Skin tone, as we all know, has been one of the great and deeply unfortunate obsessions of human history. It has also been an obsession of portraitists, who have struggled to present accurate likenesses of their sitters and often aimed to endow them with greater beauty than they really possessed. In portraiture, flesh tone can suggest race, status, and background; it can reveal the truth, or it can attempt to hide it. The idea that a great artist can capture — or conversely attempt to conceal — the essence of a person in the depiction of their skin is a central conceit of Joel Gross’s Marie Antoinette: The Color of Flesh, presented by Perisphere Theater at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda through June 21. Although ostensibly about France’s doomed queen, the play’s real focus is the relationship triangle involving the great female portraitist Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (“Elisa”), the tragic Marie Antoinette, and a fictional French count with revolutionary sympathies named Alexis de Ligne. A strong presentation by Perisphere, both onstage and behind it, suffers to an extent from weaknesses in the script, which does not fully explore the theme implied by the play’s subtitle or provide entirely satisfying motivations for its characters’ interests and attractions. That said, director Lizzi Albert’s decision to cast an African American actress (Mecca Verdell) as the doomed Marie Antoinette helps illuminate what Gross may have intended with his subtitle and serves as a reminder of the strict race and class codes that people struggled under during the ancien régime and continue to struggle against in a modern democracy.

Albert and her team tease out several motifs in the play that are especially resonant today. The count (a fine Gil Mitchell) is the conduit for a growing friendship between the queen and her portraitist, Le Brun (a radiant Laura Rocklyn). He is also a man taken with revolutionary sympathies (though the source of these feelings remains unclear), who eventually joins the American colonists in their revolt against Great Britain. He decries the growing economic inequality of pre-revolutionary France and the oppressive taxation imposed on the middle and working classes that supports life at court and wars abroad. He agitates for change but is unprepared for the extent of change that will eventually engulf his own country.

Juxtaposed with such ideas are those of the queen (a sufficiently imperious Mecca Verdell) and Le Brun (“Elisa”), who largely view the masses as “rabble.” (Elisa tells the count that, as someone who came from the working classes, she understands their true nature better than an aristocrat like him could.) However, differences of opinion about the origins of France’s woes don’t hinder the growing friendship between the queen and her portraitist or the amorous relationships between each woman and the count. We don’t get much insight into the basis of these attractions or whether de Ligne’s revolutionary interests really trouble the women, although the queen deems the American conflict “ridiculous,” and Elisa acknowledges a desire to stay out of politics and paint people in palaces. (She did so, becoming Marie Antoinette’s favorite portraitist, painting the young queen some 30 times.) Solidifying the relationship between Elisa and the queen, although not much developed, are suggestions that both (from very different classes) have suffered the domination of husbands in a patriarchal society.

The triad of actors brings out the humor in the play and nicely delineates the distinction between the formality of public life and the informality of life in the boudoir or the artist’s studio. Albert’s pacing is generally brisk, and her stage movements are well-choreographed. Often, the actors form stage pictures with their bodies that resonate with the play’s portraiture motif. Only in Act Two does the focus get a bit lost in a long confrontation scene between Elisa and the queen. A final reconciliation scene between the two, after Marie Antoinette has been imprisoned during the Reign of Terror, is poignant for what it says about Elisa’s love for a fallen friend, rather than her ambition as a painter.

While Elisa does talk about the difficulty of getting a sitter’s skin tone just right, and the queen demands that Elisa paint her as she is (“I don’t want to look like you,” she says), the theme of racial or class differences being only skin deep doesn’t feel fully developed in the script. That’s not Perisphere’s fault, but it is an opportunity lost in a play that explores history and portraiture, two ways of seeking truths about the past. It’s also worth noting that the real Elisa, like her fictional counterpart, often made her sitters look better than they really were.

Any artist would be proud of the set, costumes, and effects that Perisphere brings to this story. An array of silk-like curtains, a simple painter’s easel, and a stool or banquette make a handsome backdrop for the queen’s apartment, the artist’s studio, or the alcove of a ballroom. (The set design is Simone Schneeberg’s.) Katie McCreary’s lighting design facilitates smooth transitions between these spaces (and the emotions displayed in them) and highlights the fabric backdrop of the set. Cheryl J. Williams’ sound design carries us impressionistically into the street, the ballroom, and outside the prison with the mob. Perhaps most flattering of all are Hannah Brill’s wonderful period costumes (especially those for Marie Antoinette), which often seem to float under McCreary’s admiring lights.

In the years leading up to the French Revolution and during it, Marie Antoinette was an object of scorn for many in her adopted country, who held her culpable for the misery and injustices they suffered. In Marie Antoinette: The Color of Flesh, the tragic queen is an object of love, worthy of being painted repeatedly, even if the result is sometimes flattery. In this play’s triangle of love, friendship, and ambition set against the backdrop of a painter’s easel, it’s not exactitude that matters, but vibrancy — and Perisphere brings plenty of that.

Running Time: Approximately two hours with one intermission.

Marie Antoinette: The Color of Flesh plays through June 21, 2025, presented by Perisphere Theater performing at The Writer’s Center, 4508 Walsh St, Bethesda, MD. Purchase tickets ($35, general; $30, senior; $20, student, plus fees) online.

The program is online here.

Marie Antoinette: The Color of Flesh
Written by Joel Gross
Directed by Lizzi Albert

CAST
Marie Antoinette: Mecca Verdell
Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun: Laura Rocklyn
Alexis de Ligne : Gil Mitchell

PRODUCTION
Set Design: Schneeberg
Lighting Design: Katie McCreary
Sound Design: Cheryl J. Williams
Costumes: Hannah Brill

The post Perisphere Theater paints a vibrant ‘Marie Antoinette: The Color of Flesh’ appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

Is LeBron James the “king,” or is it Michael Jordan? That debate is a small motif in Rajiv Joseph’s warm-hearted King James, running at Round House Theatre through June 22, but it underscores the two characters’ passion for the hometown Cleveland Cavaliers, their former star player (James), and what it means to be a superfan — and how, in a time when American men report increased feelings of isolation and dissatisfaction, sports can still be a glue for meaningful male friendship.

When we first meet them, irascible Matt (an excellent Gregory Perri) and more genial Shawn (an equally excellent Blake Anthony Morris) seem to have little in common beyond their shared passion for the home team. Matt is white and a barkeep at “La Cave du Vin” wine bar who dreams of running his own establishment one day; Shawn is Black, with a mother who suffers from muscular dystrophy, and dreams of one day becoming a TV writer. They meet when Shawn responds to Matt’s ad to sell his father’s Cavaliers season tickets. Although they haggle over the price (Matt initially attempts to sell them for an exorbitant amount) and who is the true fan versus the “bandwagon fan,” they quickly discover a real respect for one another — aided by the fact that the tickets are paired, and Shawn has no one to go with him to the games except for the superfan he bought them from.

We watch the relationship between these two men evolve and ripen through the structure of LeBron James’ relationship with the Cavaliers themselves. Dates and contexts are revealed through surtitles above the stage, mimicking the structure of a professional basketball game: “1st Quarter, February 2004,” LeBron’s rookie year with the Cavaliers; “2nd Quarter, July 2010,” when James leaves to join the Miami Heat; “3rd Quarter, July 2014,” when James returns to the Cavaliers; and “4th Quarter, June 2016,” when the Cavaliers, led by James, won their only national championship. Onstage, the passage of time is cleverly evoked through Matt’s evolving understanding of how to use a cell phone — a device that really came into prominence in this same stretch of time.

Over the course of these 12 years, Matt and Shawn fall in and out with one another, much like James’ relationship with their hometown. Matt feels betrayed when James leaves Cleveland to play for Miami (“Why be a fan?” Matt asks, angrily. “What does it mean?”), and then his hurt is compounded when he learns that Shawn is leaving, too, to study television writing in New York. Circumstances are reversed early in the second act (circa 2014), when both James and Shawn return to Cleveland. But the cranky Matt, who now runs his own establishment (“The East Side”), doesn’t want to forgive James for abandoning his hometown. (“This is what’s wrong with America,” Matt says at the mere suggestion of forgiving James, a line repeated throughout the play.) Matt is, however, willing to help struggling writer Shawn — who has been working in Matt’s mother’s upholstery and curio shop, Armand’s — make an attempt at a big break in L.A. The two mini-narratives intersect in a heated exchange over what may or may not have been an unintentionally racist remark said by Matt. Shawn storms out, headed for LaLa Land.

The final “quarter” of the play finds Matt now working in his mother’s shop (his own establishment has evidently closed) when Shawn, now a successful television writer, returns from L.A. It is the day of the big parade celebrating NBA champions the Cleveland Cavaliers, but Matt wants no part of it. It is also the day of Armand’s going-out-of-business sale. Roles seem to have been reversed, and now Shawn is the one with money and prospects. Although their re-encounter gets off to an icy start, the two men rediscover their old bond when each embraces vulnerability and, through a simple action, reveals what the other truly means to him: Matt, who claims to have sworn off the Cavaliers since LeBron James (literally) went south, sends a Cavalier-related gift to Shawn in L.A.; Shawn, who scored tickets to the decisive championship game seven (which Cleveland won), hops on a plane to Cleveland to celebrate with his old buddy. Although they aren’t courtside, in the play’s final minutes, the two men find their own way to celebrate shared passion and friendship with a brand of hoops that is all their own.

A well-stocked wine bar and evocative upholstery-curio shop (including a fetching stuffed armadillo) by scenic designer Luke Cantarella perfectly complement strong turns by both Morris and Perri. These are guys you’d like to hang out with, and Cantarella’s small sets are the places you’d want to do it. Lighting design by John Lasiter (including the surtitle scene headings) and sound by Kevin Lee Alexander (the hip-hop intro, short interview cuts of the king himself, and half-time buzzer) add authenticity and punch. The pace is never wrong here, moving almost like LeBron James down the court (hats off to director Rob Ruggiero).

As the production notes indicate, this is not really a play about LeBron James or even about basketball. It’s about the ability of men to connect over something they really love, despite the many forces — cultural, political, and social — that would keep them apart. And that’s something, like the 2016 Cleveland Cavaliers, worth celebrating.

Running Time: Approximately two hours including one intermission.

King James plays through June 22, 2025, at Round House Theatre, 4545 East-West Highway, Bethesda, MD (one block from Bethesda Metro station). Performances are Tuesday through Thursday at 7:30 pm, Friday and Saturday at 8:00 pm, and Saturday and Sunday at 2:00 pm. Tickets ($50–$89) are available online or through the box office at (240) 644-1100) or boxoffice@roundhousetheatre.org or visit TodayTix. (Learn more about special discounts here, accessibility here, and the Free Play program for students here.)

The digital program for King James is here.

COVID Safety: Round House Theatre no longer requires that audience members wear masks for most performances. However, masks are required for the performances April 22 and 26 (matinee). Round House’s complete Health and Safety policy is here.

King James
By Rajiv Joseph
Directed by Rob Ruggiero
Presented in partnership with TheaterWorks Hartford and Barrington Stage Company

CAST
Shawn: Blake Anthony Morris
Matt: Gregory Perri

PRODUCTION
Scenic Design: Luke Cantarella
Costume Design: Danielle Preston
Lighting Design: John Lasiter
Sound Design: Kevin Lee Alexander

SEE ALSO:
Round House Theatre closes 47th season with regional premiere of ‘King James’ (news report, May 12, 2025)

The post Two men bond over basketball in ‘King James’ at Round House Theatre appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

There is always risk involved in adapting a beloved classic. Consider the Ford Edsel, “New” Coke, or vegetable Jell-O. Literary adaptations can be especially fraught, as any director of Shakespeare knows. The sheer range of subject matter that may be involved — language, character, plot, theme, style, etc. — provides plenty of opportunity for missteps or simply offending audience expectations. The best adaptations tend to illuminate and magnify significant elements of the original and endow them with contemporary relevance, clarity, and heightened meaning. Less successful adaptations may veer so far from the original context that characters, themes, and plot elements are no longer recognizable and lose their connection to the original altogether. Emily Burns’ Frankenstein, running at Shakespeare Theatre Company through June 29, falls somewhere in between. The playwright-director bravely recontextualizes important motifs in the classic story — the obligations of parenthood and what happens when we aren’t loved — but ultimately fails to develop them in a way that adds new meaning or clarity. This “creature,” as Burns calls her play in the Director’s Notes, isn’t really sure what it wants to be.

It should be noted up front that STC describes Burns’ work as “based upon” Mary Shelley’s famous gothic novel of 1818, but it shares characteristics common to all adaptations: characters and significant elements of plot, theme, language, and context are derived from the original and, in this case, the title itself (although without Shelley’s subtitle “Or the Modern Prometheus,” which may be significant). Whereas Shelley’s novel focuses centrally on the relationship or lack of relationship between Victor Frankenstein and his creature, Burns homes in on the relationship between Victor (Nick Westrate) and his childhood companion-cum-wife, Elizabeth (Rebecca S’manga Frank), a relationship given rather superficial treatment in the novel. This is both a strength and a weakness of Burns’ play. She gives Elizabeth a voice and, ultimately, a spirit she does not possess in the original story, but far too much of this Frankenstein revolves around heated verbal battles between these two that do little to advance the plot and sometimes verge on the melodramatic. If there is a nefarious creature in this play, it may be this toxic relationship and the way it illuminates power imbalances between men and women.

