Theater
‘The Playhouse’ a triumphant return to live performance
Tony Cisek helps make playwright’s story shine

‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’
Through Aug. 28
Folger Theatre at the National Building Museum
401 F St., N.W.
$20-$85
Events.folger.edu
Ordinarily set designer Tony Cisek is charged with making a playwright’s story shine. His latest project was a little different.
As an integral player in Folger Theatre’s return to live performance, Cisek directed the creation of The Playhouse, the National Building Museum’s current Summer Block Party installation and the stage for performances of an abbreviated 90-minute intermission-less version of Shakespeare’s magical comedy “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
The project comes from a moment of synergy where the University of South Carolina’s idea for a pop-up theater met the Folger’s need for a venue while the Folger Shakespeare Library undergoes major renovations, mostly involving public space and its closed, marble exterior, he explains. And the National Building Museum, looking for vital summer programming, was happy to join the partnership.
After pandemic-related postponements and delays, Cisek took the helm, inheriting both a set designed by University of South Carolina’s Jim Hunter, cleverly made to pack up on two tractor trailers and move from stop to stop with Washington as its first stop, and exhibitions including a life-sized immersive installation based on Joanna Robson’s book “A Knavish Lad,” which is a part of the Folger Shakespeare Library collection.
“I’d never worked where the central aesthetic is not mine,” says the out designer. “This has been more about pragmatics and logistics, and the art part really took a backseat. But that’s OK. I go in wanting every show to succeed and you never at the beginning know what that’s going to take but you do it.”
Confronted with an admittedly challenging and slightly unfamiliar project, the four-time Helen Hayes Award winner with almost 30 years’ experience in set design, soldiered forward. Building a theater in the museum’s soaring atrium with its forest of mindboggling immense Corinthian columns presented possibilities and problems. His immediate tasks were how to sit Hunter’s set in the space, how to surround it, how to seat the audience, and what the audience’s journey would be from the moment they walk in the building.
Quickly, Cisek and team realized the work at hand was mostly about infrastructure. There was no infrastructure for hanging lights. In fact, there were no lights. They needed speakers and cables too. Everything had to be brought in and rented for 10-12 weeks at no small expense.
Fortunately, he has a long history working with lighting designers: “I like to put my nose in other designers’ business. What elements are going to make this moment shine? I’m not interested in staying my little silo. That’s not a formula for a successful production. My reward is that the audience finds enjoyment, is moved and provoked. Otherwise, why bother?”
Originally from Queens, New York, Cisek first came to Washington to study pre-med at Georgetown University. But increasingly, he became interested in theater, and eventually went on to study scenic design at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. After receiving his master’s in 1994, he planned to stay on in Manhattan but an onslaught of job offers brought him back to D.C. where he’s worked consistently ever since.
Creating a realistic set doesn’t particularly interest him unless it’s specifically called for by the playwright or director. He adds, “Strict naturalism is better achieved by film. On stage, it leaves little room for the audience’s imagination. And when there are naturalistic elements in the design, I like to leave air for the audience to fill in. Stories can be helped by a naturalist environment, but I move away from naturalism and try to find something poetic, or evocative, or some way to address the larger arc of the story.”
Having lived and worked in the DMV for most of his life, it’s no surprise he’s picked up some tips from the locals. For his current project, he’s utilized the idea of a zone transition, which is how Zelda Fichlander, who founded Arena Stage, referred to the journey of her audience in the original Arena – 20 feet of dim, low-ceilinged space in which in theory you left your world behind and cleansed your mind for what you were about to see.
With The Playhouse, Cisek has created a sort of tunnel through which you progress before emerging to a staggering view of the stage and columns. See it if you can.
Theater
Rupert Murdoch’s powers on full display in ‘Ink’
Media baron helped pave the way for Brexit, Prime Minister Thatcher

‘Ink’
Through Sept. 24
Round House Theatre
4545 East-West Highway, Bethesda, MD 20814
$46-$94
Roundhousetheatre.org
Yes, Rupert Murdoch’s loathsome traits are many, but his skills to succeed are undeniably numerous.
