This play Topdog/Underdog
I mean, the story is simple.
It's two brothers in a room who are roommates, you know, two
biological siblings who are roommates who are struggling to make it.
You know, I mean, and as a joke,
their father many years ago named them both Lincoln and Booth.
Setting up a whole host of complications,
which much they struggle against.
There's a world out there outside that room where we see the play set
and there's the world inside.
There's a love between these two brothers, how they support each other,
how they encourage each other to grow, and also how they stand in each other's way.
And through that, we as an audience who
if you're a, you know, a black man, you might identify very easily.
If you're not, you might say, huh,
that story has something to do with me
because of the way that human nature ripples outward.
And it's a very it's a play which really works to include
all of us in this in the world community.
It's about brotherhood.
It's about love.
It's about family.
I happen to think that every good story is a love story.
And it's about, you know, for me,
you know, characters who are trying their best
to hold on to the things the ideas that they're in love with.
And this
the circumstances of the players are going to, you know, fight to take
those things away.
I mean, I just echo that, man.
And it's about humanity at the, at its core.
And like you said, these brothers are fighting towards
bettering themselves
and individually that fight, you know how it tears
at the fabric of who...of their love and in who they are
and who they know themselves to be or think themselves to be.
Yeah.
Yes. Is is beautiful, man.
It's a funny play
comic, I should say,
darkly, you know.
But it's also
just hope.
And and so there's a lot of depth in there.
It's interesting to do this play 20 years after the original production,
because in many ways it's just it's a different play.
It's a different play because of where we are as Americans,
where we are in the world now.
It's like you can't tell this same story,
you know, you can't tell the same story they told 20 years ago.
But that's a sign of a great classical piece of theater.
Booth as a firecracker.
You know, I love Booth.
You know, I first discovered Booth when I was, I think, 21 years old.
And he's youthful, energetic, optimistic.
You know, he has dreams of being a great card thrower,
a great three card monte player like his big brother Lincoln.
And he wants to be successful.
That's the avenue that he's, you know, chosen to, you know, to
to pursue his dreams.
And he's in love with a girl named Grace.
And and he's a man who believes
that he is much larger than his current social stature.
Lincoln.
Lincoln is the
older bro, the senior bro.
I think he
he has a history, has a past with three card money
He was, you know, cards for him was everything.
You know, no one no one was better than him on the streets.
And I think
he struggles to sort of move past that.
He's he currently like his job, you know, his day
job, the thing he loves is going to work every day.
And playing Lincoln, he has to sit in the chair and people come in
and they shoot him, it’s an arcade, you know, and and that's his way of sort of,
I guess, sort of push it down the past of pushing down
the person who he used to be, but it comes back to haunt him.
Now more now, more than ever.
I think it's important for people to wake up to the love.
I feel like now more than ever
and it doesn't matter who you voted for, it doesn't matter what God or Goddess
or spirit or not, none of the above you believe in.
It doesn't matter what your faith system is, you know, now more than ever,
it's time to wake up to the love and Topdog is a call to that.
The last moment in the written play where Booth cries out in the wilderness,
if you will.
He is calling us. Wake up to the love.
Wake up to the love that is it is trapped in
in that not trapped that it is contained within community.
Wake up to love
between someone who might look like you or someone who might not look like you.
Because the world is constantly getting in the way
and Topdog and get those cards. That's the world.
The world is getting in the way of just the basic.
You are a human being and so am I.
And what does that mean? These days?
And how beautiful and necessary that is now more than ever.