That may be Burns’ point, but the fact that the play’s central argument is unclear is part of the problem. Competing with the toxic relationship between Victor and Elizabeth, driven mostly by Victor’s failure to act as an adult, is the motif of creatureliness and whether Victor, by his failure to accept any kind of responsibility — as a husband, a father, or a creator — is himself the real monster of the story. Here, Burns employs the neat device of voice doubling, so that we occasionally hear original lines from the novel spoken by one of the two protagonists (Victor or Elizabeth) combined with the offstage voice of the Creature. This striking technique creatively underlines ideas Burns wishes to emphasize. At the end of Act One, when Elizabeth (once again) implores Victor to make good on his long-delayed promise to marry her, we hear the combined voices of Victor and the Creature respond, “I will make you a wife” — just what Victor in the novel promised his unhappy creation, but later reneged on.

But there’s some confusion here, too. Since we sometimes hear Victor’s voice doubled with that of the Creature and sometimes Elizabeth’s, are we to identify both of them with the Creature? Does the Creature live inside everyone? In her Director’s Notes, Burns tells us that her play is drawn from Shelley’s novel but “reframed through a contemporary psychology.” Throughout the play, until the very end, Burns seems to suggest there may not be any actual creature. Elizabeth, after reading Victor’s diaries, is convinced of it: The monster exists only in her husband’s overheated mind. (“You created a story that has ruined our lives,” she says…. “The enemy was you the whole time.”) Yet, in Burns’ final scene (spoiler alert), the Creature (Lucas Iverson) does make an appearance, looking for all the world like Victor himself, only selfless, compassionate, and responsible, as Victor is not. Are we experiencing a mass hallucination, or is this Victor doppelganger for real? The interior, psychological narrative Burns has set up seems to clash with the sudden appearance of a real “fiend,” and it’s hard to know what to make of this. If indeed the Creature was “real” all the time, do we need to go back and reframe our thinking about the perpetual adolescent (Victor Frankenstein) we’ve been watching onstage for the past two hours? Does he deserve some sympathy despite his tantrums?

As presented by Westrate under Burns’ direction, Victor is more spoiled child in need of spanking than serious man of ambition who employs considerable scientific skills to create a new being. It’s hard to imagine him doing anything other than drinking, lounging, and arguing, which is mostly what we see onstage. While Burns admirably focuses on a significant motif in the novel — Victor’s failure to take responsibility for his creation or to show it any love or compassion — the character she and Westrate present in the play is almost impossible to take seriously or sympathetically. (At one point, Westrate’s Victor literally throws a childlike tantrum, lying on the floor and pounding his fists.) If we can’t take a character seriously, it’s hard to care very much about his inner turmoil or external adversaries.

The same is not true of S’manga Frank’s Elizabeth, who has more agency and a much larger presence here than in the novel, where she is murdered by the Creature on her wedding night. Nevertheless, so much of her stage time is spent trying to cajole answers out of Westrate’s Victor (about his whereabouts, about marriage, about having a child, or where he has taken it) that she inevitably comes across as passive (or simply reactive) and disempowered. Why an intelligent, attractive woman like her would spend five minutes with a man like this Victor, much less wait on him for years at a time, is hard to fathom. But perhaps family ties run deep (they are adoptive brother and sister).

The introduction of humor (which the Gothic novel does not really have) and colloquial language are noble attempts to update and to some extent recontextualize Shelley’s work. However, the language often falls into modern slang (“those guys,” “Are you okay?” etc.), including the F-bomb, which (again) undermines the seriousness of the story and clashes with the early 19th-century set and costumes. The introduction of humor, while refreshing here and there, especially in the play’s early moments, becomes an issue as the play struggles to find its tone, navigating at times between flippancy, seriousness, and melodrama. (On the night this reviewer attended, there was involuntary laughter during the big reveal scene, when the creature suddenly makes his appearance — presumably meant to be a serious and defining moment in the play.)

The gothic set (designed by Andrew Boyce) and early 19th-century costumes (by Kaye Voyce) admirably evoke the original context of Shelley’s novel. Boyce’s gigantic gray set — huge “stone” fireplace, soaring walls, and tall French windows — is the perfect receptacle for Neil Austin’s dim, moody lighting (which moves into a brighter key in the second act). Andre Pluess’ sound design, including the voice doubling, is very effective, as are surtitles by Elizabeth Barrett projecting selected lines from the novel above the proscenium.

The first of these lines, taken from the Creature in the novel, but seemingly applied to Victor here — “I never felt the safety of unconditional love” — is, presumably, meant to set the theme for Burns’ entire production. But does it? Never do we feel that Victor’s real problem is not having been loved — he seems instead to have been spoiled — and Elizabeth’s frustration appears to stem more from Victor’s intransigence and irresponsibility, as well as her own failed expectations, than from any deep-seated insecurity about love. Perhaps Burns simply opens up too many lines of inquiry, making it impossible to fully develop any of them. And yet. An important line of exploration in the novel, more relevant today than ever, is surprisingly never touched on in this Frankenstein. That is the ethical implications of technology and the responsibilities of those who both use it and create it. In an era of rapidly developing Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, gene editing, and robotics, to name only a few scientific advancements, questions about our relationship to technology and the limits placed upon it (or not) are of central importance for civilization itself. The same was true in Mary Shelley’s day, when experiments in galvanism (the study of the effects of electricity on the body) and new understandings of human anatomy and physiology were hotly debated, including in Shelley’s own circles. It’s why technology and science play such a large role in a novel written by a teenager. This seems a missed opportunity for a Frankenstein that purports to reframe Shelley’s story for our own time.

Unfortunately, Emily Burns’ tale is dominated by an adolescent very different from the teenage Mary Shelley, one not nearly so mature, not nearly so talented. This Victor Frankenstein is no modern Prometheus. But he might be Holden Caulfield.

Running Time: Approximately two hours and 20 minutes, including one intermission

Frankenstein plays through June 29, 2025, at Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Michael R. Klein Theatre (formerly the Lansburgh) – 450 7th Street NW, Washington, DC. Tickets (starting at $35) are available at the box office, online, by phone at (202) 547-1122, or through TodayTix. Shakespeare Theatre Company offers discounts for military servicepeople, first responders, senior citizens, young people, and neighbors, as well as rush tickets. Contact the Box Office or visit Shakespearetheatre.org/tickets-and-events/special-offers/for more information.

The Asides program for Frankenstein is online here.

COVID Safety: All performances are mask recommended. Read more about STC’s Health and Safety policies here.

Frankenstein
Written and directed by Emily Burns
Based on the novel by Mary Shelley

CAST
Elizabeth: Rebecca S’manga Frank
Victor: Nick Westrate
Justine/Esther/Voice of Caroline, Young Victor: Anna Takayo
Creature: Lucas Iverson
Young Elizabeth/Eva (alternating): Mila Weir, Monroe E. Barnes

ARTISTIC TEAM
Playwright and Director: Emily Burns
Scenic Designer: Andrew Boyce
Costume Designer: Kaye Voyce
Lighting Designer: Neil Austin
Sound Designer/Composer: André Pluess
Projection Designer: Elizabeth Barrett

SEE ALSO:
STC announces cast and creatives for world-premiere ‘Frankenstein’ (news story, April 30, 2025)

The post An unsettling new ‘Frankenstein’ comes to uncertain life at STC appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

Growing up in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, José Alberto Uclés often went to the city’s only theater, Circulo Teatral Sampedrano, with his mother and siblings. A continent away, his future husband, Tom Noll, helped build sets for high school musicals in the small town of Somerset, Ohio, where the annual Fourth of July parade involved the entire populace of 1,400 people. Both men developed a love for the arts, and especially theater, early on, and both understood the importance of supporting them. “Our town had to beg people not to be in the parade,” Noll laughs, “because somebody had to be there to watch it!”

Noll’s humorous anecdote underscores the essential role that audiences play and hints at the decades of advocacy and support he and Uclés have given to DC-area arts. Now, the couple are being recognized with the nation’s only audience award given by a local theater community. In a special ceremony at GALA Hispanic Theatre on May 3, Uclés and Noll will receive the 2025 Gary Maker Audience Award for their outstanding support of and encouragement to DC-area theaters and audiences.

“They bring an incredible social cheerleading to the whole theater community … their energy and positivity encourage others to engage with our work,” Theater Alliance Producing Artistic Director Shanara Gabrielle said in a statement nominating Uclés and Noll for the award.

Susan Galbraith, Artistic Director of the Alliance for New Music-Theatre, which is sponsoring the award, said that “in these precarious times, when the performing arts are so much on the line … it has become an act of courage to support live local theater. We need [audience members like Uclés and Noll] now more than ever.”

The Gary Maker Audience Award was established in 2011 by DC Theatre Scene, under the leadership of then-publisher Lorraine Treanor, in honor of a passionate and dedicated local audience member. Uclés and Noll are the tenth and eleventh persons to receive the award.

“We are very honored and grateful,” Uclés says of the recognition. “We’re passionate about theater. For us, it’s a love affair.” Uclés adds that, while he and Noll have been invited to serve on a number of theater boards and as hosts on GALA committees over the years, they prefer to remain free to “help many theaters, rather than put all our energy into one basket.” One important way the couple supports DC theater is by promoting shows through their very active social media accounts, especially on Instagram at “Artsy Fashion Peacocks.”

Many local theatergoers — and many Web surfers who visit them at “Artsy Fashion Peacocks” — will recognize the pair by their colorful, inventive haberdashery. They are often seen at theaters, operas, gallery openings, and other arts events wearing coordinated jackets and trousers, often in bright floral or geometric designs, enhanced with sequins, lapel pins, and even ascots. The vibrant clothing draws attention.

“We’ve always been into fashion,” Uclés says, noting that he and Noll regularly attend the biannual Fashion Week in New York City and when visiting always catch a few fun Broadway shows. “We started collecting jackets when we first got together, and now, we’ve been together twenty years. So that’s twenty years of collecting.” Uclés says the pair have hundreds of artsy and creative jackets, vests, shoes, and accessories hanging in their popular “Peacock Walk-in Closet,” a guest bedroom that Noll purpose-designed in their Bloomingdale townhouse apartment. They sometimes help outfit other adventurous souls.

Costuming by design

Dressing for performances and exhibitions is another, highly visual and highly public, way Uclés and Noll support the arts. Years ago, Noll had the idea that it would be fun to dress in the style of whatever event he and Uclés were attending. He began researching color schemes and designs in gallery shows and costuming in theater productions. With a background in multimedia and sculpture, Noll had the skills and fashion sense to transform ordinary clothing into a kind of performance art itself, always in honor of the creative forces behind the event he and Uclés were attending. “We want to bring joy, we want to bring people together,” Uclés says of the couple’s purposes.

While Noll, the quieter of the pair, is retired, Uclés still works full-time as the Hispanic Outreach Spokesperson and Public Affairs Specialist for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). He acknowledges that the couple’s busy social calendar, dominated by attendance at arts events, can sometimes be exhausting, but he and Noll see supporting theaters and other cultural organizations as a responsibility.

“We show up where we need to show up to support everyone,” Uclés says, describing the busy routine of leaving work on time in order to come home, change clothes, and be at evening events across the city several times a week. “It’s never the same if we go to a show without making an effort, and making an effort means dressing accordingly.” A quick scroll through the duo’s Instagram account illustrates what that means, as Uclés and Noll can be seen in their signature dynamic attire (specific to different occasions) posing with a wide range of artists, musicians, civic leaders, audience members, and fellow arts advocates.

“Alberto and Tom bring joy into every room and every venue they walk into,” says Amy Austin, president and CEO of Theatre Washington, noting that the “artsy peacocks’” love for group photos is a form of community building in itself.

“They’re always involved, no matter what’s on stage,” GALA Hispanic Theatre Co-founder and Executive Director Rebecca Medrano, a longtime friend, says of Uclés and Noll. “They mingle and liven things up. They engage the actors and theater staff and make people feel like the theater is their home. I wish we had more audience members like them. Theater would be a lot healthier if we did.”

Uclés and Noll can offer an exhaustive list of the theater, music, and arts events they have attended over the years. Musical theater is a particular favorite, especially for Noll. He recounts the time when Uclés was a Helen Hayes Award judge from 2009 to 2011, and the couple were seeing upward of 80 shows a year, many of them dramas.

“In the third year, I finally said, ‘Honey, if I want drama, I can go home to my family in Ohio,’ ” Noll laughingly recalls of his penchant for lighter musical fare.

