As the ancient world witnessed the birth of democracy 500 or so years before the common era, the prolific Athenian playwright Sophokles was penning the first written dramas. That these two touchstones of political and cultural advancement were birthed simultaneously in the creatively fertile civilization of Athens is not a surprise.

In 2025 Washington, DC, democracy feels fragile  — even on the brink of failure in light of the current political ruling class’s embrace of neo-fascistic, nepotistic, and kleptocratic policies and practices. In this climate, the third of Sophokles’ Theban plays, written in the fifth century BCE, feels alarmingly prescient.

A young theater troupe with the out-of-the-ordinary moniker Songs of the Goat draws on the wisdom and storytelling of the ancient Greeks to return these dramas to the stage to be seen with fresh eyes. Comprised primarily of actors and theater creatives from DC’s well-respected Studio Acting Conservatory, Songs of the Goat strives to “engage new audiences and perpetuate the 2,500-year-old tradition of ritualized storytelling, exploring timeless themes of fate, order, and justice,” as it states in its mission.

And that name does not use “GOAT” in its current vernacular, an acronym for “greatest of all time.” Rather, tragos means goat in Greek and is the root of tragoidia, from which the English tragedy derives. Oidia means song or, better, it suggests ode.

These earliest tragedies were performed at Athens’ annual festival for Dionysus, the god of wine, fertility, and revelry. In fact, some reports of these ancient Dionysian festivals, with dramatic storytelling, supported by a chorus, noted that a sacrificed goat may have been part of the festival practices.

Not unlike Lost or Westworld, Antigone has a complicated backstory that sets the stage, before even getting to the conflicts begat by Kreon.

The daughter of King Oedipus and his mother/wife, Jocasta, Antigone has the ultimate in family dysfunction. In the eponymous play, she is set on providing an honorable burial for her brother Polynices, which has been forbidden by the current ruler, Kreon, also her uncle. And, yes, the backstory gets more complicated. The two brothers — Polynices and Eteocles — were in a power struggle for the throne and killed each other in battle, fulfilling a curse placed on Kreon.

Song of the Goat stages this ancient production in what feels like the mid-1960s or early 1970s, when plaid dirndls with cardigans and bellbottom jeans and T-shirts were the styles of choice, along with heavy tortoiseshell glasses and quirky print bowling shirts.

Carlotta Capuano gives her Antigone bold assertiveness, while Tiana Lockhart’s Ismene is a rule-follower, cautious, even fearful, of defying Kreon’s decree. Silas Gordon Brigham’s Kreon is the ultimate alpha, clad in a sharp suit; his equally sharp replies reveal him as a power-hungry K-Street lobbyist and would-be king. A foil for the opposite sisters, one brash and brusque, the other retiring and reticent, Maryanne Henderson puts verve and even a bit of chutzpah — albeit modulated when it comes to negotiating with Kreon — in her role as Messenger. In a military tank and fatigues, she adds to the feminist undercurrent that keeps Antigone pushing against authority. The ten-member cast includes, of course, a Greek chorus (what would a Greek tragedy be without a chorus commenting on a tragic turn of events?), which, as per tradition, serves as a singular character reciting related songs in unison and responsively.

Set in ancient Thebes, the production in the Atlas Performing Arts Center’s intimate 65-seat Lab Theater 1 takes advantage of the spare theater-in-the-square arena setting. Director/set designer Kate Debelack peppers the bare stage with a few cinderblocks, trash, and trash bins. Solomon HaileSellasie’s lighting provides the mood and the scene changes that keep Antigone alive.

Canadian poet and classics professor Anne Carson’s modern-day translation, supported by Debelack’s spare yet muscular direction, is integral to this vivid and visceral remake. Sophokles remains relevant when theater artists find themselves and their own political and cultural moments in these ancient stories. Song of the Goat has found the perfect vehicle for this political moment. Riding the DC Streetcar up H Street NE, it was hard to ignore the presence of uniformed National Guard groups, following President Trump’s orders. And then, waiting for the show to start, one of the visible props was a protest sign proclaiming “Free Thebes.” An audience member sitting just a few feet away wore his own protest on his chest: his black T-shirt proclaimed “Free DC” — ancient and modern pleas for sanity amid despotic rule.

Running Time: Approximately 90 minutes, no intermission.

Antigone plays through September 14, 2025, presented by Songs of the Goat performing at the Atlas Performing Arts Center, 1333 H St NE, Washington, DC. To purchase tickets ($33.25, all fees included) call the box office at 202-399-7993, email boxoffice@atlasarts.org, or go online.

The program is online here.

COVID Safety: All performances are mask-encouraged.

Content Warnings: mild usage of swearing/coarse language, mild references to and depictions of self-harm, violence, suicide, grief, and mild depictions of use of weapons.

Antigone
by Sophokles
translated by Anne Carson
directed by Kate Debelack

SEE ALSO:
Songs of the Goat brings timely retelling of ‘Antigone’ to DC stage (news story, August 28, 2025)

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In this era when friends connect through Netflix-and-chill and group chat, does anyone have real company anymore? In my parents’ and grandparents’ generations, there used to be formal invitations, a table of homemade delicacies — either dinner or desserts — good china and silver place settings that accompanied adult conversations late into the night. Company was a big deal and a way for adults to connect and enjoy each other’s, well, company.

This idea of company informs Steven Sondheim’s 1970 musical of the same name, Company, which debuted on Broadway under the sure hand of director Harold Prince, featuring a book by Sondheim collaborator George Furth. Praised as a landmark show, it provided a sophisticated, cultured, urbane view of upper-middle-class life in Manhattan in the 1970s. The musical deals with dating — long before it became hook-up culture — love, marriage, infidelity, and divorce; in a nutshell, the ups-and-downs of modern relationships are analyzed.

This month Silver Spring Stage, a stalwart community theater closing out its remarkable 56th season, is taking on this challenging musical, with its speedy patter songs, a heartfelt 11 o’clock showstopper, complex orchestrations and choral harmonies, as well as a script that could feel ridiculously dated more than 50 years after the show opened. Yet under the care-filled direction of Matt Bannister and music director Matthew Dohm, the production, while at times uneven, acquits itself quite nicely.

Silver Spring Stage’s space on Colesville Road in a basement shopping center under a CVS is not great. The stage is arranged like a diamond, with a support column at one corner and the audience seated in rows along two sides. But Bannister uses this industrial, inhospitable layout to advantage. This Company plays out against a backdrop of the New York City subway — Times Square station, to be exact. The walls are painted in a grid of white tiles (though not in the rectangular subway format) and graffiti that calls out to some of the song titles. This setting proves particularly apt for the Act One number “Another Hundred People,” reflecting the anonymity of urban life on the underground platforms. Bannister also designed the sets, which remain spare, featuring a series of platforms and movable boxes that serve as benches, stools, and tables throughout the two-act production.

The 14-member cast sings beautifully together. It must be because music director Dohm specializes in choirs while pursuing his master’s at Westminster Choir College. As a group, their singing is rich, filled with complex harmonies along with great personality and verve. The large numbers, including the opener, “Company,” and Act Two’s “Side by Side,” truly resonate vocally, even with pretty run-of-the-mill choreography, but this is a cast of singer/actors, not dancers, and singing comes through best in this production.

As Robert, or Bobby, the male lead, William Lewis warms into his voice and character over Act One and by Act Two, he comes into his own with a stunning rendition of “Being Alive,” Sondheim’s “I want” song, articulating what the composer called the “defining desires” of the protagonist. Unusually, the “I want” song typically comes earlier in Sondheim shows. But in Company, this song is the show’s penultimate, underscoring how long it has taken the Bobby character to come to terms with his purpose and articulate his desire with certainty.

Throughout, we follow Bobby on and after his 35th birthday, encountering friends, girlfriends, potential lovers, and strangers in an existential quest to, as E.M. Forster put it, “only connect.” We see him interact with and charm women — married, single, dating, or divorced, no matter — while he struggles with his purpose, questioning whether he needs a deep connection or if simple female companionship, physical or otherwise, is enough. He blows off his own birthday party, gets high with his married buddy and his wife, drinks plenty of bourbon with his teetotaling friends, and finds connection with Joanne (sharply played by Pamela Northrup), a married older woman whose cynical sarcasm forms the basis for a Sondheim classic: the bitter “The Ladies Who Lunch.”

