Following its New York premiere at the 2013 Under The Radar festival and an international tour, BRIC will present Rodney King, Roger Guenveur Smith's solo performance on the legacy of Rodney King. The critically acclaimed production was listed in The New York Times as a Critics' Pick and described as "sinuous, complicated, [and] deeply moving."
"BRIC strives to engage our audiences in a continual dialogue with the issues of our time," said
Jack Walsh, BRIC's Vice President of Performing Arts. "Perhaps more timely than ever,
Roger Guenveur Smith's Rodney King gracefully and compassionately brings us face to face with the nuanced complexities of America's relationship with race."
Rodney King was thrust into international prominence in 1991 when beaten by members of the Los Angeles Police Department. In response to a jury's acquittal of the four indicted officers a year later, Los Angeles exploded into the deadliest riot in the nation's history.
Roger Guenveur Smith negotiates Rodney King's subsequent odyssey as "the first reality tv star" in an intimate, ingeniously devised conversation" with the deceased King, who expired in his backyard swimming pool in 2012.
Sound design is provided by Smith's longtime collaborator
Marc Anthony Thompson. Lighting by Jose Lopez.
Six performances Rodney King will take place tonight, December 3, through the 7th (see schedule above) at BRIC House, located at 647 Fulton Street in Downtown Brooklyn. Tickets are $22 ($16 student, seniors with valid ID) and can be purchased by visiting BRICartsmedia.org or by calling OvationTix at 866.811.4111.
The Los Angeles Times praised the show, calling Smith "the jazz master of the form, riffing as freely and confidently as
Sonny Rollins on sax." The Hollywood Reporter said, "alternately confrontational and rhapsodic, this exhortation to Rodney G. King, symbol and man, finds a painful ecstasy in the varieties of historical memory, likely the best yet of
Roger Guenveur Smith's ongoing examinations of influential black Americans."
Roger Guenveur Smith adapted his Obie Award-winning solo performance of A Huey P. Newton Story into a Peabody Award-winning telefilm. His history-driven work also includes
Frederick Douglass Now, Who Killed
Bob Marley?, Juan And John, Christopher Columbus 1992, The Watts Towers Project, In Honor of Jean-Michel Basquiat, and, with Mark Broyard, the award-winning Inside The Creole Mafia. For
Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing, Smith created the stuttering hero Smiley. His astonishing range of film credits also includes Malcolm X, He Got Game, Get On The Bus, Eve's Bayou, All About The Benjamins, Hamlet, Deep Cover and American Gangster, for which he was nominated for the Screen Actors' Guild Award. He starred in the HBO series K Street, Oz, and Unchained Memories: Readings From The Slave Narratives.
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