The couple have attended shows at all kinds of theaters across the DC region, including dinner theaters such as Toby’s Dinner Theatre in Columbia and children’s theaters like Imagination Stage in Bethesda and Adventure Theatre MTC in Glen Echo. The latter are of special interest to Noll, who, in addition to being a sculptor and multimedia artist, is also an award-winning children’s book author and puppeteer. He and Uclés often invite friends or members of their chosen family to these performances. On many occasions, they have introduced the children or grandchildren of friends to live theater, sparking interests that carry beyond the individual productions themselves.

“We’re not snobs,” Uclés says of the range of their interests. “If there’s something we want to see and somebody is producing it, we’ll go.” While the couple enjoy larger Broadway-style theater productions, they have a special love for the “vast variety and creativity of our local theaters with their diverse and inclusive productions,” Uclés says.

Passion and approachability are key to the pair’s star power. People want to be with them, and they want to bring people together. What better place to do that than at the theater?

“Alberto and Tom are true advocates,” says Theater Alliance’s Shanara Gabrielle. “Not just showing up in our audiences, but always singing the praises of our great theater city.”

Uclés’ and Noll’s enthusiasm is contagious. When they talk about the richness and vibrancy of DC theater, they don’t just talk about the acting or the directing or the main star, although they talk about those things, too. But the pair are just as likely to call to mind a particular set designer, costumer, choreographer, composer, or local playwright. It’s the whole package that excites them. “We have some 90 theaters here,” Uclés says, “big ones and small ones, and we’re always in awe of the quality of what they present.”

It was an experience in the theater — the same theater — that got each man started on the arts journey that led to the Gary Maker Award and that helped solidify their love for their “forever home” of Washington, DC. Uclés first saw the city during the National Cherry Blossom Festival while on a spring break trip from college in Indiana. He remembers going to the National Theatre downtown and seeing a big production there. “That just sealed it for me,” Uclés recalls. “I said, ‘When I finish college, I’m coming to Washington … ‘ I don’t even remember what I saw, but I was impressed with it.”

Noll’s experience may have been less dramatic, coming from Ohio to help a friend, and the two of them going to the National together. Nevertheless, Uclés and Noll have become big advocates of the capital’s oldest continuously operating theater (1835) and its touring Broadway shows. Uclés is particularly struck by the beauty of the historic facility. “It’s a wonderful place to see a show,” he says.

After his stint as a Helen Hayes Award judge, in which Noll traveled at his side, Uclés served for ten years as a commissioner on the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, promoting arts in the nation’s capital and helping administer grants to arts organizations. He stepped down from that role last year and now serves on the World Pride DC 2025 Arts, Culture, and Theatre Committee. World Pride 2025 is an international LGBTQ+ pride event that will take place in

Washington from May 23 to June 8 in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of Pride celebrations in the city. Its aim is to promote awareness of and support for the global LGBTQ+ community.

“The show must go on”

Uclés acknowledges that it is a challenging time for both arts organizations and LGBTQ+ community members like Noll and himself. Some World Pride–related events originally scheduled for the Kennedy Center have scrambled to find new venues, and there are concerns that some members of the international LGBTQ+ community who had originally planned to attend World Pride DC will no longer feel it is safe to come here.

“There’s a lot of fear,” Uclés admits, acknowledging that this is “a very tough and heartbreaking time” for many people, and for him personally as a federal employee, a gay man, and an immigrant. “This new administration and its changes in philosophy have really shaken our foundations,” he says. Nonetheless, Uclés is resolute. “We refuse to let things ruin our happiness, our dreams, our goals, or to give up our positive attitude,” he declares. “We gay people have been through a lot of challenges before. We are a resilient community. We’re not going anywhere.”

While World Pride DC 2025 might be “scaled back a little,” Uclés says “the show must go on,” and there will still be “an amazing number of things happening” during the two weeks of the festival. Among them, an exciting roster of local gay/pride plays at area theaters that are part of the “Gay for DC Theatre” lineup. (Check the World Pride DC 2025 website for events and details.) And while “some mega companies” have withdrawn funding for the festival, Uclés praises city leaders and Mayor Muriel Bowser for their financial support of World Pride DC 2025, underwriting performances, readings, exhibits, and learning opportunities.

“It will make a statement … ,” Uclés says of planners’ and participants’ determination, despite obstacles, to make the festival as grand and joyful as possible. “And just as in theater or any art, it is unity, empathy, and helping each other that will get us through.”

Uclés says that he and other World Pride DC 2025 planners are encouraging companies “to come through” and support the diversity and inclusion that World Pride celebrates, and he encourages individuals to donate, volunteer, and participate because “it takes a village to do something as big as this.” Washington is only the second U.S. city to host World Pride celebrations, after New York in 2019. The global event originated in Rome, Italy, in 2000.

“We have to look out for each other”

One category of World Pride DC 2025 events that has been a particular target of President Trump’s is drag shows. He cited them in his takeover of the Kennedy Center in February, and some World Pride performances scheduled for the Kennedy Center, and which had to relocate, involve drag. Over the years, Uclés and Noll have been supporters of drag performance, hosting an annual Christmas event in their home. Among the local performers they know and/or admire is DC drag artist Tara Hoot, known for her popular drag story time readings for children and families. Uclés believes that the very drag culture President Trump wishes to cancel is an important means of teaching tolerance and inclusion at a time when both are greatly needed.

“We know so many drag queens and kings who do amazing, artsy shows, and it’s an incredible talent,” Uclés asserts. “And it’s always been part of theater. If you go back to Shakespeare’s time, it was men who played the women on stage. So, I’m happy that children can learn acceptance like this in a way that is fun and entertaining. The prejudice some people now [direct] toward drag performers — that they are influencing kids the wrong way — just isn’t right, and it’s not what’s really happening.”

The particular scrutiny that drag shows face is part of Uclés’ and Noll’s overall concern that, in a time when the arts, LGBTQ+ culture, immigrants, and federal institutions (and their career employees) can all seem under attack, “we have to look out for each other,” in Uclés’ words. “The show must go on, but it has to be even better,” he declares. “We have to be supportive and united, just like when COVID hit.” Uclés acknowledges that the circumstances today may be somewhat different. “The arts got money during the pandemic. We’re not going to get that this time.” He also expects that local audience attendance could be down, given the massive layoff of DC-based federal workers, and he commends theaters that offer discount tickets or free nights to laid-off employees. “Accessibility is going to be important,” Uclés asserts, “so that we are able to survive this period. And I think we’ll do it, because our theaters have shown that they are resilient and creative forces.”

For many in the DC theater and arts communities, “artsy fashion peacocks” José Alberto Uclés and Tom Noll are an inspiration. That’s why they are receiving the Gary Maker Audience Award. But for Uclés and Noll, it’s the art that inspires. “Art — and especially theater — is uplifting, uniting, reconciliatory,” Uclés observes. “It’s where you bring people together. It’s a joint live experience. And that’s what we love about theater: Coming in with other audience members and feeling what they are feeling and sharing that experience together. It’s really wonderful.”

And, Noll adds, who would have thought a farm boy from Ohio and a young student from Honduras would have experienced that — thousands of times over?

The 2025 Gary Maker Award Ceremony begins at 7:30 p.m., followed by Choke at 8:00 p.m., on Saturday, May 3, 2025, at GALA Hispanic Theatre, 3333 14th Street NW, Washington, DC. A reception will follow. Tickets are $50 ($35 for seniors and military). To purchase tickets, call the box office at 202-234-7174.

SEE ALSO:
José Alberto Uclés and Tom Noll to receive 2025 Gary Maker Audience Award (news story, April 26, 2025)

The post ‘We want to bring joy’: José Alberto Uclés and Tom Noll on their love of theater appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

Synetic Theater’s visually stunning, emotionally charged The Immigrant comes at a pivotal moment in our nation’s story, as well as that of the inimitable company itself. The production opens as one of the country’s largest immigrant deportation programs is underway, and numerous court battles are being fought over the mistaken deportation of some immigrants and the intended or accomplished deportation of others. For Synetic, the battles are personal: Its founders, Paata and Irina Tsikurishvili, emigrated to the U.S. from the former Soviet republic of Georgia in 1995. Since then, they have welcomed a number of émigré artists into their ranks. Moreover, The Immigrant, loosely adapted from the eponymous Charlie Chaplin silent film of 1917, marks the first time that father and son Paata and Vato Tsikurishvili have shared star billing onstage. It is also the first Synetic production following the death of Paata’s father, Vakhtang, whom Paata credits with inspiring his own artistic journey and the creation of Synetic Theater itself.

Fathers and sons, artists and their self-creations, loom over this beautiful, melancholy, wordless production. To Chaplin’s straightforward comic drama about an endearingly clownish immigrant who weathers the storms of coming to America, falls in love, and faces the hard realities of capitalism — things the immigrant Chaplin himself knew — Synetic adds a framing device that brings Paata, Vato, and the Little Tramp together. Here, we enter into the memories of an elderly, Chaplinesque actor and filmmaker (Paata Tsikurishvili) as he reflects on his journey to the land of opportunity, his outsized success in the nascent film industry, and the ostracization that drove him from both. (The production is bookended with Paata’s filmmaker in his 1920s-era studio, expertly rendered by scenic designer Phil Charlwood, examining old strips of film and, in the beginning, burning some of them.) It’s hard not to think about the present state of things as, partway through the performance, a large scaffold (the major set piece) is transformed into a rough-hewn but incomplete version of the Statue of Liberty. (Chaplin’s film has a notable shot of Lady Liberty as the Tramp’s boat passes by on its way to Ellis Island.) As the film actor and director’s younger self — the titular immigrant — Vato Tsikurishvili is the central figure in this story, a supremely agile, poignant, endearing clown who finds that success, like prolonged innocence, comes at a price.

Synetic’s signature performance style focuses on the visual, combining dance, acrobatics, and mime with little or no dialogue. It’s a perfect match for the kinetic visual storytelling of Chaplin’s films. Led by Vato, the Synetic ensemble deftly and delightfully recreates some of the best-known scenes from The Immigrant and other Chaplin films: The physical acrobatics of a storm at sea, in which bodies, as well as food, are tossed to and fro, and Vato’s immigrant climbs the ship’s rigging (the repurposed scaffold); the immigrant’s first job in a print shop, which goes awry and leads to an all-out brawl on the print floor; and the immigrant’s big break into the movies as one of the Keystone Cops (recalling Chaplin own film beginnings). Along the way, the immigrant finds love with a young woman met on board the ship (an appealing Maryam Najafzada) and leads the ensemble in a visually spectacular dance sequence as the ship nears harbor, including somersaults, flips, spins, twirls, and things you never thought possible when dancing the Charleston. As always, Synetic co-founder Irina Tsikurishvili’s choreography is stunning. Light and sound design by Brian S. Allard and Koki Lortkipanidze, respectively, contribute to a lively and authentic sense of time and place.

There are beautifully rendered, poignant images here, too, a reminder of Chaplin’s ability to seamlessly navigate the comic and the tender, a sensibility Synetic shares. Vato and Najafzada recreate the tender encounter between the Tramp and the blind flower girl in City Lights, and we watch Vato’s down-and-out Tramp share his food and his box-like hovel with other unfortunates in a scene possibly inspired by Chaplin’s 1936 film Modern Times. These intimate scenes are expertly mimed, as is the entire production. Among the most touching is an unexpected encounter between Vato’s down-and-out immigrant/Tramp and his older filmmaker self (Paata, dressed identically to the Tramp). In what may be an episode drawn out of the Tramp’s own imagination, the older man sits down to console the younger — who seems at the end of his rope — and offers him the toothbrush mustache, bowler hat, and cane that will become the trademarks of the latter’s enormous success. No doubt this is a meaningful moment for father and son. It is also a tribute to the power of artistic imagination and, possibly, an allusion to Chaplin’s own father, who was a music hall performer back in England.

Other images are darker and sadder, although no less remarkable. In a late sequence, Vato’s Tramp — now, like Chaplin, become a director as well as an actor — stars in his own satirical takedown of 1930s Fascism. Also, like Chaplin (in 1940s The Great Dictator), Vato and the ensemble don brownshirt uniforms and goosestep their way toward world domination. (Costumes by Erik Teague, in this scene and elsewhere, do a good job establishing character and context.) In a chilling concluding image, the ensemble reaches up toward Vato’s dictator in a gesture of obeisance as he grimly places his boot atop a huge balloon map of the world.

It’s clear that these are the memories and the works of a man who has loved a place, discovered himself in it, and then been forced to leave. Like Chaplin, Vato’s aging film star finds himself the object of censure and spite on the part of a public that once adored him. (Chaplin was attacked for some of the positions taken in The Great Dictator and later forced into self-exile in Europe, only returning to receive an honorary Oscar in 1972.) This production’s final scene takes us back to the elder filmmaker (Paata) in his studio as he intently examines a miniature gold film statuette, shaped like the Statue of Liberty, on a table before him. In the background, a Hollywood starlet, recognizable as the Tramp’s love interest and film co-star, climbs the tall scaffold with its incomplete rendition of Lady Liberty and beckons him toward her. Is it a real invitation? A siren call? A joke? It’s hard to separate the mythology of filmmaking from the mythology of Lady Liberty herself. One is left to wonder: Does she still welcome the “tired … poor … huddled masses” as she welcomed Charlie Chaplin in 1910 or the Tsikurishvilis in 1995? Through this smart, graceful, visually stunning production, Synetic Theater reminds us that the promise of America is, like Lady Liberty herself, a beautiful thing, but only as real as we are willing to make it.