Bobby’s “girls” include sweet-faced Amy, who sings the breath-defying patter song “Getting Married Today,” accompanied by her milquetoast fiancé, Paul (mild-mannered Alan Gonzalez Bisnes). As Amy, Marissa Liotta attacks “Getting Married” with vim and aplomb, finessing the tongue-twisting lyrics and comic angst of pre-marriage jitters. Rose Hutchison as April, the American Airlines flight attendant who flies in and out of Bobby’s life, provides the wistful longing needed for the duet “Barcelona,” but I’m always a bit bothered by the cheap surprise ending Sondheim and Furth concocted.

After more than half a century, Company shows its age. The elemental themes of connection, longing, friendship, and coupling remain relevant, evergreen, even; yet in 2025, we live our lives and find our loves differently. Our connections are often more matter-of-fact or, worse, digital. Perhaps, then, a reminder of the deep longing to “only connect” the old-fashioned way is necessary. In any case, anytime Sondheim’s smart, heartfelt, and scintillating music and lyrics are on tap, it’s a good time for old-school company.

Running Time: Two hours and 30 minutes, with one 15-minute intermission.

Company plays through June 29, 2025 (Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 pm and Sundays at 2:00 pm) at Silver Spring Stage, 10145 Colesville Road, Silver Spring, MD. Purchase tickets ($23.75–$26.75 including fees) at the door, online, or by contacting the Box Office at boxoffice@ssstage.org or 301-593-6036.

Company
Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by George Furth
Directed by Matt Bannister

CAST
Bobby: Billy Lewis
Joanne: Pamela Northrup
Larry: Bri Calleigh
Amy: Marissa Liotta
Paul: Alan Gonzalez-Bisnes
Sarah: Tanya Coyne
Harry: Brian Lyons-Burke
Susan: Isabelle Solomon
Peter: Daniel Riker
Jenny: Danielle Comer
David: James Armstrong
April: Rose Hutchison
Marta: Elizabeth Suzanne
Kathy: Laura Hepp

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The DMV has been fortunate to have the one-of-a-kind movement-theater company Synetic Theater in its midst for nearly a quarter of a century. Founded by Georgian émigrés Paata and Irina Tsikurishvili in 2001, the then-young troupe of creatives drew from their Georgian and Russian-style training in dance, mime, theater, and film to forge their new American theatrical identity. And they did it by eschewing spoken language with Hamlet … the rest is silence, by taking the poetry of Shakespeare’s drama out of the equation and distilling the tragic tale of star-crossed lovers into movement. Their inventive offerings over the decades have enhanced the theatrical landscape of the region.

After 14 wordless Shakespeare adaptations, and dozens and dozens of other adaptations from the theatrical canon, Synetic selected the perfect vehicle for this moment and its expertise at wordless theater: Charlie Chaplin’s 1917 romantic comedy The Immigrant. Created during the early years of commercial film, when movies were silent, The Immigrant tells the wordless story of Chaplin as a young, hapless yet clever émigré. Viewers follow his escapades aboard a ship sailing to New York, glimpsing the Statue of Liberty, passing through Ellis Island, and making his way into the modern, bustling city.

Synetic’s co-founders Paata and Irina Tsikurishvili co-directed the production, and founding company member Nathan Weinberger adapted this iconic piece of film and American history for the stage. Featuring Koki Lortkipanidze’s remixing and original compositions and sound, joined with additional music by Aaron Kan, the classic piano of silent film accompaniment dominates, enhanced with environmental sounds of water, rain, and other atmospheric and jazzy music, while playing an equal partner in the storytelling. Phil Charlwood’s set feels spare on the wide Thomas Jefferson Community Theatre Stage, yet the minimal boxes and roughhewn structures elegantly and simply morph into the ship deck, a dining hall at sea, the iconic torch and crown of the Statue of Liberty, a factory, a restaurant, and a filmmaker’s studio.

This adaptation maintains the episodic structure of the Chaplin film but bookends it with a prologue and epilogue of sorts. In these scenes, we see an elder filmmaker — Chaplin as immigrant at the end of his career — editing and marking up strips of film. Paata Tsikurishvili, sporting a graying beard, plays the aging immigrant Chaplin with pathos and dignity. He has a world-weary demeanor that speaks volumes of his hard-won success both as the character he portrays and in his personal story of reinvention in a new country, a new language, and a new culture over the past quarter century.

As the classic Chaplin character, here known as Little Fellow, the Tsikurishvili son, Vato, proves masterful, channeling his agile mimetic gestures and iconic duck-footed walk with that graceful sway. Clad in Chaplin’s signature baggy pants and black bowler hat, Vato allows for Chaplin’s naïve, childlike wonderment and his nimbleness to shine forth in this boy-meets-girl-and-falls-in-love story. In the midst of this gentle encounter with Hetty (innocent Maryam Najafzada), that all starts with a glimpse and an accidental brush of hands, a sweet romance blossoms.

The dinner scene on the rocking ship is among the most memorable from the original film. As the camera swayed back and forth to create the rocking deck, plates slide back and forth across the table while Chaplin tries to get a quick spoon of soup before it slides away. On stage, the camera-rocking effect has been replaced with rocking chairs, and chuckles follow.

During this sea adventure, the Little Fellow faces little challenges. He finesses a high-stakes shell game. Then, when Hetty and her sister are pickpocketed, the Little Fellow tries to replace the stolen cash, only to be accused of stealing. But throughout his journey, he’s scrappy and inventive enough to find a way out. These include a restaurant scene with Hetty when he’s short of cash, meeting an artist, working at a mechanized factory, and a fateful encounter with a film producer.

The Little Fellow becomes a filmmaker and in one of the most intriguing moments pays homage to another Chaplin classic: The Great Dictator. He dons a toothbrush mustache, which immediately recalls Adolph Hitler, mounts the wood scaffolding, and embraces an oversized globe. Chaplin’s bold message against war and world domination was clear in 1940, as is Little Fellow’s today in 2025, when fascism seems to be in fashion again.

Throughout, the 10 artists on stage form a tight ensemble, stylishly dressed in Erik Teague’s period costumes: ankle-length dresses and sleek flapper outfits for the women and two-button suits or work uniforms and shirts for the men. Irina Tsikurishvili’s choreography is typically a treat, and here is no exception. The chaotic rush of dancing people in the streets of turn-of-the-20th-century New York pays homage to beloved, energetic Busby Berkely numbers. Aboard the ship, passengers tumble and roll and Vato shows off his acrobatic skills in the off-kilter dining-on-the-ship scene. She also includes a swing dance sequence and nods to currency with a few performers finessing the snaky arm wave from one hand through elbows and shoulders and out the other arm, now seen in hip-hop dance.

In the hands of Synetic’s incredibly inventive artists, The Immigrant is far more than a remake of the indelible silent film. The 90-minute production — on stage at Thomas Jefferson Community Theatre in Arlington through March 23 before it moves to Theater J in the District on April 11 — is, like each of Synetic’s wordless Shakespeare adaptations, a perfect vehicle for Vato and Paata to share the stage. The lovely manner in which both men pay homage to the fount of creativity of early film innovators who invented a new art form that has in essential ways changed the world is touching because the Tsikurishvilis have given so much of their own inventiveness to the theater community in the DC region.

For those who have followed the Tsikurishvilis from their pre-Synetic days creating a children’s theater company, how wonderful to see Paata and Vato — father and son — share the singular role of The Immigrant/Little Fellow. They embody Chaplin’s Immigrant — his innocence and his wonder’ his quicksilver walks and his gravitas, along with his striving and indomitable spirit of reinvention. The two characters become reflections of past and future, in a way that film itself has served as both an aide memoire and a divination. Thus, while 1917’s The Immigrant allows us to glimpse a moment in time past, Synetic’s The Immigrant not only looks back at where we were but remains a living, breathing vehicle that addresses the present political moment when worrying and denigrating discourse on immigrants and immigration abounds. Of course, Americans love to define themselves/ourselves as a nation built by immigrants. Yet, turn the page in the history books or open up a newspaper to read of the continuing long-held animosities about welcoming newcomers to the United States. Synetic reminds its audiences that we all have immigrant stories, immigrant histories, immigrant families, friends, neighbors, and colleagues in our midst. We must not forget where we came from and where we’re going. The Immigrant is an evocative reminder.

