Citizen: An American Lyric
Recommended
Citizen: An American Lyric is a new play based on the evocative and enraging book of prose fragments by Claudia Rankine about what it's like to deal with the daily insults of racism. The show was adapted for the stage by Stephen Sachs and directed by Jay O'Leary. Each prose fragment in Citizen tells a different anecdote. For example: "At the end of a brief phone conversation, you tell the manager you are speaking with that you will come by his office to sign the form. When you arrive and announce yourself, he blurts out, I didn't know you were black!" Each anecdote is dramatized with actors playing a variety of roles. If you have not read Citizen, if a book of nonfiction prose-poetry is not something you're ever going to crack, you owe it to yourself—and to your imagination, and to the world around you—to go see this. If you have already read Citizen, it will you remind you all over again of the power and poetry of Rankine's work.
by Christopher Frizzelle