Theater
Studio’s Muse
New artistic director first to succeed founder Zinoman
David Muse, the new artistic director of the Studio Theatre. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
He has been labeled a “wunderkind,” but no one would mistake this young man who has taken the helm of the Studio Theatre as a “wild child,” a Rimbaud on the rampage, scary, impudent, a feral genius in a state of artistic nature.
For with David Muse, who became at age 36 Studio’s second artistic director when founder Joy Zinoman passed him the reins last September, the clearest impression is of a young man with artistic time and motion studies on his mind, with a bookkeeper’s talent for cutting costs or adding a new line to the budget — either way, it’s the temperament of a manager.
But that would be the wrong impression also.
The best explanation about what makes David Muse run — as an artist himself, Yale-educated twice over, as well as the new manager of Studio Theatre — may come from Zinoman, who says, “David’s story is the classic, American story of a smart, talented kid from a small town who finds his passion, pursues it with dedication and intensity, and manages to win friends and admirers by virtue of his charm, sensitivity and intelligence.”
She has also said of the preternaturally calm and highly cerebral Muse, a vegan, a cyclist and a fitness buff, that “he’s very seductive and charming,” and Susan Butler, Studio’s board chairman, told the Washington Post that “I hope he likes to raise money.” That’s a handy charm in that rarefied realm of courting wealthy patrons, coaxing those birds from their tall trees and out of their mansions, just another talent for Muse to demonstrate.
Muse must use persuasion to find new patrons just as he has also found old patrons, key sponsors like Zinoman of course but also Michael Kahn at the Shakespeare Theatre Company who plucked Muse from New York City to return to Washington in 2004 to become his artistic aide-de-camp. His talent is in having talent and in inspiring others more senior also with talent to appreciate and invest in his own talent. Which is sizable.
Consider that he has amassed a glittering resume as a director — including staging an all-male version of “Romeo and Juliet” — since arriving in D.C. in 1996 to teach calculus to kids at Eastern High School, when he was soon drawn to theater at Studio’s own acting conservatory, where first he was a student and then began to dabble part-time as a “juvenile,” the theatrical term for a male newcomer, enchanted by the stage, focusing on acting at the beginning, one time even dressing as an ostrich in size-13 high heels. He later tackled directing also.
Today he is filling even bigger shoes, succeeding the trail-blazing Zinoman in command of about 60 staff in four stages seating 900 in three buildings with about 60,000 square feet set in the heart of D.C.’s Logan Circle neighborhood, anchoring in a former auto showroom at 14th and P Streets. With its more than $5 million annual budget, Studio is a major force on the local theater scene, mounting major productions every year and with its new and impressive 2011-2012 season just announced. And of course he is also in charge, with Joy Zinoman still as its lead faculty member, of the Studio Theatre Acting Company, where his serious career in theater began.
Born in Appleton, Wis., he spent most of his childhood in Fulton, Mo., a small town (11,000). In high school he threw himself into theater and graduated valedictorian. In 1992 he left Fulton, the first student from his high school to attend an Ivy League school, for New Haven and Yale University where he studied ethics, politics and economics. Upon graduation, Muse joined Teach for America and headed for D.C., teaching math and also leading Outward Bound wilderness programs for troubled youths during the summer. But he also found his way to Studio’s acting school, to hone his passion for drama, and in 2000 he returned to Yale, this time to its drama school, to earn a master’s in directing.
Next he moved to New York City, but then he soon came back to D.C. when summoned by Kahn to become his second in command as associate artistic director at the Shakespeare Theatre Company, where he helped grow the company from its single theater at the Lansburgh with the addition of the new Harman Hall. He also was primary liaison for all the talent. He also began to direct plays at Studio’s smaller and edgier 2nd Stage.
The next year, 2006, also at Studio, he directed Bryony Lavery’s critically lauded “Frozen.” Then, last year, while also directing an electrifying version of Neil LaBute’s “Reasons To Be Pretty” there, he also threw his hat into the ring to replace Zinoman. After a scrupulous nationwide search lasting a year, he pulled that rabbit from out of that hat, emerging from half a dozen finalists to step into her shoes there officially last September.
Asked about his artistic vision, he demures at first, saying that he finds it “challenging to say the least” to define such an overview “when the work here is so purposefully eclectic, with so broad a range of theatrical offerings.” He also offers what he calls “another disclaimer” to having any “broad vision,” in that “you need to leave room,” he insists, for the thespian Holy Spirit, “for what feels right, this year, or at any other moment.”
