed to have things all figured out. He had a loving significant other, a loyal dog named Shadow and a nice new apartment, the result of gentrification.

Like the character he plays, Tyler said he felt called to Happiness after reading the script because both felt like they weren’t “Black enough” because of their circumstances. For Tyler, the feeling was compounded by the fact that he is often “the only queer person in an all-black space.”

Even still, Tyler said that he relates to “Depression” given that he recently lost his father, just like the character, Happiness, does in the play.

“Who do I coincide with alongside Happiness?,” Tyler reflected after the show. “I’d say maybe Depression. I think there’s a certain sense of longing in that character, or like a wanting of more from the reality that he’s in that I can relate to, at least when I was younger or in college, trying to reach something that was bigger than where I was at the moment.”

With every character that graced the stage, viewers cast themselves in their shoes. 

Audience member Tyrone Goodwin, 63, told TCB that he was the first Black person to integrate his elementary, middle and high school, as well as his university. Because he is light-skinned, Goodwin said that he often found himself being a bridge between worlds — between Black and white. 

“I had to teach white people that the word ‘ni**a’ was not an appropriate word,” says Goodwin, who has blonde hair, blue eyes and fair skin. “I had to do that as somebody that looked more like them than me, but I had to make clear this is where I am.”

Like the varied perspective that Goodwin brought as he reflected on the show, the characters portrayed on stage showed a wide-ranging landscape of what it means to be a Black man today. No one is any singular emotion or trait or thought. Instead, certain situations and emotions become the formula of a man’s character.

The show ends with poetry. The characters stood in front of the audience and stated who they are, where they’re from and more insight into what and why they are one by one. The scene concluded with a harmonized hymn in which Happiness kneeled down to finish the serenade with an impressive vocal run.

“Wow,” says a lady in the front row as the show concludes with a standing ovation.