Running Time: 90 minutes with no intermission.

The Immigrant plays through April 27, 2025, presented by Synetic Theatre in association with Theater J performing 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.

SEE ALSO:
Synetic Theater channels Charlie Chaplin’s ‘The Immigrant’ for our time (review of the production at Thomas Jefferson Community Theatre by Lisa Traiger, March 18, 2025)

The post Synetic’s stunning, emotionally charged ‘The Immigrant’ comes to Theater J appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

Some of us are old enough to remember reading portions of Beowulf in high school English. Hrothgar, Unferth, Wiglaf, Hygelac, Halfdane … shadowy names from what feels (and felt) like a very distant past. But in a deeply engaging, deeply thoughtful one-man show at the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop (Beowulf, A Retelling), Taffety Punk Artistic Director Marcus Kyd turns those high school recollections on their head, suggesting that Beowulf and his tale have a great deal to say to us today about the true nature of heroism, what strength really means, and the power of art to convey timeless human values. In Kyd’s retelling, Beowulf is as relevant and inspiring today, in our own dark time, as it presumably was 1,500 years ago in what our English textbooks used to call (with no little presumption) “The Dark Ages.”

To place Beowulf’s story in a more analogous modern context — and, honestly, to make for a really fun night out — Kyd and his compatriots at Taffety Punk have turned the black box space at Capitol Hill Arts Workshop (their regular home) into a dive bar. It’s the modern equivalent of Beowulf’s mead hall, replete with a range of alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, including real mead. Taffety adds a welcome touch in free, refillable bowls of popcorn for every table, undoubtedly a better deal than the sheep’s innards Beowulf and his friends might be snacking on.

As our resident “scop” (Anglo-Saxon for oral poet), Kyd offers his own contextualization of Beowulf — generally considered the first great work of English literature — by inserting a handful of brief contemporary stories and folk tales that illuminate themes and values Beowulf espouses. These center on the true nature of heroism and include the story of Hawaiian surfer and lifeguard Eddie Aikau, said to have rescued over 500 people before himself being lost at sea; the Oversteegen sisters, Dutch teenagers who fought the Nazis during World War II; and the African American folk legend John Henry, who stood up for common laborers when he entered a steel-driving contest against a steam drill. (Kyd, with guitar, presents part of the famous ballad, in which John Henry beats the new-fangled machine but dies from his exertions.) Alongside these stories of heroes, Kyd adds the cautionary tale of Nicolae Ceaușescu, the brutal Romanian dictator whose lavish lifestyle belied the economic privations of his people and who (with his wife) was overthrown and executed in 1989.

“There are monsters in the world,” Kyd soberly asserts, so we have to stay vigilant, defend ourselves against dishonor, and be generous with what we have, as the characters in Beowulf do. This is why we need heroes: because the forces of malevolence and malcontent are, like Beowulf’s Grendel or Romania’s Ceaușescu, always lurking out there somewhere.

Kyd sets up the architecture and tone of his tale from the beginning, utilizing a wall map of southern Scandinavia on which are placed old school-style placards with the names of the various (long-forgotten) Anglo-Saxon tribes referenced in the epic. It’s the only set piece on a simple, black stage platform that (perhaps intentionally) evokes an open-mic night at the pub or late-night stand-up comedy. (Kyd’s dress — jeans paired with a long-sleeved flannel shirt over a black T-shirt — is reminiscent of contemporary comics like Nate Bargatze.) Similarly, Kyd’s presentation is at turns, and effectively, both comic and poignant. When he scrambles and sometimes confuses the location of the various tribes, we sense that he is channeling a version of that (endearing) high school history teacher we all thought was a hundred years old. But the transition to seriousness and concern is quick: When Kyd introduces Beowulf’s backstory — of how, driven by nothing more than jealousy, the monster Grendel repeatedly attacked and killed the men of King Hrothgar’s court — Kyd reminds us that, in the eyes of the original audiences, these were real people with real lives. Each time the king and his warriors reassembled in the great mead hall, Heorot, the empty seats had multiplied.

Analogies to the present are purposeful and clear, if never stated directly. The malevolent force that threatens the existence of Hrothgar’s kingdom and of the community of strength and generosity embodied by Heorot feels all too familiar, as does the warning — given in the story of the Oversteegen sisters — that “the unthinkable seems impossible until it is before us.” How many Americans today feel just that?

Readers will have surmised that Beowulf, A Retelling is no straightforward line rendering or verse recitation of the 3,100-line epic. Inspired by contemporary translations by Maria Dahvana Headley and the late Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, Kyd talks and sometimes sings us through the various parts of the epic — backstory, Beowulf’s battles against Grendel and Grendel’s mother, the final, mortal battle against the dragon, and Beowulf’s funeral — with the intent to inspire us. The lessons drawn out of these encounters offer hope to contemporary audiences, as they must have for those gathered around firesides 1,500 years ago, and Kyd does a marvelous job making them stick. “It matters how you win,” he tells us, after describing how Beowulf determined to fight Grendel without weapons because the monster used none. “There always will be a cost” to resisting evil, he says, when describing the toll that fighting the Nazis took on the teenaged Oversteegen sisters, one of whom shot and killed a German officer after witnessing him murder an infant.

Juxtaposing the values of strength, courage, generosity, kindness, and selflessness against the selfish, destructive passions of Grendel (who kills out of envy and spite) and the dragon (who accumulates wealth only for himself and is never satisfied), Kyd shows that we are not so different from Beowulf’s first audiences. It does matter how you win, and there is a cost to standing up for what is right. But it may be that, like the hero Beowulf — who voluntarily leaves his home in Sweden to help the Danes in their fight for survival — we are sometimes called to pay it. As Kyd says in one of the show’s final lines, “Monsters are real,” but as Beowulf attests, “they can be beaten.”

And this, I think, is the true role of art: to remind us of those enduring human values that don’t change over time: courage and generosity and kindness and empathy, selflessness and strength of character — the qualities Beowulf exemplifies. That, Kyd suggests, is what a real hero is like, and we need real heroes. Kudos to Marcus Kyd, director Chris Curtis, and lighting designer Elijah Thomas for so creatively and thoughtfully reminding us of an important lesson we should have learned in high school.

Running Time: Approximately 90 minutes

Beowulf, A Retelling plays through April 19, 2025, presented by Taffety Punk Theatre Company, performing at the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, 545 7th Street SE, Washington, DC. Performances are Wednesdays through Saturdays at 8:00 pm. There is an additional “industry night” performance on April 14 at 8:00 pm and one Saturday matinee at 2:00 pm. Purchase tickets ($20 reserved seats at tables, $14 reserved riser seats) online.

Beowulf, A Retelling
Freely adapted from the original poem by Marcus Kyd
Directed by Chris Curtis

Storyteller: Marcus Kyd
Light Designer: Elijah Thomas
Stage Manager: Hana Clarice
Dramaturgy: Tiffany A. Bryant
Lighting and Scenic Assistants: Aaron Beaver, Renee Beaver, Jenna Berk, Percival Kyd Bruneau, Aidan Sokolov

SEE ALSO:
Taffety Punk revamps ‘Beowulf’ as a barroom tale (news story, March 20, 2025)

The post Taffety Punk’s ‘Beowulf’ reclaims the heroism we need to slay today’s dragons appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

“We’re in a crisis now”

President Donald Trump’s recent executive orders banning “discriminatory” diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and “gender ideology” from federally funded arts projects, as well as his purge of the board of trustees of the Kennedy Center (making himself chairman) and the administration’s fierce crackdown on undocumented immigrants has raised alarms among arts organizations around the country. Theaters are especially vulnerable, as they often display diversity onstage and sometimes challenge cultural norms in highly visible ways. In the shadow of Congress and the White House, Washington-area theaters could face particular scrutiny.

“I certainly feel that we’re under a microscope,” says Jason Loewith, artistic director of Olney Theatre Center (OTC) and board chair of Theatre Washington, an alliance of Washington-area professional theaters best known for producing the Helen Hayes Awards. “Everybody in our community should be concerned because history tells us that this kind of chilling of a nation’s cultural dynamism happens over the course of years. It tends to be death by a thousand cuts, making it impossible for artists to provide their essential role, which is to question the status quo of the society in which they live.”

Loewith acknowledges some concern about the heightened scrutiny that could result from the new executive orders, citing an upcoming OTC world premiere of the musical Senior Class, which features a teen gay male character performing in a contemporary adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion.

“We do not discriminate against anybody,” Loewith asserts. “We do not run afoul of any federal laws. But when the reviews come out, is somebody from the administration going to suddenly take a very strong look at Olney Theatre Center? Is somebody going to take it upon themselves to interpret what I do or what we do as illegal and call us to the mat, try to revoke our 501(c)(3) status? I mean, these things are scary.” Loewith says that the new executive order banning “discriminatory” DEI initiatives is dangerous precisely because it leaves the interpretation of what is considered discriminatory up to Trump and his administration.

Loewith’s colleague Amy Austin, president and CEO of Theatre Washington, describes the Kennedy Center realignment as having a “chilling” effect on artistic communities and their allies.

“It was a dramatic takeover,” Austin says. “It is shocking, not only for the people who work in the industry, but also for the audiences. People in DC are regular patrons of the Kennedy Center. They consider it their place.”

Austin cites the “unprecedented” nature of the changes at the Kennedy Center, whose leadership has traditionally striven to be bipartisan, with a range of political persuasions represented on its board of trustees. In February, President Trump removed Kennedy Center President Deborah Rutter and all board members not appointed by him. The current board members are all Republicans.

“What the arts can do is bring people together. This transformative power is not recognized in the reorganization of the board,” Austin asserts. “We live in the nation’s capital. We have this sense of ownership, that we are a place where supreme court judges see our work, where senators come together from across the aisle to be in the same theaters on the same night, that we host the nation’s capital and its citizens.” In addition to its convening power, Austin points to the Kennedy Center’s historic role in arts education, outreach, and accessibility. “It’s hard to imagine what the impact will be” on local as well as national theaters and audiences, she says. “COVID was a crisis for the performing arts industry. We’re in a different crisis now.”

Outgoing Woolly Mammoth Artistic Director Maria Manuela Goyanes says that, given the broad impact of Trump’s directives, she’s “nervous” for the city of Washington itself. “What you’re talking about here is more than theaters,” Goyanes says. “It’s the restaurants, it’s the schools, it’s the community centers. It’s all one ecosystem, and if the ecosystem is broken, it becomes hard for everybody.”

Goyanes notes that a sizable portion of Woolly Mammoth staff, as well as audience members, live in the District, a demographic Woolly shares with a number of Washington-based theaters. “My biggest concern is . . . that the changes to our industry can create a seismic shift for our communities,” she says, adding that the concern is exacerbated by the fact that DC is not a state and does not have the protections of a state. The mood “is different now,” she acknowledges, from when she took over the helm at Woolly in 2018, during the first Trump administration.

“When I arrived, Woolly and some of these other theaters felt like places of resistance and places where folks could feel safe, could feel like they could be brave together and talk together,” she recalls. “The kind of fear that lives now feels very different from that.” Goyanes worries that audiences may not want to come to downtown DC because of the fear that it is no longer a “safe,” inclusive, and culturally welcoming place. “I care deeply about DC and making sure that the folks who live here continue to feel like they have a safe community and a home at Woolly Mammoth.”

That concern is compounded for organizations like GALA Hispanic Theatre, whose mission is to promote and share ethnically focused (in this case, Latino) arts and culture.

“Just our name alone, GALA Hispanic Theatre, puts us in a different category already,” says Abel Lopez, associate producing director at GALA and also a board member of Theatre Washington. He observes that President Trump’s executive order making English the official language of the United States (for the first time) is especially problematic for a theater dedicated to producing Hispanic and Latino playwrights in their native language.

“It is another way to make us feel that we don’t belong, or that one doesn’t belong unless you speak or perform in English,” Lopez says. “So how that order is interpreted could affect us as well as our community.”

Lopez says he and GALA are especially concerned about the effects of the Trump administration’s new immigration crackdown and its invocation of an antique anti-immigration law from 1798 (the Alien and Sedition Acts) that has been challenged in the courts.

“There’s a fear in the community, not just for us [GALA], that it could become the norm to perceive and treat us differently as a class of people, as citizens, denied the protections we are entitled to under the Constitution,” Lopez says. “So, it’s not just about the impact on artists, but the audiences as well. This could affect them in terms of whether they decide to attend [a performance] or not. Or the kids who participate in our afterschool youth programs. How safe will they feel to come here?”