Besides, Muse says, Studio “is not a place that needed someone to come in, to save or reinvent it.” But that said, he has even so his own vision of course, which is why in addition to his managerial mindset he was chosen for this job.
“The challenge,” he says, is “to balance all the historic strengths of this place with some new energy, and that’s what I aim to do.”
Those strengths, he says, include that it stages what he rightly boasts are “plays of real literary and theatrical merit.” He intends, he says, to build on that Studio strong deck of cards by pulling out some new ones — by “going in a little less familiar direction,” in part by bringing in more international productions but especially by “working with living writers, and working with them on the creation of new work,” not generally seen as a strong card at Studio in the past.
“We want to welcome these writers into the building as active collaborators,” he says, pointing to two world premieres slated for Studio in its just-announced 2011-2012 season.
This year, meanwhile, has included a season of superb performances in productions like the gay-themed “Marcus; or the Science of Sweet” (though Muse is straight and has a girlfriend), a season that has been the result of his collaboration with Zinoman, which will also later feature Anna K. Jacob’s “Pop!” a new musical about Andy Warhol. Muses also draws attention to “The History of Kisses,” set for this summer as an example of collaboration with its author, David Cale, someone Muse calls “an electrifying solo performer, returning to D.C. after a long history here, but having been away for about 10 years.”
But it is with next year’s slate of 11 offerings that Muse lets his own muse come to the fore. First out of the gate, Sept. 7-Oct. 16, comes a new play in its U.S. premiere, directed by Muse, “The Habit of Art,” by Alan Bennett, the English author of “The History Boys,” whose career began decades ago as a member of the Oxford-Cambridge troupe of performers, “Beyond The Fringe.”
Starring the great D.C. actor Ted van Griethuysen as the gay poet W.H. Auden, it is set deep in the bowels of London’s National Theatre as rehearsals for a new play go on and the famed composer Benjamin Britten, also gay, and Auden’s former lover, now troubled at work on a new opera, seeks out the poet after a 25-year separation, to collaborate again, this time artistically. Between visits by Auden’s rent-boy and a biographer — briefly mistaken for the rent-boy — these two aging artists must wrestle with long-buried desire and current jealousy and seek to understand all the reasons their erstwhile friendship fell apart.
Called both wistful and “filthily funny,” the play is what Muse calls “an imaginary meeting” between the two great artists, when after a quarter century Auden comes to talk about collaborating again, but the rent-boy keeps returning” as the play progresses.
David Muse (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Looking to the new season, Muse also points to two world premieres — one in the Lab Series Sept. 28-Oct. 16 — “Lungs,” by Duncan Macmillan,” the chamber drama of a couple trying to face their future in a time of global anxiety over terrorism and erratic weather. The other world premiere comes next February and March in Studio’s 2nd Stage, in a new play, “Astro Boy and the God of Comics,” by Georgetown University theater professor Natsu Onoda Power, who also directs.
Muse says she has been invited to come to Studio “to conceive of this new play” there. It takes on Japanese Manga in a highly visual performance that he calls “a retro and sci-fi, multi-media extravaganza” about the 1960s animation series “Astro Boy,” a crime-fighting boy robot, and the life of his creator Osamu Tezuka.
Another play, set for November-December, is written and performed by former “Daily Show” correspondent Lauren Weedman, who has been called “a female Robin Williams.” This one-woman show, “Bust” is based on her experiences working as a volunteer advocate in a Southern California prison for women. In her solo performance she plays dozens of characters, switching from prostitute to parole officer, addict to editor with what Muse calls “nuance and empathy.”
Other plays will also startle and stir audiences, he predicts, including “The Golden Dragon” by German playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig, in its U.S. premiere in November-December. Called both “poetic” and “brutal,” it is set in the cramped kitchen of an Asian restaurant where four cooks pull the tooth of a Chinese co-worker. His tooth ends up in the Thai soup of a flight attendant, and that’s just the beginning of unexpected linkages connected to the young Chinese man sans tooth. Muse calls it “fierce and vicious” but also “a kaleidoscopic look at a globalized world,” where five actors “cross age, race and gender” to play 15 characters showing “how intertwined our lives really are.”
