The Lower Bottom Playaz To Close 24th Season With August Wilson's RADIO GOLF

Oakland's oldest Black theater company ends its 24th season with August Wilson's final installment in his American Century Cycle.

RADIO GOLF wraps The Lower Bottom Playaz's (LBP) Season 24: Songs Like Home, with an examination of what it means for Black people to make place and space at this particular moment in time, not only in Oakland but in the United States as a whole. It is an installation in Wilson's query of the value and cost of progress in a colonial paradigm where success can mean playing someone else's game with rules that change as you play. This will be the company's first fully staged formal production since the COVID pandemic.

Set in the late 1990s, the play follows the story of a real estate developer who aspires to become the city's first Black mayor. RADIO GOLF is the final play of Wilson's Century Cycle, a ten-play series chronicling the experiences of the African American community in the 20th century. LBP is the only theater troupe in the world to have produced this cycle chronically.

Dr. Ayodele Nzinga, LBP's founding artistic director and Oakland's Poet Laureate, will direct. "RADIO GOLF asks us to consider what from the past we need to hold onto in order to move to the future we want. It also asks us to consider if we are sure we are headed in the right direction to begin with. The story takes place in the Hill district of Pittsburgh, a Black neighborhood rapidly experiencing gentrification where certain residents see an opportunity to leverage the shifts for their own future, while others seem destined to be casualties to the change. The resonance between the Hill District and West Oakland, CA is pronounced."

This season, focused on space, place, and belonging for Black artists, is especially resonant with the recent announcement that Black Arts Business Movement Business District, Community Development Corporation (BAMBD CDC) has become the new leaseholder of 1540 Broadway (formerly known as PianoFight and as The Flight Deck). The space, now known as BAM House, will serve as a Black Cultural Center in Downtown Oakland and house Lower Bottom Playaz as its resident theater troupe. This will be the first time in its 25 year history that the Lower Bottom Playaz, an arts house for so many Oakland artists, will finally have a secure home.

RADIO GOLF is also an anchor event for BAMBDFest 2023 International, an annual festival produced by BAMBD CDC celebrating Black Arts, Culture & Economics in Oakland during the month of August. For more information about this year's festival, themed (un)belong)ed, visit http://www.bambdfest.com/

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