Courtesy of Woolly Mammoth.

Before Michael R. Jackson’s A Strange Loop, for which he wrote the book, music, and lyrics, won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Drama, he worked for five years as an usher at The Lion King and Mary Poppins, ringing chimes at intermission. His semi-autobiographical, metafictional musical is like “a portrait of a portrait of a portrait of a portrait of the Black gay artist as a young man,” as he says in a video for Playwrights Horizons, where his piece premiered off Broadway in 2019. His funny, tormented, true-feeling work traces a particular yet universal interior journey from self-loathing to self-acceptance. The pandemic-postponed production at Woolly Mammoth is being directed by Stephen Brackett and produced in association with Playwrights Horizons and Page 73 Productions. Following its holiday season run, this baby is Broadway bound. Say you saw it first in D.C. Nov. 22 to Jan. 2, 2022, at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. $1–$74.