Theater
YEAR IN REVIEW: Theatrical partnerships and productions
Several collaborative efforts among the year’s theatrical bright spots
This all-male production of ‘Twelfth Night’ from Chekhov International Theatre Festival in October was a highlight of this year's regional theatrical offerings. (Photo by Victor Sintsov; courtesy of the Festival)
Despite a still-struggling economy, it’s been a pretty good year for theater in the D.C. area. Along with the crowd-pleasing big musicals, there has been a wide variety of riskier and more offbeat productions. Interestingly, the year that brought marriage equality to the nation’s capital also saw an unusually high number of LGBT couples (some married, others not) enjoying productive theatrical collaborations.
Ganymede Arts, D.C.’s only company dedicated to the LGBT experience, grabbed theatergoers’ attention with two terrific musical productions in 2010: “Naked Boys Singing” in the spring, and more recently “Falsettos,” Lapine and Williams’ gay-themed musical about love and family in the time of AIDS.
Surely one of the harder working folks in local theater, Ganymede’s gay artistic director Jeffrey Johnson staged both shows and played the lead, Marvin, in “Falsettos.” He performed two one-woman shows — his pink-haired drag persona Galactica act and “After the Garden — Edie Beale LIVE at Reno Sweeney” — locally and on tour. True to industrious form, Johnson is closing the year with a new non-lip syncing Galactica cabaret show tonight at Noi’s Nook on 14th Street, N.W.
Holly Twyford tested her range in 2010, playing a tap dancing pig in Adventure Theatre’s summer production “If You Give a Pig a Pancake.” Twyford, an award-winning local actor who is gay returned to children’s theater after a long absence in order to give her young daughter a chance to see what mommy does for a living. More recently, Twyford played Pamela, a boozy, country club cougar in Signature’s premiere of Ken Ludwig’s comedy “A Fox on the Fairway,” a show to which her little girl was most probably not invited.
In September, Factory 449 continued building its reputation for impressive and challenging work with Erik Ehn’s “The Saint Plays,” an exploration of traditional saints in contemporary settings. Directed and produced respectively by John Moletress and Rick Hammerly, both of whom are gay, the ensemble production was beautifully acted and imaginatively staged.
At Studio Theatre (a favorite with Blade readers), gay director Serge Seiden drew excellent performances from small casts in two plays featuring complex, intergenerational relationships: “Sixty Miles to Silver Lake,” and Tracey Letts’ comedy “Superior Donuts.”
Many good things came from out of town this year including the New York-based, gay actor Nicholas Rodriguez. Currently playing cowboy Curly in Arena Stage’s hit production “Oklahoma!,” the handsome young Broadway actor became widely known for playing earnest-but-sexy activist Nick Chavez, the third man in a tumultuous gay love triangle on TV’s “One Life to Live.” Rodriguez initially came to Washington in the spring to play Latin lover Fabrizio in Adam Guettel’s gorgeous musical “The Light in the Piazza” (also at Arena).
Veteran gay actor John Glover is usually found in New York or L.A., but in March he came to town and put his stamp on the part of over-the-top opera queen Mendy (a role originally created by gay actor Nathan Lane) in Terrence McNally’s “The Lisbon Traviatia.” The production was part of the Kennedy Center’s mini-festival “Terrence McNally’s Nights at the Opera.”
Gay director José Luis Arellano García made the trip from Spain to Columbia Heights to stage an earthy and athletic production of Lope de Vega’s “El caballero de Olmedo” (“The Knight from Olmedo”) at Gala Hispanic Theatre. García’s partner, David R. Peralto, provided a varying pulse to the circa 1620 tragedy with his own period-sounding compositions and selected folk music.
For a short time in October, D.C. audiences were delighted with the brilliant work of British director Declan Donnellan and his longtime partner (professional and personal) set designer Nick Ormerod. As part of the Chekhov International Theatre Festival, the couple brought stellar productions (performed in Russian by fabulous Russian actors) of Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” and an all-male production of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” to the Kennedy Center.
