Join us for In the Red and Brown Water on Nov. 30 and Dec. 1,2, 6, 8, and 9 in the Center for the Arts Lab Theatre (Building 1P, Room 110).
In the Red and Brown Water is written by the African American playwright Tyrell Alvin McCraney (of Moonlight fame). The play is part of a trilogy collectively called The Brother Sister Plays, which together track a group of people of color in the projects in an invented town in southern Louisiana through a generation. In the Red and Brown Water, the first, follows three years in the life of Oya, a young woman whose hopes to become a track star collapse and her relationship with two men, Shango and Ogun Size, fail to bring her the child she begins to desperately hope for. The play, which is loosely based on Frederico Garcia Lorca’s Yerma, ends with Oya taking a dramatic action. The play is beautiful, vibrantly funny, musical, and written partly with gritty realism and partly with poetic lyricism. Significantly, McCraney draws from Yoruban diasporic religion, (primarily as Santería in this case), naming each character after an Orisha. Qualities of the Orishas delicately inform the lives of the characters, even as no direct reference is ever made to them. The play is performed by an outstanding ten-person cast, and is directed by Professor Maurya Wickstrom, with design by Matt Fick (set and lights), Liam O’Brien (costumes), and AJ Parascandola (sound).
Tickets are $10/$5 with student ID. They are available at the CFA Box Office (718.982.2787), and also at the door on the evening of the performance.
