All the World’s a Pitch

I play a lot of ball in Fort Greene. Last night, the neighborhood was home to a transcendent vision of soccer, with the performance of Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s /peh-LO-tah/ at BAM's Harvey Theatre. The mashup of song, dance, and poetry is part love letter to the beautiful game, part Coates-ian diatribe against our culture of inequality in its many isms, leading with race and sex.

My 9-year-old daughter was my date for the night, which made for one or two squirmy moments (ahem, Ronaldo…). But over a post-performance quesadilla at Habana Outpost, we got into some new territory, like who Marta is and why she, like every female footballer on the planet, earns less than their male counterparts.

Joseph, who grew up in Queens and lives in San Francisco, also deftly tackles the question of why American (men, at least) stink at soccer—all the more prescient following the U.S. Men’s Team horrifying collapse this month in World Cup qualifiers. Delivered by performer Traci Tolmaire, the answer is that Americans “lack the intuition to aim for egalitarianism,” demanded of the game. “We suck at soccer where everybody shares or we all lose,” she says. As Joseph himself puts it elsewhere in the show, “if you want to win, you’ve got to pass the ball.” 

/peh-LO-tah/ is teeming with life lessons from the field. Joseph and I come from different places, but so much of it resonated. The fortysomething father of two even reflects on the challenges of middle age. Ultimately, though, it’s his singular passion for pelota that universalizes this lyrically mesmerizing production. “I am a lone man on a wide field playing the world’s game,” he tells us. 

Amen to that.

(Correction: This post originally painted all American soccer players with the same sucky brush. It should have acknowledged that the USWNT are badass world champs three times over!!!)