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\u00a0 An empty swimming pool can evoke countless childhood memories. For Janice, the protagonist of Tony-nominated playwright Christina Anderson\u2019s new play, it brings up a story her father told her of their small Kansas town\u2019s public pool being drained because of \u201ccontamination\u201d in the \u201930s, after Black kids snuck in to swim\u2014and of his subsequent life-long fight to desegregate it.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The Ripple, the Wave That Carried Me Home, <\/span><\/em>which opened as a coproduction between\u00a0Portland Center Stage<\/a> and\u00a0Artists Repertory Theatre<\/a> on October 13,<\/span> <\/strong>speaks to the complicated relationship segregation created between Black Americans and water.<\/strong> Anderson\u2019s script uses the metaphor of swimming, which requires every muscle in one\u2019s body, to illustrate\u00a0the arduous task of fighting racism:\u00a0<\/span>\u201cThe connections between the physical exertion of what it takes to be a strong swimmer and the exhaustion that comes with fighting for the right to live in your body and swim or drive down the street,\u201d as Kamilah Bush,\u00a0PCS literary manager and the production\u2019s dramaturg, puts it. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Ripple <\/span><\/em>was commissioned by California\u2019s Berkeley Repertory Theatre in 2018 as part of a summer residency lab. And though its world premiere was just last month, Bush calls the script an \u201ceasy get\u201d for Portland. Anderson, whose last production was the Tony-nominated Broadway musical <\/span>Paradise Square<\/span><\/em>, is a close collaborator of PCS artistic director Marissa Wolf; PCS has commissioned her before. That relationship made quick access to the script possible, Bush says, and has also allowed for lots of on-the-fly collaboration between this production and the playwright. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n As the Berkeley production was fleshed out, Anderson passed notes along to PCS and ART. \u201cEven on first rehearsal, she sent us a new script,\u201d Bush recalls. Most changes were small, but there was a last-minute scene added, giving some airtime to a nostalgic Sugar Child Robinson song. \u201cPlays are never \u2018finished-finished,\u2019\u201d says Bush. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Harlem-based director Daniel Bryant is making his PCS debut with the play. He\u2019ll come directly from a production of <\/span>May Treuhaft-Ali’s <\/span>ABCD <\/span><\/em>at the Barrington Stage Company in Massachusetts, which also featured Chavez Ravine, who plays Gayle, Janice\u2019s aunt in <\/span>Ripple <\/span><\/em>(you may have seen her in <\/span>Prison Break<\/span><\/em>, Mike Birbiglia\u2019s film <\/span>Sleepwalk with Me, <\/span><\/em>or<\/span> Barber Shop 2<\/span><\/em>)<\/span>. <\/span><\/em>In the lead is Drammy-winning Portlander Lauren Steele, turning in a performance Bush calls \u201csingular\u201d right on the heels of her role as Susan in PCS\u2019s production of <\/a><\/span>Tick, Tick \u2026 BOOM!<\/span><\/em><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The script itself leaves an unusual amount room for performers to put themselves into the play; a symbol called chicken feet (\u201c=.=\u201d) repeated throughout asks actors to react to the context of the scene and improvise gestures or lines. \u201c<\/span>It’s really important for us to let the people whose stories are being told\u2014who the stories are about\u2014tell it themselves, in ways that feel authentic and right to them,\u201d says Bush, who notes the import of having a Black cast and almost all-Black production team.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Most of the play is set in the spring of 1992. Though it jumps through time, the climax directly overlaps with the Rodney King trial that sparked the Los Angeles riots. \u201cI’ve heard audience members who don’t know about the Rodney King trial leaving and going, \u2018I need to know more.\u2019 And people who <\/span>do <\/span><\/em>know about the Rodney King trial being like, \u2018I remember exactly where I was when I heard this. I remember exactly what TV I was standing in front of watching those streets go up in flames,\u2019\u201d Bush says.\u201cI say that the history in this play is both slippery and sticky. It sticks to your bloodline. It sticks to who you are as a person in your family and how you\u2019re moving through the world. But it\u2019s slippery in that it\u2019s so easy to forget how connected all of those things are.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Anderson\u2019s inaugural show at Berkeley Rep overlapped with the\u00a0rehearsal process\u00a0of this performance, but Bush says she will be able to catch the show at PCS and, she\u2019s sure, make notes and tweaks for its next production.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/p>\nThe Ripple, the Wave that Carried Me Home<\/a><\/h4>\n