Live Arts

By Whit Davis

This article was originally published in DC Theater Arts here.

Distillation is an experiential, interactive production presented by Solas Nua and Abbey Theatre at Eaton DC, brought to life by creator and performer Luke Casserly. It’s a unique blend of performance art and theater, with Casserly serving as the bridge between them. At the heart of this bridge is the star performer, the Irish bog, symbolized by a circular custom-made table by sculptor Ger Clancy and miniature bottled fragrances to be discovered by the audience. Casserly, in his supporting role, beautifully honors the story of the Irish bogs and his deeply personal relationship with them. In this intimate performance, Ireland’s landscape and history are brought to life, allowing the audience to connect with them through scent and touch.

The recent cessation of the peat harvesting industry in Ireland inspired this multidisciplinary performance, which features Casserly providing oral history, video, sound, and costume design.

Every element of the production is essential. The performance starts with smelling coffee beans to cleanse the scent palate and bring the audience to a place of presence. The organic materials of peat and moss pass from person to person for us to touch and smell. The stage is where the audience sits around the table, and the exchanges occur between stranger and artist and stranger.

Irish bogs, once a vital fuel source that created a significant need for jobs, now serve as a central reminder of our environmental impact. The peat-harvesting company Bord na Móna played a key role in this narrative. Peat harvesting, while contributing to carbon dioxide emissions, also had the potential to hold carbon dioxide within the bogs. However, when extracted, they can emit into the atmosphere, leading to the destruction of the ecosystem. Casserly and his family, living with the aftermath of the decision to start and stop peat harvesting, embody the complex and often devastating consequences of our actions on the environment.

Casserly plays the Irish bog. He gives voice to the material, allowing it to speak for itself. Casserly also uses dialogue from a real-life conversation he had with his father. A random audience member plays the father. The interactiveness of the play is a unique touch. How might the work have benefited from more dialogue and less lecture? What if the bog spoke more? What if the eerie weirdness was a much larger theme? The performance is detailed, calculated, delicate, compelling, and weird. The small moments of strangeness have a way of elevating the work.

Distillation reminds us that storytelling can take many forms and shapes, blending mediums and genres. Theater is still alive and well with experimental creativity.

By D. R. Lewis

This article was originally published in The DC Line, here.

For the unacclimated, an advertisement for William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale might conjure images of holiday stories that are often seen on stage this time of year. But DC audiences will find a twisting, tangled yarn spun of jealous royals, blood-thirsty bears and folksy shepherds rather than holly sprigs and spirits of Christmases past, present and future. Playing through Dec. 17 in an admirable production, Folger Theatre reasserts The Winter’s Tale as one of Shakespeare’s “problem plays” and begs audience members to open their imaginations to the playwright’s most extraordinary dramatic whims.

The Winter’s Tale begins in the court of Sicilian king Leontes (Hadi Tabbal), who misinterprets a moment of friendship between his pregnant wife Hermione (Antoinette Crowe-Legacy) and visiting Bohemian king Polixenes (Drew Kopas). Growing jealous, Leontes instructs an aide to kill Polixenes, imprisons Hermione, and orders the abandonment of newborn child Perdita. While Polixenes manages to escape, Hermione ambiguously withers away and the baby is left to die in Bohemia. Only after the Oracle of Delphos exonerates Hermione does Leontes see the foolishness in his jealousy, prompting him to commit to atoning for his reckless behavior. Years later, Perdita (Kayleandra White) — having been rescued and raised by a shepherd — falls in love with Bohemian prince Florizel (Jonathan Del Palmer). Their love, along with the epiphany that Perdita is the Sicilian princess, not only brings the kingdoms together in friendship once again, but also facilitates Hermione’s resurrection (or, perhaps, the revelation that she’s been alive all along).

