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Theater potpourri

Last weekend to catch several worthy productions in the D.C. area

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‘A Shadow of Honor’
by Peter Coy
8 p.m. tonight and Saturday
closes 3 p.m. Sunday
The Keegan Theater
at Church Street
1742 Church Street
Dupont Circle
703-892-0202 or keegantheatre.com

‘Genesis’
by Evan Crump
8 p.m. tonight and Saturday
closes 3 p.m. Sunday
The Warehouse Theater
1021 7th St. N.W.
(back room at the Passenger)
202-213-2474 or cityartisticpartnerships.org

‘Twilight of the Golds’
by Jonathan Tolins
8 p.m. tonight and Saturday
2:30 p.m. Sunday
through Feb. 5
Reston Community Players
Center Stage Theater
Reston Community Center
2310 Colts Neck road
Reston, Va.
703-476-4500 or rcp-tix.com
or box office

‘Return to Haifa’
adapted by Boaz Gaon
from the novella by Ghassan Kanafani
11 a.m. today; 8 p.m. Saturday
3 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday
closes Sunday
Theater J
Goldman Theater
D.C. Jewish Community Center
1529 16th St., N.W.
800-494-TIXS or theaterj.org

From left, Mark A Rhea, Jon Townson and Michael Innocenti in 'A Shadow of Honor. It closes Sunday at the Keegan Theatre. (Photo by Jim Coates; courtesy of Keegan)

Good and evil, theology and science, past and present — these polarities loom large in four plays now on stage in Washington.

Closing on Sunday, a Keegan Theatre production at the Church Street Theater is the world premiere of Peter Coy’s multi-layered melodrama about history, “A Shadow of Honor,” the story of two families, each haunted by the ghosts of two wars — the Civil War and the Vietnam War — and the dead who gave the last full measure of devotion with their bloodshed.

“It is those I killed who are truly damned by God” thunders the alcoholic William Ruffin (ably played by Mark A. Rhea, Keegan’s founder and producing artistic director), author of the cold-blooded murder that happened in Nelson County, in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley in 1907, an incident discovered by Hamner Theater co-artistic director and playwright Coe in what he calls “a murder motivated by honor.”

The scene is set in the same house, with two troubled families in two places in time, 1907 and 2007. When past and present collide, something must give. And in each case, the smoking gun is murder, one committed by an 11-year-old boy when begged to pull the trigger by his father, damaged goods from Vietnam where he had earned, at great cost, a Silver Star. Another shadow falls with the gunfire in 1907, when Ruffin decides he must kill the man who deflowered his daughter and swears that “I’m a hero in the eyes of all true Southerners.” He tells his daughter, “I’ve taken my stand,” and later, “I love the South even though it exists no more!”

Michael Innocenti stars in a stand-out role as high school history teacher Tyler McNeill, the boy now grown to manhood yet shadowed still by his complicity in his father’s death. Watch him in his motor-mouth rush of words about the stress he feels, his voice a strangled cry of pain held inside, and attention must be paid when he pesters his wife Kathy, asking, “Didn’t you know that the South is the most violent part of the country?” As always, Anton Chekhov was right to say that when a gun is seen on stage it will surely be fired before the last act ends. The fear shown by his pregnant wife, in a riveting portrayal by Shannon Listol, is palpable as her voice shakes and her body quakes in abject terror.

Also closing this weekend, unless there’s a last minute rescue in the Warehouse Theater schedule that permits an extended run for two more weeks, is another play by a playwright from this region, D.C. resident Evan Crump, whose two-act drama “Genesis” about a mental patient who believes himself to be a fallen angel won the 2010 Capital Fringe Festival award for Best Drama. Retooled since last summer by Crump and especially by director John C. Bailey, a gay actor who is literary curator for D.C.’s Ganymede GLBT Arts Company, this play, which is a meditation on “the human condition,” astounds with its passion and crackles with electricity from mystery-shrouded start to ambiguous finish.

Actor Derek Jones, with glistening bald pate and his sinewy sleek ebony physique much on display, for he is shirtless much of the time, inhabits the role of the eponymous “Genesis” like he was alive in the role, not acting it. As his performance unspools, inside an asylum for the criminally insane, where he has been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic (his doctor calls it “some form of delusional psychosis”), his beautifully dangerous mind always seem rational and his story becomes increasingly credible of being literally a fallen angel. But the question of whether he is sane or insane, convict or saint, human or angel, is never fully answered.