Local theater couple Christopher Henley (Washington Shakespeare Company’s artistic director) and Jay Hardee successfully continued their collaboration on and off stage in 2010. In addition to marrying in the fall, the talented pair recently co-staged a strikingly inventive production of “Richard III” in the company’s spanking new black box space in Arlington’s Artisphere. Earlier this year, Hardee directed Henley as “He,” the embodiment of state-inflicted evil in the world English language premiere of Chilean playwright Marco Antonio de la Parra’s “Every Young Woman’s Desire,” an intense allegory of Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship.
On April 8 at the Warner Theatre in what was definitely one of the highlights of the theater year, famed gay playwright Terrence McNally, 70, warmly presented the Helen Hayes Tribute to his “friend, colleague and ex,” the even more famous gay playwright Edward Albee (the pair were lovers in the 1960s). McNally lauded Albee’s genius as evidenced by a long list of extraordinary works, including “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” “The Zoo Story,” “A Delicate Balance” and more (Albee has multiple Tonys and Pulitzers). At a small party the night before the awards, Albee, 82, shared with the Blade his appreciation of the energetic D.C. theater scene and its intelligent audiences.
Theater
Theatre Prometheus spreads queer joy with ‘Galatea’
Two girls dressed as boys who find love despite the odds
‘Galatea’
Through May 10
Theatre Prometheus
Montgomery College Cultural Arts Center
7995 Georgia Ave, Silver Spring, Md.
$27
Theatreprometheus.org
In a timely move, Theatre Prometheus thought it would be a beneficial thing to spread a little queer joy. And since the company’s mission includes engaging audiences and artists in queer and feminist art, there was nothing to stop them.
Co-artistic directors Tracey Erbacher and Lauren Patton Villegas, both queer, agree they’ve found that joy in John Lyly’s “Galatea,” an Elizabethan-era comedy about Galatea and Phillida, two girls dressed as boys who find love despite some rather slim odds.
Now playing at Montgomery College Cultural Arts Center on the Takoma Park/Silver Spring campus, the upbeat offering is a mix of contemporary and period, and strives to make audiences happy. Galatea’s cast includes Amber Coleman and Cate Ginsberg as the besotted pair.
Erbacher, also the production’s director, adds “queer joy is something that I prioritized in casting actors and interviewing production people. I asked them what it means to them, and resoundingly the reply — from both them and the play — is that queer joy is the freedom to be yourself without having to think about it.
“Galatea” was first brought to Prometheus’s attention by Caitlin Partridge, the company’s literary director. Erbacher recalls, “she strongly suggested I read this very queer play. I read it and fell absolutely in love. And because it’s a comedy — I really like directing comedy — I knew that I could lean into that while not neglecting its universal themes of young love.”
Villegas, who’s not ordinarily drawn to the classics, was also instantly smitten with Galatea.
“Usually with classics, the language doesn’t jump out at me the way modern works do,” she says. “But not so with ‘Galatea.’ The first time I heard it read aloud, I found it easy to follow and entirely accessible in the best way.”
Whether Lyly deliberately wrote a queer play isn’t known. What’s definitely known is the play was written with an all-boy performing troupe in mind; that’s partly why there are so many young female roles, the parts 10-year-old boys were playing at the time.
There’s not a lot known about Lyly’s personal life, mostly because he wasn’t wildly famous. What’s known about the times is that there wasn’t a concept of “gay,” but there were sodomy laws regarding homosexual activity in England geared toward men having sex with men; it was all very phallocentric, Erbacher says.
She categorically adds, “Women’s sexuality wasn’t considered in the equation. In fact, it was often asked whether women were even capable of having sex with other women. It just was not part of the conversation. If there wasn’t a dick involved it didn’t count.
“Perhaps that’s how the playwright got around it. If there were two male characters in the play he could not have done it.”
Prometheus has done adaptations of ancient myths and some classics, but in this case it’s very faithful to the original text. Other than some cuts winnowing the work down to 90 minutes, “Galatea” is pretty much exactly as Lyly wrote it.
And that includes, “girls dressed as boys who fall in love thinking girls are boys,” says Erbacher. “And then they start to clock things: ‘I think he is as I am.’ And then they don’t care if the object of their affection is a boy or a girl, the quintessential bisexual iconic line.”
