Arts & Entertainment
Remembering a queer visionary
New force/collision work celebrates iconic late filmmaker
A scene from ‘Jarman.’ (Photo by Benjamin Carver)
‘Jarman (all this maddening beauty)’
Through April 27
Atlas Performing Arts Center
1333 H Street N.E.
$10-20
202-399-7993
Iconoclastic ‘80s filmmaker Derek Jarman was a standout among his peers. Gay and fearless, Jarman eschewed traditional movie making methods for more experimental, semi-narrative forms. His films like “Sebastiane” and the “Caravaggio” are deeply personal, wildly inventive and strongly homoerotic. He’s best remembered as one of the founding fathers of new queer cinema.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of Jarman’s death from AIDS complications. In commemoration there are myriad salutes and retrospectives, mostly in London. Washington-based theater company force/collision is celebrating the artist with its latest offering “Jarman (all this maddening beauty).”
Acted and staged by the company’s founding director John Moletress and written by Obie Award-winning playwright Caridad Svich with filmed footage by talented local filmmaker Ben Carver, “Jarman” combines theater and film to create a glorious mishmash of sound, images and live performance.
“In making the project,” says Moletress who identifies as queer, “We sought inspiration from Jarman’s work. We weren’t attempting to recreate or make a comment. We approached it from a contemporary point of view keeping in mind how we’re making art today. You’ll see images of the left’s then-nemesis Margaret Thatcher, but you’ll also see images of Putin as well.”
At 80 minutes, “Jarman” is a solo show staged on a spare set, reminiscent of the filmmaker’s bare-bones studio. Moletress plays both the title character and a young artist from today. And while he’s the only actor onstage, 50 other actors contribute performances through voiceover and film projection.
“Jarman’s work is beautiful and rageful,” Moletress says. “As a filmmaker, he cared about community, queer identity and ensemble work. So does force/collision. Company members are involved in all facets of the production, but our intent has always been to tour ‘Jarman’ (it’s slated to play in England in the fall) and from a financial perspective it’s more feasible with a cast of one.”
The show’s footage was shot by Carver on locations throughout D.C., including the Arboretum and the shuttered, historic Washington Coliseum (located near Union Station) where the company staged a decadent end-of-the-world party.
“It was sort of an apoplectic tea dance,” Moletress says. “We had fog machines, a DJ, cheap Champagne and lots of actors drawn from D.C.’s mainly underground performance art scene. Ben (Carver) was instrumental in accessing unique locations and some interesting and well-built actors.”
In keeping with Jarman’s aesthetic, the production is homoerotic and there’s nudity.
“I’m naked onstage — that’s something I haven’t done since I was a twink. But I’m not nervous. I’m more concerned about dressing as Margaret Thatcher and dancing around violently with a butcher knife while giving the audience lap dances … and remembering my lines.”
As a 16-year-old video store clerk, Moletress, 35, saw his first Jarman film “Aria” (’87) featuring the filmmaker’s career-long muse Tilda Swinton. He was smitten. Moletress became further intrigued as an undergrad at Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania when one of his English classes screened Jarman’s “Tempest” (’79).
Then last year, while doing “Gun Control Action Theatre” with playwright Caridad Svich, the pair agreed to collaborative on a project involving Jarman. “It was then that I really began watching all of his films and reading everything I could find about him. In my research, I learned that Jarman was a charming and determined man. Still, the deeper I delved, there was always more to know about him.”
Jarman arrived at filmmaking via art school. His early works include the sexy “Sebastiane” (‘76), about the martyred gay saint, and “Jubilee” (’78) featuring punk star Adam Ant. His best known film is “Caravaggio” (’86), in which the filmmaker celebrates the painter’s obsession with his thuggish studio model.
After being diagnosed with HIV while filming “The Last of England” (’86), Jarman continued to work, staging the Pet Shop Boys’ 1989 tour and making more films, working with big names like Judi Dench and Laurence Olivier. He spoke publicly about his illness and became increasingly active in the gay rights movement. Jarman died in London in 1994 at 52.
Moletress counts Jarman as a deserving member of the gay Pantheon: “There’s no shame in his work. Jarman didn’t pander. He made what he wanted to make. If it offended some people, he didn’t give a shit. Jarman never said no to his sexuality or to what he wanted to see on film.”
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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.”
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‘Inherit the Wind’ isn’t about science vs. religion, but the right to think
