“During peacetime, when we need metaphors, we raid the language of war. But the idiom of wartime is food: cannon fodder, carnage, slaughterhouse. Buildings and people are pancaked, sandwiched, sardined,” writes Annia Ciezadlo in Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War. “Perhaps it is because the destruction reminds us of the knowledge […]
About John Bavoso
Review: Weep. a world premiere from Nu Sass Productions
It’s an image as ancient and archetypal as Medea and La Llorona, and as modern as Andrea Yates—a woman, a mother, standing over the bodies of her drowned children. From this shocking visual, which goes against every culturally constructed narrative of how and why a giver of life should behave, local playwright Amanda Zeitler begins […]
Review: Anna Ziegler’s Boy at Keegan Theatre
As I was watching the DC premiere of Anna Ziegler’s inspired-by-a-true-story play, Boy, now playing at Keegan Theatre, there was an Oscar Wilde quote rattling around in the back of my brain (because isn’t there always?): “Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.” […]
Review: Recent Tragic Events, 9/11 play, asks ‘Will the world ever be the same?’
Am I wearing the right shirt? Is the bottle of wine I brought too cheap? Should I go in for the kiss at the end of the night? These are common questions running through the mind of your average participant in a blind date. The world of Craig Wright’s barely-post-9/11 drama, Recent Tragic Events—currently being […]
Review: Taylor Mac’s Holiday Sauce. Did you miss it? How sad for you.
Like it or not, the New Year is rapidly approaching, which means our minds will shortly be turning toward making resolutions and setting intentions for the decade to come. After seeing Taylor Mac’s irreverent seasonal spectacular, Holiday Sauce, I have a new motto—live in such a way that after you’re gone, your friends will create […]
Review: Airness. An air guitar comedy whose wildly talented cast strikes a comedy chord
“The whole impetus of air guitar is world peace,” earnestly intones a grown man who goes by the name Golden Thunder right before he goes out on stage in a dingy bar to play a pretend instrument. This one moment, perhaps more than any other, perfectly encapsulates Chelsea Marcantel’s hit air guitar play, Airness, currently […]
Review: Blue Camp. Debut play reveals hidden story of queer injustice in the 1960’s military
“History does not always repeat itself,” wrote science fiction writer and editor of Astounding Science Fiction, John W. Campbell Jr. “Sometimes it just yells, ‘Can’t you remember anything I told you?’ and lets fly with a club.” That bludgeoning is what it feels like watching Rainbow Theatre Company’s world premiere production of Tim Caggiano and […]
Review: She Kills Monsters, Rorschach’s revival of its 2014 hit show
When you leave this world, what are you going to leave behind for your loved ones? Memories? An inheritance? How about an entire fantasy world in which a version of you lives on and offers insight into the person you used to be? That last one is the set up for Qui Nguyen’s She Kills […]
Review: Crystal Creek Motel from Flying V Theatre
Hotels rooms are one of those things we largely take for granted but are rich fodder for those of us with overactive imaginations who consistently wonder about the other people who have previously inhabited the same spaces as us. Every rented room we’ve stayed in has been occupied by hundreds or thousands of other strangers, […]
Review: What the Constitution Means to Me disarms all the arguing and in-fighting
Washington, DC, is one of the few cities in the country where it’s not uncommon for large groups of people to come together to spend two hours deep in conversation about the constitution and its relevance to the modern world on a Friday night. Rarely, however, are these prosaic gatherings of politicos and pundits anywhere […]
Review: Fabulation or, The Re-Education of Undine
It has become a trope of a certain type of made-for-TV movie for the successful, career-driven woman in the Big City to have to return home to her humble beginnings and learn the true meaning of happiness (usually with the assistance of a hunky Everyman). But none of them look anything like two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning […]
Capital Fringe review: Emil Amok! All Pucked Up: Harvard, NPR and more
“The best thing about majoring in Invisibility Studies,” jokes Emil Guillermo early on in his one-person show, Emil Amok! All Pucked Up: Harvard, NPR and more, making its DC premiere right now at the Capital Fringe, “is that you don’t need to show up to the final.” This moment is indicative of how the next […]