The name Nathan Louis Jackson may not ring a bell for most, but it will for the lover of theater. It is a name with which one should become familiar.
“If you told me that this is how it would turn out, I would have called you a liar,” states the 32-year-old Jackson during an interview via Skype. He recalls applying to graduate schools after finishing at Kansas State University just a few years ago. Now, his plays are being produced up and down the eastern seaboard.
His off-Broadway production of Broke-ology was produced in the fall of 2009 and is now being presented by Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theater Company in Atlanta. He admits to actually questioning what he describes as this “playwright thing,” but the bills continued to pile up and his child was born. This is hard to believe since Jackson is a two-time Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award winner and winner of the Mark Twain Comedy Playwriting Award. In addition to plays, Jackson writes for the TNT cop drama “Southland.”
His play, When I Come to Die , tells a well-crafted story of Damon Robinson, a death-row inmate who attempts to understand why his life has been spared after his scheduled execution by lethal injection goes wrong. Set on death row in an Indiana prison, Robinson struggles to come to terms with his faith. An emotional work, this play is Jackson’s second Lincoln Center Theater production.
When asked about his writing approach, Jackson says that his goal “is to re-create life, and I need life to do that.”
Jackson has a very rare and special talent. He has the ability to write simple, yet complex, stories about experiences of African Americans that are entrenched with compelling messages regarding family, faith and life. –torrance stephens