Worth a trip out to Reston’s Community Center Stage Theater in Fairfax County is a play about the “gay gene” (assuming one is ever located in the human genome) and the ethical dilemma of whether parents might abort such a child as eugenic prophylaxis. Written by gay playwright Jonathan Tolins and helmed by gay director Andrew J.M. Regiec, “The Twilight of the Golds” tests the limits of love and acceptance in a drama that ran briefly on Broadway in 1993. Then, the actress Jennifer Grey (best known for playing Frances “Baby” Houseman in the 1987 hit film “Dirty Dancing”) played Suzanne (in Reston the role is played by Jennifer Cambert) who is pregnant and whose husband, a genetic researcher, discovers irregularities in the unborn child’s genetic makeup. Though completely healthy, the baby will likely be born gay, like Suzanne’s younger brother David, an opera set designer.

David (played in the Reston production by Andy Izquierdo) appears to have it all: a loving partner, a supportive family, but now he is drawn into the family debate over the fate of the child. Harvard graduate Tolins, a former writer and co-producer of “Queer as Folk” during its first season on Showtime in 2001 and also an actor who played the gay quarterback in the 2003 film “Totally Sexy Loser,” adapted “Twilight of the Golds” for a Showtime movie in 1997, featuring actors Brendan Fraser as David and Jennifer Beals (of “Flashdance” fame) as Suzanne. It was nominated for a GLAAD media award for outstanding made-for-TV movie that year.

Tolins, who has written for Bette Midler’s road-show tours and her current Las Vegas extravaganza, “The Showgirl Must Go On,” also spent time for two years writing for the Academy Awards show and the 2003 Tony Awards program. He now lives in Connecticut with his husband Robert Cary and their two children. His newest play “Glad Tidings,” is nominated for a GLAAD media award for outstanding New York City play, to be announced March 19.

Finally, there’s “Return to Haifa,” from Israel’s premier flagship theater company, Cameri Theater, now resident through this Sunday only at Theater J, at the D.C. Jewish Community Center’s Goldman Theater. The play, adapted by an Israeli Jew, Boaz Gaon, from the short novella by Palestinian Arab writer Ghassan Kanafani, brings to life the heart-rending saga of two couples — one Palestinian and the other Jewish-Israeli — who must face complex questions of loss and identity when the Palestinian couple returns to the home they fled in 1948 to learn the fate of the baby son they left behind. Now a soldier in the Israeli army, Dov meets his birth parents who had named him Khaldun, as he clings to his mother, a Holocaust survivor who raised him from infancy.

The play — performed in Hebrew and Arabic, with English surtitles — is a meditation on trauma and how to move beyond such wounds. Kanafani himself, assassinated in a 1972 car-bomb, probably by the israeli Mossad, was a spokesman for the militant Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, viewed by Israel and Western governments at the time as a terrorist group. Yet in his novella, he acknowledged that Jews in Israel had also suffered, not just Arabs, and his empathy for such suffering marked his work as an unusual document to help build bridges. But even so, in Israel, most theater companies turned down the chance to produce “Return to Haifa” until the Cameri Theater stepped forward, and the production itself was dogged by protestors from Israel’s anti-Arab far-right.

The play is gripping for its look into the heart of anger and the soul of reconciliation. You will not soon forget the feelings it can stir. But Theater J has sought ways to go beyond these feelings, however, with a companion series of other plays and discussions it calls “Voices from a Changing Middle East: Portraits of Home,” including on Sunday night the play by Ben Brown, “The Promise,” set in London in 1917 when the future president of Israel, Chaim Weitzman maneuvered with British notables to support the right of Jews to return to a Zionist Israel. For more information on this series, see theaterj.org.

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Trans performer, juggler premiering one-woman show

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Lucy Eden stars in ‘Circus of the Self’ at Spooky Action Theater.  (Photo courtesy of Spooky Action Theater)  

Circus of the Self
May 29-June 6
Spooky Action Theater
1810 16th St., N.W.
Pay-What-You-Can: May 2
All other performances: $35
Spookyaction.org

For Lucy Eden, tricks have proved a way into theater.

The Oakland, Calif.-based trans performer and juggler is premiering her one-woman show “Circus of the Self” at Spooky Action Theater in conjunction with WorldPride. 

