The title Gwen & Ida: The Object is of No Importance comes from a painter’s refrain to a film director that the subject of your art doesn’t matter, only that you make it. To this end, the audience of the work is irrelevant, so long as the work satisfies the creator. Gwen & Ida starts […]
About Kate Colwell
Review: Klytemnestra: An Epic Slam Poem, a courageous act of revolution in the Trump era
Dane Figueroa Edidi is many things. She is a playwright, poet, choreographer, performance artist, priestess, and advocate. She is also a Nigerian, Cuban, Indigenous transgender woman. To understand Klytemnestra: An Epic Slam Poem at Theater Alliance is to witness all aspects of her identity laid bare on the stage, and not only acknowledge them, but […]
Review: Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity asks when the earth becomes chaos, what is worth saving
You have one shoe box and twenty minutes until your house burns to the ground. What do you save? In Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, Signature Theatre asks not only what art is worth saving, but also which memories, beliefs, and people. Heather McDonald’s play, developed and produced for its world […]
Among the Dead review: a war crimes survivor and a playful Korean ghost story at Spooky Action Theater
Despite its premiere date of February 14, Among the Dead is not a Valentine’s Day play. Written by Hansol Jung, a world-traveling playwright and director from South Korea, Among the Dead is a ghost story orbiting the February 14th birthday of Korean American Ana Woods as she experiences firsthand the far-from-romantic conditions that created her. […]
Review: BLKS, poet Aziza Barnes’ breakout play, is cracking them up at Woolly
BLKS at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company starts and ends with a scream, for reasons you cannot guess. Despite unexpected turns in the plot, you can count on BLKS to consistently provide a front-row seat to the physical and emotional feelings of Black women and femmes. In a society that so often censors Black women for […]
Review: Heidi Schreck’s Grand Concourse marks the promising debut of Prologue Theatre
A line delivered by Frog, a homeless man, encapsulates the dilemma of Heidi Shreck’s play, Grand Concourse. Speaking in a soup kitchen filled with raw vegetables for chopping, he tells the security guard Oscar eating lunch with him that vegetables have feelings too. Frog offers a choice: to either become a predator or starve: “At […]
Performing The Fever in DC, its co-creators hope to repair “something that feels a bit broken.”
We can’t tell you much about 600 Highwaymen’s new show, The Fever, without spoiling the experience. Woolly Mammoth Theatre cryptically calls it a “spellbinding examination of how we assemble, organize, and care for the bodies around us,” performed “in complete elaboration with the audience” that “tests the limits of individual and collective responsibility and our […]
How to Win a Race War: How The Klunch will take on white supremacy fiction
How can liberal activists diminish the power of the Alt Right, a rebranded digital army of white supremacists whose influence manifests in real domestic terrorism? For starters, they can plumb white nationalist literature for the origins of racist conspiracy theories, and then make a satire with music about the products of those imaginings. At least, […]
Happy Ending, a 1965 comedy, marks the beginning for promising black actors and writers in DC
Is Washington, D.C. ready to support Black theatre produced by a new Black theatre company? I recently had the opportunity to speak with Ella Davis, co-founder of All About the Drama Theatre Group and director of Douglas Turner Ward’s 1965 play Happy Ending, now playing at Anacostia Playhouse.
Review: Brahman/i at Logan Festival plays on the threshold of theatre itself
It’s rare to see a performance so original that you can’t quite find your footing. Brahman/i, the story of an intersex Indian comic, purposefully moves all the boundaries of what you think you know to put you in the shoes of a character whose identity confuses them. (For the purposes of this review, nonbinary pronouns […]
Review: Damned If You Do. The women of UCB prove there’s hope for DC after all.
To put on a fresh show every night, Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB) must know its audience down to the core of their prides and insecurities. The New York- and Los Angeles-based improv comedy troupe, co-founded by Amy Poehler, read D.C. like a book on press night.
Review: Guerilla Theatre Works’ A New Nation
A New Nation has found the right city, the right moment and the right place at the Anacostia Arts Center this month. As national headlines bear down on this administration’s Muslim travel ban, zero tolerance immigration policy, and withdrawal from the United Nations Human Rights Council, this collection of vignettes about immigration, family, and home […]
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