It was incredibly refreshing to watch the well-trained, well-rehearsed dancers of Bowen McCauley Dance in From the Ground Up. This was definitely not amateur hour. The company, based in Arlington, is the brainchild of Lucy Bowen McCauley, a veteran of a variety of ballet and modern groups, brings an airy, lyrical quality to modern dance.

The results of the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case were fresh as the crew of The Deadly Seven took the stage. Fresh enough to make its way into The Deadly Seven, a show about prejudice and marginalization, both in the black and the LGBT community.

Imagine Election Day November 2016. Imagine Presidential candidates committing to reformed taxes. Transparent government. Peace. It’s not hard. Every election since we, the people, chose FDR has echoed its predecessor. And every four Januarys, the same tax, peace, and transparency promises seem to turn to ash.

It is an unpromising start. The title is a slur describing comfortable suburban white boys who pretend to be black. It is based on a much worse slur, an expression which white bigots used when they discovered, to their astonishment, that not all whites were bigots.

Paying your final respects to Sister Mary Jasmine requires a bit of a pilgrimage off the beaten track of your favorite Fringe venues.Mourners gather in Studio 2 of the Emergence Studio Arts Collective near Howard University, hoping to get one last glimpse of their dear sister before she is interred in the earth, but alas, […]

Even though Underneath the Lintel has been attracting crowds and winning awards on the Fringe circuit (voted Best Solo Show, 2011 Minnesota Fringe Festival; voted Best Solo Show, 2012 London Fringe Festival; chosen as Best of the Fest, 2013 Orlando Fringe Festival), it doesn’t feel like it belongs in a festival. The script by Glen […]

I glanced up from my watch on my way to the Goethe Institut and saw a group of people in the dim streetlight in front of the door. They stood at odd angles to one another, each in their own posture. If they were conversing, it was quiet and private, no touristyammering or drunkblathering.

The Rude Mechanicals make a lot of bold choices in their adaptation of the classic Lysistrata. They have chosen to set Aristophanes’s sex-laden comedy in 1969, a time rife with anti-war sentiments, sexual  exploration, and rebellion against authority. They have chosen to mostly maintain the antiquated syntax of the text, including lines said in unison, […]

“What do they call me?” Nina Simone asked. “What should they call me?” asks Wild Women Theatre in Four Women, their multidisciplinary exploration of black identity and womanhood showing at Studio Theatre.

We all have those evenings that turn, inevitably, into those storytelling days of yore — gathered around a fireplace or a fruit bowl, talking about family and friends, the good times and bad — and sometimes those stories take a poignant turn.

For some, it happened in the back of a car. For others, it might’ve happened on prom night or during a house party—an awkward tango of limbs fueled by nerves, desire and a few beers.  Whenever or wherever, one never forgets their “first time”—no matter how hard they might try.