Running Time: 90 minutes with no intermission.

The Immigrant plays through March 23, 2025, presented by Synetic Theater performing in the Thomas Jefferson Community Theatre, 125 S Old Glebe Rd, Arlington, VA. Tickets ($35–$65) are available online, at the theater box office (open an hour before showtime), by email at boxoffice@synetictheater.org, or by phone at (703) 824-8060 x117. The Immigrant also plays April 11 to 27, 2025, at Theater J (the Aaron & Cecile Goldman Theater in the Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center), 1529 16th St NW, Washington, DC. Tickets ($59.99–$79.99) are available online or by phone at (202) 777-3210.

The playbill for The Immigrant is online here.

The Immigrant

CAST
The Immigrant: Paata Tsikurishvili
Little Fellow: Vato Tsikurishvili
Hetty: Maryam Najafzada
Hetty’s Sister: Stella Bunch
The Producer: Philip Fletcher
Ensemble/Understudy Little Fellow: Natan-Maël Gray
Ensemble: Lev Belolipetski
Ensemble: Nutsa Tediashvili
Ensemble: Chris Galindo
Ensemble: Joshua Cole Lucas
Understudy Hetty’s Sister/Ensemble: Camille Pivetta
Understudy The Producer/Ensemble: Rodin Alcerro
Understudy Ensemble: Kaitlyn Shifflett

CREATIVE TEAM
Co-Director & Adaptation: Paata Tsikurishvili
Co-Director & Choreographer: Irina Tsikurishvili
Adaptation: Nathan Weinberger
Lighting Designer: Brian Allard
Costume Designer: Erik Teague
Set Designer: Phil Charlwood
Technical Director: Joshua Cole Lucas
Production Manager: Amy Kellett
Production Stage Manager: Khue Duong
Sound Designer, Composer & Remix: Konstantine Lortkipanidze
Assistant Director & Co-Sound Designer: Irakli Kavsadze
Additional music: Aaron Kan
Audio Engineer: Levi Manners
Assistant Stage Manager: Natasha Sanchez
Assistant Lighting Designer: Dean Leong
Assistant Costume Designer: Channing Tucker
Additional Music: Aaron Kan
Lighting Supervisor: Alex Keen
Lighting Programmer & Board Op: Susannah Cai
Draper: Kristin Patrick
Scenic Artist: Tim Grant
Carpenters: Pete Neil, Tony Ritchie
Creative Team: Vato Tsikurishvili, Maryam Najafzada, Stella Bunch, Natan-Maël Gray, Lev Belolipetski, Katie Buchwell
Stage Manager Cover: Katie Buchwell

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Long before the words diversity, equity, and inclusion were ever uttered in a single breath, beloved choreographer Alvin Ailey was building a dance company that would look like 21st-century America. Born poor to a single mother in Texas, Ailey discovered dance as a teenager and went on to choreograph some of the most emblematic works reflecting African American stories and history. But when he founded his company in 1962, he emphasized that he never wanted a company of only Black dancers like himself. Even at its creation, Ailey was intent on building a troupe that reflected the multicultural ethos of the U.S. in ways that he had yet to fully experience at that time.

This week, DEI became embattled as the Trump Administration went on a witch hunt to eradicate programs at Federal agencies across the board. That made the return of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater to the Kennedy Center Opera House a balm for both spirit and soul. This powerhouse influential company has a long special connection to the Kennedy Center. In fact, it was Ailey’s choreography and dancers that opened the Kennedy Center in the fall of 1971, performing in Leonard Bernstein’s premiere of his ambitious Mass.

Since then, the company has made the Kennedy Center a nearly annual stop on its busy national tour schedule. For the past quarter century, a post-performance gala has raised millions of dollars for the company. On Wednesday, February 5, Sela Thompson Collins, a gala co-chair, announced that a record $1.2 million was raised for educational programming, scholarships, and new works.

This run introduced four season world premieres, and every performance concluded with Ailey’s signature piece, “Revelations,” which brought the audience into an ecstatic frenzy. The cheers at the first hums and strains of the gospel-sung score shook the Opera House with the same energy as fans at Nationals Park.

“Revelations,” which traces the African American journey from enslavement to a cleansing baptismal to a joyous church celebration, draws on what the choreographer — who was all of 29 when he crafted the work in 1960 — called his “blood memories” of growing up in rural Texas in the Black Baptist Church. It became the inspiration for the most-anticipated premiere, “Sacred Songs,” created by Matthew Rushing, a company member since 1992, most recently interim artistic director.

Rushing returned to the roots of “Revelations,” which originally was about an hour long. But for a U.S. State Department tour, Ailey shortened the piece, cutting nine songs from his original choreography. Rushing, working with composer and former Urban Bush Women dancer Du’Bois A’keen, returned to these songs, some well-known like “By the Waters (of Babylon)” and “Glory, Glory),” others more obscure. The new settings shy away from the traditional gospel sounds of Brother John Sellers and Ella Jenkins, leaning further into jazz and rock influences and sounding more like 21st-century pop-infused church music.

Rushing’s approach to movement favors a less chiseled physicality than Ailey, a breathiness in the attack that lends a sense of freedom to the dancers from core to flowing limbs. He also emphasizes arms, sometimes in semaphores that converse with the defined angularity of dancers’ arms in “Revelations.” There’s the preacher’s point, prayer hands, the archetypal reaching upward and outward — expressing in gesture that search for freedom of body and spirit — and a two-handed flutter held close to the body, a motif that appears throughout “Sacred Songs.” For those who have “Revelations” etched into their soul — I’ve seen it likely 75 or more times over the past 40 years — Rushing tucks in some subtle choreographic quotes, legible for those familiar with the work. Attractive cream and gray loose-fitting casual tunics designed by Dante Baylor change in intensity from the etched rays of light by Andre Vazquez. The work plays with the individual and group in dynamic ways, yet the meandering shifts from one song passage to the next left multiple empty spaces that felt like false endings. Ultimately, the final imagery of “Sacred Songs” leaves viewers with an apotheosis of sorts, as the dancers on their knees circle around a heavenly glow of light that brings a sense of closure to the changing groupings.

The spiritual trope continued with “Many Angels,” by 81-year-old choreographer Lar Lubovitch, who has been a mainstay in the modern dance world for generations. In the work, set to Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5, the choreographer said he reflected on St. Thomas Aquinas’ unanswerable question, “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” Performing before a gorgeous projection of heavenly clouds, the five dancers move with the ease and grace of 15th-century Italian master painter Botticelli’s angels. Lubovitch draws on the classical underpinnings of ballet with elegant arabesques, supported lifts, and sweeping turns. The five dancers even tumble gorgeously clad in diaphanous sheer jumpsuits over leotards. Lubovitch has given the company a Renaissance painting in motion. A skilled dancemaker, he excels at making beautiful work, but without shading, “Many Angels” lacks depth.

Hope Boykin performed with the Ailey company for two decades and has now stepped fully into choreography. Her “Finding Free” lives in shadows beneath overcast lighting. The ten dancers wear armor-like, stiff-collared jackets at first while struggling through push and pull, weighted stances, and sharp elbows. Deep thumping bass melds into rock-like riffs and drums from Matthew Whitaker’s score. This is a journey piece, but to where? A sense of dystopian disconnect sets everyone on their own exodus. When they come together, in a circle or a diagonal formation before peeling off again, a sense of common ground adheres. The work also pits the individual against the group as a sense of severity or precarity pervades. Soloist Jessica Amber Pinkett takes center stage, at times seated cross-legged like a high priestess or centered in a circle of fellow dancers. At one point, braided ropes pull against her from off-stage as she struggles until they slacken. When the mood lightens, with churchier music and brighter light, the dancers join in a unified rhythm, traveling upstage, disappearing into a black void. “Finding Free” aligns with the Aileyesque ethos in its individual-versus-society theme, its weighty movement motifs, and the abstracted portrait of humanity’s innate battle against adversity.

