Vineyard Theatre has released the first production photo from MS. BLAKK FOR PRESIDENT, and it belongs to Ato Blankson-Wood, who plays Terence Alan Smith/Joan Jett Blakk in the new play by Tarell Alvin McCraney and Tina Landau. Previews began on October 22, and opening night is November 8, 2026.
Carol Rosegg’s shot finds Blankson-Wood grinning under a backdrop of oversized black stars and strung lights, in a black leather jacket with a hot-pink feather boa looped over both shoulders. It is a single image, issued the day after the first preview, and it is the first look the Vineyard has given at the staging.
The play takes its subject from life without being bound by it. In the early 1990s, with the AIDS epidemic at its height, the Chicago performer and activist Terence Alan Smith ran for President of the United States as Joan Jett Blakk, the first and only Black drag queen to do so, backed by the newly formed Queer Nation Chicago. The campaign took queer politics all the way to the floor of the Democratic National Convention. The Vineyard pitches the evening as a campaign rally, a nightclub act and a confession at once.
McCraney, the Academy Award winner behind Moonlight and the author of Choir Boy, shares the writing credit with Landau, a Tony nominee for Floyd Collins, who also directs. Blankson-Wood, also a Tony nominee, heads a company of Nic Ashe (Queen Sugar), Tony nominee Gideon Glick (To Kill a Mockingbird), Kelvin Moon Loh (Beetlejuice), Sawyer Smith (The Devil Wears Prada) and Adina Verson (Indecent, Liberation). Polanco Jones Jr. (The Wiz) understudies the central role.
The run was extended by a week before it began, and now plays through November 29, 2026. It opens the Vineyard’s 2026–27 season, which continues in February 2027 with PETRA, Half Straddle’s piece drawn from Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, directed by Tina Satter. A third production has yet to be named.
MS. BLAKK FOR PRESIDENT is in previews at Vineyard Theatre, 108 East 15th Street near Union Square. Tickets are sold through the Vineyard Theatre website and the box office at 212-353-0303. Season memberships start at $40 for Theatre Artist and Under 40 members, and three-ticket packages at $220.
