American poet Claudia Rankine has faced racial “micro-aggression” from friends and coworkers, as well as strangers, from rude comments about her hair to hearing the “N-word.”

Her award-winning book “Citizen: An American Lyric,” a searing, poetic riff about systemic racism in America, adapted into a play in 2015 by Stephen Sachs, was the perfect choice for the final production of 2020-2021 school year, says Bill Mutimer, head of the Northampton Community College Theater Department.

“Citizen: An American Lyric” is available 12:15 a.m. June 11 - 11:45 p.m. June 13 as video-on-demand.

The stage adaption of Rankine’s acclaimed book combines theater, music, movement and video to track the progression of micro-aggressions to overt acts of racial violence by white Americans against black Americans.

Mutimer, who also directs, calls the work “a fast-moving, emotionally-charged and thought-provoking piece of art.” The play depicts snapshots of acts of everyday racism, he says:

“Some of these encounters are slights, seeming slips of the tongue, and some are intentional offensives in the classroom, supermarket or at home ... those did-they-really-just-say-that-slurs that happen every day and later steep poisonously in the mind.”

Rankine wrote her book of poetry and essays in 2014, stretching the conventions of traditional lyric poetry by interweaving several forms of text and media into a portrait of race-relations in the United States.

The book was a New York Times bestseller and won several awards, including the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, the 2015 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry, and the 2015 Forward Prize for Poetry Best Collection.

In the book, Rankine details the experience of black Americans, from micro-aggressions she and her friends experienced to backlashes against tennis player Serena Williams and the ramifications of the shootings of Trayvon Martin and James Craig Anderson.

The book includes images of paintings, drawings, sculpture and digital media of the black experience.

Mutimer says the production is different from other NCC theater productions. He cast a wide net to draw on students’ and local residents’ experiences.

“There really isn’t a cast as usual,” Mutimer says. “It is a lyric that has many people involved to set the fabric of being a citizen. So there are people who play a little larger part in the fabric than others who may have one or two lines, but it is an experience.”

Rankine’s poetry is structured around third-person anecdotes that challenge the audience as citizens to think about how embedded racism affects the daily lives of persons of color. Rankine writes, “This is how you are a citizen.”

“It is why I like the piece,” Mutimer says.”It is non-conventional and sets a different tone and experience.”

“Citizen: An American Lyric” contains racially-charged language and video.

Tickets: www.showtix4u.com/events/14994

“Curtain Rises” is a column about the theater, stage shows, the actors in them and the directors and artists who make them happen. To request coverage, email: Paul Willistein, Focus editor, pwillistein@tnonline.com