Keenan Scott II's "Thoughts of a Colored Man," the first Broadway show written, directed, starred in and lead-produced entirely by Black artists, plays three nights at Portland's Brunish Theatre starting Thursday, Oct. 1.

The production runs through Saturday, Oct. 3, at 1111 SW Broadway. Jarvis Sam, CEO of the DEI advisory firm The Rainbow Disruption and former chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer at Nike, Inc., is executive producing the Portland run, Hoodline reported.

Sam discussed the show on KOIN's Everyday Northwest program in a recurring segment called "The Juice." He left Nike in November 2022 after nearly five years as the company's top diversity officer, according to Retail Dive. He was Nike's third person in that role since 2020.

The play puts seven Black men on one stage and traces a single day in their lives in a gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood. Each character is an unnamed personification of a human emotion: Happiness, Love, Lust, Passion, Depression, Wisdom and Anger. The script uses what Concord Theatricals calls a "slam narrative" structure, blending spoken word, prose and music.

Scott spent 15 years developing the script. He first conceived it while studying acting at Frostburg State University, where he felt excluded by the traditional theatrical canon, according to Brooklyn Magazine.

He drew on his upbringing in Queens and Washington, D.C., to shape the play's vignettes.

The show opened on Broadway at the John Golden Theatre in October 2021 after earlier runs at Syracuse Stage and Baltimore Center Stage.

It was the first Broadway production in which every key creative role was held by a Black artist, a milestone widely reported at the time.

Three nights only. Tickets are available at portland5.com.