Also certain to draw attention, Muse predicts, will be another of the 2nd Stage productions, coming in the summer of 2012, “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson,” by Alex Timbers, with music and lyrics by Michael Friedman.
“American history has never been this sexy,” Muse says, “in this rowdy and irreverent musical,” a scathing satire that re-imagines President Andrew “Old Hickory” Jackson as a rock star.
Theater
Out actor Kevin Cahoon on starring role in ‘Chez Joey’
Arena production adapted from Broadway classic ‘Pal Joey’
‘Chez Joey’
Through March 15
Arena Stage
1101 Sixth St., S.W.
Tickets start at $93
Arenastage.org
As Melvin Snyder in the new musical “Chez Joey,” out actor Kevin Cahoon plays a showbiz society columnist who goes by the name Mrs. Knickerbocker. He functions as a sort of liaison between café society and Chicago’s Black jazz scene circa 1940s. It’s a fun part replete with varied insights, music, and dance.
“Chez Joey” is adapted from the Broadway classic “Pal Joey” by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. It’s inspired by John O’Hara’s stories based on the exploits of a small-time nightclub singer published in The New Yorker.
A warm and humorous man, Cahoon loves his work. At just six, he began his career as a rodeo clown in Houston. He won the Star Search teen division at 13 singing songs like “Some People” from “Gypsy.” He studied theater at New York University and soon after graduating set to work playing sidekicks and comedic roles.
Over the years, Cahoon has played numerous queer parts in stage productions including “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” “La Cage aux Folles,” “Rocky Horror” as well as Peanut in “Shucked,” and George the keyboardist in “The Wedding Singer,” “a sort of unicorn of its time,” says Cahoon.
Co-directed by Tony Goldwyn and the great Savion Glover, “Chez Joey” is a terrific and fun show filled with loads of talent. Its relevant new book is by Richard Lagravenese.
On a recent Monday off from work, Cahoon shared some thoughts on past and current happenings.
WASHINGTON BLADE: Is there a through line from Kevin, the six-year-old rodeo clown, to who we see now at Arena Stage?
KEVIN CAHOON: Anytime I want to land a joke in a theater piece it goes back to that rodeo clown. It doesn’t matter if it’s Arena’s intimate Kreeger Theatre or the big rodeo at the huge Houston Astrodome.
I was in the middle stadium and there was an announcer — a scene partner really. And we were doing a back and forth in hopes of getting laughs. At that young age I was trying to understand what it takes to get laughs. It’s all about timing. Every line.
BLADE: Originally, your part in “Chez Joey” Melvin was Melba who sings “Zip,” a clever woman reporter’s song. It was sort of a star feature, where they could just pop in a star in the run of “Pal Joey.”
CAHOON: That’s right. And in former versions it was played by Martha Plimpton and before her Elaine Stritch. For “Chez Joey,” we switched gender and storyline.
We attempted to do “Zip” up until two days before we had an audience at Arena. Unexpectedly they cut “Zip” and replaced it with a fun number called “I Like to Recognize the Tune,” a song more connected to the story.
BLADE: Wow. You must be a quick study.
CAHOON: Well, we’re working with a great band.
BLADE: You’ve played a lot of queer parts. Any thoughts on queer representation?
CAHOON: Oh yes, definitely. And I’ve been very lucky that I’ve had the chance to portray these characters and introduce them to the rest of the world. I feel honored.
After originating Edna, the hyena on Broadway in “The Lion King,” I left that to do “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” as standby for John Cameron Mitchell, doing one show a week for him.
Everyone thought I was crazy to leave the biggest musical of our time with a personal contract and getting paid more money that I’d ever made to get $400 a week at the downtown Jane Street Theatre in a dicey neighborhood.
At the time, I really felt like I was with cool kids. I guess I was. And I never regretted it.
BLADE: When you play new parts, do you create new backstories for the role?
CAHOON: Every single time! For Melvin, I suggested a line about chorus boys on Lakeshore Drive.
BLADE: What’s up next for Kevin Cahoon?
CAHOON: I’m about to do the New York Theatre Workshop Gala; I’ve been doing it for nine years in a row. It’s a huge job. I’ll also be producing the “Cats: The Jellicle Ball” opening on Broadway this spring; it’s a queer-centric uptown vogue ball with gay actor André de Shields reprising his role as “Old Deuteronomy.”
BLADE: There’s a huge amount of talent onstage in “Chez Joey.”
