BBC (Big Black Cockroach)

Paul Outlaw

WORLD PREMIERE

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Price: $27*
Genre: Theater
Season: Winter/Spring 2024
DATE: JUN 20-22
IN-PERSON: THU-SAT, 8:30 PM
STREAM: SAT, 8:30 PM (PT)
RUNTIME: Approx. 75 minutes, no intermission
COUNTRY: USA
Program: Not yet available

* Discounts available for REDCAT members, students & the CalArts faculty and staff

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About

Writer and performer Paul Outlaw returns to REDCAT with a gripping work of experimental theater, inspired by classical European mythology, American comic books, current events, and Franz Kafka’s best known novel, Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis). A nightmarish satire, in which a right-wing American white woman wakes up in the body of a Black man, BBC (Big Black Cockroach) mixes a disorienting cocktail of historical violence and near-future visions. Innovative spatialized sound design, built entirely from recordings of Outlaw’s voice and movements, echo the expanding identities within the protagonist and the production’s indelible central image—a queer Black male body in stark isolation—becomes the vessel for America’s violent past, present, and future.

Please note: BBC (Big Black Cockroach) contains loud sounds, mature content, and nudity.

Paul Outlaw’s boldness blew me away as he inhabited the character of a white, wealthy, conservative woman who wakes up to find herself trapped in a black man’s body …The power of BBC’s exploration of xenophobia, black virility, and gender confusion left me speechless and stunned.

—

Bianca Collins, Artillery

As of October 5, 2023, the creation of BBC (Big Black Cockroach) has been supported by a Los Angeles County Performing Arts Recovery Grant, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts (FCA) Emergency Grant, a micro grant from the Speranza Foundation, and the generosity of individual donors. Additional support has been provided by the Ucross Foundation, Thymele Arts, Lincoln City Fellowship, and Los Angeles Performance Practice.

about the artist

Paul Outlaw

Paul Outlaw is a Los Angeles and Berlin-based multidisciplinary performing artist. Spanning an array of mediums, including text-based drama, physical theater, performance art, spoken word, and American popular music, his works confront the tangled web of societal constructs around race and gender and excavate the enduring legacies of white supremacy and patriarchal violence—both physical and psychological—that have marred the tapestry of Euro-American history. Under the banner of OutlawPlay, he has created an evolving series of performances and solo theater works, including: Berserker; What Did I Do to Be So Black and…; The Late, Late Show; BIRTHDAY SUITe; Shine; Reading Ventriloquist Scripts: The Talking at Money; and the upcoming DUET. Outlaw’s award-winning solo projects and collaborations have been presented in the US (including at LACMA, MOCA, REDCAT, the Getty, The Lab, Yale Union) and abroad (including at Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin, Melkweg in Amsterdam, and GES-2/V-A-C Foundation in Moscow).

Outlaw is the recipient of various grants, fellowships, and residencies, including a City of Los Angeles Individual Artist Fellowship and a Los Angeles County Performing Arts Recovery Grant. He played the title role in Pepe Danquart’s Schwarzfahrer, winner of the 1994 Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film. Outlaw is one of the queer changemakers memorialized in One Institute’s 2021 exhibition, Pride Publics: Words and Actions.