“The past is never as distant as we imagine.”

“Resistance is not only about weapons or battlefields. It is about imagination — the belief that a different world is possible and worth risking everything to create.”

These words from dramaturg Lindsey R. Barr’s program notes for the American University production of Disarming Girls frame the subject matter that will be explored during the play’s 90 minutes.

How do we resist efforts to take over and manipulate our lives and welfare? Can knowing what was done in the past inform and inspire our present efforts around this issue?

There are good reasons that students and faculty at American University have been excited about this production for weeks.

Of course, having Aaron Posner — a DC theater treasure — as a member of your creative and production team is grounds enough for excitement. But in addition, this production also acknowledges the support of Imagination Stage, Olney Theatre, and The George Washington University. So, it looks like the success of this production is the result of collaborations across skills, disciplines, and communities. The ideas of “community” and “empathy” these days have been the target of a resurrection of a Margaret Thatcher-type disdain. We are currently living under a government that is gleefully terrorizing its people, taking note of all of the intersectionality of the nation’s people — shared experiences that could be used as ways to unite them — and choosing instead to manipulate those commonalities as ways to divide them. I have heard many people on many podcasts ask, “What can we do?” In the context of the current times, acts of collaboration such as the one explored in the process that gave us this performance can be seen as examples of resistance.

Disarming Girls tells us the true story about a group of young women who, exploiting the roles that girls and women have been assigned in Western culture, figured out something they could do. Within those pre-determined roles, these girls figured out ways to collaborate in their resistance against the Nazis even though as a citizenry and as women they seemed powerless. This need to find a useful and effective method of resistance must have seemed an especially relevant plot point as Washington, DC, anticipated people pouring into the city for a second No Kings march.

As the audience entered the theater, we saw a painter’s dropcloth casually draped against the upstage wall. But instead of the splotches of paint that we usually expect to see on a dropcloth, there is a painting of the Canals of Haarlem, the city where the play takes place. So, it was as if we were looking through the proscenium out into the city. The artificiality of the painting’s presence amplified any leaning toward nostalgia the audience might have had. In a way, the audience is enticed to co-create the reality of this space.

Hannie is the central character in this story. She has stalked and eventually approached Franz, the leader of the resistance in the Netherlands. She forces Franz to consider her as a participant. At first, there is skepticism. But it turns out that she’s a crack shot and speaks several languages, including German. Eventually, the resistance group stumbles upon a strategy of disarming German soldiers that proves to be extremely effective, and three of the girls (Hannie, Truus, and Freddie) are enlisted to carry it out regularly. It is a dangerous strategy that makes the girls highly vulnerable, but because it is so effective, it’s a strategy that they pursue almost until the end of the war.

The script by Sarah Caroline Billings and Kallen Prosterman is stylized, utilizing a chorus to play various incidental characters and to portray crowds and to concretize or embody feelings.

The scenes move from place to place and time to time rapidly. This creates a puzzle for how to move the scenes while at the same time maintaining some kind of believability.

But it is energizing to watch as this company solves this puzzle playfully and resourcefully. Director Jenna Place has drilled these performers. They move from scene to scene and from moment to moment with a military-like precision, focus, suppleness, and speed. The bodies of the actors — aided greatly by the costuming — hold the intent and feeling of the characters that the playwrights have evoked.

Sydney Moore’s costuming is almost photographic in its evocation of the era. The costuming is supported every step of the way by makeup and hair styling, and further amplified by Jesse Belsky’s sepia-tinged lighting touches. All of it encourages a willing suspension of belief on the part of the audience.

Scenic designer Samina Vieth uses rolling scaffolding, boxes, and platforms that morph the performing space into various locations and objects as needed on a moment’s notice. I especially enjoyed the illusion of automobiles traversing under and around each other. Deaths and killings happen in this play. They were represented by slips of cloth dropping, floating away from or being snatched out go a previously living character’s hand. There is no re-traumatizing or glamorizing of violence or death in this story of human rapaciousness. Instead, emphasis is placed in the storytelling on noticing the suffering, loneliness, cruelty, and courage of the war participants and victims.

We won that war, you know.

Running time is approximately 90 minutes without intermission.

Disarming Girls plays to 26, 2025, presented by the American University Department of Performing Arts, performing at the Harold and Sylvia Greenberg Theatre – 4200 Wisconsin Avenue NW, Washington, DC. For information about future events, call 202-885-ARTS (885-2787) or visit the website.

Tickets are free for AU students; $10 for children (under 18), seniors (over 55), AU alumni, staff, and faculty; and $15 for the general public. 

The program for Disarming Girls is online here.

Disarming Girls
By Sarah Caroline Billings and Kallen Prosterman 
Directed by Jenna Place

CAST
Lucille Rieke: Truus; Maddy Cooper: Hannie; Mira Gross-Keck: Freddie; Shelly Wiese: Franz

ENSEMBLE
Laurel Brown, Iliana Cardoso, Gabriela Cohen, Bitaniya Menkirs, Lan Mourad, Ainsley Noven, Madelyn Ruyle, Sophie Laurence

CREATIVE AND PRODUCTION TEAM
Director: Jenna Place
Assistant Directors: Morgan Kullen and Olivia Morrison
Stage Manager: Quinn Laubach
Assistant Stage Manager: Siena Johnson
Fight Choreographer: Robb Hunter
Intimacy Director: Sierra Young
Dramaturg: Lindsey R. Barr
Scenic Designer: Samina Vieth
Lighting Designer: Jesse Belsky
Sound Designer: Jordan Friend
Properties Design: Mason Dennis
Costume Design: Sydney Moore
Stage Manager Advisor: Martita Slaydon-Robinson
Theatre/Musical Theatre Artistic Director: Aaron Posner
Theatre/Musical Theatre Program Director: Jason Arnold

GREENBERG THEATRE STAFF
Technical Operations Manager: John Stahrr
Lighting & Audio Coordinator: Kassie Bender
Costume Shop Manager: Sydney Moore

STUDENT PRODUCTION TEAM
Production Assistants: Jackson Smith and Emmett McNulty
Light Board Operators: Aaron Miller, Alisté Bills and Emmett McNulty
Wardrobe Head: Finn Fairfield
Wardrobe Crew: Emme Fischer, Ivy Collins, Allison Evans, and Justine Lee
Fight Captain: Shelly Wiese
Sound Board Operators: Twain Steven and Alisté Bills

The post In ‘Disarming Girls’ at American University, an act of exemplary resistance appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

Under the title Young Griots: New Works for the Stage, the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts Department of Theatre Arts at Howard University showcased works from four students in its Playwrights minor program. The production, directed by Professor Denise J. Hart, was performed October 9 through 11, 2025.

All times can be said to be difficult in some ways, but in the face of our current difficult times, Young Griots: New Works for the Stage offered visions of a way forward. As I watched and absorbed the efforts of these young playwrights at the beginning of their journeys, I felt a sense of hope that continued to grow as each successive play unfolded.

Each play in the showcase explored a different topic. In 5 Minutes by Essence Jackson (senior, TV and Film major), a young woman finds that she cannot — and does not want to — continue her alcohol binge-inducing relationship with a young man from whom she receives neither support nor affirmation. In Echo Chamber by Kevoy Somerville (junior, Acting major), a young wife and mother feels unseen by her video-game-playing husband — even in their own home. In Incline, by Joycelyn Sophia Jackson (senior, TV and Film major), a sister and her older guardian/brother retrace the obstacles their deceased mother placed in their relationship to each other. In Two Sides to Black by Efeoghene Rhonor (senior Musical Theatre major), the male head-of-household announces, “I don’t fuck with Africans,” just before the couple’s African immigrant friends arrive for game night. The play is a topical drama in the vein of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, but here, Black American and African friends confront the divisions and misunderstandings that continue to separate them.

The entire cast, Ramere Kelly, Mahlet Gebreyesus, Tyler T Lang, Skylar Jade, Kameron Outland, Niani Braxton, and Cody Holmes, was urgent: embedded and focused on the relationships in the plays rather than the audience. Despite the fact that they were surrounded by audience members on all sides, psychologically, this was very fourth-wall-contained. In other words, the performers were fully immersed in the worlds of the stories they were telling. It was a no-frills (essential) production that moved cleanly and decisively from moment to moment and scene to scene. All except one actor played double roles.

“Give us more to see,” implores one of the characters in Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George. The playwrights showcased in Young Griots did just that. And that’s an encouraging sign for the future of American storytelling.’

