John R. Gordon

In 1995 he directed his play Wheels of Steel, about a closeted young thug paralysed in a joyriding accident and his flamboyant male nurse, at the Gate Theatre, London.

He wrote a 1999 sitcom pilot The Melting Pot about a macho black British man (Felix Dexter) coming to terms with his long-lost Jamaican brother's homosexuality.

The film, Noah's Arc: Jumping The Broom, was given a limited release in six American cities, where it played to sold-out houses at the end of October 2008 and recouped $500,000 in ticket sales alone.

The "Jumping The Broom" script that Gordon and Polk wrote was nominated for an NAACP Image Award,[3] as was the film itself in the Best Independent Feature category.

In 2020 he co-executive produced Noah's Arc: The "Rona Chronicles", a reunion episode written and directed by Polk, and presented by Gilead Sciences on 5 July.

It starred all original cast members and included a feature cameo by Wanda Sykes as Noah's mother, for which she was nominated for a 2021 Emmy for Outstanding Guest Performer in a Daytime Fiction Program.

Its 352 pages of poems, memoirs, fictional stories and essays exploring the lives of black gay men with some connection to the United Kingdom includes writers, artists and activists such as Leee John, Travis Alabanza, Dean Atta, Adam Lowe, David McAlmont, Bisi Alimi, black British photographer Robert Taylor, Topher Campbell and Jide Macaulay.

Several of the plays they developed, such as Somalia Seaton's Crowning Glory (2013), Lynette Linton's Step (2013) and Alexis Gregory's Slap (2018) have gone on to full productions and/or tours.

[1] On 3 November 2015 a theatrical version of Faggamuffin, directed by Rikki Beadle-Blair and starring Nathan Clough, Marlon Kameka and Savannah Rae, was presented at the Bush Theatre as part of the Gay Buddies Week.

It's a mashup of the immigrant saga, a chilling gangster thriller, a state-of-the-nation novel, a coming-of-age story and an intimate family portrait with a harrowing war crime at its heart.

Gordon received an Arts Council grant to make copies available free to gay urban young people and sexual health charities.

On 28 April 2016 Gordon's short HIV-themed comedy play Yemi and Femi go da Chemist was premiered at Team Angelica's Boom!

On May 9, 2023 Gordon's one-act play, Yemi & Femi Go Windrush, which sees the titular characters go back in time and encounter a gay Caribbean couple having a secret affair in 1950s Notting Hill, was presented as a staged reading as part of Tom Ratcliffe's Platform festival at the King's Head Theatre, dir.

[21] Mother of Serpents, pub Feb 2025, is a US-based weird tale in which a Black-white gay male couple and their mixed-race young son relocate from Brooklyn to all-white, rural Maine.

The fully realised, believable main characters exist in the real world, and the strong writing and specificity of detail make for a gripping read, with a genuinely original monster.'

With queer Rwandan performance artist Urban Wolf, in 2022 Gordon created a series of interlinked works, featuring the same cast of Black queer characters, set in 'the endz' in South London: the 40-minute grime audio drama Scooters, Shooters & Shottas: a Curious tale (launched at Theatro Technis on 19 April) and a raucous 17-minute short film, Curious - both directed by Rikki Beadle-Blair, about a closeted rapper's quest for self-expression and liberation, also starring Dior Clarke and Curtis Brown.