Iris is an astronaut. She travels through space. Iris is also a chrononaut. She travels through time. And that’s where her troubles begin as the protagonist of The Interstellar Ghost Hour, Kathleen Akerley’s latest fall annual auteur production, often seen as the opening volley of the season, especially for shows made for and by local artists.
Kathleen Akerley’s Interstellar Ghost Hour travels to a time when it wasn’t too late to ask one last question
“We either repeat mistakes or don’t update our own sense on what love is for,” Kathleen Akerley, artistic director at Longacre Lea, said in our recent interview about her upcoming debut play Interstellar Ghost Hour. She has long been interested in the lessons we give children about love and how to love, and specifically what we are […]
Deep Cuts: a Lesson from Whipping’s Beer Man
In the past few days, as I’ve let Kathleen Akerley’s play Whipping, or The Football Hamlet (and this review) settle in my mind, I realize that my review perhaps comes off more harshly critical than I intended. Longacre Lea plays have a deserved reputation of inspiring polarizing, even heated, opinions. Such is the nature of […]
Whipping, or The Football Hamlet (review)
Whipping, or the Football Hamlet has rushed into CUA’s Callan Theater with Kathleen Akerley calling this play as writer and director as she does most every humid DC August. As a theatergoer, it’s an exciting time. Just before the mass of September openings that signal the start of the theater season, Akerley often offers a […]
My won’t-miss shows for this season
If you’re like me, you’ve already done your Christmas shopping, filled out your budget for the next fiscal year, and made arrangements for your final repose after The Event Which Awaits Us All occurs. Now it’s time for something much more difficult: planning your theater season.
FEAR, Kathleen Akerley’s latest, a heady brew (review)
So, why doesn’t Shakespeare excite anyone anymore? And, what would it take for Shakespeare to garner the same level of hype as Star Wars or Harry Potter? These are the central questions of FEAR: a comedy? about performing Shakespeare, written and directed by Kathleen Akerley and produced by Longacre Lea.
How We Died … and Bones in Whispers kick off Women’s Voices Theater Festival
The Women’s Voices Theater Festival began with two very different plays by two very different playwrights: How We Died of Disease-Related Illness by Miranda Rose Hall and Bones in Whispers by Kathleen Akerley. Both one-acts are directed by Longacre Lea auteur Akerley.
UpClose: Miranda Rose Hall, Women’s Voices Theater Festival
Miranda Rose Hall is a playwright from Baltimore, MD. She has presented work in DC (Kennedy Center Page-to-Stage and Georgetown University), Baltimore (Center Stage), and Anchorage. She is resident playwright with LubDub Theatre in NYC, and an MFA student at the Yale School of Drama. Her play How We Died Of Disease-Related Illness, produced by Longacre Lea, opened […]
UpClose: Kathleen Akerley, Women’s Voices Theater Festival
Kathleen Akerley, Artistic Director of Longacre Lea, has two plays debuting in the Women’s Voices Theater Festival: Bones in Whispers opens August 12 and Night Falls on the Blue Planet opens September 3.
Kathleen Akerley on Pol Pot & Associates and stretching her wings
For almost all of the last fifteen years, during the dog days of August, the devoted and discerning DC theatergoer knew that a stimulating experience would be in store at the Callan Theater on the Catholic University of America campus. In residence for its one-show-a-year season would be Longacre Lea Productions (LaL). Maybe it’s doing […]
Pol Pot & Associates, LLP
Kathleen Akerley’s Something Past in Front of the Light remains, in my view, the finest original work by a Washington-area playwright not named Posner. She has written other excellent plays – dense, howlingly funny, and wise – as well. This is why – let’s say it without the bark on – Pol Pot & Associates […]
Goldfish Thinking
Read, sleep, repeat. Grad students run this sad circuit every week, none more so than those in law school. What workaholic wunderkind hasn’t passed out face-down in a stack of books from time to time, the clock ticking onward toward the big exam?