Nathan Louis Jackson, an acclaimed playwright who grappled with serious issues like the death penalty, homophobia and gun violence \u2014 and was also known for his work on television shows like \u201cLuke Cage,\u201d a Netflix series about a Black superhero \u2014 died on Aug. 22 at his home in Lenexa, Kan., a suburb of Kansas City. He was 44.<\/p>\n
His wife, Megan Mascorro-Jackson, confirmed the death. She said that she did not know the cause, but that Mr. Jackson had had cardiac problems over the past few years, including an aortic dissection and an aortic aneurysm.<\/p>\n
Mr. Jackson was still attending the Juilliard School when his play \u201cBroke-ology,\u201d premiered in 2008 at the Williamstown Theater Festival in Massachusetts. The story of a Black family in a poor neighborhood of Kansas City, Kan., where Mr. Jackson grew up, it focuses on the confrontation between two brothers over the care of their father, William (played by Wendell Pierce), who has a debilitating case of multiple sclerosis \u2014 a disease that Mr. Jackson\u2019s father, who died in 2001, also had.<\/p>\n
Reviewing the play in The Boston Globe, Louise Kennedy wrote that \u201cwhat makes Jackson\u2019s writing feel true and fresh \u2014 aside from its great humor\u201d\u2014 was the way he portrayed the brothers. Malcolm, she noted, \u201cisn\u2019t just a selfish striver,\u201d nor is Ennis \u201cjust a resigned martyr\u201d \u2014 and William \u201cisn\u2019t just a passive victim.\u201d<\/p>\n
A year later, after Mr. Jackson received his artist diploma in playwriting from Juilliard, \u201cBroke-ology\u201d opened at the Off Broadway Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018Broke-ology\u2019 is a decidedly imperfect work,\u201d Robert Feldberg wrote in The Record of Hackensack, N.J., \u201cbut it\u2019s a very promising debut in the big time for a playwright with a rare quality: heart.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Jackson\u2019s next play, \u201cWhen I Come to Die,\u201d explored the emotional turmoil of a death row inmate whose execution goes awry \u2014 the drug cocktail that was supposed to kill him managed only to stop his heart temporarily \u2014 forcing him to wonder what to do with an unexpected extension of his life, and if he will face another execution.<\/p>\n
\u201cI started thinking about people in weird time positions, and these cats know exactly how much time they have left on this earth,\u201d he said of death row inmates in an interview with The New York Times in 2011, when the play was running Off Broadway at the Duke Theater, a production of Lincoln Center Theater\u2019s program for emerging playwrights. \u201cBut what happens if you get more of it?\u201d<\/p>\n
Although Mr. Jackson established an early place for his work in New York City, he remained close to his Midwestern roots. In addition to living in Kansas, he was the playwright in residence at the Kansas City Repertory Theater, in Missouri, from 2013 to 2019.<\/p>\n
That theater staged productions of \u201cWhen I Come to Die\u201d and \u201cBroke-ology\u201d and the world premieres of his \u201cSticky Traps,\u201d about a woman\u2019s response to protests by a homophobic preacher at the funeral of her gay son, who had killed himself, and \u201cBrother Toad,\u201d about the reactions in the Kansas City community to the shooting of two Black teenagers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe beautiful thing about his writing is that he never told the audience what to think,\u201d Angela Gieras, the executive director of the Kansas City Rep, said in a phone interview. \u201cHe\u2019d share a story that was compelling and truthful and let the people have their own conversations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nathan Louis Jackson was born on Dec. 4, 1978, in Lawrence, Kan. His father, Cary, was a heating and cooling service technician. His mother, Bessie (Brownlee) Jackson, was a preschool teacher.<\/p>\n
Nathan said that he was not a good student in high school, and that he studied as little as he could.<\/p>\n
\u201cIronically, I failed English,\u201d he told Informed Decisions, a Kansas State University blog, in 2017. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to read Shakespeare.\u201d<\/p>\n
He graduated from Kansas City Kansas Community College with an associate degree in 1999. At Kansas State, where he majored in theater, he made his first attempt at playwriting by creating monologues for forensics competitions.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m there in the Midwest, and there ain\u2019t no other Black folks doing this, so I\u2019d just end up doing August Wilson every time,\u201d he told The Times. \u201cI wanted to do a piece that speaks for me, so I said, \u2018I\u2019ll just write my own stuff.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Jackson wrote two plays in college that were recognized after his graduation by the Kennedy Center. He won the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award twice, for \u201cThe Last Black Play\u201d and \u201cThe Mancherios,\u201d which he adapted into \u201cBroke-ology,\u201d and the Mark Twain Comedy Playwriting Award, also for \u201cThe Last Black Play.\u201d<\/p>\n
After graduating with a bachelor\u2019s degree in 2003, Mr. Jackson acted in a children\u2019s theater, took graduate courses in environmental science and writing, and worked as the manager of a barbecue restaurant.<\/p>\n
He moved to New York City to attend Juilliard in 2007. He and his wife lived in a diverse neighborhood there, and he remembered seeing people from all over the world on the subway.<\/p>\n
But at the theater, \u201cI did not see that,\u201d he said in an interview with KCUR-FM, a public radio station in Kansas City, Mo., in 2016, \u201cWhat I saw was predominantly white, older, and with a little money in their pockets.\u201d<\/p>\n
He strove to write plays featuring \u201cpeople marginalized by poverty, incarceration or gun violence,\u201d Ms. Mascarro-Jackson said in a phone interview.<\/p>\n
\u201cLots of times they were Black characters,\u201d she added, \u201cbecause that\u2019s what he knew.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition to his wife, Mr. Jackson is survived by his mother; a daughter, Amaya; a son, Savion; a sister, Ebony Maddox; and a brother, Wardell.<\/p>\n
Over the last decade, while continuing to work in the theater, Mr. Jackson also wrote episodes of several TV series, including \u201c13 Reasons Why,\u201d \u201cResurrection,\u201d \u201cS.W.A.T.,\u201d \u201cSouthland,\u201d Shameless\u201d and \u201cLuke Cage,\u201d for which he was also an executive story editor. He spent a lot of time in Los Angeles, where he suffered the aortic dissection in 2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe series makes a bigger, grander statement about African American men and how we view them,\u201d he told The Kansas City Star in 2016, referring to \u201cLuke Cage,\u201d a Marvel show whose title character is a former convict (played by Mike Colter) with superhuman strength and unbreakable skin who solves crimes in Harlem.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cIt is undoubtedly a Black show. But at the same time, it\u2019s just a superhero show. We deal with something all the other superheroes deal with. We just do it from a different standpoint.\u201d<\/p>\n