Playwright Johnna Adams (Gideon’s Knot) makes a strong case for unfettered imagination in the quirky, intense World Builders, a world premiere rom-com at the 25th anniversary of the Contemporary American Theater Festival. Max (Chris Thorn) and Whitney (Brenna Palughi) meet un-cute—in the psych wing at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He’s tense and inward; she’s a major […]
Archives for July 14, 2015
Russian riot grrls rule in unruly ‘Pussy Riot’ at CATF
The saying goes, all you need to become a punk rock band is three chords and the truth. Russian performance artists and feminist activists Pussy Riot couldn’t play three chords but their truth—spoken loud and proud in a Moscow church in 2012—incited the wrath of Putin and the Orthodox Church and turned them into a […]
Suffering for fashion in Sheila Callaghan’s ‘Everything You Touch’ at CATF
Fashion is pain, beauty is suffering and thin is in in the chic black comedy Everything You Touch, playwright Sheila Callaghan’s faboo-looking treatise on body shaming, art and finding your identity. Like other works by Callaghan—That Pretty Pretty; Or the Rape Play and Crumble (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake) – this one is dreamlike and […]
2015 Contemporary American Theater Festival
July 10 – August 2, 2015
Marriage mined for warm comedy in Weller’s Full Catastrophe at CATF
Who better than a feckless linguist with commitment issues to be a live-in counselor for a nice couple from Missouri having marriage problems? That’s the situation in Michael Weller’s (Moonchildren) affable romantic comedy, The Full Catastrophe, a world premiere at the Contemporary American Theater Festival snappily directed by festival director Ed Herendeen.
To Err is Falstaff!! at Capital Fringe
With DC ramping up for yet another presidential tilt, it’s a great time to sit back and laugh at the whole circus. To Err is Falstaff!! inventively blends Aaron Sorkin-esque humor and pacing with Shakespearean wordplay and characters, showing us that while times and styles may change, the political game remains the same.
The Giant Turnip at Capital Fringe
Alice Waters once said, “teaching kids how to feed themselves and how to live in a community responsibly is the center of education.” It’s a frequent criticism that if you ask kids these days where food comes from, they’ll likely tell you the grocery store.
BOND: An Unauthorised Parody at Capital Fringe
As the lights in the Artspace Loft Studio dimmed, a (vaguely) familiar orchestra string is heard and a (vaguely) familiar silhouette walks across the stage, turns, and fires his (finger) gun. His name? Bond…just Bond (lest any Eon Productions reps happen to swing by the Brookland venue). The performer? Robertson, Gavin Robertson. The show? BOND: […]
John Feffer’s Stuff at Capital Fringe
Stuff is a play about objects and their accumulation, but it is not about hoarding, strictly speaking. It’s about why we keep things and what the things we keep can inform us about ourselves and about others. It’s about the stories that objects can tell us, and about how the perceived value of an object can […]
I Thought The Earth Remembered Me at Capital Fringe
The first thing to know about I Thought The Earth Remembered Me is that it isn’t a play, at least not in the traditional sense. The second thing to know is that this is the weird Fringe experience you’ve always heard about, but never manage to see. The last thing to know about banished?’s newest […]