Br’er Cotton (7-31 Mar)

Lynchburg, Virginia, on the former site of a cotton mill. 14 year old Ruffrino is struggling to make sense of his place in an impoverished world filled with seemingly random killings of young black men. As his anger towards reality grows, he moves further away from his family. Losing himself online, Ruffrino’s world sinks around him while he battles to wake up the zombies and prove by any means necessary that Black Lives Matter.

The play delves into the aftermath of the the notorious incident on September 5, 2014 when a white police offer (Darren Wilson) confronted and killed the unarmed teenager Micheal Brown, in a case that bore all the hallmarks of racial profiling and excessive use of force.
According to writer Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm, the play was written out of anger and frustration of not being able to vent his anger at the injustices that was happening in his hometown of Ferguson.

He says ‘After Mike Brown’s murder my hometown was in pain. I was away so I wasn’t able to be part of the protest, the rioting or the healing. I channelled my anger into this play in order to examine and exorcise it.

The cast includes Michael Ajo (The Lorax), Kiza Deen (Trouble in Mind) and Trevor Toussaint (The Harder They Come).

David Greig, Theatre503 Playwritng award judge said “The production mixes magic realism and finely observed naturalism to tell a tragic story of race and masculinity in today’s America. Haunting, thoughtful, angry and urgent.

7-31 March, Theatre 503, London SW11 3BW, £12-£18, 7.30pm  https://theatre503.com/whats-on/brer-cotton/