To comply with the overnight directive of the California Department of Public Health and a mandate from the County of Los Angeles, effective today, March 12, 2020, all REDCAT performances and screenings are being postponed through May 15, 2020.

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This darkly comic musical portrait of Oluo’s mother builds one story out of many, a journey from Section 8 housing in 1980s Seattle to the mangrove swamps of the Niger Delta to the Clallam Bay Correctional Facility. With stunning new compositions combined with soul-baring stand-up interludes, Oluo explores two intertwining narratives: his mother’s life as the white, Midwestern wife of a Nigerian chief and, later, a destitute single mother; and his own journey to Nigeria, as an adult, to visit his late father’s village and discover a family on the other side of the world. The follow-up to Oluo’s musical Now I’m Fine, SUSAN is a story about the failings of men and the endurance of women. It is a crystalline slice of American life; a collision of class, race, bodies, love, and men with bad intentions; a tragedy about the most comically optimistic person on Earth.