In the first scenes of John Graham’s West End and Broadway hit drama “Ink,” an exciting year-long detail from the life of a burgeoning media baron, Murdoch’s powers of persuasion are on full display.
It’s 1969 London. Over dinner with editor Larry Lamb, a young Murdoch shares his plan to buy the Sun and rebrand the dying broadsheet, replacing the Daily Mirror as Britain’s best-selling tabloid. What’s more, he wants to do it in just one year with Lamb at the helm.
Initially reluctant, Lamb becomes seduced by the idea of running a paper, something that’s always eluded him throughout his career, and something Murdoch, the outsider Australian, understands. Murdoch taunts him, “Not you. Not Larry Lamb, the Yorkshire-born son of a blacksmith, not the guy who didn’t get a degree from Oxford or Cambridge, who didn’t get a degree from anywhere. Not you.”
Still, Lamb, played convincingly by Cody Nickell in Round House Theatre’s stellar season-opener, a co-production with Olney Theatre Center, remains unsure. But Murdoch (a delightfully brash Andrew Rein) is undeterred, and seals the deal with a generous salary.
Superbly staged by director Jason Loweth, “Ink” is riveting. Its exchanges between Lamb and Murdoch are a strikingly intimate glimpse into ambition involving an ostensibly average editor and a striving money man who doesn’t like people.
Once on board, Lamb is trolling Fleet Street in search of his launch team, played marvelously by some mostly familiar actors. He makes his most important hire — news editor Brian McConnell (Maboud Ebrahimzadeh) — in a steam bath. The remainder of the Sun’s new masthead falls handily into place: Joyce Hopkirk (Kate Eastwood Norris) the women’s page editor whose forward thinking is marred by her casual racism; Zion Jang plays Beverley Goodway, an awkwardly amusing young photographer; persnickety deputy editor Bernard Shrimsley (Michael Glenn) who learns to love ugly things; and an old school sports editor who proves surprisingly versatile, played by Ryan Rillette, Round House’s artistic director.
At Lamb’s suggestion, the team brainstorms about what interests Sun readers. They decide on celebrities, pets, sports, free stuff, and —rather revolutionarily for the time —TV. Murdoch is happy to let readers’ taste dictate content and the “Why” of the sacred “five Ws” of journalism is out the window.
Murdoch is portrayed as a not wholly unlikable misanthrope. He dislikes his editors and pressman alike. He particularly hates unions. His advice to Lamb is not to get too chummy with his subordinates. Regarding the competition, Murdoch doesn’t just want to outperform them, he wants to grind them to dust.
Loewith leads an inspired design team. Scenic designer Tony Cisek’s imposing, inky grey edifice made from modular walls is ideally suited for Mike Tutaj’s projections of headlines, printed pages, and Rein’s outsized face as Murdoch. Sound designer and composer Matthew M. Nielson ably supplies bar noises and the nonstop, pre-digital newspaper clatter of presses, linotypes, and typewriters.
From a convenient second tiered balcony, the Daily Mirror’s establishment power trio Hugh Cudlipp (Craig Wallace), Chris Lee Howard (Chris Geneback) and Sir Percy (Walter Riddle) overlook all that lies below, discussing new tactics and (mostly failed) strategies to remain on top.
Increasingly comfortable in the role of ruthless, sleazy editor, Lamb is unstoppable.
Obsessed with overtaking the Daily Mirror’s circulation, he opts for some sketchy reportage surrounding the kidnapping and presumed murder of Muriel McKay, the wife of Murdoch’s deputy Sir Alick (Todd Scofield). The kidnappers mistook Muriel for Murdoch’s then-wife Anna (Sophia Early). Next, in a move beyond the pale, Lamb introduces “Page 3,” a feature spotlighting a topless female model. Awesta Zarif plays Stephanie, a smart young model. She asks Lamb if he would run a semi-nude pic of his similarly aged daughter? His reaction is uncomfortable but undaunted.