The post Howard University showcases one-acts by four promising playwriting students appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

In the Biblical story of Salome and the Dance of the Seven Veils, a teenage princess named Salome performs a seductive dance for her father, King Herod, who promises her anything she desires, with bloody consequences. If you’ve ever heard this story— and of Salome’s desire for the head of John the Baptist — then you’ve heard the story that baroque composer Alessandro Stradella and librettist Ansaldo Ansaldi set to music in 1675 and called St. John the Baptist. This IN Series production — with new English text by Bari Biern — is the world premiere of this piece.

The story has been notably adapted before: as an opera by Richard Strauss, and as a play by Oscar Wilde. Both of these versions were banned at various times for the portrayal of necrophilia and young lust. (Salome is 13.) The Stradella/Ansaldo version focuses more on Herod’s suppression of his own inner voice and John the Baptist’s efforts to draw that inner voice forth, with the homosocial and homosexual implications such an action might have.

This is a story that is filled with the same shocking moral corruption, rot, and insult as we currently contemplate with the Epstein files and the Trump regime. And director Timothy Nelson and his production crew at IN Series dig into this material with relentless fervor, zest, and rigor.

In contradistinction to the deadening malaise of the subject matter, John the Baptist is filled from the first moment to the last with some of the most gorgeous, constantly moving, rejuvenating, and uplifting baroque music you will hear anywhere.

To pull this off, in the entirety of the opera, there are only five actors on stage, accompanied by the cracker-jack orchestra (INnovātiō Baroque Orchestra) under Nelson’s incisive conducting. As far as I’m concerned, the IN Series production of Stradella’s St. John the Baptist is a colossal achievement of imagination and skill.

Rather than replicating a Biblical epic, the way Cecil B. DeMille films did for Baby Boomers and their parents, Nelson has placed the opera in what looks like a late 1960s-’70s suburban America. Josh Sticklin’s set design is full of cheap, unrecyclable, and undigestible abundance, creating a world that fosters isolation and dread. Just from looking at the set, you get the feeling that, clearly, nothing good can happen here, despite all of the beautiful music in which we are immersed. The polyester clothes designed by Oana Botez don’t allow the bodies of the people to breathe. The constant accompaniment of black-and-white television “interference” (lighting design by Yannick Godts) doesn’t allow for human feeling. We see why Salome, an only child, is unable to develop healthy connections with others, with disastrous consequences.

The audience is introduced to the Herod household as soon as they enter the theater, and before hearing a note of music: As we take our seats, we see Herodiade, Herod’s wife, played by Hayley Abramowitz, troweling icing onto a depressingly American birthday cake intended to cheer Herod up, cigarette dangling precipitously from her darkly glossed lips, her face framed by hair that is cut in an assertively geometric style. Heriodiade longs for sexual connection with her husband but makes do with her husband’s sleazy brother, The Counselor (Greg Sliskovich). Herod (Andrew Adelsberger) is likable enough. But mostly he seems depressed and tends to blend into the wall work.  The rest of the family spends all of their energy trying to bring him out, with Salome being the most successful at this. Adelsberger easily garners our patience and attention just as Herod garners that of the rest of the people around him.  

This next part I may have completely wrong. No one has claimed that this was part of the planned production on stage. However, this is the only way I can explain cogently what I saw.

In a gesture that reaches back to commedia dell’arte conventions, in which characters onstage are costumed as recognizable stock types (such as servants, wealthy old men, young lovers, self-styled captains), Nelson has chosen to have some of his cast look like instantly recognizable roles or archetypes from iconic movies. Of this cast, St. John the Baptist and Salome are each most obviously and pointedly dressed as an identifiable type. St. John is costumed as The Farmhand (specifically for our 21st-century reference, he is dressed and coiffed like Jake Gyllenhaal’s ranch hand Jack Twist in the movie Brokeback Mountain). Salome is similarly dressed as The Innocent Little Girl (specifically, she is dressed and coifed like Patty McCormack from the 1950s movie The Bad Seed, including her iconic pigtails). This choice in costuming has sizable payoffs as the show progresses.

John the Baptist is played by Daniel Moody, whose glorious countertenor comes through in the oratorio’s earliest musical moments as he sings of his plans to leave his current way of living in nature to preach to and reclaim the soul of Herod. Moody’s John the Baptist exudes a transcendent personal conviction (bordering on arrogance, to be honest) of the glory and healing effect that God’s love can have on one’s life.

The bulk of the rest of the production belongs to Dawna Rae Warren (Salome), whose singing and acting embody monumental strength, flexibility, and endurance as she berates her father to give her what she wants. Warren’s voice moves from low, guttural contralto reprimands to soprano howls emitted while climbing on top of the torture chamber in which John the Baptist is confined. Her appeals are unrepentant and unrelenting. Because of this, the last two-thirds of the second act belong to Salome regardless of whoever else is onstage.

The archetypal costuming I mentioned earlier may serve as masks, providing a kind of distancing for the performers, giving them permission to be bigger and more intense in their performances. All of these performers are well-trained, with voices that are facile, focused, and bold instruments. They apply their craft and talent unapologetically. These are not fragile artists onstage. And the audience is the better for it. I thought Warren’s Salome would get tired or at least slow down as the show neared the end. She didn’t. As a fellow audience member noted, “She was in the zone.”

Finally, a word about librettist Bari Biern. If librettists are not as well known as an opera’s composers, maybe it’s because when a librettist is doing their job, they meld with the work of the composer, and the work becomes one blended entity. Librettist Bari Biern’s work in John the Baptist blends into Stradella’s (and Timothy Nelson’s). Her words fit into the story and the conceit of this production, urging both the characters and the audience along. It’s in large part because of Biern’s deft use of language that the audience is able to take in some of the large musical, emotional, and conceptual leaps that it does.

Running Time: Approximately 90 minutes including one intermission.

St. John the Baptist played October 2 to 5, 2025, presented by IN Series and Catapult Opera, performing at Pop-Up Theater, 340 Maple Drive (IN Series’ new venue in Southwest DC). St. John the Baptist also plays October 10, 11, and 12, 2025, at the Baltimore Theatre Project, 45 West Preston St., Baltimore, MD. Tickets range from $25 to $35 in Baltimore and can be purchased online or by calling 410-752-8558.

The cast and creative team bios are online here.

St. John the Baptist
Music by Alessandro Stradella
New English Text by Bari Biern

CAST
Hayley Abramowitz: Herodiade; Andrew Adelsberger: Herod; Daniel Moody: St. John; Dawna Rae Warren: Salome; Greg Sliskovich: The Counselor

PRODUCTION TEAM
Stage and Music Director: Timothy Nelson; Set Design: Josh Sticklin; Lighting Design: Yannick Goats; Costume Design: Oana Botez

INNOVATIO BAROQUE ORCHESTRA
Violins: Risa Browder, Keats Dieffenbach, Rebecca Nelson, Leslie Nẻo, Zoe Kunubar. Viola: Asa Zimmerman; Violincellos: JohnMoran, Alexa Pilon; Bass: Jessica Powell Eig; Theorbo: Cameron Welke; Harpsichord/Organ: Paula Maust and Timothy Nelson

SEE ALSO:
Timothy Nelson on staging the shocking opera ‘St. John the Baptist’ (interview by Rasheeda Amina Campbell, September 19, 2025)

The post IN Series debuts shocker ‘St. John the Baptist’ and scores a hit appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

Three hours outside of Manhattan, there is a house that Henry Wilcox and Walter Poole (two characters in The Inheritance) moved into during the 1980s when the relentless reality of AIDS in the city became more than either of them could bear. While Henry is away on business, Walter takes a friendless man living with AIDS into their home and cares for this man until the man dies. Angered by Walter’s actions, Henry moves out but leaves the house to Walter. Decades later, having survived the AIDS epidemic, and his age having forced him to move back into the city, Walter meets Eric, a young gay man of a generation who did not experience the epidemic firsthand. On his deathbed, Walter scribbles a note to Henry urging him to give the house to Eric. Thus begins a spiral of therapeutic care that continues to the present with the potential to continue into the future. The house is the first and most overt metaphor of inheritance in this piece.

The other inheritances are less concrete, but they emanate from this one: the inheritances of connection and community. The attempt to balance all three inheritances — connection, community, and property — is a major source of heartbreak and resolve in the play.

Round House Theatre’s production of The Inheritance is a thrilling and awe-inspiring combination of poetic, evocative writing and daring performances by a cast whose honed voices and bodies engage rigorously with the important temporal and spiritual issues raised in the play.

Before the play even begins, the set vibrates with readiness. The stage design by Lee Savage is stark and symbolic, like the theater architecture of ancient Greece. A large, neutral-colored, round platform occupies most of the stage floor. The upstage back wall is featureless in its whiteness. Colors projected on it (lighting design by Colin K. Bills) shift its contours. It is like a wall surrounding a castle/fortress. Its central doors open with portentous ceremony.

