The Brothers Size Breaks the Fourth Wall, Fractures the Whole

With a bracing musical elegy, the three actors of The Brothers Size enter the Armory’s main stage, each announcing his own entrance and joining in song to build a rhythmic performance, invoking traditions of oral storytelling, old negro spirituals, and the echoed songs of a chain gang. Designed as two sharply-angled, sloping walkways and placed amidst a towering pile of junk, a set dressing of items like car doors, a bed frame, a rusted shopping cart, and chain-link fencing create an altar built to the everyday, the unthanked, the used and discarded. Both brothers are plagued by their own nightmares—Oshoosi grapples with the trauma of incarceration, and Ogun struggles with the fear of losing his brother again and trying to wrestle him back to safety.

Author: Jenna Fletcher

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