Another former Ailey dancer, Jamar Roberts, most recently served as the company’s resident choreographer from 2019–22. His premiere for the company, “Al-Andalus Blues,” features a flamenco-infused score performed by Roberta Flack and Miles Davis with a cantoara singing “Angelitos Negros” along with hints of flamenco dance, from sturdy, deep lunges to elegant curling hand flourishes. The curtain rises with a group of dancers, swathed in sleek black unitards with raised epaulets emphasizing shoulders. They stand poised on a grassy-colored slab. Leaving the promontory, they push away the sections until a lone dancer steps away, and the land-like mass is gone, suggesting a people who have lost their land. Moments of sparring, a few shouted yips, and some flat-footed stomps emphasize the nod to flamenco’s Andalucían roots. “Al-Andalus Blues” reflects many Ailey company works that draw inspiration from and pay homage to cultures across America, from jazz, blues, and hip-hop to African and the Mediterranean, especially Ailey’s own “Night Creature” and “Blues Suite.”

Across the decades, the annual Ailey run at the Kennedy Center brings tremendous joy to the always enthusiastic audiences who often clap and holler for an extended balance, a superb leap, or a whip-smart series of turns. But nothing garners more applause than the requisite company finale, “Revelations.” And at this moment, when our national values and democracy itself are threatened by POTUS and his administrative henchmen/women, the Ailey company is not merely a salve for the demoralized and depressed. In fact, it does not feel like an accident that POTUS chose the week Ailey company is back in Washington, DC, to depose, via a tweet, the president and key board members of the Kennedy Center and declare himself new president. Ailey, who passed away in 1989, built a company that has survived and thrived for nearly 65 years by dint of hard labor, dedication to the deeply embedded American values of diversity and equality, and the support of a vast constituency that returns year after year. The response and dedication are not just for the excellence the company exhibits on stage. The Ailey company is beloved because it shows us — viscerally, kinesthetically — who we are as Americans. We are strong, invincible, love beauty, truth, freedom and equality; and we acknowledge the “blood memories” that shaped our nation’s past are truly past as we place our hope in a better future.

Running Time: Approximately two hours and 15 minutes, with two intermissions. Varies by program.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater performs through February 9, 2025, in the Opera House at The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, 2700 F St NW, Washington, DC. Purchase tickets ($50–$202) online or by calling (202) 467-4600 or toll-free at (800) 444-1324. Box office hours are Monday-Saturday, 10 am-9 pm, and Sunday 12 pm-9 pm.

The program for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is online here.

COVID Safety: Masks are optional in all Kennedy Center spaces for visitors and staff. If you prefer to wear a mask, you are welcome to do so. See Kennedy Center’s complete COVID Safety Plan here.

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“When you lose a son, what do you do?” The pointed question posed by Manuel Oliver is filled with sorrow. Oliver lost his only son on February 14, 2018, in the harrowing school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

Oliver could have just laid down, wallowed in the depths of his anguish. But this Venezuelan-born former restaurateur turned artist and creative director turned his grief into activism and his activism into art.

The result has so far included a traveling art installation featuring murals, sculptures, and paintings, including portraits pierced with 17 holes representing the 17 high schoolers who were murdered that Valentine’s Day nearly seven years ago. Beyond this installation, Oliver has memorialized his son in GUAC, a one-man performance piece that enshrines his beloved lost child with the fierce and abiding love only a parent can have. Oliver is performing in GUAC through February 16, 2025, at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. It’s a must-see for the searing ripped-from-the-headlines story and inspiring and activist-driven intentions.

On a bare stage, with just a stool, yellow oversized letters spelling out GUAC — the endearing nickname his friends gave him when they couldn’t say Joaquin — and an outsized panel covered with brown packing paper, Oliver paints, with both words and brushes, a vivid portrait of his lost son.

As much as this is a tragedy about how this bright, athletic young man’s life was cut short in an unbearable manner — four bullets shot from an AR-15 automatic rifle — GUAC is an unexpectedly enjoyable, at times funny, at other times sweet paean to a gaping loss.

While Oliver is not a trained actor, he has a charismatic and natural presence on stage. His thick salt-and-pepper hair and beard, a T-shirt, torn and paint-splattered jeans, and worn pink sneakers — his late son’s — mark him as a casual, easygoing dad, or papi. The audience sits rapt for nearly 100 minutes of Oliver’s reminiscences about family and friends, carpooling his son to school, and lackadaisically coaching a group of Guac’s friends on a community basketball team. Using a plastic milk crate filled with brushes and paints, he paints and tears off sheets of brown paper, revealing life-sized photos of the Oliver family, including mom Patricia, step-sister, the family dog, and, finally, his son. Guac is rendered in black-and-white, slim, athletic, wearing sneakers, jeans, and a plain white T-shirt, looking out, a teenager not yet fledged, but readying for his flight.

By breaking the theatrical fourth wall, Oliver engages the audience like friends. He’s the kind of guy you want to hang out with over nachos and beer, or red wine. At one point he reminds us that he’s been to Washington, DC, before. Back in 2022, he climbed a construction crane near the White House and then unfurled a banner with his son’s face and the message: “45K people died from gun violence on your watch.” The direct message was intended for former President Biden and eventually got Oliver a White House invite, but no real change in gun policies, at least not yet.

In the tradition of Brazilian theater artist Augusto Boal, GUAC is pure activist theater. Throughout, Oliver engages the audience through his personal storytelling and pointed moments where the audience is urged to participate. This technique captivates viewers with a deeply personal and emotional story, then moves them toward action, effecting change. Oliver’s persona is part everyman, part every parent until his unfathomable loss.

Yet there’s something exceptional in the way he harnessed his grief into growth and change. His target: the $9 billion profit that the U.S. gun industry reaps each year, along with the many politicians who receive National Rifle Association contributions for their campaigns. For Oliver, his adopted country, the United States, is oppressed by the hegemony of gun manufacturers and lobbyists. His ask — really demand — is that we, the people, must not sit idly by. He demands engagement and action in the best sense of activist performance.

For Oliver, art, performance, and activism are the most effective tools for spreading his message for stricter gun laws, regardless of party or political affiliation. It is significant that he has accomplished both in a compelling, entertaining, and emotionally resonant show that celebrates his late son while inducing viewers to do more.

Additionally, Oliver has filled the Woolly Mammoth Theater lobby with an exhibition of art that speaks to the issue of gun violence in this country. And over the weekend, the school bus the Oliver parents use to travel the country will be parked near the theater, and opened as an activist space to learn about the issue, to spark action against gun violence. Also, like any good marketer, there are T-shirts, books, and ephemera for sale to spread the word and spark conversations and action.

Running Time: Approximately one hour and 40 minutes, no intermission.

GUAC plays through February 16, 2025, at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, 641 D St NW, Washington, DC. All tickets are $30 (with discounts available) and can be purchased online, by phone at 202-393-3939 (Wednesday–Sunday, 12:00–6:00 p.m.), by email (tickets@woollymammoth.net), or in person at the Sales Office at 641 D Street NW, Washington, DC (Wednesday–Sunday, 12:00–6:00 p.m.). Special benefit-price tickets are $60, with 50% donated to Change the Ref, Oliver’s nonprofit.

COVID Safety: Masks are optional in all public spaces at Woolly Mammoth Theatre except for a mask-required performance Thursday, February 13, at 8 p.m. Woolly’s full safety policy is available here.

GUAC
Written & performed by Manuel Oliver
Co-written by James Clements
Directed by Michael Cotey
Presented in association with Change the Ref and The Public Theater.
Lighting Design: Justine Burke
Sound Design: Grover Hollway
Producer: Michael Cotey
Executive Producer: Patricia Padauy-Oliver

SEE ALSO:
Father of Parkland victim brings one-man activism show to Woolly Mammoth (news story, January 8, 2025)

The post A shooting victim’s papi turns to art and action in ‘GUAC’ at Woolly Mammoth appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

When it was founded in 1998 in Herndon, Virginia, Elden Street Players, a community theater run by volunteers, was a small theater with big ambitions. With funding from the town and a dedicated board and community, it grew into a 114-seat black box theater alongside warehouses in the Northern Virginia suburbs. The suburban community theater became known for producing edgier, newer works more in line with downtown Washington, DC, venues like Studio, the now-defunct Source, and Woolly Mammoth.

