Media Archive

Marlow and Moss were just trying to get through finals when they wrote a musical that turned the six wives of Tudor monarch Henry VIII into pop stars.

Writers Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss dug into the history of Tudor England and the royal court for the lyrics to their pop opera…Here are the CliffsNotes to help you navigate this chapter in British history.

Director Zack Winokur and Chanel DaSilva, the show’s choreographer, evoke the spirits of Josephine Baker, the Nicholas Brothers and Cab Calloway. “It’s the eternal joy and glee of African-Americans in society behind the mask,” Chanel said.

It challenges its audience members, creates enough of a tension between frivolity and terror to make them uncomfortable, as in the noose scene, or the plantation scene, which, [choreographer] DaSilva said, is meant to hold viewers accountable as witnesses to tragedy.

“The Black Clown,” [Co-creator and performer] Mr. Tines said in a recent interview, “is our most earnest attempt to realize Hughes’s project for making the larger humanity understand a single person, and thus understand itself.”

There is a question at the end of the play: how can we make change where we are. A lot of people might say, ‘I’m just one person, how can I make change.’ There are many tables of power that we sit within…if my play can get someone to say, ‘Where am I, and how can I make change?,” I’d love for that to happen.