For Murdoch’s purposes, history proves he chose well in Lamb. By year’s end, the Sun is Britain’s most widely read tabloid. Together they give the people what they didn’t know they wanted, proving the pro-Labour Daily Mirror’s hold on the working class is baseless and paving the way for things like Brexit and a Prime Minister Thatcher.
“Ink” at Round House closes soon. See it if you can.
Theater
Local theater scene prepares for a season to remember
‘Evita,’ a Garland tribute, ‘Night of the Living Dead’ among highlights

Mosaic Theater Company has already stepped into the fall season with Psalmayene 24’s “Monumental Travesties” (through Oct. 1), a new D.C.- set comedy that explores race, memory, and disturbing statuary. Mosaic’s out artistic director Reginald L. Douglas directs. Mosaictheatre.org
At Round House Theatre in Bethesda, it’s James Graham’s “Ink” (through Sept. 24). A co-production with Olney Theatre, the smashing joint effort rivetingly rehashes the beginning of the relationship between burgeoning media tycoon Rupert Murdoch (Andrew Rein) and an increasingly ruthless British editor Larry Lamb (Cody Nickell). Olney’s out artistic director Jason Loewith directs. Roundhousetheatre.org
Shakespeare Theatre Company rather uncharacteristically kicks off its season with a musical, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Evita” (through Oct. 15). Produced in cooperation with Boston’s American Repertory Theater and staged by young director Sammi Cannold, the show promises a new take on the rise and fall of Eva Peron (played by Shireen Pimental), Argentina’s iconic first lady, both sainted and despised in equal measure. Shakespearetheatre.org
Following the recent death of GALA Hispanic Theatre’s beloved artistic director Hugo Medrano, the Columbia Heights company marks the opening of its 48th season with “Baño de luna/Bathing in Moonlight” (through Oct. 1), written and directed by Pulitzer Prize-winning out playwright Nilo Cruz.
The provocative drama (in Spanish with English surtitles) centers on the illicit romance between a handsome Catholic priest (Raúl Méndez) and talented pianist parishioner (Hannia Guillén). The cast also features Hiram Delgado, Luz Nicolás, and out actors Victor Salinas and Carlos Castillo. Galatheatre.org
Studio Theatre marks its foray into foreign language with “Espejos: Clean” (through Oct. 22), a bilingual play with both Spanish and English supertitles by Christine Quintano. The new work takes a look at isolation and the power of being seen when two women from different worlds cross paths in touristy Cancún, Mexico. Studiotheatre.org
Through Oct. 8, Woolly Mammoth is premiering Sasha Denisova’s “My Mama & The Full-Scale Invasion.” Starring multiple Helen Hayes Award-winning out actor Holly Twyford as Mama, the 90-minute long, three-person piece describes an old Ukrainian woman’s fantastical account of her experiences in the war with Russia. Woollymammoth.net
Ford’s Theatre presents the premiere production of playwright Pearl Cleage “Something Moving: A Meditation on Maynard” (Sept. 22 – Oct. 15). The work reflects on Maynard Jackson’s game-changing 1973 election and legacy as Atlanta’s first Black mayor and strong gay ally. The 10-person ensemble cast includes queer actors Billie Krishawn and Tom Story. Seema Sueko directs. Fords.org
And a note to friends of Dorothy. For one night only at the Strathmore in Bethesda, it’s the Liza Minelli-produced “Get Happy! Michael Feinstein Celebrates the Judy Garland Centennial” (Sept. 21). The good-time show features famed out pianist Feinstein performing Garland’s hallmark songs along with big-screen film clips, never-before-seen photos, and rare audio recordings. Strathmore.org
The Edge of the Universe Theater is offering Harold Pinter’s “The Caretaker” (Sept. 29 – Oct. 22) at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda. The absorbing 1960 psychological study involving two brothers and a homeless man was Pinter’s first commercial success. Stephen Jarrett directs. Universalplayers2.org
On Capitol Hill, Taffety Punk Theatre Company presents Kelsey Mesa’s intriguing new play “La Salpêtrière” (Sept. 28 – Oct. 15), a painful yet heartening exploration of one woman’s experience as an inmate in the dreaded asylum known for its curious and publicly demonstrated methods of “treatment.”
