Presentation: Berkeley Rep Docent Talk on Mother Road

A docent talk about the play Mother Road, on at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in June and July, will provide context of the play’s production and feature an open audience discussion about Mexican-American experience, migrant farm camps, trauma, and Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, which intertwines with the story. Attendees do not need to have seen the play in order to enjoy the talk and discussion.

One of the most celebrated living writers of the Mexican-American experience, Octavio Solis pens a 21st-century tale inspired by John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. William Joad has no heir to bequeath the family farm to — until he learns about Martín Jodes, a young Mexican-American migrant worker descended from Steinbeck’s protagonist Tom Joad. In a reversal of the Joads’ mythic journey, William and Martín embark on a road trip from California’s migrant farm camps back to Oklahoma, where they reckon with their brutal pasts and forge an unlikely bond. Along their journey on the Mother Road, they gather a chorus of travelers. Witness Solis’ soaring poetry, gritty realism and mythic scope as he captures the intersection of people, cultures and migration in the American West.

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