By 2013, Elden Street Players was ready for its next step. The board appointed one-time child actor and theater creative Evan Hoffmann as its first full-time producing artistic director, and under his direction, the volunteer troupe became the fully professional NextStop Theatre Company. After a dozen years at the helm of the growing regional theater, Hoffmann stepped away, making room for New York City–based director, producer, and arts educator Heather Lanza to lead NextStop to its next level.

DCTA: You have some family in the Virginia area, so had you seen or heard about NextStop’s work?

Heather Lanza: I do have family in the area, so I grew up coming down to Northern Virginia and spending a lot of holidays in the area, but I had never actually seen anything at NextStop. I was really excited to learn about its history, which is so rich, especially the transformation from being this really amazing community theater into this as amazing professional space.

With your extensive experience in New York and regional theaters, including both as a freelance director and a co-leader of Waterwell theater company in NYC, what excited you about making the move to Northern Virginia?

I just spent a decade working at Waterwell, a company that’s really focused on civic-minded art and theater that [asks] different community and civically engaged questions. One thing that’s really important to me is that I am always thinking about what it means to tell stories in, with, and for a community. What role do the arts play in a community setting? And how do we as artists think about what those needs are and how that changes over time? What was really exciting to me about NextStop was the really, really deep community roots that have been there since the beginning … seeing how the community love is really reciprocal. The amount of love the [Herndon] community has for the space — they really view it as an arts hub for them with really amazing high-quality professional work in their backyards — that was a huge draw for me.

Coming in mid-season as a newcomer, what are the first steps you want to take in your producing artistic director position?

At first, I thought I wanted to start with my season. But what’s been cool about starting now is that I’m really getting to learn the space and learn what producing at NextStop is like. Who are the artists? What are audience expectations of the season? What works well in the space, and what are some growth areas in the space? That has actually been really helpful.

And with that, I’m focusing on season planning. We’re gearing up to announce that in the spring.

I’m also really thinking about audience development and community development. The community around and within NextStop is like a warm hug. They love the space. A big question that I’m thinking about is how we can make sure NextStop stays a hub and a space for our existing audiences and community members, but how can we make sure we’re expanding that community to be really inclusive of everyone in the Herndon/Reston area in the DC Metro area, and that we are expanding our audiences to be even more diverse, even more inclusive, to be expanding on the really awesome dialogue that’s happening with our existing community members.

What do you hope to bring from your background and experience to NextStop and the greater Herndon community?

My passion and what I love doing artistically is new play development and producing new works. I’m looking to bring that to the Herndon/Reston community. I’m looking at the needs of writers and generative artists in the DC Metro area. What could we offer for artists that would be an additive step in their process to help make and develop their work in the way that’s going to help it grow and really shine? So I’m really excited about that.

How else are you acclimating to this big move to Herndon?

My partner and I signed a lease in Herndon, so we’ll be very close to the theater, which will be really nice. A big focus of mine right now is listening and learning. Every community is unique, every community is different. My job, especially in this first amount of time here, is to get to know the other theater companies in the area, get to know the community, get to know what people are making and seeing both in and outside of theater. There’s a robust visual art community and music community in Northern Virginia. Museums aplenty. I could go see something new every single day. So, I’m trying to just absorb all that to understand experientially what it means to live as an artist and as a culture maker within this community.

Finally, with “next” in the theater’s name, how are you thinking about your role, the company’s role, and the community’s role for the next generation?

I am really into exploring how we can be pipelining local artists better. What do the local writers and artists here want and need from a company that could potentially produce their work down the line? What could we offer that would be most helpful in their process as generative artists? Then, thinking about other companies in the community who have that same want in terms of pipelining new works: Where can we be collaborating on some of those new plays? Commissions would be amazing. I would love to get to a point where NextStop could commission new work. There are a lot of financial implications, so that’s probably a couple years down the line. But that is definitely a bigger-picture goal and dream because [by commissioning] you really get to craft something [more] from the ground up, thinking about your audiences and your communities in a very different way, than even bringing in a play that’s been workshopped.

Final thoughts?

I’ve been inspired because I feel that the DMV theater community is so warm and welcoming and really super supportive of each other. There is a lot of potential … we’re all experiencing the same thing. We’re all asking the same questions about what it means to be making theater in this post-pandemic moment. I say, “Game on.” I’m a firm believer that the more minds you have on a question, the better ideas you get. It’s why I love making theater and why I love collaboration. We all know how to collaborate well in our playmaking. The question becomes: How can we take that same approach to re-envision what it means to be a nonprofit art space and to be theater makers grappling with this really hard moment.

To keep up with NextStop Theatre Company, visit nextstoptheatre.org.

SEE ALSO:
NextStop Theatre welcomes Heather Lanza as new artistic director (news story, December 12, 2024)
First stop for a show in Herndon? NextStop Theatre Company (feature by Lisa Traiger, October 23, 2024)
Evan Hoffmann to step down as artistic director of NextStop Theatre (news story, June 20, 2024)

About the Wendi Winters Memorial Series: DC Theater Arts has partnered with the Wendi Winters Memorial Foundation to honor the life and work of Wendi Winters, the DC Theater Arts writer who died in the Capital Gazette shooting in Annapolis, Maryland, on June 28, 2018. To honor Wendi’s legacy, the Wendi Winters Memorial Foundation has funded the Wendi Winters Memorial Series, monthly articles to be produced by DC Theater Arts to bring attention to theater companies and theater practitioners in our region who engage in exemplary work that makes our community a better place. The centerpiece of these articles is a series we are calling “The Companies We Keep,” articles offering an in-depth look at one local theater company each month. In these times of division and conflict, DC Theater Arts chooses to celebrate those who do good.

For more information on DC Theater Arts’ Wendi Winters Memorial Series, check out this article graciously published by our friends at District Fray Magazine. 

The post Heather Lanza on her dreams and goals for NextStop Theatre appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

Aeschylus, if thought about at all in our 21st-century lives, is remembered as the father of tragedy. With our contemporary obsessions focused on the scroll and the click, we live in the fast lane, where multitasking usurps tragedy, which could be anything from a bad restaurant experience to a botched manicure, a bad day at the office, or a distant war or famine so far-removed it elicits sympathy, but not empathy. Yet, Aeschylus’ ancient dramas — like Shakespeare’s — remain relevant, even revelatory, by peeling away at family dramas and relational discord among not mere mortals but Greek gods and kings. In ancient dramas, poor or ordinary folk weren’t considered the stuff of drama, let alone tragedy.

Yet, Aeschylus’ The Suppliants, likely first performed around 463 BCE, features women — in the original, 50 of them! — pleading for their freedom, their agency, their lives, in the face of forced marriages to 50 brothers, actually their cousins, who were sons of Aegyptus. California-based playwright, lyricist and screenwriter Meghan Brown aims to give voice to women — who are often unheard in classical drama. Her reimagining of the The Suppliants as The Pliant Girls modernizes this ancient choral — as in Greek spoken-word chorus — drama for a generation immersed in present-day feminist issues related to sexual abuse, PTSD, disordered eating, body positivity, addiction, same-sex coupling, and the like. Her adaptation, presented by Theatre Prometheus in association with Nu Sass Productions through November 9, unfurls in a swift 100 minutes while honoring both ancient theatrical tenets as well as relevant issues of today.

The original script cast 50 sisters and their 50 forced suitors; Brown has streamlined this to five of each, along with their father, played by the five men together speaking in full unison. The patriarch is formed with one actor playing the head, flanked by two male actors who serve as his arms and two others as his lower extremities, recalling the choral roots of ancient Greek theater.

We initially meet the sisters at the height of their distress — clad in muddied and torn dresses and tennis shoes or combat boots — pleading, “Help us! Save us!” — their arms outstretched to the audience. Soon enough, this chorus of sisters, who beseech, “You don’t know what it was like for us …,” becomes unique individuals, young women with specific struggles. Wild-child Kay, Alex Aspiazu, with full tattoo sleeves and combat boots, serves as the primary explainer for her sisters, introducing the audience to the narrative. We met Courtney, the lead sister, played by Emma Wesslund with officious leadership qualities. Philomena, a redhead who has quietly planned for her future — Madeline Marie imbues her with quiet determination. Leta is the blonde, funny one; Mollie Greenberg takes us on a road to self-discovery as her character opens her heart. And Arianna, also a ginger, suffers from panic attacks and a frail disposition, which Caleigh Riordan Davis uses to highlight her painful vulnerabilities.