The four-person cast includes Fabiolla da Silva, Yihong Chen, Danny Puente Cackley, and celebrated local actor Kimberly Gilbert. Danielle A. Drakes directs. Taffetypunk.com
At 1st Stage in Tysons Corner, it’s “The Chosen” (Sept. 28 – Oct. 15). Penned by Aaron Posner and Chaim Potak, it’s the story of two Jewish teenage boys navigating friendship, family, and religion in 1940s Brooklyn. Artistic director Alex Levy directs. 1ststage.org
Arena Stage opens its season with “POTUS: or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive,” (Oct. 13 – Nov. 12), Selina Fillinger’s feminist farce describes a staff of women who keep their dim president and beleaguered country afloat. Directed by Margot Bordelon, the singularly female seven-member cast includes Felicia Curry, Naomi Jacobson, and Natalya Lynette Rathnam. Arenastage.org
Through Nov. 11, Constellation Theatre Company presents Sarah Ruhl’s adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s novel “Orlando,” a trans tale of an amorous young nobleman who one night goes to sleep as a man and awakens the following morning as a woman. Nick Martin directs. Constellationtheatre.org
Just in time for Halloween, Rorschach Theatre presents a reimagining of filmmaker George Romero’s 1968 zombie cult classic “Night of the Living Dead” (Oct. 27-Nov. 19) with an “unforgettable theatrical experience with thrills and surprises for both horror fans and those new to the genre.” Lilli Hokama directs. Rorschachtheatre.com
Lauren Yee’s “King of the Yees” is making its D.C. premiere at Signature Theatre in Arlington through Oct. 22. It’s not a musical (Signature’s specialty), but a play, more specifically “a vibrant, semi-autobiographical comedy about community, culture and the connection between fathers and daughters.” Out actor Grant Chang plays the playwright’s father Larry Yee.
And then it’s “Ragtime” (Oct. 24 – Jan. 7) directed by Signature’s powerhouse artistic director Matthew Gardiner. With a score by Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens, and an adaption of E.L. Doctorow’s novel by extraordinary gay playwright Terrance McNally (who succumbed to COVID complications early in the pandemic), the epic musical intertwines storylines from early 20th century New York including the scandal involving Evelyn Nesbit portrayed on celluloid in “The Girl on the Red Velvet Swing” with Joan Collins as the eponymous showgirl. Sigtheatre.org
Broadway at the National continues with hits from the Great White Way including “Mrs. Doubtfire” (Oct. 10-15). Rob Mclure reprises his Tony Award-nominated performance as an out-of-work actor who poses as a Scottish nanny in a desperate attempt to stay in his kids’ lives followed by “The Wiz” (October 24-29), a gospel/rock/funk infused take on “The Wizard of Oz” with a Tony Award-winning score by Charlie Smalls. Broadwayatthenational.com
Theatre J presents Jenny Rachel Weiner’s “The Chameleon” (Oct. 11- Nov. 5), directed by Ellie Heyman. Rampaging through questions of identity, representation, and the complications of assimilation, Weiner’s new comedy centers on an aspiring actor poised for her big break, or so she hopes. Theatrej.org
Along with promising works, Theatre Week (Sept. 21 – Oct. 8) is ushering in fall with a three-week-long celebration of the launch of the 2023-2024 theater season in the DMV. The festivities begin with Kickoff Fest, a free all-day event at Arena Stage on Saturday Sept. 23.
