Berkeley Rep’s Mexodus blazes an indelible trail across and beyond the Peet’s Theatre stage. Its illuminating history is ignited by the searing energy of Nygel D. Robinson and Brian Quijada. The dynamic playwright/performer duo anchoring the two-person cast infuses the 100-minute, live-looped, multicultural musical created in real time with hip-hop, reggae, African-American spirituals, freedom and work songs, Mexican ranchera, bolero and more. Triangulating three century-spanning, profound stories, Associate Artistic Director David Mendizábal, also the costume designer, delivers taut direction that never leaves loose ends hanging. Riw Rakkulchon’s masterful scenic design—a visual kaleidoscope of vintage and contemporary objects—along with effective lighting by Mextly Couzin and Rasean Devonté Johnson’s atmospheric projection design, all elevate the show’s high artistic and production levels. Partnering and enhancing the visuals are the impeccably sculpted audio by sound designer Mikhail Fiksel, sound operator Angela Don and audio engineer Courtney Jean. The play’s gateway narrative tells of the roughly 10,000 enslaved Black and African people who joined a Southern Underground Railroad and fled slavery by fleeing south to Mexico after that country won independence from Spain in 1821. Stacked against this essential slice of history rarely if ever taught in textbooks or classrooms is the play’s dramatic center. The core and “second” story of Mexodus presents Henry (Robinson), a runaway slave escaping what was to be a sure lynching after killing his master, and Carlos (Quijada), a sharecropper in Texas who became a Mexican soldier. If Henry has lost all chance and belief in living as a free man in America—and he has—Carlos has sacrificed as well. During the Mexican-American War he lost his wife and son in a house fire, and his friends and comrades in battle, and was eventually forced to forfeit land ownership when Mexico ceded Texas and other territories to the United States in 1948. Lovingly, Mexodus unfolds a replica of the unlikely bonds that formed between Black and brown people such as Henry and Carlos in the mid-1800s. United by enslavement or betrayal, and forced to flee or cast out by America, Henry and Carlos model the countless people who survived by uniting and thrusting aside their cultural and social differences to support each other and their quests for freedom. The two men first encounter each other when Henry nearly drowns while crossing the Rio Grande while seeking safety in Mexico during a treacherous storm. Rescued and harbored in secrecy by Carlos, Henry slowly recovers his physical strength. Their relationship is fortified by mutual dedication to respecting the land, whistling while performing manual labor and shoring up each other’s unwavering spirits. Struggling to survive with valor, nobility, independence, humor and hope, they face and defy inner and outer demons: rage, grief, despair, floods, crop devastation, racist persecution, the threat of recapture and more. Robinson and Quijada are gifted, not only as actors with authentic intensity and sophisticated physical and modulatory skills that deliver their raw forcefulness with nuance, but also as top-flight musicians. The live score is composed using their vocals and by sampling and looping every instrument in Rakkulchon’s packed set, as well as every sound-making material, surface and technique possible. Rakes, shears, buckets, a milling grinder, work boots stomping on wood flats, corn kernels, fingers snapping, moans, groans and more become instruments. It’s a magnificent sonic feast and, shaped in the moment, music becomes the show’s lead character: A living entity beyond its two creators. Henry’s and Carlos’ situations are thrust into the third story and the present day during the show’s final scenes, when the two actors speak directly to the audience about the sociopolitical and environmental climate in 2024. Oppression, exploitation, denigration, inequity, overt and covert violence, and other evils continue to imperil Black and brown bodies and lives, and our planet. Early in the play Robinson asks the audience, “Why does a bird in a cage still have high hopes?” Quijada later delivers an equally complex line: “If you don’t know the story, you can never know the glory.” In light of the ancestral generations who have fought and even died for the freedoms we have today, they ask, what is each person’s obligation when choosing how to live, love and learn? Unsurprisingly, the play in its last minutes veers toward a concerted, impassioned call for understanding, compassion and action. “We don’t need your pity,” Robinson declares. Instead, Mexodus calls on us to refuse to conform to or create division, but rather to take on the mantle of “we rise up” and to live it out in real time. For more info visit berkeleyrep.org.