A Streetcar Line Divides the Genders and Classes

My co-host, YBCA’s Marc Bamuthi Joseph, notes he doesn’t believe in art that doesn’t bleed, sweat or cry. It’s one reason we both love the work of Oakland’s Ubuntu Theater Project, which always aspires to reach such intensity. Ubuntu Theater is currently staging Tennessee Williams’s classic drama A Streetcar Named Desire, which is all about gender and class war. Blanche DuBois wages against the macho Stanley Kowalski, and the alternating resistance and complicity of Stella, Blanche’s sister and Stanley’s wife. The stakes are high — a quality that Marc notes makes the difference between the entertaining and the transformative. Details for Ubuntu’s A Streetcar Named Desire at the Alice Collective in Oakland Feb. 2-25 are here.