What to know about 'The Brothers Size' and what's next for OKC Rep in its 2023-2024 season

A universal story of brotherhood, friendship, incarceration and freedom enthralls with an innovative telling using music, dance, poetry and West African mythology in "The Brothers Size."

Oklahoma City Repertory Theater is closing its 2022-2023 "This Is Theater" season with the Sooner State premiere of Oscar winner Tarell Alvin McCraney's "The Brothers Size." Performances continue through May 7 at Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center's Te Ata Theater.

The nonprofit professional theater also has announced the lineup for its 2023-2024 season, which will include the return of an original title that has already become a buzzy local favorite.

What's 'The Brothers Size' about?

Along with winning an Academy Award for adapting his semi-autobiographical play "In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue" into the 2017 Best Picture winner "Moonlight," McCraney penned "The Brother/Sister Plays," three interconnected stories set in the Louisiana bayou. "The Brothers Size" is one-third of that trio of contemporary stories.

OKC Rep received a $10,000 National Endowment for the Arts grant to produce the intimate three-man show. New York-based actor Ato Blankson-Wood, who was nominated for a 2021 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for originating the role of Gary in the acclaimed and controversial "Slave Play," makes an assured directorial debut with the OKC production.

Set in San Pere, Louisiana, in the "distant present," "The Brothers Size" follows big brother Ogun Size (Caleb Barnett, a University of Central Oklahoma senior from Dallas who impresses just as he's done in several recent Lyric Theatre and OKC Rep productions), a skilled, hard-working and reliable auto mechanic who runs his own shop, and younger brother Oshoosi (Atlanta actor Ibraheem Farmer, making his OKC Rep debut), who is newly out of prison, lacking in direction and seems almost destined to find trouble, much to his older sibling's consternation.

Trouble and danger seem practically guaranteed with Elegba (Thaddeus S. Fitzpatrick, a NYC-based actor who was born in Wyoming, raised in Alabama and is making his OKC Rep debut), Oshoosi’s friend from prison, routinely coming around. It's obvious that there's a mighty bond between Oshoosi and Elegba, one that tugs at the younger Size just like the ties that bind him to his big brother.

It's a testament to the actors' powerful performances that they keep the viewer's focus on them even with Edward T. Morris' striking set design — a 900-pound expanse dotted with real-life scavenged car parts that instantly intrigues and sets the scene — looming over them. They expertly tease the humor and heartbreak out of McCraney's evocative tale, even rendering their experiences with the racist local sheriff so vividly that you can practically see the corrupt lawman's suspicious sneer.

Although McCraney's decision to have the characters announce their stage directions when they enter and exit can sometimes feel distancing and distracting, his lyrical language and canny use of music heightens the story. He also adds layers to the storytelling through his clever use of Yoruba cosmology — all three characters are named for and share characteristics with West African deities — and the work of Chalia La Tour, the production's costume designer and co-associate director, echoes those creative choices.

What's next for OKC Rep in its 2023-2024 season?

With the theme "Right Here, Right Now," OKC Rep's 2023-2024 subscription season will include four shows at Oklahoma Contemporary's Te Ata Theater, plus the comeback of a popular outdoor title as an add-on production. It's the second full season programmed by Artistic Director Kelly Kerwin since OKC Rep's 2022 "Reboot" season.

“These five productions are fun, exuberant, and thought-provoking," Kerwin said in a statement. "We believe that visionary theatrical works should be just as accessible to audiences in Oklahoma as they are to those in bigger cities, where these kinds of works traditionally premiere."

The award-winning regional theater will venture into the world of Bronies and Pegasisters with next season's opener, Eric John Meyer's "The Antelope Party." To be directed by Jesse Jou, the dark comedy centers on a rural Pennsylvania group of adult fans of the animated series "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" whose enchanted role-playing is disrupted by fear and paranoia. Performances are set for Oct. 12-22.

The season will continue Nov. 16-18 with "Looking for Tiger Lily," written and performed by Anthony Hudson, aka "the human vessel for Portland’s premiere drag clown Carla Rossi." The show uses song, dance, video and drag to put a queer spin on the ancestral tradition of storytelling.

OKC Rep again will ring in the New Year by partnering with New York City's The Public Theater for Under the Radar: On the Road, a program that brings selections from the NYC festival to Oklahoma City. Last year, OKC audiences got to see Inua Ellams' poetic one-man show "An Evening with an Immigrant" even after an outbreak of the COVID-19 omicron variant canceled the NYC festival, and in January, esteemed actor and playwright Roger Guenveur Smith traveled from New York to Oklahoma City to perform his solo stage show "Otto Frank," in which he depicts the Jewish Holocaust survivor who famously published the diary of his late daughter, Anne Frank.

The title for the 2024 installment of the Under the Radar: On the Road partnership won't be announced until closer to the Jan. 25-28 OKC run.

OKC Rep will close its 2023-2024 main stage season Feb. 29-March 9 with Qui Nguyen's "Vietgone," billed as an "all-American love story about two very new Americans." Set in 1975 after the fall of Saigon has ended the Vietnam War, the show is both a romantic comedy and a cross-country road trip. Nikki DiLoreto will direct.

What outdoor show is OKC Rep bringing back by popular request?

For a season add-on, OKC Rep is bringing back its spring 2022 hit "Of a Mind: Oklahoma City," an inventive and immersive guided audio tour exploring OKC's urban core. 

Kerwin told The Oklahoman that she decided to bring back "Of a Mind: OKC" by popular request. The collective audio journey will return May 9-June 10, 2024.

Kerwin developed "Of a Mind: OKC" with an international group of collaborators, including Emily Zemba, a New York playwright originally from Connecticut; sound designer Tyler Kieffer, who hails from New Orleans but is based in New York City; composer Kevin McNamara, an Irishman who is also a music therapist; and Hugh Farrell, a Dubliner who leads with Kieffer an artist collective called Listen and Breathe.

How can theater fans get OKC Rep tickets?

Single tickets for "The Brothers Size" and ticket packages for the 2023-24 main stage season are on sale at okcrep.org.

Single tickets for the 2023-2024 OKC Rep shows at Oklahoma Contemporary, along with tickets to the encore presentation for "Of a Mind: OKC," will go on sale later this year.

OKC Rep is maintaining its mission of making theater accessible to everyone: The theater plans to continue offering its sliding-scale ticket prices and Pay-What-You-Can options.

“OKC Rep makes incredible theater, but with fewer financial barriers. This is only possible because of our devoted supporters They make it possible for us to reach a broad audience, one that looks and feels like OKC," Kerwin said in a statement.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: OKC theater presents Oscar winner's powerful play 'The Brothers Size'