Over a period of two years, the American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) worked with residents of San Francisco’s Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood on gathering stories from the community to interweave into a new play written by Aleshea Harris based on Sophocles’ tragedy, Oedipus the King. The resulting production, Crack, Rumble, Fly: Bayview Stories Project, featured actors from the community and was performed at different locations around the neighborhood in June.
The play brings to the theater questions about marginalization, police brutality and displacement — key issues for the residents of this part of San Francisco.
“We want to be able to tell the story because this is not only going on in the Bayview-Hunters Point or in the East Bay. It’s going on everywhere – Sarasota, Florida, Atlanta, New York,” says the production’s assistant director Whitney Mignon Reed. “This project for me is the antithesis of grief.”
A.C.T. created the production via its Stage Coach initiative — a program that aims to engage underserved communities in San Francisco through theater-based storytelling projects about their own lives and experiences.