Given the demographics of GALA’s audiences and the fact that the theater is an anchor of the Latino community in DC’s Columbia Heights neighborhood, Lopez says the theater is providing information about what to do in the event of an ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raid nearby. (There is a large, busy, public gathering space immediately outside of GALA’s building.)

“We’ve been trying to educate people about what happens if you’re stopped because of what you look like or because you’re on the ‘team,’ so you have a plan of what to do if that happens,” Lopez explains. “So, we’re trying to help people become aware of their surroundings and know what are the safe spaces in the community that we can direct people to.”

Lopez says that the prospect of losing federal funding due to new administration guidelines, while a concern, is not the primary issue. “It’s about safety. How safe do [people] feel being perceived as an immigrant? We should all be concerned about any part of our community being excluded or limited because of what they look like or what language they speak.”

Ultimately, Lopez says, Trump’s moves — especially the order establishing English as the nation’s official language — are about culture: Whose it is, who controls it, and who is excluded from it. 

Controlling the Narrative

When President Trump announced the “takeover” of the Kennedy Center in early February, he suggested that it would be the beginning of, or a return to, a “golden age of American arts and culture” under his leadership. Some arts leaders see that as Trump’s self-declaration as the nation’s new cultural arbiter. Others suggest it references something that has never existed at all.

“What does that mean, ‘a golden age of the arts’?” Amy Austin asks. “Every age is a golden age. The arts are constantly reinventing themselves, thinking of new ways of expression, finding new stories to tell, reexamining old stories. We produce Shakespeare, even though he’s hundreds of years old. I just saw Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights, which is 20 years old and relevant today. We’re always producing work that speaks to the time but isn’t necessarily of the time. If we’re trying to return to one specific ‘golden age,’ we’re in trouble right there.”

“In taking over the Kennedy Center, Trump is attempting to control the cultural narrative,” Jason Loewith argues. “But you can’t use the levers of government to do that. Artists need to do that. We work in a free marketplace of ideas, and over the decades I’ve been at this, not a lot of people on the Right decided that they wanted to become playwrights. Not my fault. So, tell them to go and become playwrights and change the culture that way. We’d have had a much healthier society over the past 10, 15, 20 years if there were more conservative voices who wanted to create art, but there weren’t. Where are they? Where have they been?”

Austin says that the suppression of the arts, such as she sees in the Kennedy Center realignment, “is not a new thing in the playbook. It’s common to want to control storytelling, to want to not have certain expressions seen and heard, because the arts bring people together. The objective now is to draw people apart.”

On his Truth Social account, President Trump cited drag shows and “other anti-American propaganda” as factors in his decision to take over the Kennedy Center, although it is estimated that the Center produced only two drag shows out of nearly 2,000 total productions last year. The aggressive moves against the Center are seen in some quarters as part of a larger campaign against LGBTQ+ rights.

“What is the pointing of fingers at LGBTQ identity about?” Austin asks. “That it’s somehow objectionable to have art that has an LGBTQ framework? This sort of thing [art with LGBTQ themes] isn’t new. But it’s antiquated in American culture to show such hatred and vehemence toward a drag show. It’s absurd that in 2025 we haven’t moved beyond it.”

One event originally planned for the Kennedy Center, and which will no longer take place there, is Decolonized Beatz Indigenous World Pride 2025. A gathering of “2SLGBTQIA+ Indigenous artists, performers, and storytellers,” the festival was set to take place from May 30 to June 1 before the Kennedy Center withdrew support following new guidelines from the president. According to Woolly Mammoth Associate Artistic Director and Director of Connectivity Kristen Jackson, Woolly was in conversation with the event organizer, Crushing Colonialism, about hosting part of Indigenous World Pride 2025 downtown at Woolly Mammoth. Crushing Colonialism has since found another venue for its event.

“[O]ur approach [was] to try to provide some of the same support that the Kennedy Center was going to provide them in terms of staffing and venue,” Jackson says, “but to allow them to be able to present their entire program, which they would not otherwise have been able to do.” The Decolonized Beatz event features some drag presentations.

(Other recent cancellations at the Kennedy Center include a performance by the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, which, like the Decolonized Beatz, was scheduled to perform at the Center as part of World Pride 2025. A number of other artists have voluntarily pulled out of scheduled Kennedy Center appearances since February, most notably, Lin-Manuel Miranda in Hamilton and actress and comedian Issa Rae. Hamilton had been scheduled to be a centerpiece of the Kennedy Center’s celebration of the 250th anniversary of American independence next year. Referencing the recent takeover of the Kennedy Center, Miranda and Hamilton producer Jeffrey Seller told the New York Times they would not participate in events at the nation’s arts venue “while it is the Trump Kennedy Center.”)

Woolly Artistic Director Maria Manuela Goyanes affirms her theater’s desire to “share a platform” with artists affected by the changes at the Kennedy Center, as well as those just looking for a home in destabilizing times.

“Whether they’re from out of town or locally based DC folks, we’re happy to provide a space where these kinds of works can still be seen,” Goyanes says, “because we believe there’s still an audience for it.”

Goyanes has issued an invitation to Kennedy Center staff, as well, whether laid off or voluntary departures. “There are fantastic people there with great skills whom we’d be lucky to have,” she says. “So, we really encourage them to come and see if there’s a place for them here.” To date, Goyanes says Woolly has had a number of inquiries from theater professionals around the DMV, including current and former Kennedy Center staff.

(On March 25, the Kennedy Center cut the majority of its Social Impact team, according to the Washington Post. The team is responsible for reaching new and more diverse audiences and works closely with the Center’s free Millennium Stage performances, which draw local as well as non-local audiences. According to the Post, at least ten Kennedy Center staff members have resigned since the February takeover, and more staff cuts are expected. Reached for comment, Theatre Washington President Amy Austin said in an email that the firing of the Center’s Social Impact team was “another clear sign that silencing voices is the objective. [The Social Impact team] were deeply connected to the local theatre community, and we are outraged by their dismissal.”)

While Woolly Mammoth has a long-established reputation for edginess and boundary-busting, perhaps giving it some insulation against, or at least familiarity with, periods of cultural and political realignment, Maria Goyanes acknowledges that many area theaters must, of necessity, remain more cautious.

“It’s a very different thing to be a theater [in DC] in the midst of all this,” Goyanes says. “I just want to send a lot of love and care towards those artists and those theater companies that are not [speaking out] because they’re doing so for a reason. They’re doing so to protect their art, their own artists, and their own staff. If you’re a culturally specific organization, especially, it’s just very, very tricky.” (A handful of Washington-area professional theaters declined to comment for this article.)

A Call to Action

While many theaters are exercising caution in the face of the new Trump initiatives, in some cases, to protect funding and avoid alienating audiences, advocacy efforts have begun on both local and national levels. March 24 to 31 was National Theatre Advocacy Week, sponsored by the Theatre Communications Group (TCG) and involving workshops, seminars, and a variety of virtual and in-person events. “As theatres across the country navigate policy shifts and critical funding challenges, collective advocacy has never been more necessary,” TCG spokesperson Alisha Tonsic said in a statement.

Locally, one of the first “calls to arms” was issued by OTC’s Jason Loewith at the Victor Shargai Leadership Award ceremony in February, shortly after the dramatic realignment at the Kennedy Center. In a speech, Loewith quoted President John F. Kennedy on the essential function of the artist as social critic and called upon area theater artists to collectively “fight for our country’s artistic soul.” In a later interview, Loewith stressed that “collective action is going to be essential to move us forward because, otherwise, the opposition will be delighted if we only respond as one whiny arts group at a time.” Loewith suggests that arts groups state the case for their importance, rather than allow themselves to be seen as victims who are always begging for public support. “We need to throw out the playbook of ‘You can’t take my money away,’ of always whining about money,” he says. “We need to be flipping the script. It’s the others who are the elites. We are the oppressed workers. And the fear is, will they try to take away our First Amendment rights?”

Amy Austin says that Theatre Washington can be an important vehicle for bringing the voices of  DC-area artists and theater companies together, especially now. “What we saw with the Kennedy Center was a bell toll, right? We can see what’s coming ahead. So this is where we start.” Austin describes Theatre Washington as a “centering body” that can convene conversations among theaters, artists, and audiences to organize direct, concerted action in response to the Trump administration’s moves. “We can bring people together around shared concerns,” Austin says. “We have an extraordinarily talented and nationally recognized, impactful theatre community here that cares about the full ecosystem — including the Kennedy Center.”

In his role as board chair, Loewith says Theatre Washington is convening area performing arts companies that are, or are expected to be, National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grantees to talk about what the new federal exclusions around DEI and “gender ideology” mean for them. There is concern in the community that some federal funding could be lost. (Since the interview with Loewith was conducted, the American Civil Liberties Union won a lawsuit against the NEA, requiring the federal agency to remove the mandate that artists attest they will not “promote gender ideology” in order to apply for and receive funding.)

Loewith, like his theater counterparts, argues that, in this time of heightened scrutiny and regulation, theaters need to stay focused on their vision and continue doing the work. “It’s very easy in the heat of the moment, and given the speed with which this administration is moving, to become alarmed and think the end days are near,” Loewith says. “What we need to remember is that significant change doesn’t happen overnight. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 didn’t just happen because a bunch of legislators decided it was time; the desegregation of  DC theaters didn’t just suddenly happen. It happened because in 1948, Helen Hayes refused to bring [a play] to the National Theatre because they wouldn’t desegregate. These ‘great reckonings in little rooms’ add up over time, they make a difference.”

Loewith contends that, especially now, theaters and theater artists need to remember that, in the long run, “politics follows where culture leads, and not the other way around.” Highlighting diversity and representation on  DC-area stages and around the country will bear fruit over time, regardless of the policies of any political administration. “It’s successful because people see themselves onstage, sometimes for the first time,” Loewith says. “And then the person next to them sees themselves onstage. Continuing to emphasize visibility and representation is the most important thing we can do right now.”

And Loewith has a final warning for artists and theater makers who would rely on policy and legislation to move their priorities forward rather than the art itself. “When you lead with politics, you don’t invite everybody into your room,” Loewith reflects. “And we have to be inviting everyone into the room, all the time.”

The post How can theater talk back to Trump? appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

Over the 400-plus years of its existence, Shakespeare’s most youthful tragedy has been adapted to a wide range of settings and circumstances. Most familiar, perhaps, is the blockbuster musical West Side Story (1957), set amid ethnic gang warfare in mid-century Manhattan. But the long list of notable variations includes Baz Luhrmann’s action-packed Romeo + Juliet (film, 1996), featuring rival crime families who shoot it out in postmodern SoCal; the girl-meets-zombie romance Warm Bodies (film, 2013), which takes place in a post-apocalyptic, eerily post-pandemic universe; and Disney’s Gnomeo & Juliet (animation, 2011), in which a pair of garden gnomes negotiate romance amid inter-garden rivalries. Now, as a divided America anxiously prepares for another contentious election, the Folger Theatre has brought Shakespeare’s great tale of passion and tragedy home to a fictionalized version of the nation’s capital itself.

Directed by Raymond O. Caldwell, this Romeo and Juliet foregrounds the youth of the play’s protagonists, as well as the multiple pressures, influences, and stimuli that impact them and the cultures they move in and out of. Politics is certainly forefront, as rival politicians Lord Capulet and Lady Montague duke it out in campaign ads, public speeches, and social media posts projected onto LED screens. But Caldwell is also interested in how media, language, and culture of various kinds impact people who, because of their youth, are still forming ideas about who they are and what the world is like.

“We [the creative team] were trying to have a very clear conversation about the here and now,” Caldwell, says, noting that the pressures young people in metro DC face are not so different from those faced by youth around the country. “What gets in the way of love for young people?” Caldwell asks, referencing the central conflict of Shakespeare’s tragedy.

“We know that social media is getting in the way of love for young people. We know our body politic is getting in the way of love for young people. So, this play is actually about a series of things that get in the way of love,” he says.

Noting the various kinds of “substance abuse” that today’s youth may be prone or subject to — including politics, social media, and the 24-hour news cycle, as well as familiar forms of drugs and alcohol — Caldwell asserts that Shakespeare’s famed depiction of star-crossed lovers is best understood as a cautionary tale.

“I don’t think that this is a love story,” Caldwell declares. “It can’t be a love story, because almost every single young person in it dies. For me, it’s this really tragic, scary story…. We know that these two young people [Romeo and Juliet] are acting in incredibly rash ways. And so the question for us as a team was to ask ourselves, ‘What causes young people to act in these rash ways in today’s society, and how can we bake that into this production, so that young people can see both themselves and their world in this fantastical play, and so that the play becomes a lesson for us?’”

The Folger production does depict characters taking drugs and drinking to excess, but it places these behaviors against the backdrop of dominating parents, social and political division, and the constant stimulus of technology — social media posts litter the LED screens throughout the play — suggesting reasons for why the modern-day Romeo and Juliet behave as they do.

