An original student play about confronting racial stereotypes and moving toward social progress has made its way back to the Moe Theater stage.

Africana Theater Lab introduced a revamp of its original production “I Can’t Breathe” on Wednesday night for the first of four showings scheduled to take place this week. The play’s director Manning Goldman, a senior studying musical theater and president of Africana Theater Lab, said the play features a 20-member cast of SIUC students and Carbondale community members.

While the message of “I Can’t Breathe” is the same, Goldman said this new production has been polished, enriched and emboldened with new music, dance and cast.

“With the new cast, we found opportunities to create, to have them bring their own experiences into the show and to … put their stories into the show,” Goldman said.

What began as a class project for Goldman and 11 other students last year has since gained momentum and support from the community, which, in part, inspired him to bring it back to the SIUC students again this semester.

Honest, bold and unafraid, “I Can’t Breathe” confronts racism and homophobia head-on. In its hour-long runtime, the cast revisits true accounts of contemporary and historical black oppression through spoken word poetry, gospel music and scripted scenes. 

“I Can’t Breathe” was written by a multicultural group of SIUC students last year in response to controversy surrounding the deaths of two black men, Eric Garner and Michael Brown, at the hands of white police officers.

“Since then so much more has happened and so we saw an opportunity to bring it back again,” he said.

“I Can’t Breathe” will run three more showings at 7:30 p.m. from Sept. 17-19 in the Moe Theater. Thursday’s showing will feature a pre-show lecture by Father Joseph Brown, a professor of Africana Studies at the university, and a forum on police brutality led by members of the Zeta Phi Beta sorority.

 Bill Lukitsch can be contacted at [email protected] or on Twitter @Bill_LukitschDE.