Arts & Entertainment
Creative coupling
Toronto-based theater pair in D.C. for ‘Shoplifters’
Ken MacDonald and Morris Panych (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
‘The Shoplifters’
Through Oct. 19
Arena Stage
1101 Sixth Street, S.W.
$45-90
202-488-3300
In theater, longtime collaboration is not uncommon. For Canadian playwright/director Morris Panych and his husband, set designer Ken MacDonald, it’s a way of life.
Together, the pair has worked on about 90 productions. Both agree their joint projects can be trying, but they’re always the most fulfilling. “Nobody argues like we do in terms of design,” MacDonald says cheerily and without hesitation. “Other directors like my work from the start, but Morris can be critical. He loves design and as director ultimately has the last word.”
“It’s true,” agrees Panych. “When you collaborate with someone for years whether you live together or not, you get to know them really well — weaknesses and defaults and when they fake an easy route. You call them on it and it irritates them. But it also brings out their best.”
Currently, the couple is in Washington premiering Panych’s “The Shoplifters” at Arena Stage’s Kreeger Theatre. The biting comedy features Broadway’s Jayne Houdyshell as Alma, a career shoplifter whose thieving ways are about to be cut short by an overzealous security guard.
“Morris likes to write about petty things,” says MacDonald during a recent chat in one of Arena’s comfortable backstage rooms. The couple finishes each other sentences and talks over one another in a funny but singularly polite way. “That’s true,” Panych says. “I like starting off with something small — like a woman stealing a steak — and extrapolating it into a huge deal.”
Have either ever shoplifted? “No. Never,” says McDonald. But Panych says, “Sure. Long ago before I had a career, I took meat. My friends and I liked to do steak fondues.”
Panych, 62, began his career as an actor but later branched out into directing and playwriting which he had studied in college: “Acting can be humiliating and alienating. Not so much in theater, but as an actor you have to try to get all kinds of work to survive and the judgment is nonstop. I wanted other ways to express myself creatively.”
Throughout most of his 20s, MacDonald, 61, was a high school art teacher. “I was never trained in set designer. I’m foremost a drawer/painter. I draw my sets and then figure out how to build them.”
“He has no technical skills,” says Panych wryly. “But Ken does have great ideas.”
“The Shoplifters” is set in a grocery store break room. Rather than design a generically drab space, MacDonald has constructed a dizzyingly high tower of 800 brown packing boxes interrupted by brightly colored patches of laundry detergent and breakfast cereals. Some of the custom made boxes float like clouds and light shines through the spaces that separate them. “Other directors expect something more realistic. But Morris and I believe theater should be theater. It should make a statement.”
“The play is approached from an absurdist, mock naturalistic point of view. It has to be dreamlike,” Panych says. “We have people surrounded by stuff. We live in a hugely consumeristic world with a huge dichotomy between the haves and have nots. There’s a shockingly large amount of shit in the world. Boxes represent all that we live in.”
Together 34 years, the Toronto-based couple married in 2004. “It was shortly after same sex marriage had become legal in parts of Canada. And there was talk that the right might be taken away. So we thought we’d better do it. Now no one in Canada cares. That’s what I foresee for the U.S. in a couple years.”
In addition to opening “The Shoplifters,” they’re also designing upcoming productions of Panych’s next new play, and the musical “Sweet Charity” for Ontario’s Shaw Festival in May. Right now they’re fighting a lot, says the couple. But it’s not they’re fault. They blame the deadlines.
“We’re fine,” Panych says.
“We’re used to it,” MacDonald adds.
Team DC, the umbrella organization for LGBTQ-friendly sports teams and leagues in the D.C. area, held its annual Night of Champions Awards Gala on Saturday, April 20 at the Hilton National Mall. The organization gave out scholarships to area LGBTQ student athletes as well as awards to the Different Drummers, Kelly Laczko of Duplex Diner, Stacy Smith of the Edmund Burke School, Bryan Frank of Triout, JC Adams of DCG Basketball and the DC Gay Flag Football League.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
The 2024 National Cannabis Festival was held at the Fields at RFK Stadium on April 19-20.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
Covering the @NatlCannaFest at RFK Stadium for @WashBlade . Stop by the LGBTQ+ booth and pick up a paper if you are here. pic.twitter.com/is7hnsaPns
— Michael Patrick Key (@MichaelKeyWB) April 20, 2024
Theater
‘Amm(i)gone’ explores family, queerness, and faith
A ‘fully autobiographical’ work from out artist Adil Mansoor
‘Amm(i)gone’
Thorough May 12
Woolly Mammoth Theatre
641 D St., N.W.
$60-$70
Woollymammoth.net
“Fully and utterly autobiographical.” That’s how Adil Mansoor describes “Amm(i)gone,” his one-man work currently playing at Woolly Mammoth Theatre.
