I wrote the first draft of Jass in a writers’ group run by Israel Horowitz in 1980. I had fallen in love with Belloc’s extraordinary photos of early 20th century Storyville, the notorious section of New Orleans that was the center of legalized prostitution. (I was as much intrigued by the name “Storyville” as I was by the life that was led there.) Around this time, Louis Malle’s film Pretty Baby was released, and I was appalled by the film’s failure to capture anything true of that extraordinary time and place. My answer to all this was Jass.

It was accepted by the O’Neill Playwrights’ Conference in 1985, my second play to be workshopped there. It created something of a stir – there was anger that a white writer would dare write something of the black experience. I’ve come to feel that a few of those feelings came because there were no African-American women in the play, which choice forced several of the relationships to be between black men and white women, a distorted picture of life at the time. I’ve since remedied that problem. But the darkness of the piece – the serial killer named the Ripper who lurks behind all the musical notes, biding his time until he strikes – cannot be helped. The joy of the music is the sheath that holds his killing knife.

The lyrics are all mine. In 2016, when I workshopped the play at The New Harmony Project, I partnered with the remarkable Stan Tucker, who wrote the music to some new songs and sharpened and rewrote the music that I had written way back in the early ’80’s. Stan also helped me re-think the metaphor of the entire show. The music is indeed a character in the play, as alive and seductive and longing for escape as any of the people. Everyone in this play and place wants out, even the notorious Mama V., who serves as both heroine and villain. Jerico too, the narrator of the play, is saint and Satan – I’ve always been intrigued by the thin line that can exist between good and evil, and tried to characterize that in these two acts. Jerico’s speeches are as musical as the songs – the entire play is meant to be a jazz symphony, with Jerico as conductor and composer who is unable to stand back and observe, but who is inevitably drawn in by the seductiveness of the stories he sings.