Rocket Man

World premiere Rocket Man produced by Base Roots Theatre Company is about the intimate romance of true love and the heroic romance of the spirit. A young family from the Space Age of our imagination engages in a furious internal struggle to define the nature and meaning of love.

Dad is a dreamer, a seeker, a visionary. As an astronaut, a Rocket Man, he searches through the Cosmos for the heart of the Ultimate. While in Space he aches for the warmth and love of his family, while with his family he longs for the supernatural mysteries of Space.

Mom is a realist, a caretaker, a lover. Back on Earth she fights a desperate battle to hold her family together, to give meaning to the life she has created, to understand her precocious young daughter and to keep her man on Earth with her.

Sydney, the twelve year old daughter, is the fulcrum upon which these two attracting opposites pivot. She is the very symbol of her parents’ love for each other and understands this as a unique responsibility.

Rocket Man follows this unique African-American family; passionate, idealistic, and courageous, as they seek their way to each other and to a deeper understanding of what it means to be human.

Base Roots Theatre, Portland’s first ensemble of professional caliber African-American artists, is a group of professional theater artists organized to build bridges between communities by presenting classical and contemporary theater that showcases the African-American experience. BaseRoots assumes the artists responsibility of reflecting the culture we live in, shaping it and nurturing it to new maturity. Our work will reflect a commitment to excellence at an affordable price. A large part of the BaseRoots vision is to bring an old art form to new communities and thus re-imagining both the art and the communities in a dynamic, diverse and tolerant reality.