Both created and performed by out artist Mansoor, it’s his story about inviting his Pakistani mother to translate Sophocles’s Greek tragedy “Antigone” into Urdu. Throughout the journey, there’s an exploration of family, queerness, and faith,as well as references to teachings from the Quran, and audio conversations with his Muslim mother.
Mansoor, 38, grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and is now based in Pittsburgh where he’s a busy theater maker. He’s also the founding member of Pittsburgh’s Hatch Arts Collective and the former artistic director of Dreams of Hope, an LGBTQ youth arts organization.
WASHINGTON BLADE: What spurred you to create “Amm(i)gone”?
ADIL MANSOOR: I was reading a translation of “Antigone” a few years back and found myself emotionally overwhelmed. A Theban princess buries her brother knowing it will cost her, her own life. It’s about a person for whom all aspirations are in the afterlife. And what does that do to the living when all of your hopes and dreams have to be reserved for the afterlife?
I found grant funding to pay my mom to do the translation. I wanted to engage in learning. I wanted to share theater but especially this ancient tragedy. My mother appreciated the characters were struggling between loving one another and their beliefs.
BLADE: Are you more director than actor?
MANSOOR: I’m primarily a director with an MFA in directing from Carnegie Mellon. I wrote, directed, and performed in this show, and had been working on it for four years. I’ve done different versions including Zoom. Woolly’s is a new production with the same team who’ve been involved since the beginning.
I love solo performance. I’ve produced and now teach solo performance and believe in its power. And I definitely lean toward “performance” and I haven’t “acted” since I was in college. I feel good on stage. I was a tour guide and do a lot of public speaking. I enjoy the attention.
BLADE: Describe your mom.
MANSOOR: My mom is a wonderfully devout Muslim, single mother, social worker who discovered my queerness on Google. And she prays for me.
She and I are similar, the way we look at things, the way we laugh. But different too. And those are among the questions I ask in this show. Our relationship is both beautiful and complicated.
BLADE: So, you weren’t exactly hiding your sexuality?
MANSOOR: In my mid-20s, I took time to talk with friends about our being queer with relation to our careers. My sexuality is essential to the work. As the artistic director at Dreams of Hope, part of the work was to model what it means to be public. If I’m in a room with queer and trans teenagers, part of what I’m doing is modeling queer adulthood. The way they see me in the world is part of what I’m putting out there. And I want that to be expansive and full.
So much of my work involves fundraising and being a face in schools. Being out is about making safe space for queer young folks.
BLADE: Have you encountered much Islamophobia?
MANSOOR: When 9/11 happened, I was a sophomore in high school, so yes. I faced a lot then and now. I’ve been egged on the street in the last four months. I see it in the classroom. It shows up in all sorts of ways.
BLADE: What prompted you to lead your creative life in Pittsburgh?
MANSOOR: I’ve been here for 14 years. I breathe with ease in Pittsburgh. The hills and the valleys and the rust of the city do something to me. It’s beautiful, it’ affordable, and there is support for local artists. There’s a lot of opportunity.
Still, the plan was to move to New York in September of 2020 but that was cancelled. Then the pandemic showed me that I could live in Pittsburgh and still have a nationally viable career.
BLADE: What are you trying to achieve with “Amm(i)gone”?
MANSOOR: What I’m sharing in the show is so very specific but I hear people from other backgrounds say I totally see my mom in that. My partner is Catholic and we share so much in relation to this.
I hope the work is embracing the fullness of queerness and how means so many things. And I hope the show makes audiences want to call their parents or squeeze their partners.
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‘Amm(i)gone’ explores family, queerness, and faith
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