Diary of a Thriving Black Artist

At the Municipal Auditorium in Nashville last December, the Friday-night crowd locked into a call-and-response that was part church, part something else entirely. It was opening night for a touring musical called "Madea Goes to Jail," and the audience, late to arrive, had already taken a hectoring from the title character, a 6-foot-5 grandmother played by a man in a fat suit. "This show started at 8 o'clock, now sit the hell down," he scolded, before adding a mock double-take for tonight's crowd: "Even the white people are late." The show, which defies easy plot summary, involved child molestation, infidelity, gunplay, scripture, prayer and willful abuse of the fourth wall. "I know this is in the script because I wrote it, but I feel like I'm talking to someone in here," said the grandmother, breaking partly from character. "Life goes on."

"That's right," the crowd answered.

This affirmation has made the man in the dress, Tyler Perry, 36, a household name in black America, with little recognition from white audiences or the black theatrical establishment. His self-financed musicals, playing rented halls on what is often called the chitlin' circuit, have grossed $80 million to $100 million in the last seven years, by his account. "Diary of a Mad Black Woman," the movie adapted from one of the shows, surprised the industry last year by opening at No. 1 at the box office (eventually taking in more than $50 million), and again in June by selling 2.4 million DVDs in its first week. Its follow-up, "Madea's Family Reunion," opens Feb. 24. Perry is now shooting a television series for syndication and has a book coming out in April that earned him a $2 million advance.

In an entertainment industry most fascinated by young males, he has succeeded in the guise of an older woman and a Christian, with work that is anomalous in mainstream entertainment: church-driven, preachy, pro-parental discipline, anti-premarital sex and funny in a Southern manner that doesn't try to be sophisticated. "He knows something I don't think anyone told him, which is how to help black people laugh at ourselves without ridiculing ourselves," says Maya Angelou, who plays one of several matriarchs in the upcoming movie. "In West Africa there's a phrase, 'blow-bite-blow.' You blow on an area until it's partly anaesthetized, then bite, then blow again before they notice the pain. That's what Tyler Perry does. He's chocolate covering on spinach or collard greens."

Perry often refers to his work as "my brand," a self-contained network of movies, musicals, books, DVDs, programs and posters. After years on the touring circuit, he has a list of 500,000 fans who get an e-mail blast every time he comes to their town or has a new product to sell. This constituency, mostly churchgoing African-American women, is the backbone of Perry's brand. "African-American women are the most loyal fan base you'll ever have," he said, sitting in his suite at the Trump Hotel during a run at the Beacon Theater in New York. "You don't need to worry about eating for the rest of your life, because they will support you with everything they have. As long as you don't marry outside the race, you are in."

"Madea's Family Reunion," like all of his work, is a story of family abuse and forgiveness. Men -- it is almost always men -- do bad things to women and children, who find strength, and often vengeance, through their faith. The mode is a kind of African-American nostalgia for communities that do not exist, combined with maternal instruction to do better. In the new movie, a matriarch played by Cicely Tyson laments seeing what her family has come to: young men gambling and fighting, women "with no clothes on, gyrating, fornicating," amid other falls from grace. "What happened to us?" she asks them. "What happened to the pride and dignity and love and respect we had for each other?"