Wilma Theater presents Inua Ellams’s The Half-God of Rainfall

Thank you, basketball gods

Directed by Lindsay Smiling, The Half-God of Rainfall follows the journey of Demi (played by Anthony Martinez-Briggs), a half-Nigerian mortal, half-Greek God who wields the ability to control the weather with his emotions. Plus, he’s an absolute pro on the basketball court. It’s a combination of superpowers that catapults him from his small Nigerian village to the world stage of the NBA and ultimately the halls of Mount Olympus, set on a course to confront the Gods themselves. Joining Martinez-Briggs is a cast of local stage actors and resident members of the Wilma’s HotHouse Acting Company, including Keith Conallen, Suli Holum, Jessica Johnson, Brandon J. Pierce, Brett Ashley Robinson, and Damien J. Wallace.

With this play, Smiling—a longtime Wilma performer in addition to co-artistic director and founding member of the Wilma HotHouse Acting Company—makes his Wilma directorial debut. “The material itself is poetry,” said Smiling, on the themes that drew him to Half-God. “We’re really embracing the idea that these are storytellers on stage, because a lot of it is literally storytelling. There’s poetry in the description, and we’re going to invite the evening to be more of a poetry slam than anything else.”

In this tradition, the show touches on generational themes of the myths we tell ourselves, and how they both reinforce and resist age-old models of what it means to be a man. To this end, the Wilma is also highlighting the Masculinity Action Project (MAP) as its community partner for the production, an organization that aims to “create new masculinities—ways of being that challenge our patriarchal culture and are rooted in humanity, connection, relationship, and support.”

“Within the play, we look at hierarchy, and masculinity, and patriarchy, and how mythology plays a part in our cultural identity, and in what we think is acceptable behavior and what’s not,” said Smiling. “These myths that we hold up as essential truths to human nature.”