Playwright Scott says that many of the scenes - including one where Depression describes his humiliation when an old classmate finds him working behind the cash register at Whole Foods and tells him, “You’re too good for this” - come from his own life. “We’re depending on the audience to give us the feedback, to give us the ‘amens’ and the ‘uh-huhs,’ ” Burnside says, adding that the audience is like an eighth character. The show, which deals with issues like social status, homophobia, parenting, poverty, racism, marginalization and microaggressions (or “macro aggressions,” as Burnside calls them), is resonating with audiences, including those at the show’s premiere last week who chimed in with cheers and shouts.

“We don’t have an opportunity to speak about that,” he says. He describes his character’s mental illness as situational and something experienced by many Black men. McClendon says it’s a privilege to put a face to depression. Left to Right: Tristan Mack Wilds, Dyllón Burnside, Forrest McClendon, Da'Vinchi in 'Thoughts of a Colored Man' (Julieta Cervantes)įorrest McClendon’s character Depression once won a scholarship to the renowned university Massachusetts Institute of Technology but stayed in Brooklyn instead to take care of his mother and now works at Whole Foods for health insurance. “ beauty of what Keenan has written is that any of these men could be perceived as Love as some point,” Burnside says. But that he could have played any of the roles since the characteristics that define each of them are nuanced. “I wrote it to have the complexity and the spectrum of Black men on showcase like never before,” Scott says.Īctor Dyllón Burnside, who plays Love, says that role spoke to him. The play marks the first time a Broadway show has had an all-Black team both on and off-stage. After “growing up in this city, walking these streets, seeing the marquees and billboards my whole life, never imagining I would be on one of them,” the premiere was a proud moment, he says - a culmination of years of wanting Black men to feel seen.

Thoughts of a colored man closing