Directed by Spooky Action’s artistic director Elizabeth Dinkova, the autobiographical busking show is a unique blend of circus and serious storytelling.   

Juggler first met director several years ago in Atlanta. Eden explains, “She was working at a theater down the street from the juggling club where I spent a lot of time. She needed people for a street fair. I agreed. Another collaboration soon followed.” 

Previously, Eden had worked mostly as a roaming performer at Atlanta corporate events and street style pre-game shows for the Braves: “Those environments were a good way to work on material, to learn what tricks make people stop their talking and turn their attention to me,” she says.

Now based in Oakland, Calif., Eden, 40, has created a 77-minute-long one-woman show infused with burlesque, expert juggling, and a personal, sometimes difficult, story.  

While she hesitates to say it’s the obligation of all trans people to tell their stories, she says, “In these times, if you get the opportunity, I believe you ought to take it.” 

Recently, she took a break from preparations, to talk life and showbiz.

BLADE: How exactly did you learn circus tricks? 

EDEN: I’m autodidactic. I taught myself to juggle in the last semester of college. Things had gone wrong and I was looking for distraction. So, when I found a “three ball learn to juggle” kit, I never looked back. That lead to advanced juggling, unicycling, and balancing objects on my face. 

Things began to look up. Today, I try to resist everything in my life going back to circus tricks, it almost always does. 

BLADE: It sounds almost preordained. 

EDEN: For sure. It changed everything. Circus skills force you to face your own failure. When you drop a ball, you can’t convince yourself or the audience that it didn’t happen. Performing, like life, forces you to develop capacities to deal with internal and external failures. 

It teaches us not take ourselves, societal rules, or the idea of what’s success too seriously. 

BLADE: Juggling at a cocktail party to baring your past before a rapt audience must be quite a stretch.

EDEN: It is, but rather than making a dramatic leap, I leveraged the fun and draw of circus to engage people in a more difficult conversation. 

BLADE: Spooky Action’s website warns about “frank discussions of transphobia and mental health.” 

EDEN: Well yeah, I grew up in rural Georgia in the 1990s. You can only imagine. Trans is integral to my identity, and a hot button term right now. I think everyone sees and hears a lot of things about trans people that don’t in fact come from actual trans people. 

A big part of why I wrote this show and brought it to D.C. is because I really want audiences to have as intimate and revealing look at me as a trans persona as I can give them. I think it’s only through knowing that we can get beyond all the noise, misinformation, and fear mongering.  

BLADE: Lately I hear a lot of artists bandying about the term “queer joy.” Woolly’s website uses the term in describing aspects of your show. What does it mean to you?

EDEN: It’s an important thingfor us all to be focused on right now, but we’re in a place where joy is hard to access. So, to me, it’s complex; it’s an important yet nuanced pursuit. 

BLADE: As a part of the vast and promising WorldPride (through June 8) entertainment lineup, what makes your show stand out?

EDEN: It’s fun. I wrote “Circus of the Self” with a queer audience in mind. I spend a lot of time and creative energy performing for a general audience. I want this to be different. As far as I know, there’s nothing quite like my show out there. 

There are a lot of shows that are a combination of storytelling and circus parts but they tend to be surface level entertainment. I think of this as more standup with circus layered on; it’s modeled after queer comedians like Hannah Gadsby and Tig Notaro whose work is driven more by personality than jokes. 

I have tried to write a show for a queer audience. It has all the things I need to see for myself but never have.

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Mike Millan prepares to co-host Helen Hayes Awards

Accomplished actor has background in standup and improv

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Mike Millan is co-host of the upcoming Helen Hayes Awards. (Photo courtesy of Signature Theatre)

2025 Helen Hayes Awards
May 19
For tickets go to theatrewashington.org

It helps to have “an amalgamation of tricks, some more useful than others,” to host the Helen Hayes Awards. With a background in standup and improv and experience hosting children’s dance competitions and basement comedy clubs, out actor Mike Millan fits the ticket.  

And if he has any misgivings, Millan isn’t showing them. He’s mostly looking forward to co-hosting with Felicia Curry, a Helen Hayes Award-winning local actor who’s successfully hosted the event more than once. 

Based in both L.A. and New York, Millan is an accomplished actor whose connection to the DMV involves two productions at Arlington’s Signature Theatre, “Which Way to the Stage” (2022) and Sondheim’s zany romp “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” (2024). 