This wall is punctuated with numerous windows, the shades of which are, noisily and vigorously, shaded or unshaded, emphasizing moments when important crossroads in the characters’ lives are reached and acknowledged. Suspended above this central arena are the branches of a massive cherry tree in bloom, gorgeously impossible and impossible to ignore.

As directed by Tom Story, The Inheritance is both a ritual of celebration and an act of remembrance, reminiscent at times of Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls... Britta Joy Peterson’s choreography makes the language itself feel like dancing, rhythm pulsing through the words. It is also a prayer — or, at least, a kind of séance — asking not only for help with the creation of the very story we are witnessing, but more deeply for the healing of the gay community and the wider world it inhabits. There is a lot of grief in the process; a lot of uncertainty and a lot of hope.

The Inheritance, comprising two parts (each over three hours long, including intermissions), is a broad and comprehensive exploration of the legacies that an older generation of targeted individuals leaves to the next generation. It also explores the debt that the succeeding generation owes to their elders and ancestors. The targeted folks in this case are gay men, especially white gay men. The progress of “gay liberation,” AIDS, and the evanescent forging and maintaining of community and connection across class lines are the foci around which the play functions. Playwright Matthew López cites E.M. Forster’s Howard’s End as the inspiration for The Inheritance, drawing our attention to one pointed statement from the novel: “Only connect.” James Baldwin (whom López identifies as another important influence on his work) noted: “What connects us, speaking about the private life, mainly remains unspoken.” In a way, it is the tension between Forster’s direction and Baldwin’s observation that powers the play through its moments of weeping, delight, exhilaration, and awe.

Part One introduces us to a large group of modern gay men who have formed a family among themselves. Every actor in this production could have their own one-person show, holding our attention and conveying emotions. It’s an abundance of riches. Most of our attention is focused on traumatized and ambitious Toby (the spectacular Adam Poss), a playwright; Eric (a highly focused and empathic David Gow), who is the person holding this group together; Adam (the mercurial Jordi Bertrán Ramírez, who also plays Leo, Adam’s doppelgänger), a young, aspiring, gay actor who Eric and Toby take under their wing; and the tasteful, effete Morgan (the masterful Robert Sella).

Part Two brings us Nancy Robinette as Margaret. If you have been a theatergoer in Washington, DC, it is more than likely that you have seen Nancy Robinette give a master class on acting in any production that she is a part of. It is no different here. The character of Margaret is the only woman in the cast. Robinette traces Margaret’s story, from her son’s birth, through their estrangement, to his death from AIDS in the very house that Eric now owns. Her performance is uncluttered, with no self-pity and no request for sympathy. Robinette allows Margaret’s humanity and acceptance of her life’s lessons to fully inhabit the stage. It’s a devastating performance.

While this production usually soars, two moments fall flat. At one point, there is a recitation of gay icons and their accomplishments. At another, there is a debate between a gay “conservative” and a gay “leftie.” Despite the performers’ skill in attempting to make these moments seem conversational or heartfelt, I did not buy either of these moments.

The play ends with the possibility of hope, but questions, challenges, and longing hang in the air:

What do gay men owe to each other from one generation to another?

Throughout the play, characters return again and again to a longing for others to truly recognize their worth — to be seen as beautiful, human, and valuable. The house that becomes a place of healing embodies this desire, giving it concrete form. Yet, with the tragic end of one of the central characters, the play also poses a harder question: if we cannot hold that space of recognition for one another, or allow others to hold it for us, can our liberation and pride ever be fully realized — or will they remain, at least for now, incomplete?

Running Times:
The Inheritance, Part One: Approximately three hours and 25 minutes, including two 15-minute intermissions.
The Inheritance, Part Two: Approximately three hours and 15 minutes, including one 15-minute intermission and one 5-minute pause.

The Inheritance plays through November 2, 2025, at Round House Theatre, 4545 East-West Highway, Bethesda, MD (one block from Bethesda Metro station). Tickets ($50–$108) can be purchased by calling 240-644-1100, visiting the box office, or online (Learn more about special discounts here, accessibility here, and the Free Play program for students here.) Tickets are also available on TodayTix (Part One) and (Part Two).

The digital program for The Inheritance is here

Advisory: Photography and video are strictly prohibited. Upon arrival, patrons will be asked to place a sticker over the camera on their phones, and it must remain in place for the duration of the performance. (Stickers are residue-free and are easily removed at the conclusion of the performance.)

COVID Safety: Round House Theatre no longer requires that audience members wear masks for most performances. However, masks are required for the performances October 14 (Part One) and October 21 (Part Two). Round House’s complete Health and Safety policy is here.

The Inheritance
By Matthew López
Inspired by the novel Howards End by E.M. Forster
Directed by Tom Story

CAST
Adam Poss (Young Man 10/Toby Darling), David Gow (Eric Glass), Jordi Bertrán Ramírez (Young Man 1/Adam McDowell/Leo), Robert Sella (Morgan/Walter Poole), Robert Gant (Henry Wilcox), Jamar Jones (Young Man 6/Tristan), Hunter Ringsmith (Young Man 7/Jasper/Paul Wilcox), Nancy Robinette (Margaret), Cole Sitilides), Dylan Toms (Young Man 4/ Young Walter), Jonathan Atkinson (Young Man 8/ Jason #2), Ben Bowen (Young Man 5/Toby’s Agent/Charles Wilcox), John Floyd (Young Man 2/ Jason #1). Understudies: Anthony de Souza, Eric Hissom, Elizabeth Pierotti, Drew Sharpe, Theodore Sherron III, James Whalen

SEE ALSO:
Round House to present award-winning ‘The Inheritance (news story, July 5, 2025)

The post Thrilling and awe-inspiring ‘The Inheritance’ now at Round House appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

In April, I opened my mailbox and found the instructions for my first participation in Vox Populi: A Psychogeographies Project. The Rorschach Theatre materials describe this 2025 adventure as follows:

“In Vox Populi, two teenagers fall through time after a shared moment in the woods. Trying to find their way home, they repeatedly land at different Washington DC protests throughout history. Each time encountering the city they thought they knew through the eyes of those who sought to change it.”

In my envelope was Lucy Jane Salter’s AP History 1 assignment about the Vietnam War: a piece of writing that had been marked up by her history teacher with comments and corrections. I traveled to Ward Circle, carefully navigated getting to the circle itself, and took a photograph of the statue that was there of Artemas Ward (1727–1800) with its plaque commemorating him as a soldier who served in three wars, a graduate of Harvard College, and a judge and legislator to the Continental Congress, among his other accomplishments. Then I read Lucy’s AP History paper and her letter in which she explained that she had somehow gotten transported to 1970 during a demonstration against the Vietnam War that was taking place on the campus of American University.

“We walked up Nebraska Ave to see this sea of kids kinda my age. They were getting mobbed up in Ward Circle. They were all around this island with a statue guy but he had a cape on that said how many more?”

Lucy Ann desperately requested my help:

“If you’re reading this in 2025 or even 2024 or 2023, please go find Harvey Favreau-Johnson and tell him to get me the FREAK home!!”

I am 74 years old. I remember the demonstrations of the 1960s. What did I remember from this time? What did I miss? What did I understand that someone else might not? And who was Harvey Favreau-Johnson? So, full of curiosity, I set out to see what I could do to help Lucy Ann.

Rorschach’s Psychogeographies Project (of which Vox Populi is the most recent edition) is stimulating and grounding: an antidote to the tendency toward isolation we can find ourselves in these days.

The term psychogeographies was coined by philosopher Guy Debord in the 1950s. It refers to the life of the spaces that surround us and the way we human beings consciously and unconsciously absorb the presence of those spaces and arrange them into maps of our own meaning of a place. It’s what made (or makes) Washington, DC — home of Mumble/Mambo Sauce — Chocolate City. It’s what makes Dorothy’s home home. It’s what gives a place its resonance.

Following the instructions that Rorschach sends you monthly, you can travel to the places where the characters and events of the story you’re following have taken place. It can be a little strange walking past people who are enjoying their own lives and inhabiting their own story of the city, unaware of the drama that is even now surrounding them and that you are a part of.

The feeling that came to me while I was experiencing this is that of a “scavenger hunt.” Still, to describe Psychogeographies as a scavenger hunt vastly undervalues what the experience actually is. Still, there is some truth in that description. The experience is a scavenger hunt, but for the soul — the soul of a city, a people, or a nation.

