A Chinese American Basketball Player Is Lost In Tiananmen Square In The Great Leap

In June, the Washington Post published an article about the June 4, 1989, slaughter in China’s Tiananmen Square, when armed tanks and the Chinese army opened fire on tens of thousands of protesters peacefully demanding the country’s repressive, authoritarian regime move toward a democracy. The death count ranges from hundreds to thousands—China has made statistics unavailable and scrubbed the country’s Internet of any mention of the uprising. As the Post noted, many Chinese born after 2000 don’t even know the brutally repressed revolution happened. With The Great Leap, American playwright Lauren Yee puts audiences in the center of that sweltering June movement and the erasure that followed. As the script points out, China was “already learning to forget” by June 5.

Rasean Davonte Johnson’s projection design captures the massive Tiananmen protests with terrible, hard-hitting beauty. Pornchanok Kanchanabanca’s original music sonically heightens the stakes with subtlety throughout. Keith Parham’s zippy lighting design captures the speed and intricacy of real-life basketball.

Through 10/20: Wed-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat-Sun 3 and 7:30 PM, Tue 7:30 PM; also Wed 10/2-10/16, 2 PM, and Sun 9/29, 7:30 PM, Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted, 312-335-1650, steppenwolf.org, $20-$89