Toni Stone was the first woman to play big-league professional baseball. She succeeded Hank Aaron playing second base for the otherwise all-male Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro American League in 1953. But while Aaron had been able to join the Braves because Jackie Robinson had broken Major League Baseball’s color barrier, MLB’s gender barrier remains […]
Archives for June 2019
First look: Acuña Acuna, a Peruvian’s Journey in America
Hola, mi nombre is Erick. I was born and raised in Peru, and a couple of years ago I moved to Washington DC to work on a non-profit human rights organization (and do comedy as well). Now I’m performing my solo show Acuña Acuna around the country. When I moved to the US it was […]
Review: Ripcord, a disappointing odd couple comedy by David Lindsay-Abaire
In David Lindsay-Abaire’s Ripcord, there are two odd couples. The first are roommates Abby and Marilyn at the Bristol Place Senior Living Facility. The second are the farce and melodrama compelled to cohabitate in an unsatisfying evening that is neither funny nor moving. The premise has potential. Two elderly women, one a supreme grump and […]
Comic Michael Colyar’s drama among 150 shows in DC Black Theatre & Arts Festival
On June 21st, the 2019 DC Black Theatre & Arts Festival kicks off a fifteen day multidisciplinary arts celebration, with loads of theater showcases presented by artists from around the world. It has been ten years since the festival first debuted in the Washington, D.C. area, and it’s grown quite a bit since. “When it […]
First look: EyeSOAR, a dance inspired by a neighborhood
Jane Franklin, Artistic Director, Jane Franklin Dance, thinks about how Amazon’s HQ2 in Virginia might impact her neighbors in EyeSOAR, her latest Capital Fringe show. The idea for EyeSOAR came from the neighborhood itself. It’s probably the only remaining industrial area left in Arlington County. What does that mean? It means that there is no […]
Creative Cauldron announces its 7 show season, all of them musicals.
Childhood, magic, myths and legends, and Patsy Cline — who is arguably all of those — will make up the docket for Creative Cauldron’s 2019-2020 season. Creative Cauldron will open the season with Disenchanted, Dennis Giacino’s scathing examination of the Disney Princesses, as they really are: embittered, dipsomaniacal, and not too bright. “Nobody’s pretending that […]
Review: Falsettos, the Lincoln Center tour at The Kennedy Center
I guess I just don’t get Falsettos. The Tony Award® winning musical may have been fresh at its 1992 Broadway debut—it’s mainstream depiction of gay couples was certainly trailblazing—but it now feels vexingly thin, dated and dull. The intimate, conversational operetta by William Finn and James Lapine, directed here by James Lapine, captured a period […]
First Look at The Face Zone, spoken-word vignettes with matching surreal art
It all started with two overlapping events in childhood. To amuse the five-year-old me, my father drew a face on the inside bottom of a large water thermos that he used for tennis. When you looked into the empty container, you could see a swollen horizontal slit at the end where the halves of the […]
DCTS and DCMTA big announcement as Capital Fringe tickets go on sale
As tickets go on sale today for the 2019 Capital Fringe Festival, festival goers are realizing that a record-setting 82 Fringe shows of the 89 show festival will open in the first week of the 2019 Capital Fringe Festival. We are extremely pleased to announce that DC Theatre Scene is joining forces with our colleagues […]
First Look at Kafka’s Metamorphosis: The Musical!
In Nashville, there’s an Urban Outfitters that used to be an empty warehouse in a sketchy neighborhood where I performed my first adaptation of The Metamorphosis. It was 2001 (a few weeks after 9/11) and on a good night, we probably had about 25 people there. I could never have imagined a) that I’d live […]
Review: Southern stereotypes get tested in Byhalia, Mississippi
For the South of Evan Linder’s play Byhalia, Mississippi, both the American flag and the Confederate one should be replaced by one reading “Bless This Mess.” It’s racist, classist, misogynist, and crude—but it’ll muddle through somehow. Can we forgive personal, historical, and political trespasses? That is the defining question. At one point, the heroine, Laurel […]
2019 DanceAfrica DC. Elders and youth gather to celebrate the African Diaspora through dance
DanceAfrica DC is a week long celebration of the African Diaspora in Spirit, through Dance, Art, Music and Culture. It takes place every year in the Washington, DC Brookland area. This year’s celebration was May 28 – June 2. I invite you to check out DanceAfrica DC next year. As you drive or walk down […]