This year, “Forum” has nabbed seven Helen Hayes nominations including Outstanding Ensemble in a Musical, Hayes, and Outstanding Lead Performer in a Musical, Hayes, for Erin Weaver who plays the central character Pseudolus, a cunning slave usually played by a man. 

While Millan hasn’t been singled out for his memorable turn as Hysterium, a nervous gay slave in “Forum,” he enjoyed the part, and teasingly adds, “If they don’t nominate you, they will make you work for the event, so here we are.”

Both he and Curry will have their moments to shine: “It’s not my Netflix special; it’s not all about me. Granted that’s a twist for me, but I’ll do my best to share the spotlight” he promises. 

The 41st Helen Hayes Awards celebration will be held on Monday, May 19, at The Anthem on the District Wharf in D.C. Named for Helen Hayes, the legendary first lady of Broadway, the lengthy program is comprised of an awards presentation, a leisurely intermission, all followed by an after-party with dancing. 

Recognizing work from 165 eligible productions presented in the 2024 calendar year, nominations were made in 41 categories and grouped in “Helen” or “Hayes” cohorts, depending on the number of Equity members involved in the production with Hayes counting more. 

The nods are the result of 51 carefully vetted judges considering 2,188 individual pieces of work, such as design, direction, choreography, performances, and more. Productions under consideration in 2024 included 57 musicals, 108 plays, and 37 world premieres.

Out sound designer Madeline ‘Mo’ Oslejsek is up for Outstanding Sound Design, Helen, for Flying V Theatre’s production of Natsu Onoda Power’s “Astro Boy and the God of Comics,” a retro-sci-fi piece. Oslejsek, 29, brings queerness to her work, both professionally and personally.

She describes “Astro Boy,” as a multimedia love letter: “We wanted it to be nostalgic, cartoonish when it was meant to be, and reality too.” 

Based in Baltimore, Oslesjek who identifies alternately as queer and lesbian, says “my work is deeply tied to being queer. The reason I describe myself as a queer multidisciplinary artist is because I think it’s important for that word to be used and heartily embraced. 

“I came out at 21 just before immersing myself in the study of sound design,” she says. “A big part of that allowed me to be serious about the work that I do. Also, part of coming out was to be unabashedly ambitious and unafraid to ask for what I want when it comes to art. 

Director, playwright, and actor Nick Olcott is no stranger to the Helen Hayes Awards. Currently celebrating his 45th year in Washington theater, Olcott has received multiple Helen Hayes Awards nominations, and received the Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding New Play; he’s also directed the ceremony several times. 

This year he’s nominated for Outstanding Director for a Play, Helen, for 1st Stage’s production of “The Nance,” Douglas Carter Beane’s story of burlesque performers during the 1930s. 

“It’s funny the way things have changed, says Olcott, who’s gay. “It used to be The Washington Post would review something and you knew whether it was a hit or not. Well, the Post never came to ‘The Nance’ so I never knew if the show generated any interest. Naturally, I was staggered to learn that we received 11 nominations including nods for Outstanding Ensemble, Helen, Outstanding Production – Play, Helen, and Outstanding Lead Performer in a Play, Helen, for out actor Michael Russotto as Chauncey, the camp stock character.”  

Olcott and Russotto go back to 1983 when both acted in a production of Agatha Christie’s “Mouse Trap” at Petrucci’s Dinner Theatre in Laurel, Md., and have worked together on and off ever since.

Four years in the making, “The Nance” was slated to open in May 2020, but the pandemic shut it down. Rather heroically, 1st Stage’s artistic doctor Alex Levy stuck with the production along with most of the cast and design team.

“In 2020, questions of gender and sexuality weren’t looming as heavily on the American political scene,” says Olcott, “but by the time we brought the play back those topics had become increasingly important. That’s something that rarely happens.

“The characters at the burlesque house were a family, bonded together to stand up to the outside world. It’s a fun milieu and slice of history that not many of us know about, and didn’t realize how relevant it would become.” 

Other queer Helen Hayes nominees include Jon Hudson Odom for Outstanding Lead Performer in a Play, Hayes, in Folger Theatre’s “Metamorphoses.” And for Outstanding Lead Performer in a Musical, Hayes, are Johnny Link in Signature’s “Private Jones” and Brandon Uranowitz in “tick, tick… BOOM!” at the Kennedy Center. Beanie Feldstein is up for Outstanding Supporting Performer in a Musical, Hayes, in “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” also at the Kennedy Center. 