Each of these women completes their sisterhood, and each embodies a specific aspect of the troubling challenges and indignities that affect women living in a male-dominant society. When it’s time to meet their matches and prepare for their arranged marriages, they have no choice in this man’s world — each sister struggles with her own capacities, but, ultimately, they come together to re-enact Aeschylus’ original tragic ending — choosing death for their proscribed grooms, rather than submitting to a life of servitude. That sets them adrift as outcasts from society.

The Pliant Girls has been attractively staged by Ileana Blustein, who takes inspiration from ancient tropes and Renaissance artwork depicting the classical Greeks. Simone Schneeberg’s set features wooden slats and pallets, draped fishing netting, and hanging glass bottles that, joined by Lex Allenbaugh’s sound of crashing surf, suggest the Greek island of Argos, where the drama is set. In fact, audiences are asked to provide their own messages in hanging bottles on the way in or way out of the theater, responding to the queries “What did you want to be when you grew up?” and “What did society tell you you could be?”

For me, the prodding question as I left the theater was “Where do you find your sisterhood, your support, your people? And, what have you done to effect necessary change for a better future?” Whatever questions The Pliant Girls causes you to ponder, you likely won’t walk out of the theater without thought-provoking ideas to discuss.

Running Time: 100 minutes, no intermission.

The Pliant Girls plays through November 9, 2024, presented by Theatre Prometheus in association with Nu Sass Productions, performing at Montgomery College Cultural Arts Center, 7995 Georgia Ave., Silver Spring, MD. Purchase tickets ($30—$10) online.  https://www.nusass.com/pliant

COVID Safety: Audiences are asked to wear a mask at all performances.

The Pliant Girls
Playwright: Meghan Brown
Director: Ileana Blustein
Assistant Director: Henery Wyand
Show Producer: Lauren Patton Villegas

CAST
Emma Wesslund: Courtney
Caleigh Riordan Davis: Arianna
Madeline Marie: Philomena
Alex Aspiazu: Kay
Mollie Greenberg: Leta
Max Johnson: Dean
Seth Rosenke: Alexander
Elgin Martin: Marcus
Jordan Brown: Kem
Philippos Sourvinos: Claude
Evelyn Micacci: Swing
Shana Laski: Swing

PRODUCTION
Technical Director: Eric McMorris
Set Designer: Simone Schneeberg
Lighting Design: Hailey Laroe
Assistant Lighting Designer: Daelyn Funk
Sound Designer: Lex Allenbaugh
Costume Design: Charlie Vankirk
Props Designer: Stephanie Davis
Movement Choreographer: Shana Laski
Intimacy and Fight Director: Julia Harris
Dramaturg: Olivia Wilson
Stage Manager: Mercedes Blankenship
Run Crew: Bayron Celis and Deacon Withers
House Manager: Emmerline Porter
Nu Sass Mar-Comm Manager: Hannah Wing-Bonica

SEE ALSO:
A blisteringly resonant “Bright Room Called Day’ from Nu Sass Productions

October 29, 2024

The post Five brides for five brothers…not. (‘The Pliant Girls’ reimagines sisterhood.) appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

The famed Scottish play leans into masculinity and male power, as do many of Shakespeare’s tragedies. In Macbeth, in particular, the Bard chose to allow his characters to underscore their manliness in such lines as “I must feel it like a man” (MacDuff); “I dare do all that may become a man” (Macbeth); “When you durst do it, then you were a man” (Lady Macbeth); “This tune goes manly” (Malcolm); “Dispute it like a man” (Malcolm); and the accusatory “Are you a man?” (Lady Macbeth). Even getting dressed is referred to as putting on “manly readiness.”

Thus, Taffety Punk Theatre Company’s all-female production — proudly touted as a Riot Grrrls creation — both underscores and overrides the hyper-masculinity embedded in this play, which was, of course, a way of life during the early 17th century, and for centuries to follow.

Taffety Punk Theatre Company boldly leans into its punk ethos and its grrrl-power collectivity in calling its artistic collaboration a band — one that produces high-quality productions for quite affordable prices. And Macbeth isn’t the company’s first foray into the classic Shakespearean oeuvre; this girl band has tackled Othello, Richard III, and Henry VI, part 2.

Comfortably ensconced in Capital Hill Arts Workshop’s cozy 7th Street SE building, the small but well-used black box theater allows the audience to fully and readily enter a world where “Fair is foul, and foul is fair.” This world toggles between the supernatural and the real worlds, in Macbeth’s mind and in the minds of his underlings and even his wife. On entering the theater, the audience walks past the three Wyrd Sisters as they spin, weave, clip, and collect a mysterious web of red ribbon. Set designer Jessica Moretti has decorated the dark walls of the theater with silhouettes of ravens and curlicues of arabesques; the remaining stage is mostly bare and moodily and mysteriously lit by Katie McCreary.

Chicago-based director Michelle Shupe allowed her 10 female players to tap into and inhabit their masculine qualities — in posture and voice, stance and gesture — rather than mimic stereotypical male physical traits. When Taffety Punk company member Lisa Bruneau’s Macbeth enters, she engulfs the spaces she breezes through, her contra-alto voice filling the theater, while her confident gestures and wide-legged stance embody a general or rising head of state. Adding militaristic luster, Elizabeth Morton’s costumes and accouterments, like cell phones, set this Macbeth in our present day with camouflage and officer’s dress blue uniforms.

Tonya Beckman’s turn as Lady Macbeth feels more ruthless than vulnerable; her pale skin and blonde hair are stark against the slash of red lipstick she dons, matching her blood-red satin sheath dress. Her power-hungry rise as the ballast egging on her at times stalwart husband soon enough devolves into her famed hallucinatory monologue regarding her blood-stained hands.

Amid all the plotting and battle plans, Macbeth and his foes follow their ambitions to conquer one another seriously. Yet director Shupe makes it a point to allow her actors to lean into the pun-filled and ironic lines throughout, giving the audience plenty of opportunities to giggle and laugh. And the beloved porter scene has, in this reimagining with Dawn Thomas-Reidy in the guise of a P.G. County security guard, become a laugh-filled standup act replete with knock-knock jokes, as ghostly knocking interrupts to no avail.

Another theme this memorable production highlights is the ghostly or hallucinatory moments featuring the trio of Wyrd Sisters — soothsayers who predict the ultimate events that lead Macbeth to fall from grace — and the other supernatural voices and apparitions that appear, discomfiting Macbeth and his entourage. As Bruneau leans into the heady life of a power-hungry king relishing his growing supremacy, even as he loses his grip on reality, blood spills, and murders occur, for, of course, no Shakespeare tragedy drops its final curtain without a stage of lifeless bodies — although the moments of murder here are offstage. Shupe shares the bloodied shirts or hands, rather than the stabbed bodies on stage.

Taffety Punk’s Riot Grrrl rendering of this evergreen morality play, which wrestles with fate, ambition, greed, and guilt, remains appropriately prescient at this divisive cultural and political moment. At the same time, the all-female cast has so authentically committed to their roles that there is nothing unnatural in having women occupy and thrive in male roles. The Punks did it before, subverting Shakespeare’s cult of masculinity. And they’ve succeeded again with Macbeth. If you can nab a ticket this weekend, to hail the king of Scotland, do it.

Running Time: Two hours with a 10-minute intermission.

The Tragedie of Macbeth plays through October 12, 2024, presented by Taffety Punk Theatre Company performing at the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, 545 7th Street SE, Washington, DC. Remaining tickets ($10–$20) are sold out.

