‘Romeo and Juliet’
Through November 10
Folger Theatre
201 East Capitol St. S.E., Washington, D.C.
$20-$84
Folger.edu

In out director Raymond O. Caldwell’s production of “Romeo and Juliet” currently playing at Folger Theatre, the Capulet family are Puerto Rican except for Lord Capulet (Todd Scoffield) who is white with a Southern accent. 

Fran Tapia (Lady Capulet), Luz Nicolas (Nurse), and Caro Reyes Rivera (Juliet) all speak Spanish when they are together. Rosa Garay López (Translator and Interpreter) translated certain scenes into Spanish. The Montagues are played by a cast of multiracial and multiethnic actors.

Tapia, a Helen Hayes Award-winning actor, identifies as part of the LGBTQ community. She says, “I am Chilean, Latina, queer and a proud immigrant.”  

After receiving her acting degree in Santiago de Chile, Catholic University, Tapia started working professionally as an actor and a dancer with contemporary dance companies.

The newly single actor has been living in D.C. since 2019 and plans to remain based here. Recently, she shared her experiences playing Juliet’s mother in Shakespeare’s story of the star-crossed lovers, a play she first read as a girl in Santiago. 

WASHINGTON BLADE:  Typically, Lady Capulet is portrayed as detached, a woman who can’t even remember her daughter’s age. What’s your spin on the Capulet matriarch?

FRAN TAPIA:  From what I’ve read and seen, including productions and films, she’s a woman who has distanced herself from her daughter.

I see the part differently. I want to make it special, to get away from the hard mother. She does care about her husband and daughter. Her expectations are shaped by society more than anything, she has conservative goals, but that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t love her daughter.

BLADE: What else about your Lady Capulet is unique?

TAPIA: First of all, she’s Puerto Rican. She speaks in Spanish and English. She loves to sing. She’s a party girl. She’s a devoted wife and partner in crime with Lord Capulet, sharing both his ambition and devotion to family. 

Lady Capulet wants to look pretty and she loves money. And she wants to be blonde, of course. I wear 26-inch blonde extensions for the part. I’m giving so much drama to it. It’s fun and dramatic and over the top.

She can share secrets with the Nurse played by Luz [Nicolas]. There are nuances with how she speaks to her. Lady Capulet speaks English when she wants to be formal. Luz brings the comedy. She’s also, a very good dramatic actress.

BLADE: It’s a contemporary take on the Bard’s masterpiece. 

TAPIA: It’s super contemporary. Raymond [Caldwell] is looking to create a world that appeals to young audiences. He’s working with so many designers doing projection, lighting, and sound. There are so many surprises for you. 

BLADE: Am I right in guessing it’s not set in Verona.

TAPIA: It’s set in a fictionalized Washington, D.C., inspired by the election year. The Capulets are a conservative political family based on nobody in particular. They’re struggling for power through the marriage of their daughter. Unlike the source material, they’re not trying to marry off a teenager. It’s more about preserving a legacy. That’s scary to lose when you’re used to having it.

BLADE: How is working with Raymond? I’ve heard so many good things about him. 

TAPIA: Prior to joining the cast, I’d heard from friends that he was good, but I had no idea how good. When I got this part, I gave myself the opportunity to offer my resources like singing. And he’s been super receptive. 

Raymond is very clear and bold. Lady Capulet has problems with addiction more intense than I imagined. I won’t specify but we’re diving into all of that. There are so many kinds of addiction including social media for instance. In real life, I’m addicted to Diet Coke as anyone in the cast can tell you. 

BLADE: Is Lady Capulet a part you’ve longed to play? 

TAPIA: Not really, but under the direction of Raymond I’m loving every second of it. His view of things has given me a lot of freedom that I didn’t expect.

‘Exception to the Rule’
Through Sunday, October 27
Studio Theatre
1501 14th St. NW, Washington, D.C.
$40-$95
Studiotheatre.org

After-school detention is a bore, but it’s especially tiresome on the last day of classes before a holiday.  

In Dave Harris’s provocative new play “Exception to the Rule” (now at Studio Theatre) that’s just the case. 

It’s Friday, and the usual suspects are reporting to room 111 for detention before enjoying the long MLK weekend. First on the scene are blaring “bad girl” Mikayla (Khalia Muhammad) and nerdy stoner Tommy (Steven Taylor Jr.), followed by mercurial player Dayrin (Jacques Jean-Mary), kind Dasani (Shana Lee Hill), and unreadable Abdul (Khouri St.Surin). 

The familiar is jaw-droppingly altered by the entrance of “College Bound Erika” (Sabrina Lynne Sawyer), a detention first timer whose bookworm presence elicits jokes from the others: What happened? You fail a test? 

Dasani (who’s teased for being named for designer water) dubs Erika “Sweet Pea” and welcomes her to the rule-breaking fold. Together the regulars explain how detention works: The moderator, Mr. Bernie, shows up, signs their slips, and then they go. But today the teacher is tardy. 

As they wait, the kids pass the time laughing, trash talking, flirting, and yelling. When not bouncing around the classroom, Dayrin is grooming his hair, while Dasani endlessly reapplies blush and lip gloss. At one point two boys almost come to blows, nearly repeating the cafeteria brawl that landed them in detention in the first place.  

It’s loud. It’s confrontational. And it’s funny.

Erika is naively perplexed: “I thought detention was quiet. A place where everyone remembers the mistakes that got them here and then learns how to not make the same mistakes again.” 

For room 111, the only connection to the outside world is an increasingly glitchy and creepy intercom system. Announcements (bus passes, the school’s dismal ranking, the impending weekend lockdown, etc.) are spoken by the unseen but unmistakably stentorian-voiced Craig Wallace. 