And without spoiling a thing, the director teases, “the ending is even queerer than the rest of the play.”
Erbacher and Villegas have worked together since Prometheus’s inception 11 years ago. More recently, they became co-artistic directors, splitting the work in myriad ways. It’s a good fit: They share values but not identical artistic sensibilities allow them to exchange objective feedback.
In past seasons, the collaborative pair have produced an all-women production of “Macbeth” and a queered take on [gay] “Cymbeline,” recreating it as a lesbian love story. And when roles aren’t specifically defined male or female, they take the best actor for the part.
With Galatea, Prometheus lightens the current mood. Erbacher says, “the hard stuff is important but exhausting. We deserve a queer rom-com, a romantic sweeping story that’s not focused on how hard it is to be queer, but rather the joy of it.”
Theater
Timely comedy ‘Fake It’ focuses on Native American themes
Arena Stage production features two out actors
‘Fake It Until You Make It’
Through May 4
Arena Stage, 1101 Sixth St., S.W.
Tickets start at $59
Arenastage.org
A farce requires teamwork. And Larissa FastHorse’s “Fake It Until You Make It” now at Arena Stage is no exception.
The timely comedy focuses on Native American nonprofits fractiously housed in a shared space. Friction rises when rivals River (Amy Brenneman), a white woman operating in the Indigenous world, goes up against the more authentic Wynona (Shyla Lefner) to win a lucrative Native-funded grant.
While Brenneman (best known for TV’s Judging Amy) is undeniably a big draw, it takes a group collaboration to hit marks, land jokes, and pull off the well-executed physical comedy including all those carefully timed door slams.
As members of the six-person “Fake It” cast, Brandon Delsid and Eric Stanton Betts, both out actors of partly indigenous ancestry, contribute to the mayhem. Respectively, Delsid and Betts play Krys and Mark, a pair of two-spirited Native Americans who meet farcically cute and enjoy one of the play’s more satisfying arcs.
For Krys, every attractive man is a potential next fling, but when Mark, handsome and relatively reserved, arrives on the scene, it’s something entirely different.
Both onstage and sometimes off, Betts plays the straight man to Delsid’s waggishness. But when it comes down to real life business, the friends are on the same page: not only are the L.A.-based, up-and-coming actors intensely serious about their film and stage careers, but they’re also particularly engaged in the themes of Indigenous People found in “Fake It.”
On a recent Wednesday following a matinee and an audience talkback, they were ready for a phone interview.
In establishing whose voice was whose, Delsid clarified with “I’m the one who sounds a little like a Valley girl.”
WASHINGTON BLADE: Brandon, you’ve been with the show since its early work-shopping days in 2022 and through its debut in Los Angeles and now Washington. Have things evolved?
BRANDON DELSID: Definitely. I’ve grown up in the last couple of years and so has my character; it’s hard to know where I end and Kry begins. There’s been a real melding.
Eric and I are both queer, and to get to play these roles that are so human, imperfect, sexy, and interesting is really joyful.
As queer artists you don’t always get the chance to do work like this. So many stories are queer trauma, which is incredibly important, but it’s liberating to feel joy and ride it off into the sunset, which, without revealing too much, is kind of what we get to do.
BLADE: There’s some race shifting in “Fake It” particularly with regard to “pretendian” (a pejorative term describing a person who has falsely claimed Indigenous status).
ERIC STANTON BETTS: The last few years I’ve been on a journey with my cultural identity and place in the world. I’m a mixed BIPOC artist, my dad is Black and Native American by way of the Cherokee tribe and my mom is white.
Since 2020, I’ve tried to figure out where I belong in this cultural history that I haven’t had a tie to throughout my life; it’s gratifying to find my way back to my indigeneity and be welcomed.
In the play, race shifting is introduced through farce. But it’s never in a disrespectful way; it’s never mocked or done in a way to take away from others. The playwright parallels race shifting with gender fluidity.
