Andrea Coleman possesses a stage presence unlike any other, in her one-woman show 3 White Guys Named John, in which she recounts the stories of how filmmaker John Hughes, musician John Mayer and rock star Jon Bon Jovi have impacted her life. Were their appearances something akin to fate, swooping in as Coleman’s guardian angels, or is it all a matter of lucky coincidence? Coleman presents such confident and inspiring storytelling, that nearly brought me to tears, given how personal her performance is.
Part TED Talk, part comedy, and part emotional play, Coleman begins by allowing the audience into her childhood through her intimate storytelling, from being bullied, to toxic female friendships, and high school cliques. As a way to deal with this, Coleman had repeatedly watched (with 372 viewings!) the American teen comedy film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, directed by John Hughes, as a way to find solutions to overcome her school and friendship difficulties — soon embodying the way one of the characters, Cameron, stands up to others. Coleman then discusses how, despite Hughes never presenting a Black person in the protagonist role in any of his movies, she still found a way to resonate with Hughes’ characters and overall, Hughes’ writing. On the other hand, this adoration of the filmmaker slowly begins to die once he chooses to unacknowledge the mother-daughter relationship in his film, Uncle Buck, and instead chooses to describe it offhandedly as “women fighting all the time”. Coleman begins to tear up from this, as she talks about her own relationship with her mother, and thinking that this mother-daughter relationship in Hughes’ film could also represent them, but of course, “sometimes your angels make you cry”.
Continuing with her beautiful way of storytelling, Coleman also explores the idea of choosing to either pursue your creative dream or your practical dream; and in her instance, this was in between acting or working at a law firm. Enter John Mayer, with his songs like ‘No Such Thing’ and ‘Why Georgia?’ as ways of “the divine [being shown] through John Mayer” for Coleman. However, we see the pattern of what always comes from being a fan of a White man: immediate disappointment — as Coleman informs us of Mayer’s racist history and pejorative opinions on Black women. Despite this, she takes a stand and claims that “John Mayer’s music is mine”, due to it being such a large part of teenagehood and has helped her make important life decisions along the way.
Finally, after several tears shared by both Coleman and her audience, we end the show with John Bon Jovi. As she tells the story of her going to college in New York, 2022, Bon Jovi had helped her decide on whether to quit her job in law or not — this being a result of Coleman witnessing a man on a motorbike driving straight through a park, accompanied by his boombox which played nothing other than the rock singer’s ‘It’s My Life’.
Coleman brings it to a conclusion on how she is “kinda ashamed that all my angels are White men named John”, but if these “celestial messengers” were what the divine had gifted to her as important spiritual signs in her life; then what is there to truly be ashamed of?
Image by Mindy Tucker provided to The Student as press.