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Sunday

Last year, Broadway actor and national poetry-slam champion Marc Bamuthi Joseph told National Public Radio that his newest performance piece, Scourge, was inspired by his “sandal-wearing, tofu-eating, capoeira-practicing” then-3-year-old son. “I’m watching the disconnect between my son and my grandmother,” the artist said. “I’m watching my family become American.” Scourge centers around a Haitian man and his grandson, who, like Joseph himself, is the first in his family to be born in the United States. Using Afro-Caribbean jazz, hip-hop, dance, and spoken word to tell his tale, Joseph addresses Haiti’s specific cultural traditions and political history, as well as the more universal theme of assimilation versus the struggle to remain tied to an unfamiliar homeland. Or, in plainer terms, the strange journey that can take one clan, in less than a generation, from an embattled, impoverished country to a reliance on Morningstar Farms breakfast patties. Joseph performs at 4 p.m. at Dance Place, 3225 8th St. NE. $25. (202) 269-1600. (Sarah Godfrey)