DC Medical Examiner reverses preliminary autopsy; calls Gopalan death a homicide

Police ask for the community’s assistance

It is with great sadness that we report that the death of Gaurav Gopalan, an aerospace engineer who doubled as a director, dramaturge and production manager, has been ruled a homicide.

A passerby found the thirty-five-year-old artist and scientist unconscious on a street near his Columbia Heights home on September 10. He died shortly thereafter. Because he had been wearing women’s clothes, some had speculated that he was the victim of a hate crime. [Read more...]

Fela! director Bill T. Jones

Kuti’s Afrobeat was just the background to his workouts until 30 years later when he brought the musician’s story to Broadway

Consider Fela Ankulapo Kuti. In his fifty-nine years on the planet, he invented a new form of music – Afrobeat; recorded seventy albums; challenged – socially and politically – the society in which he lived; began his own political party; accused his nation’s vice-president of thievery; spoke truth to power. A thousand Nigerian soldiers stormed the complex in which he lived, beat him badly, threw his 78-year-old mother from a window (she eventually died of her injuries), and destroyed his home. Later, the government jailed him for twenty months on trumped-up currency smuggling charges. Later still, he was arrested for murder. He died of Kaposi’s sarcoma, secondary to AIDS.

[Read more...]

Macbeth

Why Shakespeare without words? And can it be done well?  People are still asking that.  But Synetic Theater, now in its tenth season, with no less than seven of its signature wordless Shakespeare plays now under its belt, is presenting three of its past productions in what the company is calling The Silent Shakespeare Theatre Festival. Synetic is here to answer that second question by theatrical means with a resounding “yes!” [Read more...]

Sweet Bye and Bye

Will the well of wonders unearthed in Secaucus in 1986 ever run dry? Here, 25 years later, we have a brand new “World Premiere Recording” of the score of a 1946 musical! Who knows what gems remain to emerge? [Read more...]

Temporal Powers

Jonathan Bank runs a pretty tight ship over there at the Mint Theater Company, one of our off-Broadway treasures. In the most unpretentious of black box theatres on the third floor of a 43rd Street office building, he has given us productions of long forgotten or little known works by playwrights who were, in their time, prominent.  Everyone from the Americans Dawn Powell, Lillian Hellman, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, Edith Wharton, Zona Gale, Susan Glaspell to the Brits Harley Granville-Barker and A.A. Milne.  During this season and last, he has taken a shine to a little known Irish playwright, Teresa Deevy whom the Irish Times labeled “one of Ireland’s best and most neglected dramatists.”  [Read more...]

Michael Feinstein and Linda Eder at The Regency

I don’t usually cover the Cabaret world, but as Michael Feinstein and Linda Eder have both graced Broadway stages on their career trajectories, I thought you might like to know how they’re doing when they are up there just inches away from you, on their own without benefit of plot, full orchestra or an audience of 1,000. [Read more...]

Tosca free at Nationals Park this Thursday

Looking to stretch your family entertainment dollar during yet another period of economic uncertainty? Well, here’s some good news. The Washington National Opera is coming to your rescue with its fourth annual installment of “Opera in the Outfield” this Thursday evening at Washington Nationals Park. This year’s operatic offering is Giacomo Puccini’s romantic thriller, Tosca. And the price is right. It’s free. [Read more...]