Rehearsal photos released as two-time Tony Award winner Billy Porter directs an industry reading of This Bitter Earth by Harrison David Rivers in London.
This Bitter Earth by Harrison David Rivers is an intimate, romantic and gripping play about a young black writer and his white activist lover that asks, “What is the real cost of standing on the sidelines?”
A London production is in the works to be directed by Billy Porter, the Grammy Award, Emmy and two-time Tony winning actor, singer, director, composer and playwright.
An industry-only reading takes place today (November 1) starring Emmanuel Imani (Geek Girl, Netflix, The Wheel of Time, Amazon Studios) and Alexander Lincoln (Geek Girl, Netflix, feature film In From the Side – longlisted Best Breakthrough Performance – and Everything I Know About Love, BBC1).
This Bitter Earth is Thomas Hopkins’ first development project by his independently owned company, Thomas Hopkins Productions. THP will focus on producing work in the same vein as his successful West End revival of Martin Sherman’s Rose, starring Maureen Lipman, and Simon Stephen’s Song From Far Away, staring Will Young, at Hampstead Theatre.
At the Million Hoodie March in 2012, Jesse, a young black man, encounters Neil, a young white man who has unwittingly found himself at the front of the crowd with a megaphone in his hand. Flash forward several weeks, and Jesse and Neil have begun dating. But as the months pass and Neill works his way further into the world of activism, Jesse never enters it. Over the years, Jesse and Neil negotiate the complex “firsts” of their relationship against a backdrop of political demonstrations and discord. With history unfolding around them every day, Jesse and Neil must contend with the fact that, no matter their response to social turmoil, they cannot remain untouched by it.
Billy Porter said today: “Harrison David Rivers has written a searingly poingant and necessary play about love and loss through the lens of the fraying American Democratic experiment. Simple. Complex. Direct and filled with compassion all at once. I’m thrilled to be a part of bringing this very special piece to life.”
