Arts & Entertainment
Pots and plans
Local artist has exhibit at MOVA
Sabri Ben-Achour
Ceramic Artist
‘Canvas and Clay: A Summer Art Exhibition’
Through Aug. 15
MOVA Lounge
12 14th Street, NW
Sabri Ben-Achour at MOVA with his current exhibition. (Blade photo by Michael Key)
Sabri Ben-Achour was 12 when he took his first pottery lesson. His mother signed him up for a class at a local studio in Columbia, Mo., where his family lived at the time. With little interruption, he has been creating works from clay ever since.
“I’ve always liked the tactile aspect of potting and ceramics,” Ben-Achour says. “The way you have to listen to the clay through your fingers and manipulate it and how it circuits through mind, body and imagination. It’s like music.”
Ben-Achour’s father is Tunisian. His mother is from New Zealand. He was born in France and grew up in Tunisia and Missouri before moving to suburban Northern Virginia in his teens. And though he sometimes decorates a bowl or vase with Arabic calligraphy, he seldom plumbs his background for inspiration. His chosen aesthetic is Asian.
Like traditional Japanese ceramists, Ben-Achour strives to create mostly functional pottery in earth tones and earth textures with a sort of calculated simplicity, aiming to capture the organic nature of the clay and other materials. His quietly beautiful works include pod and shell-shaped stoneware pieces; rounded Raku (a type of low-fire pottery) slate-gray vases with crackled surfaces and wonderfully unusual hexagonal, metal-colored honeycomb bowls. He also makes teapots.
A selection of Ben-Achour’s work can be seen at MOVA Lounge where he and fellow D.C.-based artist Kreg D. Kelly are the subjects of a joint exhibition called “Canvas and Clay” through mid-August. Both artists are gay.
“I’ve shown in galleries,” Ben-Achour says, “but showing at MOVA is more about my friends seeing my work. It’s lets them know what I’ve been up to.”
“If I’m not showing a piece, it’s at home and I’m using it,” he says. “Ever since my first lesson, it’s been drilled into me that pottery must have a function. There is Japanese pottery dating back 12,000 years and it always had a use. No matter how non-functional or purely decorative something I’ve made may appear to be, I can always find a use for it.”
One of Ben-Achour’s pieces. (Blade photo by Michael Key)
Ben-Achour credits much of his artistic development to his mentor Jill Hinckley, a well-known Asian-influenced ceramicist and proprietor of Hinckley Pottery in Adams Morgan. Over the years, Ben-Achour has progressed from Hinckley student to instructor. He describes his Wednesday evening classes as relaxing:
“We drink wine, engage in casual conversation and make things. Pottery is great for everyone as long as you don’t have high expectations immediately. Everyone is bad at first. And for me, it’s great — teaching makes you a better potter.”
When not making pots, Sabri (who received his master’s in foreign service from Georgetown University in 2006) works as a reporter for WAMU 88.5- American University Radio. He freelances for National Public Radio and when he can, takes on reporting projects in places like Haiti and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
In what little free time remains, he also paints and makes music on his computer. And while his paintings hang on his parents’ home in Great Falls, he says he’d never dare let anyone hear his music.
Looking ahead, Ben-Achour wants to explore geographic shapes and new organic textures. His goal is to incorporate lights and living growths into his ceramic work — plants, mosses, ocean life — and glaze them with the ocean. “Other people have done similar things,” he says, “but maybe not exactly the same as what I’ve got in mind.”
Photos
PHOTOS: Capital Stonewall Democrats 50th anniversary
D.C. LGBTQ political group celebrates milestone at Pepco Edison Place Gallery
The Capital Stonewall Democrats held a 50th anniversary celebration at Pepco Edison Place Gallery on Friday. Rayceen Pendarvis served as the emcee.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
Theater
‘Inherit the Wind’ isn’t about science vs. religion, but the right to think
Holly Twyford on new role and importance of listening to different opinions
‘Inherit the Wind’
Through April 5
Arena Stage
1101 Sixth St., S.W.
Tickets start at $73
Arenastage.org
When “Inherit the Wind” premiered on Broadway in 1955 with a cast of 50, its fictional setting of Hillsboro, an obscure country town described as the buckle on the Bible Belt, was filled with townspeople. And now at Arena Stage, director Ryan Guzzo Purcell has somehow crowded Arena’s large Fichandler space with just 10 actors, five principals and a delightful ensemble of five playing multiple roles.
