WRITER’S STATEMENT
Most of my formalized training in the arts has been as an actor, but I am increasingly accepting that writing is the real love of my life. Writing is where the ideas and stories for other mediums I work in such as photography and filmmaking begin. Writing is where I feel I can be big and small, comfortable and uncomfortable, and intimate about how I see the world through the ever-changing Black lens. Even beyond the ever-present and often exhausting penetrating point of view of those Black people who think they have a monopoly on what the Black experience in America is or should be. Although not limited to, I hear the Black working poor (mostly) of my southern roots of Atlanta (and rural Georgia), and the Black people of my adult years living in Brooklyn. These stories and characters simply walk into my mind community, find the creative house, and locate which bedroom of creative expression they belong to. Some subjects and characters immediately hibernate because they aren’t fully ready to speak and others disturb my creative house in a way as if their only mission is for me to respond to them immediately as they make their presence known through their politics, their way of dress, their pains and joys, or just through their loud silence.
As a traditional man, the themes of my writing palette lean towards traditional storytelling structures, which means I like honest and straightforward storytelling that cuts through to the fabric of what it is to be human in the everyday sense, as it relates to love, messy relationships (of all kinds), employment concerns, and basic survival as a chess piece on the human experimental chess board called life. My style of storytelling interests across genres will always include some bell hooks, August Wilson, Cornel West, Al Green, Son House, Public Enemy, and Ray Bradbury, along with a healthy dose of the Black prophetic tradition, for as the scriptures say, “If these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.” That’s the blues of blues people which I speak about in my storytelling as an artist.
-Jeremiah OC Jahi-
LIST OF PLAYS
THE TWO OF US
SYNOPSIS: It’s 1994, and the city of Atlanta has begun its makeover as it prepares for the 1996 Summer Olympic Games. Archer and Turner, an older Black gay couple who own a mom-and-pop soul food restaurant, can smell the change blowing into their neighborhood. With the possibility of gentrification on the horizon–as well as new visitations from the long-ago past–Archer and Turner must now grapple with the looming changes for their business and their relationship. Archer sees change as a chance to grow beyond the community they have called home for more than twenty years, while Turner wants to dig in and fight to keep what they have. An epic love story in the tragic tradition, set in the rich cultural and poetic world of everyday African American life in the south, THE TWO OF US is a story of the fight to hold onto what is precious, and the difficulty of defining what that is. It is a play about the struggle to know what to defend and what to release, and the many ways in which love is built and expressed.
CAST OF CHARACTERS available upon request.
HOUSEKEEPING
-stay tuned for synopsis
HEART MATTERS
-stay tuned for synopsis
BROTHERS IN ARMS
-stay tuned for synopsis