Over the past four months, Vox Populi has proven to be a stirring engagement around the question of how we as a city, community, and culture make space to hear the young people around us and what the work is that goes into creating a community in which mutual respect is fostered and not forced. The title begs the questions “Who makes up the people?” And “What country and world is the Voice of the People asking for?”

Rorschach provides impeccable and playful curation of this series. The experiences are informative and planned with a view to the physical safety of participants and the inclusion of children, if that’s desired. You get a map and instructions for getting to the event site by public transportation or car (including parking options). Everything is put together with care. (For example, the artifacts that are included, such as posters announcing a march, are aged and distressed so as to resemble the time period that the action of the adventure takes place in.) The experience is structured to allow you to engage in it at whatever level you feel comfortable. Rorschach has nurtured relationships with various businesses around the city that also comprise the web of interrelationships that form the framework of the stories.

There are even options that allow you to explore the stories from the comfort of your home, if you prefer to do that. And at the end of the Psychogeographies season, there is a live event August 16 and 17 that caps the entire adventure. I am looking foward to seeing the characters in person and finding out what our protagonists and their parents have learned from each other about how to live together across differences.

Sometimes we can confine the concept of theater to something that is simultaneously exclusionary, disposable, and inaccessible. Vox Populi and the entire Psychogeographies project fly in the face of that idea.

Rorschach Theatre’s Vox Populi: A Psychogeographies Project is now running. All six chapters are mailed upon subscribing. See more information here.

Created by Randy Baker, Kylos Brannon, Jenny McConnell Frederick, and Jonelle Walker

SEE ALSO:
Rorschach Theatre announces 2025 KLECKSOGRAPHY event: ‘Vox Populi’ (news story, August 11, 2025)

The post Remembrance of protests past in Rorschach Theatre’s ‘Vox Populi’ appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

Like most shows Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company produces, Dead Inside is multi-layered. Rooted in the traditions of Richard Pryor, Lily Tomlin, Robin Williams, and Lenny Bruce, it is stand-up comedy that is in the process of being shaped into something bigger. If you’re coming for the laughs, you’ll definitely get them: the show is funny as hell. It is also a one-person musical. While that is standard training in an improv class, to the uninitiated, the very idea of a one-person musical comedy is funny. The contrast between the solo performer Riki Lindhome’s Wickedly blonde (movie reference intended) appearance and her sharp insights on her life (and ours) is funny. She’s an occasional writer for Saturday Night Live. So, yes, her material is not only very funny but also honed to a fare-thee-well.

But wait, there’s more. Dead Inside is also shocking, breathtakingly disturbing, pathos-filled, and highly gratifying. On opening night, Lindhome received a well-deserved standing ovation from much of the audience at the conclusion of her performance.

In her notes for the show, Woolly Mammoth artistic director Maria Manuela Goyanes reassures the audience that we are in the excellent hands of a “stellar artist.” This is a good thing because the story Lindhome tells of her “journey” in quest of motherhood is not for the faint of heart. And the language she presents it in is casually profane and serrated like a knife.

I experienced Lindhome’s guidance through narrative as being like the reassuring constraint and laser-sharp focus you get subjected to in an excellent TED Talk. That steady and focused guidance acted as an anchor while she shared with us the personal experience of a sometimes terrifying helplessness, isolation, and rage in the face of a setup that denies women human beings access to resources needed to maintain dignity and to experience agency over their own bodies and lives.

When Riki Lindhome found herself approaching the age where giving birth to a child becomes risky for both herself and her potential child, she began in earnest to take steps to have one before it was too late. She had planned ahead. She had already frozen her eggs. So she thought that she was prepared for the journey. What followed was a rollercoaster experience involving mistakes by physicians, miscarriages, hopes, and disappointments. The journey to achieve her goal of starting a family was filled with things she didn’t know before and it was marked by secrecy and isolation. She also found the journey to be made harder than it needed to be by the misguidance embedded in the mythology in which she was indoctrinated by Disney princesses’ stories and music that she loved.

One of the tasks that Riki Lindhome has undertaken in Dead Inside is to get rid of the secrecy that surrounds in vitro fertilization. “We don’t talk about it. And I think we should,” Lindhome says at one point. As a result, this show is filled with knowledge of things that you may or may not want to know about. Things such as silent endometriosis (where tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows outside the uterus, often causing infertility but causing no pain and so going undetected for years, until one tries to become pregnant and no one can figure out why they aren’t able to) and uterine scraping (often performed to clear a uterus after miscarriage or abortion).

Another task she undertakes is to abstract from personal experience a different, more useful metaphor for the journey that women undergo. She calls this journey The Infinite Forest.

The show’s set (scenic design by Meghan Graham) is framed by cut-out shadows of trees and vines, which I take to be The Infinite Forest. It is understated and at first seems undistinguished. This set supports the narrative rather than telegraphing it. And as the show progresses, the set acquires weight and symbolism from the narrative. This is why we love set designers.

The lighting (by Luis Garcia) is savvy. Lindhome walks into and out of different “rooms” and psychic spaces while talking nonstop (choreography is by Kat Burns). The lighting creates and dissolves spaces, simulating scene changes and atmospheres almost as invisibly and seamlessly as we experience them changing in animation. This is why we love lighting designers.

The projections of charts of the Hero’s Journey and the Infinite Forest are whimsical and useful. (The Infinite Forest slide got a knowing laugh when the audience realized what it was seeing.) The production elements built on subliminal material in the show rather than literally illustrating it, allowing the work to fill the large theater space without sacrificing intimacy.

Deftly balancing these elements, director Brian McElhaney facilitates intimacy between the performer, the audience, and their shared psychic and spiritual landscape. That’s why we love directors.

Whether a production we see is live or on film or video, and whether we acknowledge it our not, we don’t go to the theater for moderation. We want to see Tosca throw herself off of the parapet to her death. We want to see the crippled Porgy follow Bess to New York City on his goat cart. Dead Inside is a story of immoderate passion told immoderately. Through this show, Riki Lindhome says out loud what many people are not willing to acknowledge they are even capable of thinking. The show prods us to laugh, gasp, and cry and in doing so, at least for the amount of time we spend watching the show, makes it impossible for us to be what the title describes: Dead Inside.

Running time: Approximately 80 minutes, no intermission.

Dead Inside plays through August 3, 2025, at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, 641 D St NW, Washington, DC. Tickets ($55-$83, with discounts available and a limited number of PWYW tickets starting at $5 for every show) 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.). Discount tickets are also available on TodayTix.

The digital playbill is downloadable here.

Dead Inside
Created and performed by Riki Lindhome
Directed by Brian McElhaney
Presented by Ali Wong and Bill Hader

Associate Director: Elizabeth Dinkova
Sound Designer: Sarah O’Halloran
Scenic Designer: Meghan Raham
Choreographer: Kat Burns
Lighting and Video Designer: Luis Garcia

COVID Safety: Masks are optional in all public spaces at Woolly Mammoth Theatre except for a mask-required performance Tuesday, July 22, 8 p.m. Woolly’s full safety policy is available here.

The post ‘Dead Inside’ at Woolly is funny as hell and breathtakingly personal appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

We Are Gathered, the new play by Tarell Alvin McCraney (Academy Award winner for the Moonlight screenplay), is a love story that takes the spiritual lives of the people we call queer and the people we call Black seriously. As such, the play is not “merely” entertainment. It is a celebration and affirmation of the right to exist. It is an immersion in rituals of healing. In addition to that, the play is an awful lot of fun to watch.

Many psychotherapeutic modalities recognize that because human lives are wounded within the context of community, human lives can only be healed within the context of community. This play suggests what that process of healing the lives of Black and queer folks within community might look like.

At a crucial moment in the play, the character Xi (Jade Jones) says to Free (Nic Ashe), Wallace Tre’s (Kyle Beltran) lover:

Go into the woods and face the wolf. There’s one in every fairytale, and that’s what Dubs is trying to give you. A happy ending.

W Tre (nicknamed “Dubs”) and Free met five years ago. They describe the meeting differently. Dubs says: “We fucked in a park.” Free says: “We did … make love … right where we met.” Now, as Dubs approaches his 40th birthday and Free approaches his 30th, they are trying to figure out whether they will marry and what marriage means for them. Dubs is tortured by the questions. Free, less so. Can the edifice of their relationship, and its relation to the larger community, be built on a foundation of shame and mere “politically correct” resistance?

Says Dubs of Free:

I hear him singing and I think, “I’m lucky,” right? God gifted. God gave me a gift sucking dick in a park? Huh. And so I go back. That’s where I went that night of my birthday and I’ve been going back since. Not to do anything, but to think. Feel. Something will tell me, something will find me. Forgive me. I’m lost. Sorry.

