The Marin Theatre Company is getting back to what they do better than most.
The integral Mill Valley theatrical organization returns this week with acclaimed playwright Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu’s provocative, electrifying play Pass Over, which reopened Broadway after the pandemic closures and drew “blazingly theatrical and thrillingly tense” raves from The New York Times.
The play, which runs through Feb. 20, has draw accolades for its starkly beautiful language, complex characters, compelling themes and the ability to turn everyday profanities into poetry and illuminating the human spirit of young Black men.
Nwandu was named one of MTC’s annual playwriting prize winners in 2017, continuing an tradition to “celebrate the work of the American playwright and encourage the creation of bold, powerful new voices and plays for the American stage.”
Pass Over combines the Book of Exodus and Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” in the setting of an urban street corner, where Moses and Kitch, a pair of African American men talk trash, pass the time and hope that maybe today will be different as they dream of their promised land. A stranger “wanders into their space with his own agenda and derails those plans” in a play that “crafts everyday profanities into poetic and humorous riffs, exposing the unquestionable human spirit of young men stuck in a cycle just looking for a way out.”
After a stirring World Premiere at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre in 2017, the provocative, politically charged play was adapted for film by Spike Lee and turned into a film in 2018.