Caldwell says that much of his work as a director is, like Romeo and Juliet, “steeped in young people.” He spent his early years in DC as a partnerships manager with Arena Stage, facilitating education and community engagement with local schools. “I spent so much time building community with young people and thinking about the state of where young people are,” he asserts. That made it easy to respond to Folger Theatre Artistic Director Karen Ann Daniels’ desire for a youth-centric Romeo and Juliet to kick off a season-long programming theme titled “Whose Democracy?” (Daniels is also Folger’s Director of Programming and Performance.)

“We’re exploring the ‘who’ in … ‘Whose Democracy?’,” says Daniels via email. “My hope was that … Raymond would see Romeo and Juliet as a story that could connect us with the youngest people (Gen Z and Gen Alpha) to make them the lens and target audience for the production. What other Shakespeare play can so directly connect in such an intense way [with] the perspective and values of the young?” she asks.

For Caldwell, the play offered opportunities to connect on other levels, too. He had seen the unusual diversity of the Washington region and noticed a lot of people like himself, a “third-culture” kid who lived not in one world or two, but often in three. The son of a Filipino mother and an African-American father, Caldwell grew up in Germany, now lives in America, and thinks of Washington, DC, as home.

“I wanted to create a Romeo and Juliet that was steeped in the backdrop of this city,” Caldwell says. “I wanted the various racial and ethnic groups that inhabit metro DC to have a voice here. And it works just so, with the play having these delineations of family differences as well.”

Videography by Jeffrey Ray.

In the Folger production, the Capulets are played primarily by Hispanic actors, although Lord Capulet is a white actor with a noticeable Southern drawl. The Montagues are primarily African American, although Lord Montague is played by an Asian American. The mixed-race casting was intentional, suggesting that Romeo and Juliet are themselves third-culture kids, belonging everywhere and nowhere all at once. (As originally written, Romeo and Juliet are, of course, natives of Verona, although by rejecting their names and their families’ demands, they essentially make themselves stateless.)

Additionally, some members of the Capulet household (principally, Lady Capulet, the Nurse, and Juliet) speak many of their lines in a Puerto Rican dialect of Spanish. (The English text is provided on screens on either side of the stage.) They also switch back and forth between Spanish and English while in the family home. While this is not the first bilingual theatrical production that Folger has done, it is the first time some of these actors have performed Shakespeare in English (as well as Spanish) and on the Folger stage. Caldwell notes the important role that native language — language sometimes only spoken in the home — plays in giving third-culture kids a center. But he describes larger aims in adding the bilingual element to this production.

“[T]he conversation I’m wanting to have in Romeo and Juliet with the inclusion of Spanish is one of breaking the tradition,” Caldwell says. “I think it’s so important for us to recognize that Shakespeare is performed in many other languages. So to ask audiences to hear Shakespeare in another language is important.”

Dr. Carla Della Gatta, a theater historian at the University of Maryland and the dramaturg on this production, agrees, noting that Shakespeare frequently peppered his work with bits of other languages, primarily French and Latin.

“Shakespeare wasn’t monolingual,” Della Gatta asserts. “There are numerous phrases and some scenes in Shakespeare that are in other languages…. When we flatten Shakespeare to say he’s only in English, it’s actually a bit of a misstatement. So integrating Latinadad [Latin American cultural attributes] and the Spanish language, to me, seems very apt for a present-day setting, but it’s also more aligned with one of Shakespeare’s original practices, incorporating the languages that he heard on the street.”

Della Gatta has tracked more than 200 Hispanic productions and adaptations of Shakespeare in her book Latinx Shakespeares: Staging US Intracultural Theater and in her online archive, LatinxShakespeares.org. She says that Romeo and Juliet is the most adapted Shakespeare play in Latinx cultures for a number of reasons. First, it’s an ensemble play that may be more accessible to actors who haven’t had the benefit of professional training in Shakespeare. Second, according to Della Gatta, it’s assigned to some 90 percent of high school freshmen in the United States. And it’s a play about young people that taps into popular ideas about suffering for love.

Both Fran Tapia (Lady Capulet) and Luz Nicholas (Nurse), stalwarts of GALA Hispanic Theatre in DC, had performed Shakespeare in their native tongues before making their Folger debut in Romeo and Juliet. But neither had performed in a predominantly English-language professional production of the Bard’s work before, and neither is Puerto Rican (the dialect of Spanish chosen for this production). Tapia is Chilean, while Nicholas is from Spain.

“It’s a huge step,” Tapia says, of the opportunity to perform Shakespeare, in Spanish and English, on the Folger stage. “This is a great moment for the Folger, to be open to telling this story from a Latino perspective, too, and integrating the Latino experience.” She agrees that there’s nothing new in hearing different languages on stage when performing Shakespeare. It’s what she grew up with. And since coming to DC in 2019, she’s worked alongside actors and stage professionals from multiple nationalities in Central and South America and beyond.

“My mind was like, ‘Oh, my God, what is this?’,” Tapia recalls thinking shortly after arriving in the DC area. “It’s America! … It’s an illusory idea to think that we’re all just one thing. This [Washington, DC] is a mash-up of everyone inside the country, and I love that, and I love that this production [of Romeo and Juliet] is showing that.”

Tapia, Nicholas, and Caro Reyes Rivera, who plays Juliet and is Puerto Rican, worked together and with dramaturg Gatta and translator Rosa Garay Lopez to determine when and how to use the Puerto Rican dialect of Spanish in the play. As the working-class Nurse, Nicholas seems to speak more Spanish and less English than her charge, Juliet, or her employer, Lady Capulet.

“It’s very challenging, very difficult,” Nicholas says of the switching between Shakespeare’s English, not native to anyone, least of all a non-native English speaker, and a dialect of Spanish that also is not her own. “Your brain has to be kind of, like, doing mental gymnastics. But It’s fun.”

When she arrived in DC 13 years ago, Nicholas says she could never have imagined one day performing on the Folger stage. “That was the kind of theater that you think, as a Latina, a Hispanic, you’re never going to have access to … because it’s Shakespeare.”

Dramaturg Della Gatta acknowledges that stereotypes of who or what a Shakespearean actor is probably made it more difficult for Hispanic actors to grace the Bard’s stages in the past. But she points to the long history of Latino actors in English-language Shakespeare productions, such as Jose Ferrer opposite Paul Robeson in Othello in the 1940s and Raul Julia in the title role in 1979. It’s the freedom “to use their voice and to incorporate Latinx culture” in Shakespeare productions that is newer for Hispanic actors, such as in Folger’s Romeo and Juliet. After all, Della Gatta observes, the concepts of “Latina” and “Hispanic” didn’t even exist when Shakespeare was at work. It was, literally, a whole, new world.

For director Caldwell, the attempt to bring various worlds together in one production — the worlds of Gen Z and Gen Alpha; of politics, technology, and social media; of multiculturalism and bilingualism — is a way, he hopes, of also bringing more young people to the Bard.

“I’m trying to draw a brand-new audience to Shakespeare and inspire them with the idea that these stories are all of our collective stories,” he says. “We see ourselves reflected in the diversity of persons on stage in a Shakespeare production and recognize the universality of Shakespeare and the specificity of Shakespeare all at the same time.”

Caldwell suggests that we can all learn from Romeo and Juliet’s failure to connect on a deeper level, mistaking — at least in his production — fleeting virtual contact for something more real.

“Post-pandemic, how we connect is something we all need to be minding,” Caldwell says, “and the theater gives us a space to connect. So, I’m hoping young people will come into this space, connect to the story, and then want to have conversations about it. Because conversations, real-life conversations — IRL, as they say — are the ones that actually have deep, lasting meaning for us.”

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

Romeo and Juliet plays through November 10, 2024, at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre, 201 E Capitol Street SE, Washington, DC. To purchase tickets ($20–$84, with many discounts available), go online or call the Box Office at (202) 544-7077.

To see credits for the cast and creative team, click here.
The complete playbill is available here.

COVID Safety: While Folger audiences and employees are no longer required to wear masks at most events, masks are welcome and remain an important preventive measure against COVID-19. Anyone needing or choosing to wear one is encouraged to do so.

SEE ALSO:
Folger Theatre bends classic rules with a fresh and urgent ‘Romeo and Juliet’ (review by Julian Oquendo, October 10, 2024)

The post The here-and-now insight in Folger’s youth-centric, DC-set ‘Romeo and Juliet’ appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

Harmon dot aut’s Tornado Tastes Like Aluminum Sting, a world premiere at the Contemporary American Theater Festival, takes place in Kansas and includes real and metaphorical tornadoes, but the world the playwright evokes is no Land of Oz. In place of Dorothy with her ruby slippers, dot aut gives us Chantal Buñuel, or “CB,” a nonbinary, autistic teen filmmaker who wears a glittery waist pouch and documents their life with their parents through the lens of a camera. In fact, film is CB’s reference for everything. (They take their chosen name from Spanish-Mexican filmmaker Luis Buñuel, whose 1962 surrealist film The Exterminating Angel is one of CB’s favorites and a touchstone in the play.) Through the eyes of CB and the lens of their camera, dot aut pulls back the curtain on autism, gender stereotyping, family relationships, and creativity to offer a glimpse into a world as full of magic, struggle, and joy as Oz itself.

From the very beginning, we understand that Chantal/CB (wonderfully played by Jean Christian Barry) interprets life through the lens of a camera and in relation to film, particularly world cinema. CB hosts family movie nights during which their parents (engaging mom Jasminn Johnson and dad Roderick Hill) flirt and make love, while CB offers the audience insightful commentary on everything from old classics to modern horror flicks. CB is more comfortable with things than with people, who are harder to interpret; in one of many memorable moments, CB sings a duet with the kitchen table, while their parents sit on the couch snoogling (again).

But CB is not unaware of feelings and relationships. They just process them differently. Memories of a tornado the family once experienced return whenever CB struggles to express, contain, or understand strong emotion. The family’s faded farmhouse (smartly designed by Britton W. Mauk) shakes and eventually splits in two; lights blink and winds roar, exemplifying what CB once literally experienced and the strong emotions that have arisen again. (Credit to light designer Kate McGee and sound designer David Remedios for work that highlights literal and metaphorical at the same time.) In a particularly touching scene, CB struggles to respond to their father’s revelation of an atrocity he (Joe) committed as a soldier in Afghanistan and the PTSD he suffers still. Although Joe accuses CB of not being able to empathize, the audience sees CB processing everything and, as always, turning to a favorite film for explanation.

As films can take us back and forth in time, so too with CB’s camera. Midway through the drama, we learn that much of what we have seen on stage (and projected on the farmhouse wall) is actually footage from CB’s student thesis project at the special school in Wichita where their parents sent them when they were 11. Apparently, CB has thrived there. Now 19, CB directs their parents to recreate scenes from the past, and also scenes of what could have happened, but did not. (In the fictional version, the parents die in the wreckage of a tornado, perhaps a nod to CB’s fascination with the horror genre.) As the narrative shifts back and forth in time, most obviously in the play’s latter half, we witness CB changing, too, into a more mature and confident individual. They are learning how to direct — and how to relate more directly.

The same can be said of CB’s parents, who are learning how to deal with someone “on the spectrum,” as CB points out to the audience. Mom “Sherri” encourages CB and CB’s filmmaking interests, even if CB has to repeatedly call her out for misgendering them as “her.” (“Misgender jargon!” CB shouts.) For his part, father Joe approaches a quiet recognition of the struggle he and CB share to find an adequate means of articulating painful emotion. In the end, this is, like CB’s thesis film, a work in progress that we have the privilege of witnessing.

CB is no Dorothy, but they are, arguably, more interesting to watch. As presented by Barry, CB is authentic, engaging, and (surprise?) relatable. We seem to understand what CB is going through, which is playwright Harmon dot aut’s point. (In an interview in the CATF summer program, dot aut, a nonbinary, autistic writer/filmmaker/singer/theater artist, acknowledges this.) Similarly, Johnson and Hill bring an appealing warmth, humanity, and racial diversity to their roles as CB’s caring, thoughtful, sometimes stressed-out parents. When life (or CB) gets to be too much, Hill’s dad heads to his greenhouse to care for the plants he sells at market. Johnson’s mom, a preschool teacher whose boss is a sexual predator, finds satisfaction — or escape — in working to empower her school community. Supported by the video projections of Caite Hevner and Paul Lieber, they bring CB’s story into full, living color.

One may quibble with a few things here and there — a scene change that feels unusually slow, an ending that, arguably, loses some power because of its suddenness — but the opportunity to inhabit CB’s world for a time is a gift. Kansas may “smell like copper,” as the synesthete CB declares, but it’s not something we’ve ever experienced before.

Running Time: 90 minutes, no intermission

Tornado Tastes Like Aluminum Sting plays through July 28, 2024, presented by the Contemporary American Theater Festival performing at Studio 112, 92 W Campus Drive, Shepherdstown, WV, on the campus of Shepherd University, Shepherdstown, WV, in repertory with three other CATF plays. See the CATF website for performance dates and times. Purchase tickets ($40–$70) at catf.org/buy-tickets or through the box office, boxoffice@catf.org or 681-240-2283.

