San Diego theater audiences may be just getting to know Bibi Mama, but if the multitalented actor-director-playwright chooses to stay in town, she won’t be a secret much longer.
Mama, who recently graduated from the Old Globe-University of San Diego MFA theater program, showcases all of the aforementioned skills this week in a filmed production of “The Mango Tree,” a 21-minute solo play that she wrote, co-directs and stars in.
The play was produced by Moxie Theatre and is being presented this week as part of the San Diego Black Artist Collective’s Say It Loud Festival, a Juneteenth celebration that runs through Saturday.
Mama wrote the play as her final master’s project at USD. A first-generation Beninese-American, she was inspired by the West African storytelling tradition handed down by her father, Raouf Mama, an author, storyteller and college professor in her native Connecticut.
In her play, co-directed by Claire Simba with sound by Melanie Chen Cole, Mama plays a young girl who breaks the fourth wall to tell the audience about her twin brother, Tunde, a playful and mischievous boy who loves to climb trees and eat mangoes. But the mango tree is cursed, and the river that glides underneath its branches is ruled by a needy goddess who craves attention. When Tunde falls into the river, the goddess takes him, but his adoring sister devises a plan to get him back. Dressed in African attire and sneakers on a bare stage, Mama’s charismatic personality and joyful sense of movement fills the Moxie Theatre stage. Like her father, Mama is a born storyteller.
The play is well-written, lively, beautifully descriptive, fun to watch and also haunting. In the filmed credits, Mimi dedicated the play to Darius Smith, a friend who died a few years ago, and that sense of grief in the play is palpable. Stay tuned after the play for a recorded Zoom interview between Mama, her father and Jennifer Eve Thorn, Moxie’s executive artistic director.
Meanwhile, audiences can see in person even more of Mama’s talents, singing and dancing, in New Village Arts’ “Beehive: The ‘60s Musical,” which is playing on an outdoor stage in Carlsbad through July 25.
“The Mango Tree” is screening again at 8:30 p.m. Friday and 6 p.m. Saturday. Tickets are “pay what you can” and can be purchased at moxietheatre.com/playing-now-mangotree.
"Review" - Google News
June 17, 2021 at 02:00AM
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Review: Moxie's 'Mango Tree' a moving folk tale of sibling love, grief - The San Diego Union-Tribune
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