What begins as a deeply dramatic descent of a jealous king, complete with death and banishment, eventually gives way to a joyous romp of mistaken identity and inevitable romance. Such tonal transition has marked The Winter’s Tale with the scholarly “problem play” label, and presents a significant challenge for producing companies to hold the audience’s attention through the shifting vibe. Sure, for some, Shakespeare’s “genius” status leaves him immune to criticism. But The Winter’s Play is too full of dissatisfying dramatic wrinkles to make for anything other than an inconsistent night in the theater. When compared to the rest of the canon, The Winter’s Tale reveals itself as simply a lesser play. Please don’t shake your fist (spear?) at me.

Regardless, director Tamilla Woodard does her best to rise to the challenge — and by and large delivers. Rather than trying to force a smooth gradient between the play’s initial drama and the subsequent comedy, she leans on her ensemble of actors and creative team to draw stark stylistic differences between the two halves of her production. Raul Abrego Jr.’s bilevel set, which fits snugly onto the Folger’s small stage, alternates effectively between the chic, angular modernism in the play’s Sicilian scenes and the country cowboy flair of more rural Bohemia. Sarah Cubbage’s costumes correspond accordingly, with charcoal suits and businesswear for the royal Sicilians and cowboy hats and chaps for their rural Bohemian counterparts. Max Doolittle’s lighting design appropriately sets the mood, especially in the darkness of the forest where Perdita was to be abandoned and the sunny sheep-shearing festival that is the centerpiece of the production’s second half. These strong style choices effectively signal to the audience that the dramatic landscape has changed, helping to ease the emotional whiplash.

But not all of the choices are as successful. The Winter’s Tale has the distinction of owning the prototypical bloodthirsty bear, who pursues and mauls Antigonus (Stephen Patrick Martin) as he deposits the helpless Perdita in the woods. Woodard’s production opts to evoke the bear solely through lighting effects and projection, rather than with an actor in a bear costume. It came as something of a surprise that, with the bold stylization of both the serious first act and whimsical second act, the most droll element of the play was given but three flashes of light in this production. Given the ensemble’s liberal use of the middle aisle and other areas of the house to immerse the audience, the omission of the bear’s physical representation left this reviewer wondering why it went understated.

But this downplayed sequence is soon forgotten in the wake of strong performances across the cast. As Hermione, Crowe-Legacy is a stately and sincere queen, making Leontes’ rejection of her all the more baffling and heartbreaking. Kate Eastwood Norris is both entertaining as a dancing Bohemian and deeply moving as a devoted Paulina (her delivery of one of the play’s most memorable lines, “it is a heretic that makes the fire, not she which burns in it,” inspires chills). And as the mischievous Autolycus, Reza Salazar enchants the audience with call-and-response and expert delivery of the character’s extended missives.

Despite its quirks, The Winter’s Tale offers a warm welcome for audiences returning to the Folger Shakespeare Library, which has undergone significant renovations since March 2020. The building’s ground floor entrance and lobby area are done over in concrete that evokes cool modernism and the iconic Brutalism visible in parts of downtown Washington. But upon ascending to the upper level and entering into the wood and stone Tudor theater, patrons may feel instantly transported across centuries and locales from Washington to Elizabethan London — or perhaps, for the time being at least, from Sicily to Bohemia. In this new building that embraces the contrasting styles of the historical and the modern, The Winter’s Tale, with its own stark contrasts, may be just the right choice for the Folger’s fresh start.

by Whit Davis

This article was originally published in DC Theater Arts, here.

What happens when life doesn’t turn out as planned? What happens when the promise of always being friends is fractured? Why does it take grief to make us realize what we have? Long Time Since Yesterday by P.J. Gibson, directed by theater student Naynna Hollins, explores these questions through the friendship between six Black women brought back together by a tragic death. The Howard Players revitalize a lesser-known but essential play for their Next Up! Play Festival featuring student-led productions that spotlight the developing artists of the Department of Theatre at Howard University in the Al Freeman Jr. Environmental Theatre Space.