Throughout Theatre Week, more than 25 area productions will offer discounted tickets at $22, $40, and $60 through todaytix.com. More information is available at theatreweek.org.
Theater
Little Amal spreading refugee awareness across U.S.
12-foot figure brought to life by three puppeteers

‘Amal Walks Across America’
Sept. 17 and 19
walkwithamal.org
Since the summer of 2021, Little Amal, a 12-foot puppet portraying a 10-year-old Syrian refugee, has roamed far and wide spreading refugee awareness. After walking all over Europe, exploring the streets of New York City and Toronto, she is now trekking across America.
Created by internationally acclaimed artistic director Amir Nizar Zuabi in association with Handspring Puppet Company out of South Africa (famed for the brilliant puppetry behind “War Horse”), “Amal Walks Across America” highlights the cross-cultural experiences of the millions of refugee children fleeing war, violence and persecution throughout the globe, each with their own story.
Little Amal was inspired by an unaccompanied minor character who appeared briefly in “The Jungle,” a play created in the former Calais jungle encampment in 2015.
As a sort of honorary ambassador/refugee, the very large puppet has clicked with audiences wherever she goes. And now through early November, Amal is visiting 35 towns and cities from the East Coast to San Diego where thousands of artists and arts organizations creating free public events are slated to show up to welcome her.
On Sept. 17 and 19, Amal will be in D.C. Her program includes stops at Lafayette Square (a high school marching band), Black Lives Matter Plaza (a Muslim children’s choir and shared testimonies), McPherson Square, and Franklin Park where the Washington Performing Arts Children of the Gospel Choir perform, and the park is filled with family art activities such as sidewalk coloring books, an activation of letters to Amal from Planet Word, and fare from Immigrant Food.
Though ostensibly on her own, Amal is brought to life by three puppeteers: one inside her torso walking on stilts, and two operating the arms.
Ashley Winkfield, a multidisciplinary nonbinary artist based in Harlem, New York, handles one of the arms.
“Puppetry is my main art form. I sort of fell into it,” they explain.
As an undergrad at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, they learned puppetry in a workshop of Basil Twist’s “Rite of Spring.” Twist liked what he saw and invited them to follow the production to Lincoln Center where they made their New York debut.
“Puppeteering involves choreography, dance, and movement, and also acting…all the things I love,” says Winkfield, 31. “Through puppeteering I’ve done theater, singing, and travelled the world. I’m fortunate to do this craft.”
Though not part of Little Amal’s original European tour, they joined the walk with three weeks in New York (2022) followed by a shorter stint in Toronto (2023), and now they’re part of the national gig.
When Amal arrives on the scene of an event, her team dresses her and checks mechanisms away from the gathering crowd. But once she stands and walks around the corner, it’s show time. Before swarming her, fans and onlookers react with variations of surprise and excitement. Often local artists will present her with things they’ve made like outsized library cards, books, and flowers.
Winkfield describes the puppet as “beautifully articulated,” especially for her large size: “People want to reach out and touch her beautifully sculpted hands; they’re made from a hard material but still have a caressing ability to them.”
Amal’s message resonates with the puppeteer too.
“She brings the crisis face to face. She’s a symbol of refugee children and all displaced people. Indigenous leaders I’ve met on the road, understand where she’s coming from, and as a Black American, that’s something I understand about my own family history, not knowing where I come from and what that means.”
Winkfield hopes moving forward across the continent, the project will do more events with the queer community.
“As queer people, we very often have chosen family. Amal is discovering her identity on the road. She’s searching for comfort and family.”
Along the route, the project partners with different organizations and artists who help coordinate events. Winkfield rather blithely opines that it’s “a logistical miracle” the way things come together.
“Anything can happen. As puppeteers we don’t have a lot of information about the next event, so just like Amal, we’re experiencing whatever’s ahead with fresh eyes.”
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