Arts & Entertainment
Able Cain
Forum managing director enjoys ‘behind-the-scenes’ efforts
Julia Harman Cain says contemporary theater doesn’t have to be didactic. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Julia Harman Cain vividly remembers her first encounter with Forum Theatre. Not long after moving to D.C. in 2007, she attended a performance of the Round House Silver Spring resident company’s production of Stephen Adly Guirgis’ “The Last Days of Judas Iscariot.”
“It was a really, really strong production,” she says. “I spent the last 10 minutes of the play crying. And I was seated in the front row — it was a little awkward.” Cain left the theater determined to get to the know Forum much better.
By the following season, Cain was working as associate producer on the company’s production of “Angels in America,” gay playwright Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning opus about AIDS. And in 2010, Cain (who is gay) was named Forum’s managing director.
As managing director, Cain says, she’s a “behind-the-scenes person.”
She explains: “My job is to help make sure that everything is in place to make the season go. That includes marketing, fundraising and finance. I’m responsible for front of house, which includes everything you experience when you walk in the door. And operations. I call the repairman when the copier breaks.”
Forum founder and Artistic Director Michael Dove says “There’s very little that Julia and I do that isn’t collaboration. It’s much more a Venn diagram with a lot of overlap than two sides of an organization. But beyond her title as managing director, what may surprise people most is that I trust her artistic eye as much as any collaborator. She would make an amazing critic or dramaturg and keenly understands story. In fact, she has even brought several plays to me that we have produced in the past few years.”
While Cain concedes being gay doesn’t have a lot of impact on the daily mechanics of her position, she does view the arts through an LGBT filter. In fact, she has a little method she uses to rate the complexity of LGBT characters in films and plays. Based on the Bechdel litmus test (named for cartoonist Alison Bechdel creator of “Dykes to Watch Out For”) which rates the complexity of female characters on screen, Cain’s gay version asks: Is there an identifiable LGBT character? And does he or she talk with other characters about something other than their sexuality?
“Theater in D.C. scores very well when it comes to plays with layered LGBT characters,” she says. “And Forum in particular has an excellent track record for producing plays with LGBT central characters.”
Growing up in Needham, Mass., (a suburb of Boston), Cain, 27, made her theatrical debut in first grade as a super hero in a 10-minute skit about recycling. She went on to do school shows and community theater. As a Princeton undergrad, she majored in comparative literature and participated in extracurricular theater, mostly behind the scenes. (Cain loves stage managing, but reportedly makes “a really bad costume designer.”)
After graduating, rather than follow her theater-focused friends to New York, Cain moved to D.C. and began a season-long internship at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company where she also worked as an assistant to the company’s artistic director Howard Shalwitz. “Woolly was my introduction to professional theater,” she says. “Being around Howard taught me so much. Over 30 years, he has created a successful company and made a recognizable brand. Although their shows might sometimes be way out and not well known, Woolly’s audiences are willing to take that dive with them.”
“Forum is a big small company and I like that,” says Cain, who lives with her girlfriend in Takoma Park. “Because we’re not too big, it allows us to take risks and not deal with a lot of red tape. At Forum, we like to do shows that are conversation starters, to do plays that deal with social, political and spiritual themes, that are engaged with contemporary life. Most political theater has a reputation for being overly didactic. It doesn’t have to be that way.”
A couple of examples supporting Crain’s claim include Forum’s season opener Kara Lee Corthron’s “Holly Down in Heaven,” the story of a pregnant, born-again Christian teen who seeks solace from her eclectic talking doll collection; and Forum’s upcoming production “9 Circles” by playwright Bill Cain (no relation to Julia) to be staged by Jennifer Nelson. It’s a play based on real events about an American soldier who kills a family while serving in Iraq.
“I’ve always wanted Forum to be a service organization that spoke to a diverse community and to be a gathering place for ideas, discussion, and discourse. Julia brought the ideas and tools to start that process,” Dove says. “Julia transformed Forum from a rag tag group who put on plays into a functioning organization that better serves a community and grows responsibly.”