Over the course of the play, we meet the families into which these two were born and the families they have chosen. Nana Jae (Jade Jones) and Pop Pop (Craig Wallace) are Free’s grandparents, who raised him to be fully who he is. Pop Pop is also an ordained minister. Dubs’ sister, Punkin (Nikkole Salter), is an astronaut, and his father, Wallace Tre Sr. (Kevin Mambo), voted for Donald Trump. Cedric (also played by Kevin Mambo) enters the same woods and park as Free and Dubs. However, he chooses the solace that the woods bring rather than the possibilities of marriage. Xi connects Free to the meaning and importance of Dubs’ ritual of solitude and “thinking” in the park. This enables Free to engage Dubs in a ritual that frees and prepares them both to consider marriage as a life of service that they are called to.

Of course, you need this play. And more than the story arc of the play, you need the ritual of congregational fellowship around which the play is structured. This structure modulates how this audience of strangers interacts with one another and shapes their shared meaning of the play. Doing away with the fourth wall of naturalism and realism is not unusual. It is so common it can be a gimmick. But in We Are Gathered, the elimination of the fourth wall is not just a matter of production style. It shifts the performer/audience relationship from one in which the audience is just watching to one in which witnessing and shared celebration are hoped for, welcomed, and, to a certain extent, expected. At the beginning of the play, the central protagonist Dubs says to the gathered:

You came. Thanks. I didn’t know if you got my … Right now, we are where we think we are … Strangers, Together … I need that … I’m inviting you here to witness.

The characters in this LGBTQ+ play are Black American folks from a Black American culture. This is the same culture that gave us songs and methodology that allowed many of us to survive the brutal viciousness — both physical and psychological — of the American response to Black Americans asserting their right to exist in this country. And the fact that the folks who inhabit this play are survivors and descendants of survivors of such brutality may have something to do with the shape that We Are Gathered takes. This is a methodology that we may be in need of now.

If you surrender to the rhythms of this play, you might be able to witness for yourself what Literary Manager Otis Ramsey-Zöe calls in a program note “the impossibility of laying out the myriad layers within this work.”

Normally, a happy ending is not guaranteed. But with this production, it comes in a big, ecstatic way. At the conclusion of selected performances, attendees who have made prior arrangements will be able to propose to their beloved, renew their vows, or be married in the presence and witness of the audience.

This production is one of those moments in theater when the skills of performers honed over decades, here under the guidance of informed and inspired direction (Kent Gash), are perfectly suited to contain and channel the prophetic channelings of the playwright into something uniquely memorable.

The script makes passing yet resonant reference to several queer literary giants: Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods reminds us of the needful encounter with the Wolf. Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George colors Dubs’ encounters in what he calls “our perfect park.” (When Dubs says about Free, “I could listen to him sing all day,” it feels like an echo of George talking about Dot: “I could look at her forever.”) Larry Kramer’s exploration of shame and wantonness in his novel Faggots is reflected in the couple’s concern about how they first met. And most formidably, Tony Kushner’s Angels in America — in its culturally specific, shamelessly flamboyant, and boldly overt wrestling with faith and spirituality as it shows up in the lives of queer folk and American culture in general — provides a dramaturgical precedent for this piece.

We Are Gathered is an epic poem that focuses on restoring the temple within rather than on dismantling the empire. The spare but elegant set by Jason Sherwood supports that idea. It’s basically a round platform (expansive and elegant, evoking a 22nd-century space portal) encircled by discreet park lights (reminiscent of Art Nouveau).

Similarly, the costumes by Kara Harmon broadcast the characters’ personae before the actors even speak. Free’s clothes are like pastel paintings that drape, caress, and flow. What could have been blue jeans are instead burnt-orange overalls with appliquéd flowers to contrast with his blonded hair. The way his butterfly-like wedding attire explodes from his Village People leather boy outfit is a scene all by itself.

Director Kent Gash guides actors and audience in a dance that balances narrative plot with ritual and participation. This is gracious directing. Nothing feels artificial or forced.

The acting is nothing short of masterful in every role: As Xi and Nana Jae, Jade Jones displays hair-trigger shifts of tonality and intent with clear, strong distinctions between the two characters. Kyle Beltran is heartwarming as Wallace (Dubs) Tre, the slightly nerdy Black man of integrity and faith who is often unable to complete sentences. Nic Ashe is a hilarious whirlwind as the singer and creative artist Free. Nikkole Salter plays Ms. Ms, a teacher, with a bravura comedic touch (it reminded me of The Colored Museum skit “The Last Mama-on-the-Couch Play”). She also plays Dubs’ sister, Punkin, with authority. Kevin Mambo as Wallace Tre Sr. and Chauncey is both formidable and vulnerable. Craig Wallace in his role as Pop Pop gives gravitas to the entire enterprise.

At the birthday party Free throws for him, Dubs tells his father,

I don’t trust myself to live! I trust myself to survive. That’s it. That’s what I got.

Toward the end of the play, the vulnerable and always optimistic Free goes into the park to look for Dubs. Nana Jae and Dubs, worried about his safety, go after him. While they walk they sing a song that keeps up their spirits and articulates their faith. It’s an unusual song for theater. It was secularized by Holland, Dozier, Holland for The Supremes as “You Can’t Hurry Love.” But here, in the older form summoned up by Free’s grandmother and his lover, it sums up the determination and the leaps of faith required to live when the world is determined to crush you:

He’s a God you can’t hurry, he’ll be there but don’t you worry. I said he may not come when you want him but he’s right on time.

Running Time: Two hours and 40 minutes, with a 15-minute intermission.

We Are Gathered plays through June 15, 2025, in the Fichandler Stage at Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater, 1101 6th St SW, Washington, DC. Tickets are available online (starting at $59) or visit TodayTix. Tickets may also be purchased through the Sales Office by phone at 202-488-3300, Tuesday through Sunday, 12-8 p.m., or in person at 1101 Sixth Street SW, DC, Tuesday through Sunday, 2 hours prior to each performance. Groups of 10+ may purchase tickets by phone at 202-488-4380.

Arena Stage’s many savings programs include “pay your age” tickets for those aged 35 and under; military, first responder, and educator discounts; student discounts; and “Southwest Nights” for those living and working in the District’s Southwest neighborhood. To learn more, visit arenastage.org/savings-programs.

The We Are Gathered program is downloadable here.

We Are Gathered
By Tarell Alvin McCraney
Directed by Kent Gash

COVID Safety: Arena Stage recommends but does not require that patrons wear facial masks in theaters except in designated mask-required performances (Tuesday, May 27, 7:30 p.m., and Saturday, June 14, 2:00 p.m.) . For up-to-date information, visit arena stage.org/safety.

SEE ALSO:
Reflections on an open-hearted open rehearsal of ‘We Are Gathered’ at Arena (feature by Gregory Ford, May 10, 2025)
Arena Stage announces full cast and creative team for ‘We Are Gathered’ (news story, April 9, 2025)
Kyle Beltran and Nic Ashe to headline Oscar winner Tarell Alvin McCraney’s ‘We Are Gathered’ (news story, February 25, 2025)

The post You need to see how ‘We Are Gathered’ at Arena celebrates Black queer love appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

In his talk “Theatre of Be Longing,” the playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney noted: “I’ve been chasing belonging, knowing this: I cannot create it. I must return to it by first returning to my community.”

If Atlanta is the Brigadoon of Black Queer Folk, Washington, DC, is our Mecca. The first Black Gay Pride Celebration in the country was held here on Banneker Field across from Howard University. So it’s fitting that We Are Gathered, McCraney’s new play, is opening in Washington, DC, at Arena Stage on May 16.

Based on what we saw at a recent open rehearsal, the play looks to invite its audience to consider the power and possibility of publicly committing oneself to another person and to one’s community. The play also suggests that its audience not only consider the possibility that each individual in the audience is worthy of making that choice to commit but also consider “Why would you want to?” And “Are you allowed to?”

In the brief Q&A session that followed the run-through of two scenes from the play, McCraney noted: “Marriage is not a necessity. It is not air. But to be in service to a relationship for the rest of your life is a calling.”

Two of the cast members are also clergy, and at every performance, audience members who decide to do so will have the opportunity to make that commitment: by proposing to their beloved, affirming their vows, or in fact being legally married in front of an audience of witnesses. In the culture in which I was raised, such a public invitation to engage in a ritual of connection would be termed “calling the children home.” This ritual gives the title of the piece — We Are Gathered — a weight that is worth meditating over conscientiously or, for those who practice it, prayerfully.