Dave Harris first conceived “Exception to the Rule” in 2014 during his junior year at Yale University. In the program notes, the Black playwright describes “Exception to the Rule” as “a single set / six actors on a stage, just acting their asses off.” It’s true, and they do it well. 

Miranda Haymon is reprising their role as director (they finely helmed the play’s 2022 off-Broadway debut at Roundabout Theatre Company in New York). Haymon orchestrates a natural feel to movement in the classroom, and without entirely stilling the action on stage (makeup applying, scribbling, etc.), the out director gives each member of the terrific cast their revelatory moment. In a busy room, we learn that Tommy’s goofiness belies trauma, that Mikayla is admirably resourceful, and most startling, why Erika, the school’s top student, is in detention.   

Mr. Bernie is clearly a no-show. And despite his absence, the regulars are bizarrely loath to leave the confines of 111 for fear of catching yet another detention. Of course, it’s emblematic of something bigger. Still, things happen within the room.

While initially treated as a sort of mascot, awkwardly quiet Erika becomes rather direct in her questions and observations. Suddenly, she’s rather stiffly doling out unsolicited advice. 

It’s as if an entirely new person has been thrown into the mix.  

Not all of her guidance goes unheeded. Take fighting for instance. At Erika’s suggestion, St.Surin’s Abdul refrains from kicking Dayrin’s ass. (Just feet from the audience gathered for a recent matinee in Studio’s intimate Mead Theatre, Abdul’s frustration resulting from anger while yearning for a world of principled order is palpable as evidenced when a single tear rolled down the actor’s right cheek) 

Set designer Tony Cisek renders a no-frills classroom with cinder block walls, a high and horizontal row of frosted fixed windows that become eerily prison like when overhead fluorescent lighting is threateningly dimmed.  

Still, no matter how dark, beyond the classroom door, a light remains aglow, encouraging the kids to ponder an exit plan. 

‘The Cradle Will Rock’ 
Goldman Theater DCJCC (10/5-13) and
Baltimore Theatre Project (10/18-20)
Inseries.org

Robin McGinness, an accomplished Baltimore-based transfemme baritone, knows a lot about music. Also, as a gender nonconforming performer she’s learned how to navigate and carve out a career in opera. 

Currently, she is playing Mr. Mister in the IN Series production of “The Cradle Will Rock,” a 1937 Brechtian allegory of corporate greed written and composed by Marc Blitzstein who was openly gay when that wasn’t an easy thing to be.

IN Series, D.C.’s innovative opera theater, which happens to rank high among McGinness’s favorite companies, infuses its take on a seldom seen classic with new energy, humor, melody, and a thirst for justice. The production features a cast of some the area’s best young vocalists and is helmed by Shanara Gabrielle (stage direction) and Emily Baltzer (musical direction).

Growing up in southern New Hampshire, McGinness started off performing in Waldorf school, followed by Vermont’s progressive Putney boarding school, and then Oberlin College where she focused in vocal performance after having been singled out as a well-rounded baritone. 

WASHINGTON BLADE: What drew you to IN Series?   

ROBIN MCGINNESS: They [out artistic director Timothy Nelson and other company members] were doing work that didn’t take opera too preciously. No kid gloves. The theater world has large productions collapsed down to smaller audiences. That’s a mode that opera might follow. IN Series was doing things that excited me. 

My first show with them was two years ago. I’d just moved back from being a young artist with an opera company in Arizona when IN Series needed someone for “Nightsong of Orpheus.” Truly a wild piece of theater that I loved. Since then, I’ve been talking them up with everyone I meet, and enthusiastically engaging with them when I can. 

BLADE: How is it to be transfemme in the opera world?

MCGINNESS: Performing hasn’t always been easy for me. There was a time when my self-image and identity aligned with composing, to produce beautiful complex music behind the scenes and not have to be center of attention.

Coming into my undergrad years, my intention was to pursue music and divorce myself from certain parts of identity including my gender identity that I didn’t think would help my career. But that would change. 

I had awareness and had for years but made a choice that being a musician was the most important part of my identity. As I got to the end of undergrad my picture of what success meant had changed and I couldn’t live with this absolutist way of living my life. 

BLADE: And how has that worked out? 

MCGINNESS: I’ve been trying to break down barriers between the personal and professional sides and try to combine that into something more functional. It can feel dangerous. 

Early on when trying to figure out how to present as a female baritone in the opera, the question I got most was won’t that effect your voice? People are more understanding now. And I’m grateful to those who have broadened this space for gender nonconforming singers. 

BLADE: Does it take courage?

MCGINNESS: Yes, but I’m not pursuing the same career that I was. I’m interested in performing with IN Series now. I’m not trying to pursue a full-time touring opera career. 

It seems that either opera companies wouldn’t want to hire because they feel they couldn’t bring you out to donors or companies would want to hire but for the identity politics of it. Both would be anathema to me. 

It’s a ridiculously competitive industry. But I’m building a career in the area where I am now, and it’s going well. With people who know my work and hire me for the work. 

BLADE: What can we expect from “The Cradle Will Rock”? 

MCGINNESS: If you’re expecting Puccini, it won’t be that. It’s gritty. A lot of spoken dialogue. Closer to spoken theater with some music thrown in than it is an opera.

It pokes out power and dynamics that queer audiences might enjoy seeing be deconstructed, particularly when it’s done in a really smart way. 

BLADE: What’s ahead for you? 

MCGINNESS: I’m 33. Musically, I’m just hitting my prime so I have some good years of singing ahead of me.

I like my work to be complex, interwoven and layered. In addition to performing, I teach career courses and work in the career office mentoring students at Peabody Institute in Baltimore. All of us who do that here are practicing performers. As long as I have performance work coming in and have money to put bread on the table, I’m happy — way too busy — but happy.