Tornado Tastes Like Aluminum Sting
A world premiere by Harmon dot aut
Directed by Oliver Butler
Scenic Design: Britton W. Mauk
Costume Design: Ashley Soliman
Lighting Design: Kate McGee
Sound Design: David Remedios
Projections Design: Caite Hevner, Paul Lieber

DCTA REVIEWS OF THE 2024 CATF:
‘Tornado Tastes Like Aluminum Sting’ at Contemporary American Theater Festival (review by Deryl Davis, July 16, 2024)
‘Enough to Let the Light In’ in rep at Contemporary American Theater Festival (review by Deryl Davis, July 15, 2024)
What Will Happen to All That Beauty?’ at Contemporary American Theater Festival (review by Bob Ashby, July 8, 2024)
The Happiest Man on Earth’ in rep at Contemporary American Theater Festival (review by Bob Ashby, July 7, 2024)

The post ‘Tornado Tastes Like Aluminum Sting’ at Contemporary American Theater Festival appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

There’s a secret at the heart of Paloma Nozicka’s Enough to Let the Light In, a new play running at the Contemporary American Theater Festival through July 28, but it isn’t the one the author intended. Part ghost story, part psychological thriller, part gay romance, Enough to Let the Light In seems to spend its 90 minutes searching for a dramatic center. When the big reveal does come, the production’s slow and sometimes awkward pacing, combined with plot points signaled well in advance, works against the build of tension the story demands. Rather than familiar horror tropes or heady dialogue about belief, doubt, logic, and irrationality, it is the characters’ backstories — particularly that of Cynthia — that elicit our deepest interest and empathy. There’s a lot to uncover in Enough to Let the Light In, but one senses that some of the play’s most rewarding secrets have yet to come to light.

Taking place in artist Cynthia’s (Caroline Neff) spooky and spacious Victorian — nicely designed for middle-class comfort by Mara Ishihara Zinky — Light’s plot unfolds in real time as Cynthia invites new lover Marc (Deanna Myers) over for the first time in the women’s eight-month relationship. Despite Marc’s surprise proposal of marriage (and Cynthia’s sudden acceptance), we know something is wrong when Cynthia’s eerie self-portrait falls off the wall, closet doors are found half-open, and Marc catches Cynthia frantically hiding a bowl of Fruit Loops under the coffee table. (She says she gets the late-night munchies.)

Suspicion grows when, instead of reciprocating Marc’s amorous advances — it is their first night together in Cynthia’s home, after all — Cynthia suggests they play a game of “Two Truths and a Lie” in order to become better acquainted. Haven’t these women just pledged themselves in marriage? It’s unclear whether this is a truly revealing moment or a weak plot device. Nonetheless, the women play the game and learn some of each other’s backstory. We find that psychiatrist Marc is a religious person who, perhaps surprisingly, rejects the idea of fate while embracing logic and reason. Cynthia, a former artist now clerking in an art shop, isn’t religious, but she does believe in fate and, especially, the irrational.

Here, Nozicka sets up a dialectic between the two women and their respective views on reality, but it doesn’t go very far. As Marc says of Cynthia’s perspective, it can all appear “too reductive.” But as the plot becomes spookier, the play’s pacing — somewhat erratic from the start — becomes inexplicably slower. Long pauses don’t hold enough action or intention to build the momentum Nozicka surely desires. Happily, this is something the play’s director (Kimberly Senior) and actors can address. More difficult is Cynthia’s big reveal in the latter half of the play. (Spoiler alert for readers as well as for Marc, the betrothed: Cynthia once had a husband and a young son, and she’s convinced that the son — now dead — is hiding in the walls of her house.)

On the evening I saw the show, there was unintended laughter in response to Cynthia’s declaration about her son’s whereabouts. Probably, the audience needs more and earlier investment in Cynthia’s story, and it may be that some of the tropes Nozicka relies on — a spirit in a closet (or closet wall), a light flash or door opening after characters leave a room — are simply worn. (Then, too, the horror-genre signals are occasionally too obvious or too camp, as when Marc plays a record by the 1960s group The Zombies.)

All that said, I left the theater wanting to know more — not about a real or hallucinatory spook, but about Cynthia’s backstory — about her marriage, about the tremendous struggle she describes between the responsibilities of motherhood and the compulsions of artistic creation, about what it was like to move from heterosexual marriage to singlehood to the idea of marriage again. There is plenty to explore in the characters and the central relationship of Enough to Let the Light In — and Neff and Myers seem to be attempting to do that — but perhaps it is not about the things that go bump in the night.

Running Time: 90 minutes, no intermission

Enough to Let the Light In plays through July 28, 2024, presented by the Contemporary American Theater Festival performing at the Marinoff Theater, 62 West Campus Drive, Shepherdstown, WV, on the campus of Shepherd University, Shepherdstown, WV, in repertory with three other CATF plays. See the CATF website for performance dates and times. Purchase tickets ($40–$70) at catf.org/buy-tickets or through the box office, boxoffice@catf.org or 681-240-2283.

Enough to Let the Light In, by Paloma Nozicka
Directed by Kimberly Senior
Scenic Design: Mara Ishihara Zinky
Costume Design: Peggy McKowen
Lighting Design: Mary Louise Geiger
Sound Design: Christopher Darbassie

DCTA REVIEWS OF THE 2024 CATF:
‘Tornado Tastes Like Aluminum Sting’ at Contemporary American Theater Festival (review by Deryl Davis, July 16, 2024)
‘Enough to Let the Light In’ in rep at Contemporary American Theater Festival (review by Deryl Davis, July 15, 2024)
What Will Happen to All That Beauty?’ at Contemporary American Theater Festival (review by Bob Ashby, July 8, 2024)
The Happiest Man on Earth’ in rep at Contemporary American Theater Festival (review by Bob Ashby, July 7, 2024)

The post ‘Enough to Let the Light In’ in rep at Contemporary American Theater Festival appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

In her fourth season as artistic director of the Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, Peggy McKowen is overseeing a diverse array of new play productions — from the story of a Holocaust survivor to that of an autistic teenager with synesthesia to a Black family struggling through the 1980s AIDS crisis. As the 2024 season kicked off, the West Virginia native spoke with me about the CATF’s current offerings, the evolution of the new-play festival founded at Shepherd University in 1991, her own evolution as artistic director, and the overall health of the American theater. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Deryl: You’ve got three mainstage shows this summer. They seem to explore a range of human identities and perspectives, as well as the challenges that come with them. There’s a nonbinary, autistic teenager; a Black couple living with HIV/AIDS; a lesbian couple dealing with secrets from the past; and a Holocaust survivor. Is there a theme or idea that connects them all?

Peggy: We have three plays [Tornado Tastes Like Aluminum Sting, Enough to Let the Light In, The Happiest Man on Earth] and an offering in two parts [What Will Happen to All That Beauty?]. When I was putting the season together, I didn’t consciously think “This theme goes with this or that and this is the message.” But as the season unfolded, through the process of putting it together, I recognized that with diverse voices and diverse representation on stage, there is a thread about finding your way in the world, connecting to the people you love, and about how you share that love. I think that speaks within all of the plays, and how we continue to love one another even in the face of challenging and sometimes horrific things. That to me is the essence of what connects the dots in these plays. I didn’t go looking for that, and I didn’t consciously realize that until I saw them coming to life.

Are there elements of these plays that speak directly to the cultural or political moment we are in?

I think it is the fact that we can have different experiences, and we can suffer in different ways, and still have community. That we can share concepts of kindness, respect, and love. We need to remember what it means to be in community and to have collective care for one another. It’s that essential value of how we relate to one another that these plays exemplify and that we need to reconnect with.

How do you approach the selection of plays for your season?

I receive scripts from literary agents and also from directors and playwrights recommending scripts, so I get a lot. But I’ve really worked hard to visit new-play festivals to see who’s doing new work. I really like to hear a new play. The other thing I’m interested in is building relationships with people who are making and producing new plays. I like to go and meet people doing new work and championing new plays, and I get additional scripts through those connections. I’m really trying to broaden the way in which I receive new scripts and the people from whom I receive them. Then I sit down and read and reflect, and what sticks with me gets on my short list. Then I work with the team here to see what we can produce, what goes together in terms of logistics, variety, and audience. I’m looking for work that meshes in a way that can create a total experience. We want audiences to have a total festival experience here, to see all of our plays, and have a complete immersion in the world of new plays. It’s just a different kind of theatrical experience in and of itself.

How much does geographic locality influence your choice of plays or productions?

I’m not sure that it does. The reason why is that I can’t pick a season anticipating what an audience will think or how they will respond, because I don’t know. I don’t know that I think about geography or location influencing our selection of plays. What I do think about is how is this art serving the communities in which I live — Shepherdstown, West Virginia, the Mid-Atlantic region, and the industry. I do think about it in that regard, but it doesn’t necessarily influence our topics or themes. Rather, I ask, what is the experience of them [the season of plays] all together, and how are we serving our different communities?

The Contemporary American Theater Festival [CATF] was founded 33 years ago, and you’ve been associated with it for almost two decades. Have you seen an evolution in the Festival’s mission or vision over these years?

When I came to the Festival, we were producing four plays in two theater spaces. Since then, we’ve expanded to as many as six plays in six spaces, and we’ve built buildings and theaters in partnership with the university [Shepherd University]. We’ve certainly grown and expanded our audience and the pool of artists and people we’re working with. I think about CATF as “growing up.” We started as a scrappy little theater trying to do new work and to provide space for new work, for an exciting exploration of new plays. Now, we’ve grown to a place where we want to be a home for the development of new plays and to welcome audiences and artists to be part of growing the next canon of American theater. It’s a significant evolution, both physically, and also in how we’re perceived by the industry and by artists making new plays. I also think it’s time for us to do a better job in serving [local] Appalachian artists. As one of the leading cultural institutions in this state [West Virginia], we have a responsibility to serve this state both in how we welcome artists into this community and how we represent this state to the rest of the country.

You took over as CATF’s artistic director in 2021, although you began working with the Festival as a costume designer as far back as 2006. What has your own evolution been like, moving from costume design to producing, and eventually, running the Festival?

I started by designing two shows that Ed [Herendeen, founding CATF artistic director] directed. At the time, Ed was interested in creating a different kind of leadership model, and he wanted an associate producing director to help him curate and manage the administrative parts of the Festival. There weren’t many people on staff at that time. I was then the chair of the Division of Theater and Dance at West Virginia University. I was already in an administrative position while still designing for the [university] theater, and I thought, “I’m sort of ready to try this in the professional theater.” So, I was excited for a new opportunity. That was the year [CATF] did My Name Is Rachel Corrie, which was very challenging because of the strong reactions to that play. [The play deals with an American student activist who was killed by Israeli Defense Force soldiers in the Gaza Strip in 2003.] I very quickly learned what it meant to be an administrator for an artistic organization, and also how to craft the sort of vision I wanted for the institution. Ed was very willing to give me the space to grow like that. So, my evolution has been significant. But I feel I was well-prepared to step into the position of artistic director and capable of realizing the vision I’ve had.

And what is that?

I’ve always felt that theater should be a community-centered experience, because theater is the most, and in some ways the only, truly collaborative artistic experience. You really have to have a community to do theater. So, really keeping that in the center is important. Everybody in the process is an artist, from actors to designers to administrators, etcetera. They’re all committed, and they all want to collaborate to make the work the best it can be. That’s a complete artistic team. I’ve always wanted to cultivate a team of people who think like that and work like that, who keep the focus on serving the art and not just serving individual artists. When we create a piece together, it has a life of its own, and that art is experienced by an audience in so many different ways. My vision is more about the kind of experience I want artists and audiences to have together, and the ways in which we reach out to the community through artistic experiences. One dream of mine is that CATF will have programming at every level of the local school curriculum — elementary, middle school, high school — creating art as a way of being in community together. My vision is about how we as artists serve both the art and the community.

You took over as artistic director of CATF right after the pandemic, which closed the theaters. Many never reopened. How did CATF deal with the pandemic, and how has it affected your work now?

One of the really big challenges coming out of the pandemic is that we had made a commitment to produce a season we had not been able to produce because of the pandemic. That season was big — six plays in rotation in three theaters. It was the hardest season I had ever experienced. People were rusty because they hadn’t been working, and we were all under great stress because we had to constantly be in masks. The self-awareness about how we were working together added another layer to the experience. Then, inviting the audience into an experience where they also had to be masked and self-aware. In some ways, it was detrimental to that sense of community we wanted to foster. It was hard for people to manage the stress, the workload demands of a season that large with the scope we had. But coming out of that season, I made the decision to try to figure out a different work model. We couldn’t just jump back into what we had been in. So, I worked hard to find a new calendar, a new schedule that would reduce stress and focus more on work-life balance. Some stress in the theater will never go away, of course, but that additional stress can. So I’ve really been working on how to reimagine the Festival so that it still fulfills its essential mission and core values, while giving more time for the artists to really do their work and for the audience to reflect on that work, and to create the sense of a destination experience. That’s a big shift for us.