During the open rehearsal, McCraney referenced Essex Hemphill,* whose poem “Commitments” describes the breach that is being mended in this play:

I will always be there.
When the silence is exhumed.
When the photographs are examined
I will be pictured smiling
among the siblings, parents,
nieces and nephews.

In the background of the photographs
the hazy smoke of barbecue,
a checkered red and white tablecloth
laden with blackened chicken,
glistening ribs, paper plates,
bottles of beer and pop.

In the photos
the smallest children
are held by their parents.
My arms are empty, or around
the shoulders of unsuspecting aunts
expecting to throw rice at me someday.

Or picture tinsel, candles,
ornamented, imitation trees,
or another table, this one
set for Thanksgiving,
a turkey steaming the lens.

My arms are empty
in those photos, too,
so empty they would break
around a lover.

I am always there
for critical emergencies,
graduations,
the middle of the night.

I am the invisible son.
In the family photos
nothing appears out of character.
I smile as I serve my duty.

It’s not surprising, then, that We Are Gathered — at least the part we were able to see — feels like a feast, an affirmation, a revival, and a welcoming home of prodigal sons and daughters. The focus here is on LGBTQ+ folk and their relationships with their families — of origin or chosen — and their communities. This is a queer love story.

McCraney, director Kent Gash, and the entire cast and crew are working to create a space that is safe. As Gash describes it, they are hoping to create a space that encourages the audience to go on a journey of “endless possibility but that also feels like we have our seatbelts on for the ride.”

The two main characters — Free and W. Tre — who are going to be married to each other, met while looking for someone to have sex with in a wooded public place: a park (aka cruising). The words that describe W. Tre’s journey through understanding and acceptance of his value are poetic and scriptural. The journey into the forest by which one is changed has mythological resonance.

To prepare yourself for We Are Gathered, I suggest you take a moment to listen to what McCraney had to say in his talk on “Theatre of Be Longing” from which this quote is taken:

Remember when the Vice President was heckled at a Broadway show? Remember how the President said that the theater was supposed to be a safe space. He was right. President Trump signaled that he and his cohorts belong to a theater that is safe for them always. That is the theater that they belong to. The theater I belong to isn’t safe from ideas, though. I want to walk home shaking.

We Are Gathered plays May 16 to June 15, 2025, in the Fichandler Stage at Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater, 1101 6th St SW, Washington, DC. Tickets start at $59 and are available online (starting at $59) or visit TodayTix. Tickets may also be purchased through the Sales Office by phone at 202-488-3300, Tuesday-Sunday, 12-8 p.m., or in person at 1101 Sixth Street, SW, D.C., Tuesday-Sunday, 2 hours prior to a performance. Groups of 10+ may purchase tickets by phone at 202-488-4380.

Arena Stage’s many savings programs include “pay your age” tickets for those aged 35 and under; military, first responder, and educator discounts; student discounts; and “Southwest Nights” for those living and working in the District’s Southwest neighborhood. To learn more, visit arenastage.org/savings-programs.

* A special exhibition at the Phillips Collection, running concurrently with We Are Gathered, showcases Essex Hemphill’s influence on visual artists and performers. There is a performance element on June 14.

SEE ALSO:
Arena Stage announces full cast and creative team for ‘We Are Gathered’ (news story, April 9, 2025)
Kyle Beltran and Nic Ashe to headline Oscar winner Tarell Alvin McCraney’s ‘We Are Gathered’ (news story, February 25, 2025)

The post Reflections on an open-hearted open rehearsal of ‘We Are Gathered’ at Arena appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

“Make Meat Great Again.” That shout comes from one of the disgruntled employees at Meat Expectations. For some time now, the people who work at this cleverly named meat processing plant have seen the principles of their beloved workplace undermined and their own skill, knowledge, and their very lives not valued. The employees’ disappointment is deeper because the new CEO of the company is a fourth-generation descendant of the original founder, someone they’ve watched grow up and who they sent off to college with high hopes and great — or, as punningly put in the title — Meat Expectations.

Embodying the show’s ironic sense of humor and outrage, this shout is delivered in American Sign Language (ASL) because this entire musical production — now in Gallaudet University’s Eastman Black Box Studio Theatre through April 27 — is performed in ASL. The show is designed to be accessible to Deaf and hearing audiences alike through the use of open captions and tactile music. New York Deaf Theatre commissioned the piece from a team of respected Deaf Theater creatives that included Lewis Merkin, JW Guido, Seth Gore, and Monique “MoMo” Holt and Deaf composer Jay Alan Zimmerman. Meat Expectations is a landmark piece of theater production. Instead of translating an English script into ASL, this piece of theater was developed from its inception in American Sign Language.

What is a musical without singing? Lyrics, like the rest of the text, are delivered in ASL. Composer Zimmerman’s beats and melodies are catchy, and you are aware that you are feeling those beats with the rest of the audience. We not only hear but also feel the vibration of tempo and texture in the music in our bodies. This production makes use of that tactile information to enable us to feel the music’s emotion and intention. In this production, the music is driving, stimulating, and convincing. Toward the end of the show, there is even audience participation when one of the characters teaches us a song in ASL and invites us to “sing” along.

Meat Expectations is a morality play, a fable of inheritance, survival, community, investment of people in themselves and the betrayal of that trust. The show features the type of buffoonery, slapstick, song, and dance that you would experience in an English pantomime performance. Consistent with being a morality play, the characters do not have personal names but rather are named by their role: CEO, CFO, Foreman, Butcher, Loudmouth, etc. The costumes and makeup reflect this fantastical and archetypal aspect of the story. Everyone has exaggerated, cartoonish makeup and hair. The meat cleavers are cut-outs. The CFO, an obviously slender person, is dressed in a fat suit. The entire cast takes to their roles with infectious energy and enjoyment. But special note must be made of Jayce Yeh, whose ecstatic, off-balance, and whirling-dervish dancing as the egotistical, self-serving CFO frequently threatened to take flight and filled the audience with amazement and delight.

Ethan Sinott’s industrial, metallic gray set, with vertical vinyl panels that keep the cold of the refrigeration confined without impeding movement through the spaces, evokes the no-nonsense desolation of a workspace devoted to making a profit from the blood of animals. (No judgment here. I mean, at Meat Expectations, the cows do get a massage beforehand, and they leave this veil of tears in a state of contentment.) But there is nothing frivolous about this space of panels and metal with no color or design to distract from the chopping and packaging of cow’s flesh. As the CFO is allowed to implement increasingly inhumane innovations, the music rumbles and grinds to announce the entry of the biggest, fastest flesh-chewing machine ever. At one point, the machine eats a portion of the arm of one of the dedicated and exhausted workers.

On opening night, sometimes the open captioning ran too fast, and sometimes the transliteration from ASL to English was challenging, so there was some frustration. The house manager seemed to anticipate this challenge and, at the top of the show, encouraged those of us in the hearing audience who did not use ASL to trust the visual storytelling and not lean so hard into having to understand everything concretely in words. That trust was justified.

Running Time: Approximately two hours plus a 15-minute intermission.

Meat Expectations plays April 24 to 26, 2025, at 8 pm; and April 26 and 27 at 2 pm, presented by Gallaudet University and New York Deaf Theatre, performing in the Eastman Blackbox Studio Theatre (adjacent to the Elstad Auditorium) on the campus of Gallaudet University, 800 Florida Ave. NE, Washington, DC. Tickets (ages 8–12, free; high school and college students, $10; Gallaudet students, free with discount code; adults, $20) are available online, by email (theatre.tickets@gallaudet.edu), or by calling 202-651-5501.

Open captions and tactile music make the show fully accessible to both Deaf and hearing audiences.

The program for Meat Expectations is online here.

Meat Expectations
Created by Lewis Merkin, JW Guido, Seth Gore, and MoMo Holt
Viscript Concept Conceived by Lewis Merkin and Annie Wiegand
Composer: Jay Alan Zimmerman
Assistant Composer: Mark Weissglass
Lewis Merkin passed in 2022. This production is in honor of his legacy.

