Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me

Core members of the team behind the Wooster Group's fascinating 2017 project The B-Side: “Negro Folklore from Texas State Prisons”—performer Eric Berryman, designer Elizabeth LeCompte and sound designer Eric Sluyter—reunite for a kind of sequel: a reconstruction of another album compiled by the documentarian and folklorist Bruce Jackson. This time, the emphasis is on the African-American tradition of rhyming epic poems known as toasts, as recorded on the 1976 LP Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me: Narrative Poetry from Black Oral Tradition. Wooster VIP Kate Valk directs the show, which features live drumming by Jharis Yokley.