When Ameenah Kaplan first read Marco Ramirez’ electric play The Royale in 2012, she knew she wanted to direct it.

“The Royale was a perfect storm of artistic techniques that lit a fire in my belly,” she says. “I heard and saw music everywhere! In the language, in the characters, and in the clapping and stomping written into the script.”

While her first connection to the play was as choreographer for the 2012 production at L.A.’s Center Theater Group—for which she won the 2013 Ovation Award for best choreography—Kaplan now finds herself directing the show for Seattle’s ACT Theatre, in its first season under John Langs’ artistic leadership. 

“It’s always exciting to work with characters who express themselves through movement,” she says. “We are often unaware of how much our bodies communicate our thoughts.”

 An original cast member of STOMP, the Atlanta-born Kaplan was especially keen to direct a show in which rhythm and movement play a key role in telling the story. 

“I don't know what was going through [Ramirez’] mind when he chose rhythm as his preferred accompaniment, but in so doing, he was speaking the universal language of man,” she says. “What better way to handle the difficult topic of race? Words have not sufficed. We are constantly misunderstanding each other with them. But with rhythm, this is hardly ever the case. It calms, it soothes, and it informs.”

 Last summer, as Langs sat down to plan ACT’s 2016 season, the Black Lives Matter movement was in full swing, and many people in America were reeling with the aftermath of the death of Trayvon Martin. Langs wondered how ACT could actively participate in this conversation from an artistic and historical perspective.

“These events, and the continued tragedies we have experienced since then, remind us that we cannot turn our eyes away from the past if we intend to change the future,” Langs says. “As we continue to face this legacy, it becomes increasingly clear that we must look at our past square in the face. In our own way, we hope to inspire conversation that leads to change by continuing to tell stories like this one.” 

Langs approached The Royale and the tangled history from which it draws, under the first rule of theatre: to entertain. 

“I find that the best way to entertain is to tell a great story in an original way,” he says. “Looking at the issue of race through the lens of sports, and through the metaphor of boxing, proved not only a leap of inspired creativity, but a vehicle by which to provide an evening of theatre as dynamic, subtle, and complex as the issue itself.” 

Inspired by the story of the first African American heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson, The Royale is told in six rounds and set in a boxing ring. From the writer of Orange is the New Black and Sons of Anarchy, the play follows 1908’s most notorious man on earth at the height of the Jim Crow era. Though boxing takes center stage, not one punch is thrown in an artfully staged interpretation of this man’s inner struggles, with a focus on his relationship to his family. At 75 minutes with no intermission, the play mirrors the fast pace of a ringside event, while bringing black history, the beauty of sound, and mesmerizing rhythm to the fore.

“I’ve long held that drums are the universal instrument because everyone has a heartbeat, and one’s perception of rhythm begins there,” Kaplan says. “Where we sometimes fail with words, we do not with music. It touches us viscerally and we are not really sure why … Perhaps that’s why rhythm works so well at bringing people together—because it’s just fundamental to being human.”

The Royale runs through October 9 at ACT Theatre. Tickets and info at acttheatre.org.