Every 28 Hours at A.C.T.

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By Elspeth Sweatman

For A.C.T.’s Community Artistic Director Tyrone Davis, theater is an art form that can bring people together and start a conversation.

Davis has been instrumental in bringing together theaters from around the Bay Area—A.C.T., Berkeley Repertory Theatre, FaultLine Theater, Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, Crowded Fire Theatre, and Campo Santo—for an arts festival and production of Every 28 Hours, 75 one-minute plays inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement.
Every 28 Hours Artwork. By Sara Morales.
Co-created by Dominic D’Andrea (One-Minute Play Festival) and Claudia Alick (Oregon Shakespeare Festival) in 2015, Every 28 Hours takes its name from a study that revealed how frequently—every 28 hours—a black person is killed by police or law enforcement in the United States.

For Davis, the plays are a vehicle for an important conversation that should happen across the Bay Area. That is why A.C.T. and Berkeley Repertory Theatre are hosting an Every 28 Hours arts festival before a full production of the piece at FaultLine Theater. On October 18 and 19, performances of some of the one-minute plays by A.C.T. M.F.A. Program actors and members of the FaultLine cast will be accompanied by performances from local musicians and spoken word artists. There will also be moderated talkbacks about the issues that this work unearths.

“As a country, we’re not dealing with these issues,” says Davis. “Look at NFL player Colin Kaepernick. He’s taking a knee during the national anthem to protest systemic racism. Everyone’s so busy talking about whether he should or shouldn’t take a knee, yet they’re not talking about why he’s doing it.”

“Theater can bring people together to showcase our humanity. Somewhere, somehow, we’ve lost it, but theater is a place where we can find it again. For me, theater has the power to do that.”

Every 28 Hours Arts Festival is at A.C.T.’s Strand Theater on October 18 (email education@act-sf.org to RSVP), and at Berkeley Repertory Theatre on October 19 (click here to RSVP).

A full production of Every 28 Hours is playing at FaultLine Theater from October 21 to November 12. Click here to RSVP. All performances are free and open to the public.

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