WorldPride 2025 concluded with the WorldPride Street Festival and Closing Concert held along Pennsylvania Ave., N.W. on Sunday, June 8. Performers on the main stage included Doechii, Khalid, Courtney Act, Parker Matthews, 2AM Ricky, Suzie Toot, MkX and Brooke Eden.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
The 2025 WorldPride Parade was held in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, June 7. Laverne Cox and Renée Rapp were the grand marshals.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key and Robert Rapanut)
Theater
A hilarious ‘Twelfth Night’ at Folger full of ‘elegant kink’
Nonbinary actor Alyssa Keegan stars as Duke Orsino
‘Twelfth Night’
Through June 22
Folger Theatre
201 East Capitol St., S.E.
$20-$84
Folger.edu
Nonbinary actor Alyssa Keegan (they/them)loves tapping into the multitudes within.
Currently Keegan plays the melancholic Duke Orsino in Folger Theatre’s production of Shakespeare’s romantic comedy “Twelfth Night.” Director Mei Ann Teo describes the production as “sexy, hilarious, and devastating” and full of “elegant kink.”
Washington-based, Keegan enjoys a busy and celebrated career. Her vast biography includes Come From Away at Ford’s Theatre; Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Helen Hayes Award, Best Actress) and Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive, both at Round House Theatre; Diana Son’s Stop Kiss directedby Holly Twyford for No Rules Theatre Company; and Contractions at Studio Theatre, to name just a few.
In addition to acting, Keegan works as a polyamory and ethical non-monogamy life and relationship coach, an area of interest that grew out of personal exploration. For them, coaching seems to work hand in hand with acting.
WASHINGTON BLADE: You’re playing the lovesick Orsino in Twelfth Night. How did that come about?
ALYSSA KEEGAN: The director was looking to cast a group of actors with diverse identities; throughout auditions, there were no constraints regarding anyone’s assigned sex at birth. It was really a free for all.
BLADE: What’s your approach to the fetching, cod-piece clad nobleman?
KEEGAN: Offstage I identify as completely nonbinary; I love riding in this neutral middle space. But I also love cosplay. The ability to do that in the play gives me permission to dive completely into maleness.
So, when I made that decision to play Orsino as a bio male, suddenly the part really cracked open for me. I began looking for clues about his thoughts and opinions about things like his past relationships and his decision not to date older women.
Underneath his mask of bravura and sexuality, and his firmness of feelings, he’s quite lonely and has never really felt loved. It makes sense to me why his love for Olivia is so misguided and why he might fall in love with the Cesario/Viola character.
BLADE: As an actor, do you ever risk taking on the feelings of your characters?
KEEGAN: Prior to my mental health education, yes, and that could be toxic for me. I’ve since learned that the nervous system can’t tell the difference between real emotional distress and a that of a fully embodied character.
So, I created and share the Empowered Performer Project. [a holistic approach to performance that emphasizes the mental and emotional well-being of performing artists]. It utilizes somatic tools that help enormously when stepping into a character.
BLADE: Has changing the way you work affected your performances?
KEEGAN: I think I’m much better now. I used to have nearly debilitating stage fright. I’d spend all day dreading going onstage. I thought that was just part of the job. Now, I’ve learned to talk to my body. Prior to a performance, I can now spend my offstage time calmly gardening, working with my mental health clients, or playing with my kid. I’m just present in my life in a different way.
BLADE: Is Orsino your first time playing a male role?
KEEGAN: No. In fact, the very first time I played a male role was at the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Va. I played Hipolito in Thomas Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy.
As Hipolito, I felt utterly male in the moment, so much so that I had audience members see me later after the show and they were surprised that I was female. They thought I was a young guy in the role. There’s something very powerful in that.
BLADE: Do you have a favorite part? Male or female?
KEEGAN: That’s tough but I think it’s Maggie the Cat. I played the hyper-female Maggie in Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at Round House. In the first act she didn’t stop talking for 51 minutes opposite Gregory Wooddell as Brick who barely had to speak. That lift was probably the heaviest I’ve ever been asked to do in acting.
BLADE: What about Folger’s Twelfth Night might be especially appealing to queer audiences?
KEEGAN: First and foremost is presentation. 99% of the cast identify as queer in some way.
The approach to Shakespeare’s text is one of the most bold and playful that I have ever seen. It’s unabashedly queer. The actors are here to celebrate and be loud and colorful and to advocate. It’s a powerful production, especially to do so close to the Capitol building, and that’s not lost on any of us.
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A hilarious ‘Twelfth Night’ at Folger full of ‘elegant kink’
