The UC San Diego Department of Theatre + Dance presents: 

IN THE RED AND BROWN WATER 

by Tarell Alvin McCraney

directed by Cambria Herrera

PERFORMANCE DATES

February 25 & 26 @ 7:30pm
February 26 @ 2:00pm

VENUE

Theodore and Adele Shank Theatre

DESCRIPTION

In The Red and Brown Water is McCraney’s take on Yerma by Federico García Lorca, recontextualized to a predominantly Black, Louisiana housing project. It centers a woman coming of age, who with the speed of the wind on the track and her undeniable grit fights the pressures and abuse around her to create her place in the world. Inspired by the Orisha’s of Yoruba mythology, McCraney connects one young woman’s story to the eternal nature of gods, humankind, and the elements, asking, “Can the young and feminine survive a world that teaches them to sacrifice for others but nothing about loving themself?” With this play in 2022, we have the unique opportunity to build on the conversation started by womanists, our queer and feminist ancestors, the Black Lives Matter movement, the Me Too movement, the courageous act of Simone Biles stepping away from the Olympic competition, and the question she and 156 other women who publically came forward expressing their sexual assault experiences brought up for us, the question of “How are we as a society failing our young girls?” While holding up a mirror to this tragic state of our world, this play tugs on me to love myself for my mere existence. It reminds me that I don’t have to be giving, excelling, or healing in order to be worthy of love or time on this planet, It calls me to love on my queerness: the parts of me that are a duality, like the characters in this play who are both masculine and feminine, queer and maternal, ferocious and soft, resolute and mailable, enduring and mortal. This play gives as much poeticism to the moon as the way a person walks into a room, calling us to look at the spiritual, the unnamable, the painfully tragic, the ecstatically joyful, and also the mundane moments of our lives with reverence. The very young protagonist of this play inspires us to keep living, no matter if we’re trapped by poverty, grief, discrimination, anxiety, infertility, abuse, or something else.