By Barbara Smith

When director Steve H. Broadnax III talks about Suzan-Lori Parks’ Topdog/Underdog, opening September 25 at The Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, he returns again and again to one word that might surprise those familiar with the Pulitzer Prize-winning tragedy: love.

“This play is a love story,” Broadnax says. “It is about two brothers that are codependent. They hurt each other, but they also need each other. They need to re-create a family that they lost.”

Those brothers are Lincoln and Booth, Black men abandoned by their parents and left to construct a family out of their complicated dependence on one another. Inside their cramped apartment, they compete over money, women, clothes, jobs, and the three-card Monte hustle that becomes a potent metaphor for something larger. Broadnax describes them as “searching for the winning card of life, the thing that will finally assure them they matter.”

Acclaimed director Broadnax returns to the Old Globe after last season’s gripping drama Appropriate. Amid a busy rehearsal schedule, he shared his thoughts on the play’s themes, the dynamic between its two actors and his admiration for playwright Parks, the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2002.

Topdog/Underdog was hailed by the New York Times as the greatest American play of the 21st century. For Black audiences, it offers an unusually layered portrait of Black masculinity. Lincoln and Booth wrestle with ideas about what men, particularly Black men, are supposed to be. Yet Broadnax is determined that their pain not become their entire identity. “You get to see these two men… beyond what news or media presents. You see the human spectrum. They are funny, they are sexy, they’re foolish, they’re brilliant, they’re competitive, they’re imaginative, and they are deeply human.”

Director Steve H. Broadnax III

That full humanity comes through in Alano Miller and Elijah Jones, two skilled actors Broadnax had worked with separately on different projects but never together. Their connection, he says, quickly mirrored the relationship they portray. “They come into the room with such a love for one another,” Broadnax says. “Now they are like brothers.”

Audiences will experience that relationship at close range. Staged in the round, the production places theatergoers around the brothers’ one-room apartment, allowing them to witness the humor, competition, vulnerability, and shifting balance of power as if they were inside the room themselves. Music provides another layer, from the blues played by Lincoln to contemporary sounds reflecting the play’s 2001 New York setting.

Broadnax brings a keen understanding of Parks’ distinctive rhythms and poetic language to this production. The two are frequent collaborators known for staging bold, provocative theatrical works. He speaks of Parks with both affection and awe. “She writes from a deeply spiritual place, serving as an instrument for something higher,” he says. “The writing is beautiful, complex, colorful, and rhythmic, capable of moving people toward revelation and deeper understanding.”

Broadnax himself moves fluidly among directing, writing, and teaching, which he calls his trifecta. He is co-head of Penn State’s MFA directing program, where he has taught for over two decades, and serves as Artistic Director of Arkansas Repertory Theatre. He recently wrote and directed The Remarkable Resignation of Dr. Joycelyn Elders, a world premiere about the first African American U.S. Surgeon General, whose story brought Broadnax’s interests in history, identity, and Black lives to the stage.

Although Topdog/Underdog is rooted unmistakably in the experience of two Black men, Broadnax believes its reach extends far beyond. Family, betrayal, survival, belonging and the hunger for self-worth know no racial boundaries.

For Old Globe Artistic Director Barry Edelstein, the production marks an important milestone for the theatre’s audiences. “Suzan-Lori Parks is a singular figure in the American theater, and her voice is as distinctive as it is captivating.” He adds that Broadnax’s visionary imagination is a perfect match for the power of Parks’ writing.

Topdog/Underdog runs through October 18. Black theater patrons are invited to the October 9 Old Globe-sponsored Black Theatre Night, featuring a pre-show mixer and the opportunity to experience the play together in community. For ticket information, visit https://www.theoldglobe.org/.