Oh Happy Day! Inside the New Play by Ain't No' Mo' Scribe Jordan E. Cooper

Jordan E. Cooper burst onto the New York theater scene with his sensational play Ain’t No Mo’, becoming the youngest Black American playwright to be nominated for a Tony in the process. This fall, he returns to the Public Theater — where Ain’t No’ Mo’ originally ran before moving to Broadway — with Oh Happy Day!, a riff on Noah’s Arc set at a family birthday party in Mississippi.

It begins with God telling Keyshawn (played by the author) that he can only save himself from an impending flood by also saving his estranged family. Can he forgive the people who hurt him the most? It’s a play that took Cooper years to write, and he could only put pen to paper for real after facing the music himself.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

When did you start working on Oh Happy Day!?
I started working on it back in 2018. That’s when the kernel of the idea came to me, and I hammered it out from there.

What was crazy…Sometimes, as artists, we’re given things to put into the world but we’re not yet mature enough to understand what it is that we’re supposed to actually say. I felt like the story was clear, the characters came through, but I didn’t know its purpose. I was trying to do something that I hadn’t yet done for myself, because I started writing the play before I even came out to my parents, and it felt like I was trying to write about my experience without doing the hard work first. I was putting the cart before the horse in a way.

Did it flow out of you once you had come to terms with everything and discovered your path?
It did, but it still didn’t do the thing. It felt like I was looking at this blurry image and I was trying my best to recreate this blurry image that was in my head. I kept being unsatisfied with the dress that I was putting out. And so I left it alone for a little bit, and then I realized that it was much deeper than just the queerness aspect of it. It was me having to come to terms with my own idea of what happiness looks like, outside of queer identity, like, just in general as a human being. What does happiness look like in the darkest moments of your life? It wasn’t until 2022, 2023, where the world got clearer. The characters got clearer. Everything got clearer.

How much does the 2025 version of the play resemble the 2018 version of the play?
When I say it’s completely new, I mean like not one stitch of language from the other drafts that I was writing made it. It was like I had to completely start over, and when I was able to do that, it’s crazy how it came together. When I finished, I was like, “This is what I’ve been trying to articulate for the past seven years.”

How does Noah’s Ark factor into it?
I was interested in the idea of cleansing and washing away and starting anew. When I think about that, I think of Noah’s Ark. I wanted to see what that story felt like within a modern-day context, from a Black, queer perspective.

You premiered the play at Baltimore Center Stage, a great theater. What did you learn about the material during that process?
These characters have lived in my head for so long, so I was finally able to see them put into reality, and not just living on a piece of paper. Even now, I’ve been doing rewrites, we have new music material, we have a new cast and new creatives; everything feels so new. I’m grateful for the context and the knowledge that we got from the production in Baltimore. The entire city of Baltimore showed up and showed out. It was a record-breaking production for them, and the love that we got from that community was overwhelming.

How does this play feel to perform in relation to Ain’t No Mo’?
It’s 10 times heavier [than Ain’t No Mo’]. Once I get on stage, I don’t leave. I go on a rollercoaster of emotions. This character is the black sheep of the family. He’s been ostracized. He doesn’t want to talk with them and they don’t want to talk with him. It’s just one of those plays where the hard conversations have to happen. I always say my favorite plays are like a boxing ring meets a therapy session. This is definitely a boxing ring.This is one of the scariest things I’ve ever written or performed in, and that comes with its own terrifying beauty.

Because of the personal aspect to it?
I think it is that. And then it’s also just an epic play. As a performer, it’s a mountain to climb just because of the scope of it. But it’s one of those things that is so internally rewarding before you even step foot in front of an audience. In the rehearsal process, when you get to weave through it and fall on your face and get back up, it’s magic. I’m excited that we get a chance to share it, because let me tell you something, what this cast is doing, it is insane. We have to put the roof back on whenever we leave rehearsal.