Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me is the newest collaboration between The Wooster Group and Eric Berryman. This original work for the theater explores a distinctive genre of Black American storytelling called Toasts via a 1976 record album of the same name recorded and edited by folklorist Bruce Jackson. Toasts are witty, rhyming poems that tell fantastical and bawdy stories about legendary street heroes.
Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me is set in a late-night radio DJ studio where Berryman, as host, performs renditions of several classic Toasts from the album, which he contextualizes with reflections on Black male identity. He is accompanied by Jharis Yokley on drums.
