Pose and Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story star Dyllón Burnside will make his London debut as the star of Black Superhero.
Danny Lee Wynter’s new play will run at the Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Downstairs from March 14-April 29.
Directed by co-artistic director designate of the RSC Daniel Evans, the cast also includes Ben Allen, Dominic Holmes, Eloka Ivo, Danny Lee Wynter, Ako Mitchel and Rochenda Sandall.
Wynter’s debut play is described as a brutal, unflinching and funny portrait of one man’s life spiraling out of control, in an age where our idols are Kings and our superheroes Gods.
Wynter said: “I feel lucky to have this extraordinarily accomplished group of artists come together to tell this story about a messy, funny, complicated, often savage group of queer friends who drive a man towards his own journey of healing and self acceptance. I wanted to write a big, epic story that asks difficult questions about who and where we are.
“Black Superhero is a love letter to the theatre. A subversion of the historical notion that a black, gay man – both in art and the world – is merely an adjunct, a side-note, an unserious man or a source only of amusement. He can, of course, be fun, but he’s also many other things; things the world has made him; things he has learnt to be for his own survival. I wanted to place him front and centre at the heart of the kind of narrative that many of us brown boys who like men have, for the most part, been culturally starved of since we entered the world. I have tried to present his myriad flaws, his fears, his sensuality, his intimate desires. To celebrate him, and those like him, by ultimately allowing him to own all of it; by becoming the hero of his own story.”
