The Bitter Game Begins Performances at American Repertory Theater’s Oberon | Playbill

Regional News The Bitter Game Begins Performances at American Repertory Theater’s Oberon Keith A. Wallace’s solo show, exploring the hardships of black men in America, will also play two free, site-specific performances in Massachusetts.
Keith A. Wallace in The Bitter Game Jim Carmody

The Bitter Game, created, written, and performed by Keith A. Wallace, begins at Oberon—the American Repertory Theater’s alternative club space—September 14. Performances will run at the Cambridge, Massachusetts, venue through September 16.

Following the Oberon performances, Wallace will present his solo show in two free, site-specific performances: the Mattapan Teen Center September 20 and the Harambee Basketball Court at the Perkins Community Center September 21.

The show is presented in five acts, representing the four quarters and overtime of a basketball game. Wallace blends poetry and prose to shed light on traumas that plague black men and communities of color in America, including racial profiling and police brutality.

“The work I’m interested in creating and consuming focuses on issues of racial inequity and injustice,” says Wallace. “With this play, I’m trying to create an opportunity for empathy—exposing humanity and emotion in a way that we can all see ourselves reflect in a particular story, that makes us responsibly in a whole new way.”

The Bitter Game heads to the Boston area following acclaimed runs as part of La Jolla Playhouse’s WithOutWalls Festival in 2015 and the Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival earlier this year.

Wallace, a self-proclaimed “activist,” has appeared onstage previously in the world premiere of Ayad Akhtar’s Broadway-bound Junk, as well as Venus, Death of a Driver, and Blueprints to Freedom.

For more information, visit AmericanRepertoryTheater.org.

 
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