Inspired by the real-life Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee’s fictionalized work pits intellectual freedom against McCarthyism via the imagined trial of Bertram Cates (Noah Plomgren), a Tennessee educator charged with teaching evolution. Drawn into the fracas are big shot lawyers, defense attorney Henry Drummond (Billy Eugene Jones), and conservative prosecutor, Matthew Harrison Brady (Dakin Matthew). On hand to cover the closely watched story is wisecracking city slicker and Baltimore reporter E.K. Horneck (played by nonbinary actor Alyssa Keegan).
Out actor Holly Twyford, a four-time Helen Hayes Award winner who has appeared in more than 80 Washington area plays, is part of the ensemble. In jeans and boots, she memorably plays Meeker, the bailiff at the Hillsboro courthouse and the jailer responsible for holding Cates in the days leading to his trial.
Twyford also plays Sillers, a slack jawed earnest employee at the local feed store who’s called to serve on the jury. And more importantly she plays Brady’s quietly strong wife Sarah whom he affectionately calls “Mother.”
When Twyford makes her memorable first entrance as Meeker, she’s wiping shaving cream from her face with a hand towel. With shades of Mayberry R.F.D., the jail is run casually. Meeker says Cates isn’t the criminal type, and he’s not.
“There’s a joke among actors,” says Twyford. “When an actor gets his shoes, they know who their character is. And it’s sort of true. When you put on boots, heels, or flip flops, there’s a different feeling, and you walk differently.”
Similarly, shares Twyford, it goes for clothes too: “When Mother slips a pink coat dress over her cowboy boots, dons a little hat and ties her scarf, or Meeker puts on his work shirt, I know where I am. And all of that is thanks to a remarkable wardrobe crew.
“Additionally, some of the ensemble characters are played broadly which is helpful to the actors and super identifying for the audience too.”
During intermission, an audience member loudly described the production as “a proper play” filled with beautifully written passages. And it’s true. Twyford agrees, adding “That’s all true, and it’s also been was fun for us to be a part of the Arena legacy as well. Arena took ‘Inherit the Wind’ to the Soviet Union in the early ‘70s when the respective governments did a cultural exchange. At the time, the iron curtain was very much in place, and they traveled with a play about a man with his own thoughts.”
When the ensemble was cast, actors didn’t know which tracts exactly they were going to play. “What came together was a cast, diverse in different ways. Some directors, including myself when I direct, are interested in assembling a cast that’s a good group. No time for egos. It’s more about who will make the best group to help me tell this story.”
At one point during rehearsal, ensemble members began to help one another with minor onstage costume changes, like jackets and hats: “We just started doing it and Ryan [Guzzo Purcell] picked up on it, saying things really began to come alive when we helped each other, so we went with that.”
“For me, it was reminiscent of ‘The Laramie Project’ [Ford’s Theatre in 2013] when we played five different parts and we’d help each other with a vest or jacket in a similar way. It worked so well then too,” says Twyford.
“Inherit the Wind” isn’t about science versus religion. It’s about the right to think, playwright Jerome Lawrrence has been quoted as saying. And it’s a quote that makes the play that much more relevant today.
Twford remembers a chat in a hair salon: “I was getting my hair cut and the woman next to me shared that she was tired of message plays. Understandably there are theater makers who believe that message plays are the point, while others think it’s all about entertainment. I feel like ‘Inherit the Wind’ sits in a nice place in the middle.”
She adds “the work is a creative way of showing different opinions and that, I think, is what we should be paying attention to right now. Clearly, it’s not right or wrong to express what you think.”
Out & About
‘How We Survived’ panel set for March 25
‘Living History’ discussion to be held at Spark Social
Friends of Dorothy Cafe will host “Part One, Living History: How We Survived,” will take place on Wednesday, March 25 at 7:30 p.m. at Spark Social House.
This event will be moderated by Abby Stuckrath, host of the “Queering the District” podcast. Panelists include: Earline Budd, activist, trans rights advocate; TJ Flavell of Go Gay DC; DC LGBTQ+ Center Board Member David Bissette; and Alexa Rodriguez, founder and executive director, Trans-Latinx DMV.
This event is part of a four-part storytelling series called “Living History,” which centers LGBTQ elders, activists, artists, and icons sharing their lived experiences and reflections with younger generations. The conversations explore themes like resilience, community organizing, chosen family, and the lessons earlier generations hope today’s LGBTQ+ and ally communities will carry forward.
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