“I took the play and read it on Memorial Day in Arlington Cemetery. It was a very significant read, that day. I thought, this was the cost. We are continuing to cycle through the same problems that this Roman moment seemed to bring up.”
Archives for October 2014
A Time for Singing as Musicals in Mufti approaches its 100th
The 100th Musical in Mufti is about to open at the York Theatre, which is a gem of a small space buried under St. Peter’s Church on 54th Street and Lexington Avenue. This very useful series, which was started in 1994 under the aegis of its genial artistic director James Morgan, has now offered us […]
Restaurant review: Roof Terrace Restaurant at The Kennedy Center
With its grand tiers and stately marble, The Kennedy Center stands as a central feature of the D.C. waterfront landscape. A living memorial to President John F. Kennedy, the Kennedy Center serves as a national performing arts center for the many theatrical and musical expressions alive in America. Seeing a show at the KC, for Washingtonians […]
Rage from Ambassador Theater
What do you expect when you see a play called Rage? Yelling? Violence? Gunshots? Ambassador Theater’s US premiere of Rage by Canadian playwright Michele Riml definitely delivers there. But the play also delivers a philosophical discussion from two characters with polar opposite opinions on violence, two characters who are familiar in the DC area.
He’s deeply in love with its score. Director Peter Kazaras talks about La boheme
We are sitting in the chic white leather Russian Room at The Kennedy Center during a rehearsal break. Director Peter Kazaras has brought his bound score and throughout our conversation pours through it, reeling off Italian while getting into each character, getting me to look at the score, handling it like it’s his Bible. It’s […]
Sylvia at NextStop Theatre
There are some great pop-culture rivalries that can’t be resolved. Coke vs. Pepsi, Cowboys vs. Redskins, Apple vs. Samsung, Sega Genesis vs. Super Nintendo… the list goes on and on. But cat people and dog people? That’s one that can tear a family apart. Or maybe it’s the divide between true dog-lovers and everyone else. […]
Caleen Sinnette Jennings on her hip hop play Not Enuf Lifetimes, opening this week
Caleen Sinnette Jennings was describing what had inspired her latest play. One of the things she mentioned was a white college-age son of her friend telling her, “If a hip hop candidate ever ran, I’d vote for him.” Processing that declaration, she noted how much different hip hop culture and values are from baby boomer […]
Loca La Juana/That Crazy Joan
Women who make trouble make history. Once there was a female pope who turned the Vatican upside down, or so the legend goes, only one of the women Ecuadoran actress Joan Estrella came to celebrate in her sensational, stand-up comedy show.
Our War at Arena Stage, a resounding success
“Doesn’t the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in an American theater make everything else that’s ever happened in an American theater before or since seem kinda trivial?”
1960’s Hedda Gabler at Quotidian Theatre
I was all ready to declare Quotidian Theatre Company’s boldly imagined if awkwardly self-conscious reworking of Hedda Gabler as a fatal misstep in transference. But after revisiting Henrik Ibsen’s original script, I found that director Michael Avolio’s adaptation is in fact an astute, if not penetrating, revamp. I’m now not so sure what to declare […]
Visible Language from WSC Avant Bard
In recent years there has been a marked uptick in collaborations between the DC professional theater community and Gallaudet University, the famed local school for the deaf. I’ve been a proponent and something of a cheerleader of this trend, even previously writing a feature on Faction of Fools’ production of sign language-infused Shakespeare commedia adaptation […]
The creators of the zombie experience DC Dead talk with Chris Henley
“We’re calling it a ‘zombie survival experience.’” I was talking to Rex Daugherty, one of the creators and directors of DC Dead, which is also described as an “interactive theatre quest.” Daugherty termed it “full immersive theatre meets haunted house meets live action video game. It’s kind of its own thing. I don’t know of […]