CAST
CEO: Alyssa Glenn
CFO: Jayce Yeh
Foreman: Tyler Dees
Butcher: Nick Hohrman
Chick-Chick: Danyeal Davis
Lighthouse: Henry Baldwin
Loudmouth: Jordana Silva
Sweet-Sweet: Sydney Padgett
Ensemble: Maia Buzianis, Ray Poukish, Elghin Hebrado, Taylor Victor, Seth Wagner, Maizy Wilcox, Dazlyn Lopez

Co-Director, Choreographer & Music Director: Jules Dameron
Co-Director, Director of Artistic Sign Language (DASL): MoMo Holt
Assistant DASL: Krystal Sanders
Assistant Choreographer: Ashley Pigliavento
Pianist/Bandleader: Owen Posnett
Drummer/Percussionist: Dustin Garza
Lighting Designer/Producer: Annie Wiegand
Associate Lighting Designer/Lighting Supervisor: Norah Matthews
Scenic Designer: Ethan Sinnott
Costume Designer: Nikolya Sereda
Sound Designer: Justin Schmitz
Assistant Sound Designer & A1: Kiefer Cure
Projections/Captions Designer: Andres Poch
Stage Manager: Kathryn Lloyd
Assistant Stage Manager: Candace Broadnax
Assistant Stage Manager: Andrew Crawford
Stage Management Mentor: Sara Gehl
Backstage crew: Jason Williams
Prop Designer: Keith Saine, August Bird
Assistant Prop Designer: Nat Fordyce
Backstage, Board Ops, Wardrobe, Marketing, and House Management: Alma Robinson, Andrew Suarez, Jason Williams, Courtney Bronson, Kyra Dinkins, Taylor Victor, Thu Nguyen, TiKa Wallace, Steven Guerrier, and Carly Ortega

SEE ALSO:
‘Meat Expectations,’ new musical at Gallaudet University, created entirely in American Sign Language (feature by Courtney Bronson, April 14, 2025)

The post Fantastical fable ‘Meat Expectations’ in American Sign Language at Gallaudet appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

It has been so long since there’s been any news about the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, that I thought the crisis was over. Didn’t you?

cullud wattah, written by Erika Dickerson-Despenza and directed by Danielle A. Drakes, informs us not only that the crisis in Flint is not over but that wherever we are in the country, we are also victims of this crisis and complicit in its implementation. What Dickerson-Despenza and Drakes have produced in collaboration with their fiercely committed cast is not a news report, social realism, or propaganda. Just as Euripides did with The Trojan Women, cullud wattah offers us a moving chronicle of a people under siege: a testimony of witness that is both epic in scale and personal in its appeal.

The siege of Troy lasted for 10 years. It has been 3,650-plus days since the people in Flint have had clean water. That’s 10 years. The play explores a question that we rarely ask and to which we never really want to know the answer: What is daily life like for the people we target for extinction and by whose extinction we profit? cullud wattah is one of the most urgent and satisfying pieces of theater on DC stages now.

The play — which won the 2021 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize — takes us into the lives of three generations of Black women living under one roof in Flint, Michigan, in 2016. This is an ensemble piece, and all of the performers are strong and supportive of others onstage. The focus is on shared pain and support of the group.

At this time, the water crisis in Flint had been in place for 936 days. Plum (Ezinélia Baba) is the school girl, learning mathematics and having her homework checked by her aunt. The polluted water coming from the city pipes has caused her to develop leukemia and to lose her hair. Marion (Kelly Renee Armstrong) is Plum’s mother and the primary income source for the house. Reesee (Khalia Muhammad) is an older sister who is a lesbian and budding worshiper of Yemanja, a major water deity (orisha) from the Yoruba religion. Big Ma (Lizan Mitchell) is the matriarch, the source of generational and ancestral memory for this family. Ainee (Andreá Belamore) is a recovering drug user who is celebrating being clean for one year. She is also pregnant with a child she names Tomorrow.

Scenic designer Nadir Bey has constructed a space that welcomes the audience in and makes them feel comfortable. As we begin to see it in use, it starts to feel like a cross between a humble and nurturing nest and a bomb shelter. When the women enter the space they seem to float up in formation from a floor below. The narrow street access is upstage center in the set. And though it does not have a lot of locks on it, it does not feel inviting. This island of security and safety is surrounded by the lights (Hailey LaRoe) that periodically flare up in conjunction with low-level sonic booms (Navi).

We see how the poisoned and polluted water causes burns on the women’s skin. How they count up and budget for the number of bottles of water needed to wash their bodies, prepare food, wash dishes, wash the floor. At the beginning of the show, under the pressure of her family measuring out their lives in terms of how much water they can afford while still being charged for the unusable water coming from the tap, we see that the youngest of this group has begun to walk in her sleep and to dream of drowning. By this lyrical and loving chronicling of their daily tasks of survival, cullud wattah successfully immerses us in the horror of these women’s lives so that you can’t help but ask yourself: is this also what genocide looks like?

The story is suffused with efforts on the part of this group of women to tap into and magnify sources of hope. These efforts are grounded in remembered, resurrected, and re-imagined ritual. The show begins appropriately enough with the song “Wade in the Water”: an invitation to confront the cataclysmic disaster and find whatever lesson or key is in it to transform it into a tool for survival. But here the lyrics are changed. Instead of “Wade in the water” the women sing, “Lead in the water.” Instead of “God’s going to trouble the water,” the women sing, “Snyder playing god with water.” With these word changes, the song shifts from the existential to the topical, contemporary protest and political comment. But the ominous rhythmic and harmonic structure of the spiritual remain, compelling us to hear the adapted version as more than just a protest song, however pointed.

The production is full of desperate and determined practice of ritual. In addition to spirits known and unknown, an important part of their collective rituals of survival is the way that the women constantly remind each other that their lives are real. The efficacy and failure of God or the gods is a major concern of the play. Where are our gods? Who are they? What can they do for us? are some underlying questions the action brings. At one point, one of the characters says: “I ain’t got no god. None of it worked. Jesus. Yemaja. Ain’t none of it worked.”

Nevertheless, rather than succumbing to despair, this strong ensemble leaves us with outrage and encouragement.

Running time: Approximately two hours with one 10-minute intermission.

cullud wattah plays through April 27, 2025, presented by Mosaic Theater Company performing in the Sprenger Theatre at Atlas Performing Arts Center, 1333 H Street NE, Washington, DC 20002. Performances are Thursdays at 11 am (April 24); Thursdays–Saturdays at 7:30 pm; Saturdays at 3 pm; and Sundays at 3 pm. Tickets are $53–$70 and available by contacting the box office at (202) 399-7993 or boxoffice@atlasarts.org from 12 pm–6 pm Tuesday through Sunday, or one hour prior to a performance. Tickets may also be purchased online.

The digital program is downloadable here.

Senior discount of 10% when using the discount code SENIOR. Student tickets $20 with discount code STUDENT. Educator: $20 with discount code EDUCATOR. Limited number of rush tickets are available via walk-up one hour before the start of each performance. Military and First Responder rate: 10% with discount code HERO. Under 30: $25 with code UNDER30 (not available on weekend matinees).

Open-Captioned Performances: Saturday, April 19, 7:30 pm; Sunday, April 20, 3 pm.

COVID Safety: Saturday, April 12, 7:30 pm is a mask-required performance.

cullud wattah
Written by Erika Dickerson-Despenza
Directed by Danielle A. Drakes

CAST
Plum: Ezinélia Baba
Marion: Kelly Renee Armstrong
Reese: Khalia Muhammad
Big Ma: Lizan Mitchell
Ainee : Andreá Belamore

Scenic Designer: Nadir Bey
Lighting Designer: Hailey LaRoe
Costume Designer: Brandee Mathies
Wig Designer: Larry Peterson
Sound Designer: Navi
Props Designer: Luke Hartwood
Stage manager: Shayna O’Neill
Intimacy and Violence Director: Sierra Young
Movement Director Culture Consultant: Dane Figueroa Edidi

The post In Mosaic Theater’s ‘cullud wattah,’ a moving chronicle of a city in crisis appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

Ibsen’s work is not as popular as it once was. At one time, if you were planning on going to college but didn’t know at least one of his plays (A Doll’s House, for example), you would have been considered a slacker. Nowadays, though, Ibsen is just not required reading or viewing. In our jaded and ostensibly multicultural age, the societies we live in tend to be less uniform or coherent than they were in Ibsen’s time. One result of that is that Ibsen’s work often seems neither instructive nor shocking. The only place you’re likely to see a production of an Ibsen play in the 21st century is in Denmark or Norway. Or at an institution that doesn’t expect to turn a profit. Which brings us to Nomadic Theatre, a student-run organization at Georgetown University that has taken up the gauntlet and given us a production of Ibsen’s Ghosts in a new adaptation — Ghosts: A Family Tragedy, adapted by CC Mesa.

