Rotimi Agbabiaka’s Middlebury visit is a student-initiated residency spearheaded by Akhila Khanna ’17, supported by the Rothrock Family Fund for Experiential Learning in the Performing Arts, established in 2011, which supports opportunities that broaden the scope of Middlebury students’ experiences in the performing arts. This residency is also supported by Chellis House–Women’s Resource Center, Women of Color, and Q&A: Queers and Allies.
March 9, Thursday
Type/Caste
Performed by Rotimi Agbabiaka
8:00 PM, Wilson Hall, McCullough Student Center
A queer, black actor dreams of a dazzling career on the American stage but first he’ll have to leap over obstacles placed by an industry that isn’t always welcoming to applicants who are neither white nor straight. Based on Rotimi Agbabiaka’s real life experience as a professional actor, Type/Caste is a fast paced and humorous journey into the peaks, pitfalls and hallucinations of a young artist’s quest for success in a gentrified and commercialized industry. Agbabiaka shape-shifts from character to character and uses monologue, song, dance, and drag to embody, explore, and expose the battles minority artists fight in the exclusive world of mainstream American theatre. Hailed as “a spectacular, neon-drenched coup-de-theatre” by 48 Hills magazine. Agbabiaka’s Middlebury visit is a student-initiated residency spearheaded by Akhila Khanna ’17, supported by the Rothrock Family Fund for Experiential Learning in the Performing Arts, Chellis House–Women’s Resource Center, Women of Color, and Q&A: Queers and Allies. Free. Open to Middlebury ID card holders only.
March 10, Friday
Master Class by Rotimi Agbabiaka: Techniques of Telling your own Story
2:00-5:00 PM, MCA Room 232
Actor/writer/director Rotimi Agbabiaka offers a theatre master class for Middlebury College students following his Type/Caste performance the previous evening. Free. Middlebury ID card holders can sign up here>> to participate.
Artist bio:
Rotimi Agbabiaka was born in Lagos, Nigeria and moved to Katy, Texas at the age of fourteen where he stumbled upon a theatre audition while waiting for his mom to pick him up after school. He got cast in the pivotal role of “Hotel Clerk” in Douglas Carter Beane’s “As Bees In Honey Drown” and has never looked back.
After studying English, Economics and Plan II at the University of Texas – Austin, Rotimi reliquinshed all plans for future financial stability and braved the frozen cornfields of the mid-west to earn an MFA in Acting from Northern Illinois University.
He then moved to sometimes sunny San Francisco where he has performed in a variety of venues – from historical musical revues (Beach Blanket Babylon) to local parks (with the San Francisco Mime Troupe) to museums (The DeYoung) to reknowned regional theatres (Cal Shakes, Marin Theatre Company, Magic Theatre) to smaller local companies and the occasional nightclub.
He has written a solo play, Homeless, that won Best Solo Performance at the SF Fringe Festival, directed plays in the SF One Minute Play Festival, writes articles for Theatre Bay Area , and teaches youth theatre programs through San Francisco Shakespeare Company, Each One Reach One, and the SF Mime Troupe, where he is a Collective Member.