ROTIMI AGBABIAKA
Actor, Director, Writer, Singer, Teaching Artist
WRITER
Playwright: Penned and toured the solo shows Homeless, Type/Caste (Theatre Bay Area award), and MANIFESTO; the musical, Seeing Red—co-written with Joan Holden and Ira Marlowe and produced by the San Francisco Mime Troupe; and was commissioned by Cutting Ball Theatre to write a new play, The Soul Never Dwells In A Dry Place, inspired by the art of Romare Bearden.
Arts Journalist: Former editor and features writer for Theatre Bay Area, the region's theatre service organization, writing articles on topics ranging from arts-related legislation, to profiles of local theatre makers, to investigation and analysis of issues relevant to the local and national theatre industry.
Reviews
"While the struggle to reconcile the artistic conscience with the hierarchy of needs is real, in [MANIFESTO] it somehow becomes fun. Like a juicy gossip sesh with your 'gay best friend.'"
Nicole Gluckstern, KQED
PLAYS
The Soul Never Dwells In A Dry Place
Commissioned by Cutting Ball Theater, The Soul Never Dwells In A Dry Place uses theatrical collage to tell the story of a young black curator, newly hired by a major American museum to mount a retrospective of 1960s artist Romare Bearden. As he struggles to fit Bearden’s boundary breaking work into contemporary categories, he is visited by the ghosts of Bearden’s influences. From North Carolina folklore to Chinese calligraphy, Greek mythology to the Harlem Renaissance, Jazz music to the Dutch masters, African sculpture to French impressionists, The Soul Never Dwells In A Dry Place goes on the kaleidoscopic journey of a person trying to find their place in a world that transcends categorization.
MANIFESTO
It’s a new day in America! There’s a vaccine for the virus, democracy has been saved, and now, more than ever, Black Lives Matter. It’s 2022 and as live entertainment makes its comeback from the COVID 19 pandemic, a queer, black actor decides to create a manifesto for theatre in our brave new world. But just when a revolutionary artist thinks he knows all the answers, a shot at Off-Broadway stardom and a visit from artistic mentors James Baldwin, Nina Simone, and Alejandro Jodorowsky lead him to start asking some new questions. Using comedy, drag, music, and dance, Rotimi Agbabiaka’s solo show gives an inside look at the terminally inequitable entertainment industry and then leaps forward to imagine the future of revolutionary art in a time when diversity is on trend, shining a comedic light on the triumphs, failings, and absurdities of our current moment.
Photo by Robbie Sweeney
Seeing Red (with Joan Holden and Ira Marlowe)
It's Election Night 2018 and Bob swears she'll never vote again. A lifetime of fading fortunes made this former Obama voter take a chance on the new guy promising change--Donald J. Trump. But it's two years into his presidency and Bob's still waiting to start winning. Tonight she's telling everyone in her small-town bar that all politicians are liars, the system is rigged, and nothing's ever gonna change.
Along comes a mysterious stranger with an intriguing offer. He'll show her an America where working people come together to demand a brighter future, where socialism isn't a dirty word. He'll take her all the way ... to 1912.
Bob soon finds herself traveling back to a time when the Socialist Party was winning millions of American votes; uncovering a hidden history and realizing that she may have more in common with those pesky progressives on the coasts. She begins to ask: what will it take to get people to stop voting against their interests? How do we overcome the divide-and-conquer tactics that keep us all down? When did our electoral choices get so limited? And isn't it time to get off the swinging pendulum that's left us at our current impasse?
Photo courtesy of SFMT
Type/Caste
In Lagos, Nigeria, a young boy tries on his mother's wedding dress and discovers a liberating world of make-belief. Setting his sights on a dazzling career as an actor on the American stage, he will first have to leap over obstacles placed by an industry that isn't always welcoming to applicants who are neither white nor straight. Hailed as a “spectacular, neon-drenched, coup-de-theatre,” Type/Caste is a fast-paced and humorous journey through the peaks, pitfalls, and hallucinations of a young artist’s quest for success. Rotimi Agbabiaka shape-shifts from character to character and uses monologue, song, dance, and drag to embody, explore, and expose the battles minority artists fight in the exclusive world of mainstream American theatre.
Photo by Cabure Bonugli
Homeless
A young man finds himself in a Bulgarian airport terminal unable to decide which flight to board in his quest to get home. As he considers his dilemma, he flashes backwards and forwards, evaluating the diverse locales he might call home.
Staunchly theatrical and sometimes funny, Homeless uses monologue, music, dance, and a parade of characters from various corners of the world to explore themes of identity, family, immigration, queerness, cultural baggage and dreams of a new world. What does home mean to those of us coming of age in the 21st century, and how do we find it?
Photo by Robbie Sweeney