In her life in the theater, Randy Danson has played a roll call of outsized women. Think of them: Clytemnestra in The Oresteia, Agave in The Bacchae, Mae Garga in In the Jungle of the Cities, Phaedra, Ahab’s Wife, Kate in The Taming of the Shrew, the Duchess of Malfi, Arkedina in Chekhov’s The Seagull, […]
Nat ‘King’ Cole director Lou Bellamy
Lou Bellamy on Nat ‘King’ Cole, August Wilson and his company Penumbra Theatre Director Lou Bellamy is back in Washington, and we had the chance to talk with him about, among other things, the great Nat ‘King’ Cole, because his Penumbra Theatre Company’s production of I Wish You Love has just opened at the Kennedy […]
The B Team
In his play The B Team, David Holstein, who, it should be noted also writes scripts for the Showtime series “Weeds”, asks and partially answers a question kind of fundamental to our times: can terrorists—and terrorism and suicide bombers—be funny? The answer will likely come out as something like this: well, yeah, kinda, maybe, sometimes, […]
Being the audience – life experienced all together
A meditation on what it means to be an audience member A while back, at the opening of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at Arena Stage, there was a reference, by George, Martha’s history professor husband, to something going back to the Punic Wars. It was a caustic, satiric, reference, as I remember, […]
Michael Bobbitt’s Excellent Adventure
An interview with director/writer/choreographer and Artistic Director of Adventure Theatre Michael J. Bobbitt Michael J. Bobbitt is a dreamer and he dreams not impossible but big, good, do-able dreams. Bobbitt is no pie-in-the sky kind of dreamer. He’s the kind that makes dreams happen.
Landless Mash Up Fest, Part 1
I’ve got a confession to make. I’m a virgin. When it comes to going to going to Landless Theatre Company, I’ve never done it. I don’t know what I was waiting for.
Philip Goodwin on playing Kenneth Tynan
Philip Goodwin may be from Maine, he may live in New York, and have trained in England, but around here, he’s a Washington actor. Goodwin feels the pull himself. “I have some of that New England reserve, I supposed, and I was cast in Shakespeare plays a lot because of my training, and I live […]
Joe Banno
Washington is full of hidden treasures, especially when it comes to culture and entertainment. You know – the concerts at many of the city’s museums and cultural institutions, from the National Gallery of Arts concerts, to the Millennium Stage at the Kennedy Center to the Tuesday performances at the Church of the Epiphany. Things like […]
Anna Deavere Smith
Back in the 1990s, when I first saw Fires in the Mirror, a play about a conflict in which African Americans and Orthodox Jews battled in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, I wanted to meet Anna Deavere Smith. That play was amazing, it broke new ground and introduced like a mini-explosion a talented, gifted, […]
South Pacific
David Pittsinger and Carmen Cusack may not be household names in the annals of theater, past or present. For sure, they can’t be called theater legends, even in the age of instant hyperbole. But maybe they should be, oughta be, and just maybe will be.
Backstage with The Nutcracker
Backstage after their performance, the actors, still exhilarated and buzzed, talk about the show, and the children in the audience. The puppets, for a few hours, are once again still and waiting. Veronica del Cerro, who plays Clara, the young girl who goes on a magical journey in The Puppet Company’s production of The Nutcracker […]
Welcome back, Cherry Red
Now that Cherry Red Productions is back on the boards in Washington with a production of Justin Tanner’s Wife Swappers, (at the DC Arts Center in Adams Morgan), everyone seems to be having sweaty flashbacks to the CR good old days.