You do hear a lot about how professional theaters are struggling. Many people never returned after the pandemic. Since you visit a lot of theaters in your job as a festival director, what is your impression of the health of professional theater in America?

For us, a couple of things are very clear. We do not have the size of audience that we had pre-pandemic. We were on a really upward trajectory before the pandemic. We had over $700,000 in ticket sales prior to the pandemic. Now, we’re in the realm of $500,000. In this particular restructuring model, we’re not offering six shows [as CATF did pre-pandemic]. Partly, it’s a response to not seeing the numbers that we saw at the height of our attendance. But last year, we had more ticket sales than the year before. So, we’re seeing an uptick. We’re moving back toward that extraordinary attendance level. I recently had a couple [of audience members] tell me they hadn’t been here for five years, and now they’re back. So, we are seeing the return of our audience. I’m encouraged that we’re also seeing new audiences and new faces. That’s both reassuring and hopeful. We seem to be reaching a broader group of people or people who hadn’t experienced the Festival prior to the pandemic and are now exploring and experimenting. I do feel that audiences can still be a bit hesitant. It used to be that CATF’s biggest weekend was our opening weekend. Now, it’s not. Some audience members may be wondering if the shows will happen, or will get postponed. There’s more impulse buying, people not planning in advance. I think we’re moving away from the trend of seeing opening weekend being our biggest weekend to other weekends being the biggest, and that’s all right.

Within the industry itself, there was a lot of talk before the pandemic as to whether the old [season-ticket] subscriber model was working. People were becoming more spontaneous in their [ticket] buying, and I think that is still very true. Theaters have been trying to figure out how to navigate from a subscription-based model to other ways [of selling tickets]. Now, you see all sorts of ticketing packages. I also think theaters are struggling because of financial pressures with the ability to reimagine themselves. It’s very risky to do something different, something new, and reconfigure yourself. It’s a tightrope walk between the ways we want to do some things differently and having the funding to do what we want to do. That’s a big challenge. I do think theaters need to embrace the big question of why we’re doing the work we are doing. That will have an impact over the next five to ten years, over what theater becomes and what the relationship with the audience becomes. We probably have to do some soul-searching about why we’re here and how we make theater and how we’re serving our audience. There’s a lot of reflection and research coming forward about the essential purposes of theater and how we communicate those things to our audiences, and how we grow in our understanding of the audiences that we serve.

I think there’s an interesting parallel with the history of regional theater. When the regional theater movement started, its intention was to provide Broadway and New York theater experiences to local communities, because many people couldn’t get to Broadway or New York or a major urban center. I think that inherent understanding has dissipated over time, but now we’re coming back to it. There’s this sense that “Maybe we’re really here to serve our community, and how do we do that?”

Is there any message you want to send out about your current season?

Very practically, for this season, I want to send out a message to the HIV/AIDS community, the neurodivergent community, the different advocacy communities, that we have [ticket] discounts for them. We want to welcome them here, so that we can get everyone together in the theater. Theater is one of the few places [in American society] where people can come together in community to have a profound experience.

The Contemporary American Theater Festival, now playing through July 28, 2004,
at Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, West Virginia

Tornado Tastes Like Aluminum Sting
A world premiere by Harmon dot aut

What Will Happen to All That Beauty?
By Donja R. Love

Enough to Let the Light In
By Paloma Nozicka

The Happiest Man on Earth
By Mark St. Germain

For more information and the full schedule of special events, visit catf.org. 

TICKET INFORMATION
Individual tickets to the CATF 2024 July season range from $40-$70. Packages of three or five mainstage performances range from $174-$300. Tickets can be purchased online at catf.org or by calling the box office at 681-240-2283.

SEE ALSO:

‘What Will Happen to All That Beauty?’ at Contemporary American Theater Festival (review by Bob Ashby, July 8, 2024)

‘The Happiest Man on Earth’ in rep at Contemporary American Theater Festival (review by Bob Ashby, July 7, 2024)

Contemporary American Theater Festival announces 2024 season (news story, May 27, 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 On community and collective care: An interview with Peggy McKowen appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

Phillip Howze’s Frontiéres Sans Frontiéres almost seems a play made for Washington. Running at Spooky Action Theater in the District through May 19, the play appears to skewer the cultural and linguistic imperialism that, too often, accompanies the humanitarian and philanthropic efforts of large powers. In this case, it is three “orphaned, stateless youth” who live “at the corner of a country that feels both foreign and familiar” who are the recipients of the questionable largesse. What happens to them when various characters from the wider world transverse their “corner” is the subject of this biting satire, which wrestles with identity, language, and appropriation of persons as well as things.

A former State Department employee who worked in Southeast Asia before becoming a professional playwright, Howze is currently Associate Senior Lecturer at Harvard University’s Theater, Dance & Media program. His plays have been produced at the Lincoln Center Theater, the American Repertory Theater, Playwrights Horizons, the Public Theater/NYSF, and the Sundance Institute Theater Lab, among other venues. A collection of his works, Rarities & Wonders, is out now from Tripwire Harlot Press, and his new play, Six Characters, will have its world premiere this summer at Lincoln Theater Center.

I met with Howze on Zoom to interview him about Frontiéres Sans Frontiéres and his artistic process. Surprisingly, Howze asked me almost as many questions as I asked him, revealing a deep thinker’s curiosity about the ideas, experiences, and opinions of others. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Deryl Davis: Where did the idea for Frontiéres Sans Frontiéres come from? Why did you want to write a play about three stateless teens exploited by affluent do-gooders and charlatans?

Phillip Howze: You know, it really came from an image. A lot of my work springs from a need to investigate a recurrence, whether that is some recurrence of language or, in this case, image. I had this recurring image of some young folks on the top of a glittering, beautiful pile of detritus, and they were smiling and joyful. And I was thinking, What is that? It was such a powerful image. So, I wrote into the question of what that was, and this [Frontiéres Sans Frontiéres] is what emerged. That’s really my process of creating a new work. It’s very much a kind of creative inquiry into something that I’m unfamiliar with and also a lurch towards something familiar through [the writing process] and through time spent with the folks in the play.

So, you weren’t starting with a particular object in mind, like “Oh, I want to write a play that critiques the pretense of altruism”?

Never, never, never. The play, for me, is never a predetermined action. It’s always an inquiry, and in that way, I get to unfold and discover something about the world of the play in the act of writing it. The revelation comes through the writing. So, the questions and critiques that may have bubbled up for you in watching the play were things that I learned in the writing of it.

Do some of the ideas in the play come out of your experience in international development and working abroad in education and cultural affairs?

Possibly. But when I sit down to write, I really have no understanding or expectation of what will emerge. It’s just a devotion to the craft of making the work and a faith and a trust that something will emerge. It may be that every work of art is a commemoration of something [in an artist’s life]. In this case, I can’t say if there’s any singularity, because the play is so prismatic. It’s like a lot of my work. Where does it begin and where does it end? It’s difficult to have a kind of clarity there. It’s like the people who come in and out of the play [an actress, a pop star, a Nobel Laureate, among them], these incredible, vibrant phantoms swooping in and out. That’s what the origin story of the play is like. Lots of different things coming together.

In the same way, I’ve never asked any actor or director to bring their identity into the work of this play, because the play is what it is. It’s this kind of burlesque intended for the talents of artists of color. Non-native English speakers, specifically…. Too often in the American theater, in the more formalized spaces of the American theater, the imagination of artists of color — actors of color, writers of color, people for whom English is not their native tongue — is asked to limit itself, in ways that this play actually demands the opposite. It demands a kind of liberty, a kind of freedom, a kind of wildness in the craft of creation. All those dialects that you hear on stage, the actors made those up. It’s the wild imaginations of the creative team and the technical capacity of the actors that brings a play like this to life. It’s that kind of collaboration.

The themes of this play seem very serious, even tragic, but there’s lots of humor and playfulness in it, too. In an early stage direction, you say the actors should be having fun.

There should be an element of joy in it. It’s interesting. There are these elements that people might say are incongruous, but it’s really about how we receive the play as an audience — the theatermakers in the space with everyone else, everything that’s happening onstage — versus how we feel about what unfolds over the course of two hours. Those are the things that create the combustion of the play. They are what give it an aliveness.

Are you critiquing how the West, in particular, goes about philanthropic or humanitarian work in other cultures? How it imposes itself on them?

Something that most people don’t seem to notice, because there’s a lot to notice in the play, is that, as I’ve said, it’s incredibly prismatic. But it’s also very specific, and one of the specific things early in the text that most people seem to gloss over is that the play takes place in a location called Here. And Here is what it’s called. I’ve always been confused that some people describe it as an unnamed place. It’s not unnamed. It is named Here. So if the play is taking place here, what does that mean? What does it tell you about the play? Or perhaps about your complicity in the play? The question of here is much more uncomfortable for us than the question of there.

That makes me think of one of the final exchanges in the play, when the character Win asks the character Pan, “What did we speak before we spoke Engaleash?” —  the language created from what they have absorbed from outsiders. They don’t even remember their original language!

And what are your thoughts on that?

I felt like it was a question about recovery. Can I recover my original identity apart from all the things that have been imposed upon me, that I’m supposed to be. How I’m supposed to fit into different identities or different boxes, linguistic or social or racial or economic. Everything. What is the person underneath all of that?

What you’re saying speaks to the core. It’s not about the clothes or the skin tone or any other external aspect of personhood. It’s about the interiority of these characters, of these people, of the people playing these characters, perhaps.

And the interlopers, if I can use that term, don’t have an interiority?

Or rather, it’s buried under so much garbage. Underneath all of that costume, whatever it is they’re here doing, whatever it is they claim to be here. And here is where they are.

At the end of the play, Win also tells Pan, “I want to unlearn you.” That’s a striking, poetically ambiguous statement. What does it mean?

What do you think it means?

It makes me think of Jerzy Grotowski [renowned Polish theater director and theorist] and the idea of the actor stripping away all the accretions and additions of life to reveal some essence underneath. To just “be.”

That’s great. To just “be.” You know, that’s a line from my most recent play. The last line is about how “to be.” I’m just trying “to be.” You know, again, I’m less interested in identity and more interested in personhood. And this is a question of personhood. How can or does one “be”?

“I want to unlearn you” has so many meanings, both interpersonal and on a larger social level. It could be something just for him [Pan] or something Win projects onto him, like “I want you to unlearn language.”

What you’re doing is refracting this notion of the prismatic and zooming all the way down to the line itself, to the possibilities in the play that are both large and small. There’s a density in the text, and also these small moments of intimacy that are revealed in a production of the play. There’s a great scale of intimacy in this work and in all of my work that tethers between the grandiose and the granular and that goes all the way down to the language on the page. In that way, perhaps it is poetic, because poetry is always lurching towards concision and clarity. A line like “I want to unlearn you” has a lot of resonance forward and backward in the play and in our world. The play is its own world, but a world that is also ours.

This is the first time that Frontiéres Sans Frontiéres has been performed in DC. What is it like to have it performed here, in the seat of power, where you have the Pentagon and so many international agencies and NGOs?

It’s exactly like you can imagine. It’s powerful and resonant. I don’t really know what this play means, you know? It means a hundred different things to a hundred different eyes. But, undoubtedly, a production of this play in Kansas City, Missouri, has a very different resonance than a production of this play in the seat of power, in Washington, DC. When this play was produced in New York, which is where it debuted, officials from the United Nations came to see it and had lots to say. So, the conversation that the play creates, dependent on where it is produced, is the conversation that it is intended to have. As we’ve said, the play set in a location called Here.

But more importantly for me, to go back to the beginning of our conversation, is for people to leave with those questions, maybe even leave with the last question or line in the play [“I want to unlearn you”], which is itself a question that anyone working in a position of power could meaningfully hold space for. So, I’m really proud that the play is happening in DC. It’s been a long time coming, and I’m delighted that Spooky Action and Beth Dinkova and her entire team have enlisted this community of artists to come together to reveal the story in the way that it’s being creatively expressed.

Frontiéres Sans Frontiéres plays through May 19, 2024 (Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m.), presented by Spooky Action Theater performing at The Universalist National Memorial Church, 1810 16th St NW, Washington, DC. Tickets (general admission, $37.50; students with valid ID, $20; seniors, $32.50; a limited number at $15) are available online.

Running Time: One hour and 50 minutes including one intermission.

The program for Frontiéres Sans Frontiéres is online here.

COVID Safety: Masks are optional.

SEE ALSO:
Spooky Action’s frolicsome ‘Frontiéres Sans Frontiéres’ gets spoofy for real (review by John Stoltenberg, April 30, 2024)

The post Phillip Howze on how he wrote his biting satire ‘Frontiéres Sans Frontiéres’ appeared first on DC Theater Arts.