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Savon Bartley is a black American poet, playwright, and performer from North Chicago, IL. In his poems, he considers the themes of love, race, culture, and masculinity.
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Holes in the Shape of My Father is a play about what it means to grow up without a father. Written and performed by Savon Bartley, this solo show is told entirely in verse, where poetry, rhythm, and raw emotion collide. Developed at The Public Theater and featured at the Under the Radar Festival, this one-man play explores fatherhood, masculinity, and generational trauma with lyrical grace and unflinching vulnerability.
I write to document the story of our lives. To tell people what happened while we were here after I’m gone. I write poems to stop the war and start the revolution. To describe the pain of growing up without my father and to share the bliss of falling in love. As an artist I am committed to tell stories and create characters that mouth the truths, tragedies, and triumphs that transform our lives. As a writer I’m interested in the musicality of modern language and how as storytellers we can blur the line between poetry and song. I think that poetry is a form of philosophy grounded in lived experience and the witness of evils that mar the lives of those around us.
What spirals when an absent father reaches out to his son over Instagram with no apologies, no remorse, and 20 years’ worth of unanswered questions? Written and performed by the son of a mother who tried, Savon Bartley tells a story about what boys become in the absence of men. It’s about the inheritance of silence, the ache of uncertainty, and the miracle of breaking the cycle. Written entirely in verse, Holes in the Shape of my Father is a poetic reckoning with manhood, memory, and what it means to grow up without a father.
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