African Play to Get U.S. Border Slant

Nigerian author Wole Soyinka, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1986, wrote his play “The Strong Breed” about a man trapped between two opposing African cultures.

When the play has its West Coast premiere May 12, it will get a San Diego slant as the two cultures become the United States and Mexico and the focus turns to tensions at the border.

Bartlett Sher, who worked most recently as assistant director for the recent Mark Taper Forum production of “A Lie of the Mind,” adapted the play as the first project of the Plus Fire Performance Group, a new San Diego experimental theater company.

Rob Murphy, set designer for “Six Women With Brain Death or Expiring Minds Want to Know” at the San Diego Repertory Theatre, is designing the set. The play features a multi-ethnic cast of 18 and is financed through a COMBO/National Endowment for the Humanities grant.

“The Strong Breed” is scheduled to run through May 28 at the Installation Gallery, 930 E St.