A full list of award recipients will be available at theatrewashington.org on Tuesday, May 20.

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A trip ‘through media, memory to examine cultural imperialism’

Ashil Lee on Woolly’s ‘Akira Kurosawa Explains His Movies and Yogurt’

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Ashil Lee as Kurosawa in ‘Akira Kurosawa Explains His
Movies and Yogurt (with live and active cultures!)’ (Photo courtesy Gisela Estrada Photography)

‘Akira Kurosawa Explains His Movies and Yogurt (with live & active cultures!)’
Through June 1
Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company
641 D St., N.W.
Tickets start at $55
Woollymammoth.net

New York City-based artist Ashil Lee, 31, acts and directs. When you enter their name in a search engine, you’re first likely to find “Korean American trans nonbinary child of immigrants.”

Currently they’re playing in Woolly Mammoth Theatre’s world premiere production of Julia Izumi’s “Akira Kurosawa Explains His Movies and Yogurt (with live & active cultures!),” a trip “through media and memory to examine cultural imperialism, ‘healthy’ consumption, and why we make art.”

The play isn’t exactly a biopic of innovative Japanese filmmaker Kurosawa (1910-1998), says Lee.  

“It’s more of a jumping off point for our own emotional journeys, which is parallel to how he’s inspired other filmmakers,” they continue. “While you may not have seen his ground-breaking samurai films, you’ve undoubtedly seen lots of movies and TV directly inspired by his work.” 

Recently, I called Lee at their temporary Woolly-provided Penn Quarter digs just a block from the theater. Smart and warmly engaging, they were enthusiastic to share what brings them to D.C. 

WASHINGTON BLADE: How did you find your way into this interestingly titled play?

ASHIL LEE: My part, Actor Two, was originally written for a female actor. When playwright and cast member Julia [Izumi] asked me if I was open to auditioning for the role, I agreed and subsequently booked the part. 

Julia and I know each other from working in New York [“The Nosebleed” at The Lincoln Center Theatre] where she was associate director and an understudy, and I was an actor. She learned the part, but never went on stage, so our experience was limited to the rehearsal room 

Now I get to act with Julia with people watching.

BLADE: Actor Two sounds pretty wide open. 

LEE: And that’s what so great about it. A name like Actor Two that means you’re going to play a lot of different roles which is true in this case. More specifically, I play Stage Hand, myself, and an older version of Kurosawa. 

BLADE: You play the iconic filmmaker’s filmmaker? 

LEE: All of the cast play Kurosawa at different stages in his life. Similar to varied cultural strains of yogurt, we call them the different strains of Kurosawa.

The play includes other characters too: Heigo, Kurosawa’s older brother and childhood influence: and a famous fetishizer who proves a problematic guest, someone we love to hate.

BLADE: Are you a Kurosawa fan? 

LEE: Actually, I’ve never seen a Kurosawa film. And since one of my characters hasn’t seen any of his work either, I thought I’d hold off seeing any. This is a play that’s equally appealing to both those who know a lot about Kurasawa and those who’ve never heard of him. 

BLADE: Changing gears. Were your parents disappointed that you didn’t take a conventional career path?

LEE: I’m fortunate that my mother is an artist. She has seen the value of artistry and has encouraged me to go into the arts. To some extent, I think she lives vicariously through the way I do art as a job. Still, my parents haven’t entirely shaken that immigrant success driven mentality. They believe “you can be an artist but you have to be the best.” Whatever the best means. 

BLADE: And how are they with your gender? 

LEE: My parents know that I’m nonbinary and they’ve been understanding, however I haven’t talked much about the transmasc part of it; I’m letting them take their time on that. 

BLADE: As a kid in Lafayette, Kentucky, you played bugs (Glow-Worm, Cricket, and Charlotte). What do you like playing now? 

 LEE: I especially like parts where you play yourself and get to put on different characters. If I could only be in that kind of play for the rest of my life, I’d be more than satisfied. That’s my jam.

As a trans performer it’s such a gift. I’m able to show up completely as myself and then step into different characters without quieting myself. It feels like a gift. I think about it in relation to my gender but also my race. 

BLADE: You’re current gig in a sentence?

LEE: It’s awonderful mishmash, a theatrical playground that takes you to a lot of different places in a short amount of time and leaves you thinking about your own life. 

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