CAHOON: There is. I’m sharing a dressing room with Myles Frost who plays Joey. He won accolades for playing Michael Jackson on Broadway. We’ve become great friends. He’s a miracle to watch on stage. And Awa [Sal Secka], a D.C. local, is great. Every night the audience falls head over heels for her. When this show goes to New York, Awa will, no doubt, be a giant star.
BLADE: Do you think “Chez Joey” might be Broadway bound?
CAHOON: I have a good feeling it is. I’ve done shows out of town that have high hopes and pedigree, but don’t necessarily make it. “Chez Joey” is a small production, it’s funny, and audiences seem to love it.
Theater
José Zayas brings ‘The House of Bernarda Alba’ to GALA Hispanic Theatre
Gay Spanish playwright Federico García Lorca wrote masterpiece before 1936 execution
‘The House of Bernarda Alba’
Through March 1
GALA Hispanic Theatre
3333 14th St., N.W.
$27-$52
Galatheatre.org
In Federico García Lorca’s “The House of Bernarda Alba,” now at GALA Hispanic Theatre in Columbia Heights, an impossibly oppressive domestic situation serves, in short, as an allegory for the repressive, patriarchal, and fascist atmosphere of 1930s Spain
The gay playwright completed his final and arguably best work in 1936, just months before he was executed by a right-wing firing squad. “Bernarda Alba” is set in the same year, sometime during a hot summer in rural Andalusia, the heart of “España profunda” (the deep Spain), where traditions are deeply rooted and mores seldom challenged.
At Bernarda’s house, the atmosphere, already stifling, is about to get worse.
On the day of her second husband’s funeral, Bernarda Alba (superbly played by Luz Nicolás), a sixtyish woman accustomed to calling the shots, gathers her five unmarried daughters (ages ranging from 20 to 39) and matter-of-factly explain what’s to happen next.
She says, “Through the eight years of mourning not a breeze shall enter this house. Consider the doors and windows as sealed with bricks. That’s how it was in my father’s house and my grandfather’s. Meanwhile, you can embroider your trousseaux.”
It’s not an altogether sunny plan. While Angustias (María del Mar Rodríguez), Bernarda’s daughter from her first marriage and heiress to a fortune, is betrothed to a much younger catch, Pepe el Romano, who never appears on stage, the remaining four stand little chance of finding suitable matches. Not only are they dowry-less, but no men, eligible or otherwise, are admitted into their mother’s house.
Lorca is a literary hero known for his mastery of both lyrical poetry and visceral drama; still, “Bernarda Alba’s” plotline might suit a telenovela. Despotic mother heads a house of adult daughters. Said daughters are churning with passions and jealousies. When sneaky Martirio (Giselle Gonzáles) steals the photo of Angustias’s fiancé all heck kicks off. Lots of infighting and high drama ensue. There’s even a batty grandmother (Alicia Kaplan) in the wings for bleak comic relief.
At GALA, the modern classic is lovingly staged by José Zayas. The New York-based out director has assembled a committed cast and creative team who’ve manifested an extraordinarily timely 90-minute production performed in Spanish with English subtitles easily ready seen on multiple screens.
In Lorca’s stage directions, he describes the set as an inner room in Bernarda’s house; it’s bright white with thick walls. At GALA, scenic designer Grisele Gonzáles continues the one-color theme with bright red walls and floor and closed doors. There are no props.
In the airless room, women sit on straight back chairs sewing. They think of men, still. Two are fixated on their oldest siter’s hunky betrothed. Only Magdelena (Anna Malavé), the one sister who truly mourns their dead father, has given up on marriage entirely.
The severity of the place is alleviated by men’s distant voices, Koki Lortkipanidze’s original music, movement (stir crazy sisters scratching walls), and even a precisely executed beatdown choreographed by Lorraine Ressegger-Slone.
In a short yet telling scene, Bernarda’s youngest daughter Adela (María Coral) proves she will serve as the rebellion to Bernarda’s dictatorship. Reluctant to mourn, Adela admires her reflection. She has traded her black togs for a seafoam green party dress. It’s a dreamily lit moment (compliments of lighting designer Hailey Laroe.)
But there’s no mistaking who’s in charge. Dressed in unflattering widow weeds, her face locked in a disapproving sneer, Bernarda rules with an iron fist; and despite ramrod posture, she uses a cane (though mostly as a weapon during one of her frequent rages.)