Macbeth
Playwright: William Shakespeare
Director: Michelle Shupe

CAST
Tonya Beckman (Lady Macbeth)
Lisa Bruneau (Macbeth)
Hana Clarice (Ross)
Fabiolla da Silva (Seyton)
Irene Hamilton (1st Wyrd Sister, Lennox)
Ashara Knyshel (2nd Wyrd Sister, Lady Macduff)
Rachael Small (3rd Wyrd Sister, Macduff’s son)
Teresa Spencer (Banquo/Macduff)
Dawn Thomas-Reidy (King Duncan, Porter, Murderer, Hecate voice)
Mallory Trice (Fleance, Malcolm)

PRODUCTION
Lighting Design: Katie McCreary
Costume Design: Elizabeth Morton
Assistant Costume Designer: Lillian Komarow
Intimacy, Fight, and Movement Director: Lorraine Ressegger-Slone
Set Design: Jessica Moretti
Sound Design: Marcus Kyd
Dramaturgy: Cam Magee
Stage Manager: Carrie Edick
Poster Art: Ryan Carroll Nelson

The post Taffety Punk’s Riot Grrrls ‘Macbeth’ flips script on manliness appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

A mashup of Marx Brothers pratfalls and Machiavellian politics feels about right for this Presidential election season. That Alliance for New Music-Theatre has been working for four years on a comic chamber opera taking seriously both Marx — that is, the brothers — and Machiavelli, with tongue firmly in cheek, makes this seriously funny 90-minute one-act both prescient and precocious.

Inspired by American visual artist Man Ray’s painting “Shakespearean Equation: Julius Caesar” — pop over to the Phillips Collection to see it on canvas — the musical aims to lean into the Dadaist principles that inspired Man Ray.

The Man Ray Project: Caesar & The Mannequin, developed by librettist Susan Galbraith, a co-founder of the Alliance, and composer and company member Andrew Earle Simpson, opens with foreboding bass notes, the cello’s voice chimes in and is answered by the piano. The evening is divided into three sections named arguments in the classical philosophical sense. We meet beret-wearing Wo-Man Ray, who schools us in a great list patter song: “Possibilities & The Seven Elements of Art.” Then from behind a curtain, Caesar enters spouting his so-called “Greatest Hits”: “Veni Vidi Vici” et al. from Shakespeare. This Caesar in his red-trimmed Roman robe toggles between maniacal and mundane, exhorting to build a new Rome.

The ingenue, Kiki, comes from Man Ray’s influence — she was a Parisian artists’ model and muse, as well as a painter and Man Ray’s common-law wife. Clad in a black sequined gown and turban, she’s chic both in pointe shoes and barefoot, as a seductress and put-upon woman in a male-dominated relationship. Screening on the backdrop, period black-and-white films depict the collection of junk — found items that became Dadaist readymades for display — that appeal to collage artists’ experimentation as well as films of Man Ray’s works, including his eponymous “Rayographs” — photos made without a camera on light-sensitive photo paper.

Caesar, Kiki, and Wo-Man Ray have philosophical spats in song — competing on vocal trills — in this odyssey. The repartee ranges from nods to the Gallic wars to grammar lessons on the correlative conjunction to the artist as god figure in creative pursuit of the universe.

The staging area features a pedestal with a curved half-open pair of columnar sculpture at center stage, while a shrouded easel stands to one side, a pair of low box-like benches at the other, and a closet door, with the initial caption overhead reading “Caesar & The Mannequin,” allows for entrances and exits. A roll-on chalkboard provides a space to replicate Man Ray’s Dadaist mathematical meanderings — 2+2=22 — which appear in his enigmatic painting series “Shakespearean Equations.” And, finally, a wheeled single table leg serves as an oddball prop, until the final reveal. In the painter’s mind, it has been written, that upside down table leg is, in fact, Caesar — or at least his scepter.

In portraying Caesar as part dictator, part dodo, and Man Ray as a Wo-Man — played by Cara Schaefer — Galbraith and Simpson, the creative team, emasculates these hyper-controlling and macho historic figures, allowing us to re-think power structures in both political and artistic realms.

Composer Andrew Earle Simpson’s pastiche score draws on classic operetta, tango, carnival music, jazz, blues, marches, and Sondheim to name a few of the stylistic music choices finely played by the five-piece ensemble featuring Susan Rider, Chris Reardon, Emily Doveala, Liz Hill, and Chris DeChiara or Glenn Paulson.

The Man Ray Project — with its mixed-media approach and its political take on power-hungry men, whether from ancient history or modern art — is thoughtfully and mostly engagingly produced. While its slapstick and Dadaist leanings come through in script, music, and design, the performers John Boulanger as Caesar, Schaefer and Wo-Man Ray, and Danielle McKay as Kiki or the Mannequin need some more time to inhabit their iconic and ironic characters fully. Finessing slapstick, comedy, and cheekiness isn’t easy. A bit more comfort in their roles will make this Dadaist spectacle reach its potential.

Running Time: 90 minutes, no intermission.

The Man Ray Project: Caesar & the Mannequin plays through September 22, 2024, presented by Alliance for New Music-Theatre performing at Atlas Performing Arts Center, 1333 H Street NE, Washington, DC. Tickets ($25–$45) are available online.

The Man Ray Project: Caesar & The Mannequin

PRODUCTION
Andrew E. Simpson: Composer, Music Director
Susan Galbraith: Librettist/Stage Director
Anne Fisher: Choreographer
Casey Kaleba: Fight Director
Wendy Grossman: Man Ray Art Consultant
Blanca Gruber: Cinematographer
Dasha Pomerantseva: Costume Designer
Matty Griffiths: Production /Stage & Tech Manager

CAST
John Boulanger: Caesar
Cara Schaefer: Wo-Man Ray
Danielle McKay: The Mannequin

MUSICIANS
Susan Rider: Trumpeter / Custodian
Liz Hill: Accompanist, Pianist
Chris Reardon: Clarinet/Bass Clarinet
Emily Doveala: Cello
Chris DeChiara: Percussion
Glenn Paulson: Percussion 9/13, 9/14, 9/15, 9/20

The post In ‘The Man Ray Project,’ Alliance for New Music-Theatre plays Dadaism for laughs appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

With the time, expense, and resources — not to mention creative and collaborative demands — that it takes to build a new Broadway-caliber show from scratch, producers have relied on revivals for decades now. No matter that each such revived Broadway show is a product of its time, its political and societal mores.

Through August 11, Kennedy Center’s Broadway Center Stage is remounting Nine — the 1982 Arthur Kopit/Maury Yeston musical homage to film auteur Federico Fellini’s 8½ (1963). Under the keen eye of director/choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler — best known and admired for his work on Hamilton — this staging is chic, smart, and lively, hewing to its Felliniesque inspiration and fashionable Italian design aesthetic.

Nine is an apt story of the joy and pain of honing the creative process as told through the life of Fellini doppelganger Guido Contini, an Italian filmmaker who hasn’t had a breakthrough in years. Contini was a hitmaker, a star-maker, a changemaker, but at 40 he’s lost his flow. Steven Pasquale’s Guido leans into his Italian machismo and insatiable appetite for women, yet at some key moments of emotional grist, he finds himself woodenly clueless to anyone’s feelings other than his own. As nine-year-old Little Guido, Charlie Firlik is still a boy soprano but a star in the making. He imbues the role with mischievous, childlike wonder, and when older and younger Guidos duet in “Be Italian” and then in “Getting Tall,” both actors sparkle and real emotional intelligence shines through.

The all-woman supporting roles and chorus are both at the service of Guido’s desires and needs but are also present to underscore the protagonist’s flaws, particularly his narcissist qualities. As Guido’s steadfast wife Luisa, Elizabeth Stanley becomes her husband’s explainer in Act One’s “My Husband Makes Movies.” But as she is forced to contend with his wandering eye for beautiful and seductive women, she faces off with his lover Carla (Michelle Veintimilla) in a choreographed pas de trois that demonstrates the backpedaling maneuvers her husband is so adept at. As Guido’s Mother, movie actor Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio imbues the character with more wryness than the Italian gravitas that Sophia Lauren carried in the 2009 movie version.

The other star of this production is the 12-woman chorus, who shape-shift in and out of supporting roles, occasionally conducting the onstage orchestra and performing through the many dream and flashback balletic sequences that keep the ensemble in near-constant motion. Then of course there are the flashy moments, particularly the sequined and feathered duo beside Carolee Carmello’s Edith Piaf–like rendition of “Folies Bergères” as Liliane La Fleur and the equally rousing and sexy tarantella-ish song and dance number “Be Italian,” tracing Guido’s origin story to Little Guido’s encounter with a beach-dwelling prostitute, Sarraghina, the voluptuous and earthy Lesli Margherita.

