Usher is a Black, queer writer, working a day job he hates while writing his original musical: a piece about a Black, queer writer, working a day job he hates while writing his original musical...

Michael R. Jackson's blistering original musical follows a young artist at war with a host of demons – not least of which are the punishing thoughts in his own head – in an attempt to understand his own strange loop.

A Strange Loop received its world premiere at Playwrights Horizons in New York in 2019. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, as well as Best Musical and Best Book of a Musical at the 2022 Tony Awards – and every other 'Best Musical' award on Broadway.

It received its British premiere at the Barbican Theatre, London, in 2023, with Michael R. Jackson winning Best Composer, Lyricist or Book Writer at the 2023 Stage Debut Awards.

'A metafictional musical that tracks the creative process of an artist transforming issues of identity, race and sexuality that once pushed him to the margins of the cultural mainstream into a meditation on universal human fears and insecurities' Pulitzer Prize Committee