Bernarda’s countenance softens only when sharing a bit of gossip with Poncia, her longtime servant convincingly played by Evelyn Rosario Vega.
Nicolás has appeared in “Bernarda Alba” before, first as daughter Martirio in Madrid, and recently as the mother in an English language production at Carnegie Melon University in Pittsburgh. And now in D.C. where her Bernarda is dictatorial, prone to violence, and scarily pro-patriarchy.
Words and phrases echo throughout Lorca’s play, all likely to signal a tightening oppression: “mourning,” “my house,” “honor,” and finally “silence.”
As a queer artist sympathetic to left wing causes, Lorca knew of what he wrote. He understood the provinces, the dangers of tyranny, and the dimming of democracy. Early in Spain’s Civil War, Lorca was dragged to the the woods and murdered by Franco’s thugs. Presumably buried in a mass grave, his remains have never been found.
Theater
Magic is happening for Round House’s out stage manager
Carrie Edick talks long hours, intricacies of ‘Nothing Up My Sleeve’
‘Nothing Up My Sleeve’
Through March 15
Round House Theatre
4545 East-West Highway
Bethesda, Md. 20814
Tickets start at $50
Roundhousetheatre.org
Magic is happening for out stage manager Carrie Edick.
Working on Round House Theatre’s production of “Nothing Up My Sleeve,” Edick quickly learned the ways of magicians, their tricks, and all about the code of honor among those who are privy to their secrets.
The trick-filled, one-man show starring master illusionist Dendy and staged by celebrated director Aaron Posner, is part exciting magic act and part deeply personal journey. The new work promises “captivating storytelling, audience interaction, jaw-dropping tricks, and mind-bending surprises.”
Early in rehearsals, there was talk of signing a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) for production assistants. It didn’t happen, and it wasn’t necessary, explains Edick, 26. “By not having an NDA, Dendy shows a lot of trust in us, and that makes me want to keep the secrets even more.
“Magic is Dendy’s livelihood. He’s sharing a lot and trusting a lot; in return we do the best we can to support him and a large part of that includes keeping his secrets.”
As a production assistant (think assistant stage manager), Edick strives to make things move as smoothly as possible. While she acknowledges perfection is impossible and theater is about storytelling, her pursuit of exactness involves countless checklists and triple checks, again and again. Six day weeks and long hours are common. Stage managers are the first to arrive and last to leave.
This season has been a lot about learning, adds Edick. With “The Inheritance” at Round House (a 22-week long contract), she learned how to do a show in rep which meant changing from Part One to Part Two very quickly; “In Clay” at Signature Theatre introduced her to pottery; and now with “Nothing Up My Sleeve,” she’s undergoing a crash course in magic.
She compares her career to a never-ending education: “Stage managers possess a broad skillset and that makes us that much more malleable and ready to attack the next project. With some productions it hurts my heart a little bit to let it go, but usually I’m ready for something new.”
For Edick, theater is community. (Growing up in Maryland, she was a shy kid whose parents signed her up for theater classes.) Now that community is the DMV theater scene and she considers Round House her artistic home. It’s where she works in different capacities, and it’s the venue in which she and actor/playwright Olivia Luzquinos chose to be married in 2024.
Edick came out in middle school around the time of her bat mitzvah. It’s also around the same time she began stage managing. Throughout high school she was the resident stage manager for student productions, and also successfully participated in county and statewide stage management competitions which led to a scholarship at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) where she focused on technical theater studies.
Edick has always been clear about what she wants. At an early age she mapped out a theater trajectory. Her first professional gig was “Tuesdays with Morrie” at Theatre J in 2021. She’s worked consistently ever since.
Stage managing pays the bills but her resume also includes directing and intimacy choreography (a creative and technical process for creating physical and emotional intimacy on stage). She names Pulitzer Prize winning lesbian playwright Paula Vogel among her favorite artists, and places intimacy choreographing Vogel’s “How I learned to Drive” high on the artistic bucket list.
“To me that play is heightened art that has to do with a lot of triggering content that can be made very beautiful while being built to make you feel uncomfortable; it’s what I love about theater.”
For now, “Nothing Up My Sleeve” keeps Edick more than busy: “For one magic trick, we have to set up 100 needles.”
Ultimately, she says “For stage managers, the show should stay the same each night. What changes are audiences and the energy they bring.”
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