In case you haven’t heard, the future is female—and fiercely funny. At least as told by the Pipeline Playwrights—a collective of sharp-tongued women playwrights from NoVa, each presenting one of five original comedies at this year’s Capital Fringe festival.
If you come to the festival in search of new voices, and up-to-the-minute political theater, HTWOFY 2.0 is the speed-dating theatergoing of your dreams. Each back-to-back play, performed by the same cast of four actors, runs fewer than 15 minutes and centers on a common theme: the “sh*tnado” that has struck our nation’s capital at the hands of the big boys of the Beltway (Trump, Kavanaugh & Bezos to name a few) and how we D.C. dwellers are coping (or not).
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In Crystal Adaway’s Christmas Card, a group of friends worries that the cynicism and snarkiness that has descended on the DMV is going to “stick,” and wonder if they’ll ever get their Hallmark moment or “meet cute” in the era of #metoo.
Sense and Nonsense (Patricia Connelly) drops our heroines back into Jane Austen’s time, where they grapple with whether any amount of money, land and power could merit a marriage to “Lord Trump,” or if they’re better off working for a living.
In Sally Has Issues (Ann Timmons), a tense white woman in a gentrifying neighborhood finds that her “white privilege card” may no longer have value, particularly in a time when “turning a profit is practically our patriotic duty.”
How’s That Workin’ Out for Ya? 2.0 closes July 28, 2019 Details and tickets
In (my favorite of the five) Kavanaugh, Jean Koppen imagines a future where the “Court of American Women,” is faced with a petition to declare Kavanaugh a “very good guy.” In hilarious fashion, Kavanaugh posits whether the infamous Supreme Court justice could ever do enough to redeem himself in the court of public opinion.
Finally, Mr. Bee-Zoo’s Lunch pokes fun at the mastermind behind “Amazyn,” that popular online retailer that has lulling us all into the hive mindset that personal convenience outweighs our more responsible urges for sustainability, fairness and even decency. Can a principled librarian take down the King Bee?
HTWOFY 2.0 is a smart, consistently funny and thought-provoking set of plays that got right to the point and left me wanting more from this group of talented playwrights.
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