DELSID: But in life, there are people posing as Indigenous, actively taking grants, and the play goes there, we don’t hold back. Larissa, our playwright, has made it clear that she’s not trying to figure it out for us. With that in mind, we hope people leave the theater interested and curious to learn more.
BLADE: Mark arrives kind of the middle of some crazy drama, bringing along a jolt of romance.
BETTS: Yeah, when I show up, we’re all sort of shot out of a cannon, struggling to keep up with the initial lie.
DESLID: A very gay cannon.
BLADE: What’s up next for you two?
BETTS: Both Brandon and I are up for the same part in a TV pilot, so one of us may be getting some very good news. I also have a Tyler Perry film coming out soon [he plays a model, not an unfamiliar gig for Betts].
DELSID: Coming up, I have a recurring part on HBO’s “The Rehearsal,” and a supporting part in “June and John,” a John Besson film. But doing “Fake It Until You Make It” in L.A. and now D.C. has been a special time in our lives. It’s 23/7 togetherness. There’s that hour for sleep.
Theater
‘Bad Books’ a timely look at censorship in local library
Influencer vs. conservative parent in Round House production
‘Bad Books’
Through May 4
Round House Theatre
4545 East-West Highway
Bethesda, Md.
Tickets start at $43
Roundhousetheatre.org
While a library might seem an unlikely place for a heated contretemps, it’s exactly the spot where adults go when they’re itching to battle out what books minors might be allowed to read.
In Sharyn Rothstein’s “Bad Books,” two women, The Mother (out actor Holly Twyford) and The Librarian (Kate Eastwood Norris), swiftly become mired in a quarrel that comes with some weighty repercussions.
The Mother is a popular conservative influencer on a mission. She’s furious that the local library has overstepped its bounds and she blames The Librarian, a woman who adheres to the “it takes a village” method of child rearing and is dedicated to the young people who approach her reference desk.
There’s some background. It seems The Librarian who dresses young (tight jackets and Doc Martens) and curses a blue streak, forged a friendship with Jeremy, a teenage library regular.
While the details are a bit hazy, it seems the troubled Jeremy confided in The Librarian regarding some personal issues. In return, she suggested a helpful book – Boob Juice.
Unsurprisingly, based solely on its title, the book has thrown The Mother into a pique of outrage. After finding Boob Juice in her son’s bedroom, she made a beeline to the library; and not incidentally, The Mother hasn’t read the recommended work and has no plans to do so.
Set in a suburb with lax gun laws, the story explores facets of division and conciliation. The Mother insists she isn’t so much about banning books as she is keeping some books away from young people until they’ve obtained parental approval.
“Bad Books” is performed in the round. Built on a rotating stage, Meghan Raham’s set is simple, pleasingly serviceable, and easily transforms from the library into a small corporate office, and later the assembly room of a church. Overhead floats a circular glass shelf filled with a cache of banned books. Things like a rolling book cart and a goldfish bowl add some flavor to the different locations.
The Mother wasn’t always a popular conservative warrior with an enthusiastic horde of followers.
Her past includes penning a book that later filled her with guilt and regret. She refers to that early questionable literary accomplishment as her bad book. And while over the years, she has persevered to find and destroy each and every printed copy, she hasn’t entirely succeeded.
Norris plays three women who figure meaningfully into the arc of Twyford’s mother character. In addition to The Librarian, Norris is The Manager, a broadly played piece of comic relief, and The Editor, a warm woman who reveals things about Jeremy that his own mother never knew.
Smartly staged by Ryan Rilette, the production is part of a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere. While Rothstein’s script offers two strong roles (skillfully performed by celebrated actors Twyford and Norris), its ending feels too neatly resolved.
In the past, Twyford and Norris have successfully joined forces for numerous DMV productions including Studio Theatre’s production of David Auburn’s two-hander “Summer, 1976,” the story of a longtime and unlikely friendship between two women who meet as young mothers during the Bicentennial summer.
Though different, both The Librarian and The Mother share a strong and ultimately hopeful relationship with words.
There’s a quote from E.B. White’s classic “Charlotte’s Web” that pops up a couple of times in the briskly paced 80-minute play. Charlotte, the wise spider, says, “with just the right words you can change the world.”
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