This week we bring you some journeys that don't require you to turn over your life savings to the oil companies. Follow a man's journey through history, a company's travels through the last 10 years and a musician's journey from Harlem to Broadway.

The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World at Exit on Taylor
After a stellar presentation of Suzan-Lori Parks's "Pickling Jar" at its Risk Is This festival last year, Cutting Ball takes on her highly experimental and rarely performed full-length Death of the Last Black Man. Now, we can't figure out why we don't see more of Parks's work around here (Topdog/Underdog was her last play at Best of Broadway)--after all, Tony "Angels in America" Kushner calls her "the greatest playwright writing in the English language today," and "Pickling Jar" caught the attention of the city's top theater critics. So Death of the Last Black Man, which follows a black man who dies over and over again yet keeps returning to the woman he loves as a metaphor for the black experience (to put it very generally), has the potential to be one of the highlights of the fringe theater scene, presented by one of a small handful of companies that has the gumption to bring us truly groundbreaking work.
Playing through June 24

Photo of Myers Clark and Allison L. Payne by Rob Melrose.

Campo Santo's 10th Anniversary Festival at Intersection for the Arts
Hitting the 10-year anniversary it only a big deal if you're a) a dot com, b) married (what with the divorce rate nowadays), or c) a small theater company dedicated to presenting exclusively world premieres in a 100-seat space. So this week we salute Campo Santo's decade-long run, which has seen plays by novelist Denis Johnson, Dave Eggers, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Octavio Solis--the list can go on and on. For a tapas-like tour of the past decade, Campo Santo presents a series of evenings sampling the works of these writers. This week sees "the work of Campo Santo and Octavio Solis" (Thursday), with Naomi Iizuka playing Friday and Denis Johnson playing Saturday. June sees a tour with Jessica Hagedorn and Philip Kan Gotanda.
Playing May 25 through June 10

Hit It! at Lorraine Hansberry Theatre
The Lorraine Hansberry Theatre rounds out its 25th anniversary with this banging musical by Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk's bucket-playing star Jared "Choclatt" Crawford. Incorporating everything from hip hop to Tito Puente to hot local musician Idris Ackamoor, this new piece follows Crawford's journey from Harlem to Broadway.
Playing through June 4

For more stage options, check out the listings at the Guardian, the Express, the SF Weekly, and the calendar on Theatre Bay Area's website.