Set designer Derek McLane smartly leaned into an unfinished soundstage setting with a visible grid of lights, and gauzy white curtains sheathing and revealing bare backstage walls and wings. The well-dressed Kennedy Center Opera House orchestra, in black designer-like togs, directed by Lily Ling, played primarily from an upstage corner, shifting the perspective of the set onto a diagonal, making the space feel slightly off-kilter in perspective and eminently more interesting visually. Alejo Vietti’s costumes — mostly little black dresses, some shifts, some clingy, with touches of white in the men’s shirts — were also a nod to Fellini’s black-and-white cinematography. The women’s dresses and shoes were all impeccably cut and styled, some modest, others curve-enhancing, with black stockings and revealing garters. As well, Tom Watson’s hair and wig designs paid homage to the 1960s with bouffants and long Breck Girl cuts, while still feeling fashionable today.

In all, this new Broadway Center Stage production of Nine is exceedingly attractive and determinedly of its times in theme and scope. It’s well-sung, beautifully choreographed, musically strong, and filled with fashionable flair and chic design choices. Each of Guido’s women — his wife, his lover, his movie star, his producer, his mother — has her moment, but this is Guido’s life, his story for all its intrigue and his many flaws. Foremost, Nine scaffolds its singular male protagonist Guido Contini into a Felliniesque 1960s period piece. But it also hews to its early 1980s creation, as well as Fellini’s focus on what British film theorist Laura Mulvey has termed the “male gaze.”

After the #MeToo era — kicked off by the egregious and criminal actions of Harvey Weinstein, whose company produced the 2009 Rob Marshall movie adaptation — reviving Nine feels, at least for this reviewer, a bit fraught. The question arises: “Why now?” Is there more to say? Does Blankenbuehler’s iteration pay justice to the women’s stories, or only to Guido’s? It gamely tries, and each woman has her moment, particularly Luisa, but the musical feels like a period piece and a stuck timepiece. Maybe the best way to attend to its glaring inequities is to enjoy the journey while being reminded that there’s still work to do in the world. Nostalgia for the male gaze and sexist, antifeminist tropes is so 1982.

Running Time: Two hours and 10 minutes, including one 15-minute intermission.

Nine, a Broadway Center Stage production, plays through August 11, 2024, in the Eisenhower Theater at the Kennedy Center, 2700 F Street, NW, Washington, DC. Tickets ($59–$299) can be purchased at the box office, online, or by calling (202) 467-4600 or toll-free at (800) 444-1324. Box office hours are Monday-Saturday, 10 am-9 pm, and Sunday 12pm-9 pm.

The program for Nine is online here.

COVID Safety: Masks are optional in all Kennedy Center spaces for visitors and staff. If you prefer to wear a mask, you are welcome to do so. See Kennedy Center’s complete COVID Safety Plan here.

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While the pandemic is over for most, long COVID and new variants continue to affect a small but not insignificant part of our population. The local dance scene still, in a sense, faces fallout from long COVID. Fewer opportunities exist for DMV-based small dance companies and independent choreographers to produce their works. Once-busy venues for local dance productions have either closed or drastically reduced their performing seasons — Dance Place in the Brookland neighborhood of Northeast DC, Joy of Motion’s now-defunct Jack Guidone Theater in Friendship Heights, and the now-closed American Dance Institute in Rockville, to name just a few lost opportunities for dance companies.

That makes the self-produced programs at Capital Fringe, like Partings: Dance of Letting Go, a necessary component in the dance ecosystem for choreographers and small companies in the District and its suburbs. Partings, a shared program of new and recent works, featured East Coast modern dancemakers — Stacey Yvonne Claytor, Joan Gavaler, Giselle Ruzany, and Malcom Shute — in a program that Shute said drew on themes of surrender, loss, parting, and, perhaps, finding one’s way back.

Claytor’s “Together/Alone: A Place of Healing,” an excerpt, contrasted a single dancer with a group of seven women using spoken and movement phrases and responses. “Where does it hurt?” “Everywhere.” “Help.” “Heal.” “Heed.” The choreographic language was informed by gut-wrenching contractions, tremors and pulls of hands, collapses and space-engulfing runs.

“Connective Tissue,” from Ruzany’s Gestalt projects, featured the choreographer and Antonella Garcia, each with a sound apparatus wrapped on their forearm. When they connected — touched — the soundscore by Brian Davis would stop. The work built tension as the duo embraced, pushed away, circled each other, then separated. There’s more to explore in this brief encounter.

Shute and fellow dancer/choreographer Katie Sopoci Drake crafted “Fiddleheads” with Gregorio Allegri’s operatic memoriam Miserere: Il salmo miserere mei Deus. There’s a primal, preternatural sense to the duet as Shute supports Drake’s full supine body. They navigate the floor in hyperalert rolls and crawls, finally contorting themselves into a boat-like shape for a journey of consolation.

Growth and discovery fill the final two works, a solo, “The We Inside,” by Gavaler featured text from Jill Bolte Taylor’s “My Stroke of Insight” along with disjointed movement that capitulates to losing physical control. And Shute’s Human Landscape Dance closed the evening with “Emerging,” an homage to plant life slowly pushing through soil in search of sunlight, synthesizing undulating, full-bodied movement from an upward trajectory.

Running Time: 70 minutes
Genre: Dance
Dates and Times: (This show’s run has ended.)
Venue: Cafritz Hall, 1529 16th St NW
Tickets: $15
More Info and Tickets: Partings: Dances of Letting Go

Partings: Dances of Letting Go
Presented by Human Landscape Dance, Claytor Company, Aura CuriAtlas Physical Theatre, Giselle Ruzany
Director: Malcolm Shute
Choreographers: Stacey Yvonne Claytor, Joan Gavaler, Giselle Ruzany, and Malcolm Shute
Performers: Stacey Yvonne Claytor, Joan Gavaler, Giselle Ruzany, Carrie Monger, Brian Davis, Antonella Garcia, Rachael Fine, Stefanie Bass, Malcolm Shute, Katie Sopoci Drake

The complete 2024 Capital Fringe Festival schedule is online here

The post 2024 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Partings: Dances of Letting Go’ (4 stars) appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

In Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey, Penelope, the wife of warrior king Odysseus, plays the role of the good woman as she waits 20 years for her husband to return from battle, all the while rejecting other suitors as she weaves (and unravels) a burial shroud. A model woman and wife, she represents fidelity and ingenuity in this male-led society.

In A Good Woman, dancer/choreographer Nerissa Tunnessen and violinist/writer Samantha Xiao Cody craft an intimate portrait of Penelope through monologues, poetry, music, and movement. Tunnessen is a recent graduate of Vassar’s undergraduate history department, while Xiao Cody holds degrees in Physics and Creative Writing from Princeton University and is pursuing her MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Together they penned the evocative script that tumbles forth with Penelope’s longing for her absent husband.

At center stage, a draped object resembling the triangular shape of a loom is revealed to be simple wooden pallets and bar stools hidden beneath gauzy fabric. Tunnessen’s ease-filled movement reflects and capitulates in the descriptions of waves and wind, sand and soil, while Ziao Cody interacts on violin interchanging harmonic riffs with atonal, sometimes staccato, trills and screeches. As Penelope unwraps and unwinds her never-ending weaving project, dancer and musician orbit each other until Tunnessen unspools string that binds them together.

Throughout the creators let Penelope revisit the idea of what being a “good woman” means in her lonely life. She struggles: “If I am good … I am good … I think only of you / You who come to me on the waves …,” she chants to her absent partner, as she connects physically with fellow sister in waiting — the musician. And in her struggle, Tunnessen and Xiao Cody posit the existential flaw of the original work, that Penelope was only good as an attendant and wife in waiting. Her own needs, desires, hopes, and dreams dismissed in favor of husband Odysseus’s public battles across the sea. A Good Woman argues for elevating the feminine voice and woman’s story — an argument as old as Homer’s ancient myths — shedding new light and fresh air on Penelope for 21st-century audiences.

Running Time: 45 minutes
Genre: Dance/Theater
Dates and Times:

• July 19 at 8:50 PM
• July 21 at 1:00 PM

Venue: Cafritz Hall, 1529 16th St NW
Tickets: $15
More Info and Tickets: A Good Woman

The complete 2024 Capital Fringe Festival schedule is online here.

The post 2024 Capital Fringe Review: ‘A Good Woman’ by Nerissa Tunnessen and Samantha Xiao Cody (4 stars) appeared first on DC Theater Arts.