Ghosts is a play that is full of grief, guilt, and rage. Captain Alving, the patriarch of the Alving family, was a syphilitic ne’er do well who passed the disease on to his son and fathered a daughter — outside of his marriage — with their household maid. Mrs. Alving seeks guidance and comfort from the local reverend, Pastor Manders. In the course of their conversations, Mrs. Alving finds herself attracted to the Pastor. Pastor Manders advises Mrs. Alving to return to her husband and fulfill her responsibilities to him. Reluctantly, she does so. She also arranges for their son to be educated outside of the country and beyond the influence of the Captain. And she provides money to the pregnant maid that allows her to be married to Jacob Engstrand, who then raises the daughter, Regine, as his own child. At the opening curtain, time has passed, and Captain Alving has died. The son, Osvald, having become an artist, has returned to spend some time with his mother. Regine — like her mother before her — is working in the Alving household as a maid, and Mrs. Alving is planning the building of an orphanage in town in the Captain’s honor.

What I appreciated:

Every member of the production is energetic, determined, capable, and well-cast. Despite the density and internecine nature of the plot, these folks do not give up. Claire Cable (as Helene Alving) demonstrated the flexibility of listening and adapting to people around her that her character needed. Brendan Teehan (as Osvald Alving) was typecast. He has the pale and dark-haired look of the starving artist. But he balanced the irony, selfishness, and arrogance of his character skillfully. Tai Remus Elliot (as Jakob Engstrand) demonstrated a humor that, combined with his British accent, made him seem a little Alfred P. Doolittle from My Fair Lady. That humor provided the audience with a way out of the density of some of the text. Anna Kummelstedt (as Regine Engstrand) gave a solid supporting performance. Will Kennedy (as Pastor Manders) gave a forceful and presentational performance. I was unclear about his pastorliness, however. I look forward to seeing these actors in another production in the future.

CC Mesa’s adaptation was accomplished in smooth, uncluttered American English. No matter how extreme the characters’ choices were, they were clear.

The painted backdrop of the Norwegian fjords (Madeleine Ott) was dramatic and evocative.

What I missed:

In addition to adapting the play, CC Mesa also directed it. I wish that the director side of CC Mesa had shown a little more faith in the script adaptation she made and the talent and craft of the actors she cast and had given the proceedings a little more space to breathe. The show might have run 30 minutes longer. And perhaps that would have been a strain. But I wonder whether the production might have gained some humility and allowed the audience to develop greater empathy around the choices that these people made. As it was, at moments, I felt a little judgy of the characters, and that took me out of the play.

Running Time: Two hours and 30 minutes, including a 10-minute intermission.

Ghosts played March 27 through April 5, 2025, presented by Nomadic Theatre performing at Village C Theatre, 3795 Library Walk, on the Campus of Georgetown. University.

Ghosts, A Family Tragedy by Henrik Ibsen, a new adaptation by CC Mesa

CAST
Helene Alving: Claire Cable
Osvald Alving: Brendan Teehan
Jakob Engstrand: Tai Remus Elliot
Regine Engstrand: Anna Kummelstedt
Pastor Manders: Will Kennedy

PRODUCTION
Director: CC Mesa
Producer: Patrick Clapsaddle
Asst. Producers: Sophie Maretz, Ruby Lillie
Stage Manager: Mariana Salinas
Asst. Stage Manager: Anandita Agarwal
Technical Director: Linsey Brookfield
Asst. Technical Director: Sophia Lu
Lighting Designer: Alex Wang
Asst. Lighting Designer: Julia Swanson
Sound Designer: Molly Kenney
Asst. Sound Designer: Julia Nguyen
Set Designer: Olivia Li
Asst. Set Designer: Julia Swanson

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This production of Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, directed by Khalid Y. Long, PhD, is an engaging and affirming immersion into the 20 poems and monologs that make up a kaleidoscopic portrait of the varied experiences of African American women from girlhood to adulthood in the United States of America.

Shange attempted suicide four times over the course of her lifetime. The crux of for colored girls… looks at the dilemma of a Black woman’s task of summoning hope and maintaining the will to live and thrive in a white-supremacist and patriarchal society: a society that hates your existence.

Ntozake’s words lay out the dimensions of that box she found herself in. Her words are a message that lets other African American women know they are not alone in this struggle:

“That’s what I was discussing: how I am still alive and my dependency on other living beings for love. I survive on intimacy and tomorrow. That’s all I’ve got going.”

“Being alive AND being a woman AND being colored is a metaphysical dilemma I haven’t conquered yet.”

“Ever since I realized there was someone called a ‘colored girl’ I’ve been trying not to be that.”

“I couldn’t stand being sorry and colored at the same time. It is so redundant.”

“I had convinced myself that colored girls had no right to sorrow.”

“There was no air.”

Those last four words, unforgettable and mesmerizing, are how the segment entitled “Bo Willie Brown” begins. The line immobilizes the audience in the same way that a pin holds a butterfly in place. At the climax of this piece, a jealous, delusional, and PTSD-ravaged man drops his children from a 5th-floor window to their death while their mother watches. It synthesizes the tragic dimensions of the journey of Black Americans and the intertwined destinies of Black women with Black men in surviving forces of white supremacy.

“Bo Willie Brown” has always been the most shocking piece in the play. The clarity and focus that Mahlet Gebreyesus brings to her performance retains the poem’s power in this production. The word “motherfucker” is used so often today that it can become like just so much confetti that we brush off our ears and consciousness. When Gebreyesus addresses her estranged lover, Bo Willie Brown, she imbues the word with purpose and removes it from its use as a generic signifier of Black American–speak that it so often is in the movies.
The segment “Positive” deals with how homophobia and the resultant refusal to acknowledge bisexuality expose women to HIV/AIDS. It is an equally effective piece that has been added since the play’s original production. Chloe Lomax gives us a portrait of a woman of integrity and courage who, rather than feeling sorry for herself, pursues the truth that she needs that will allow her to face her future.

This production has been staged in the Al Freeman Jr. Environmental Theatre Space, which is a black box theater. There is no fourth wall in this intimate and elegant arena-style presentation. You can see everything from wherever you sit. The transitions between poems and monologs are as smooth as Alaga Syrup. It is a joy and a comfort to see how the youthful and energetic performers bring themselves fully and transparently to these pieces. It’s impossible not to root for them and to appreciate their commitment, energy, and focus as they work — in the words of the poet — to find God in themselves and love her fiercely.

In the first productions of for colored girls in the 1970s, the performers dressed in colored tights that evoked a kind of Martha Graham–referent dance/workshop atmosphere that had been merged with old European troubador stylings. These costumes indicated the generic and “universal” identities: Lady in Red (played in this production by Mahlet Gebreyesus), Lady in Orange (Chloe Lomax), Lady in Yellow (Me’kaili Johnson), Lady in Green (Jada Clay), Lady in Blue (Emil White), Lady in Purple (Kennedi Woods), and Lady in Brown (Kira Mukogosi). In Howard University’s production, the performers are dressed (costumes by Ellison K., Savannah Dodd, and Sharif Nelson) in a uniform black with the colors that identify them draped and wrapped intentionally and evocatively around torsos, waists, heads, shoulders, necks. This choice seems to replace the mid-20th-century, post–Civil Rights optimism of the original production with 21st-century sobriety. The production is neither nostalgic nor irrelevant.

Running Time: Approximately 90 minutes with no intermission.

for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf was performed March 28 and 29, 2025, and has remaining performances from April 1 to 5 at 7:30 pm and on April 4 at 2:00 pm (understudy run) in the Al Freeman Jr. Environmental Theatre Space (inside the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts) on the Howard University Campus, 2455 6th Street, NW Washington, DC 20059. Tickets ($5 students, $10 general admission) are available online, in person at the box office, by emailing boxoffice.theatrearts@howard.edu, or by calling (202) 806-770.

The program can be seen here.

for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf
By Ntozake Shange
Directed by Dr. Khalid Y. Long

CAST
Lady in Red: Mahlet Gebreyesus
Lady in Orange: Chloe Lomax
Lady in Yellow: Me’kaili Johnson
Lady in Green: Jada Clay
Lady in Blue: Emil White
Lady in Purple: Kennedi Woods
Lady in Brown: Kira Mukogosi

UNDERSTUDIES
Lady in Red: Tamera McDuffie
Lady in Orange: Rayven Williams
Lady in Yellow: Jasmine Kai Young
Lady in Green: Kaci Wall
Lady in Blue: Efeoghene Rhoner
Lady in Purple: Kennedi McClure
Lady in Brown: Lauryn Cairdullo

CREATIVE TEAM
Choreographer: Lashawnda Iya Ifanike Batts
Assistant Director: Parris Brown
Stage Manager: Kaitlyn “KD”
Assistant Stage Manager: Kaia Chebiniak
Scenic Designer: Sidriel Conerly
Costume Designer: Ellison K.
Costume Designer: Savannah Dodd
Costume Designer: Sharif Nelson
Lighting Designer: Toni Rachal

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