Public Theater's 'Mobile Unit's Summer Of Joy' To Visit Brooklyn

BROOKLYN, NY — The Public Theater is hitting the road – its Mobile Unit will perform four weeks of free pop-up shows at public plazas citywide, making two stops in Brooklyn along the way.

The "Mobile Unit Summer of Joy" tour will visit neighborhoods that "were both traditionally visited by the Mobile Unit tours and hit hard by the pandemic," the Theater said in a news release.

Among those stops are the Osborn Plaza in Brownsville, where the performances will take place on Aug. 12, 28 and 29; and Albee Square in Downtown Brooklyn, where the tour will visit on Aug. 12 and 20. All performances start at 4:30 p.m.

Each show will begin with the National Black Theatre's Stage for Healing and Resilience, which will guide audiences in reflection and meditation and allow them to give voice to their own experiences, the news release said. Artists will share share stories of resilience and hope through spoken word, poems, monologues and songs.

That opening will be followed by a performance of excerpts from "Versus @ Work" by Malik Work, a Mobile Unit artist, actor, writer and emcee. The show, which Work created, depicts his tumultuous personal journey and is set against the backdrop of early millennium New York City nightlife in the Lower East Side.

"Call it verse, spoken word, rap, monologue, soliloquy and more, but Malik weaves an engaging, vibrant, and personal account, loosely analogous to Homer's Odyssey," the news release said.

The pop-up shows will conclude with "Shakespeare: Call and Response," which is an "hour-long celebration of text, music, dance, and improvisation with a live crowd," the release said. It centers on four actors who transform into a variety of roles based on audience feedback.

The show is anchored by an iambic-spitting MC and DJ and duo, the news release said, and no two "Shakespeare: Call and Response" shows are the same.

"The Mobile Unit is the purest expression of the public's conviction that the culture belongs to everyone," Oskar Eustis, the Public Theater's artistic director, said in a statement. "Our return this summer is a thrilling and responsive artistic expression born from this historical moment. We are responding to the call of community and creating a unifying embodiment of theater for this city."