The death of Jeneen (Emil White) reunites college classmates Laveer (senior Jazmine Manfrum), Babbs (Jadah Evelyn Clay), Thelma (Nadira Davis), Panzi (Rebecca Celeste), and Alisa (senior Jayson Roman Broadnax). We find the group gathered together in the home Jeneen shared with her husband. As they reminisce and reflect on who she was or who they thought she was, her suicide unearths deeply held hurts as Babbs admits that she has felt at her lowest despite possessing beauty that people associate with happiness and desirability. She drinks and pacifies herself with jokes and humor, which acts as the thread line through a heartwrenching story. Like Jeneen, Babbs is lonely. Thelma feels ugly despite her achievements. Alisa believes her braggadocious verbosity about her husband and her success cover up her lost sense of self. Panzi is too busy projecting her anger at Laveer to hold space for her feelings about being misunderstood. And Laveer boasts of being a free-spirited artist who is without rooted connections.

Through flashbacks, we learn that the friendship was the strongest between Laveer and Jeneen, but after graduation, a conflict between Laveer and Panzi caused a rift between Jeneen and Laveer. A friendship they both promised would last forever is torn apart. Years later the death of Jeneen’s father brings them back together, back to their promise. The interwoven flashbacks reveal secrets between Jeneen and Panzi, and Jeneen and her husband. The transitions between the flashbacks and the present have perfect timing and are clearly defined so that the story never loses its rhythm, and the audience easily follows the timeline. When the lights dim on the cast, we know we enter a flashback as the spotlight hovers above Jeneen to give her a ghost-like presence.

Who was Jeneen? This question becomes a focal point as each friend except Panzi believes her to be innocent, shy, and childlike. They made little room for her to be big, imperfect, sad, and a 30-something-year-old woman with needs. In an intimate conversation with Laveer, Jeneen reveals the haunting of judgmental voices in her head. She may have lived a life she never truly wanted, while her friends are left to grapple with this truth.

The tension as thick as fog on a crisp fall morning fills the home between Laveer and Panzi until it drowns everyone, and the only way to make it to the surface is to swallow the bitterness of truth. This climatic moment reveals secrets that were ultimately too heavy for Jeneen to live with. These secrets are too heavy for even the living to deal with.

The cast does a fantastic job wrestling with themes of grief, love, and identity in an intimately set black box theater with minimal set design and carefully placed props like a couch and a bookshelf. White’s performance seems to pull from a personal place deep within as she honors Jeneen’s pain. She captures the rollercoaster of emotions felt by Jeneen, moving from joy to despair. Her tears and facial expressions can easily be another character in the story. Celeste’s presence is powerful. With each line she recites, they land eloquently and with ease. She becomes Panzi. Clay has remarkable comedic timing as Babbs. A play this heavy needs humor, and she delivers. The entire cast surrenders to the story.

The Howard Players productions are invaluable because they provide an opportunity for students to explore their talents and gifts. They share them with a community that believes in pursuing art as serious, rigorous, and meaningful work. To be nurtured in a space that values Black stories, Black storytellers, and Black spaces prepares these artists for a career where they may be the only ones. But they will not shrink; they will bloom.

By Whit Davis

This article was originally published in DC Theater Arts here.

I’ve always wanted to sit with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the mountaintop to gaze at the stars, to drink the Milky Way, and to pray silently to our ancestors. The mystery of Martin Luther King Jr.’s inner world has always been of great interest to me. Dr. King was a thoughtful writer. As much skill as he had on stages, in pulpits, in front of cameras, and on streets, he could command a page. His work lives with me like a ghost, gently haunting me to read more and better and then drown in his poetics. So much of his legacy is co-opted, repackaged, and sold by big corporations. They rework his image until he is more cotton candy than fire blazed to sundown towns.

Katori Hall’s play The Mountaintop (now playing at Round House Theatre) is a reminder, a wake-up call to all who think they know or knew King. She asks us to think, look, and listen again. She spars with our imagination. Her words land like Ali vs. Foreman. We’ve got to go deeper; no, we must go higher!

In The Mountaintop,  we find King, played by Ro Boddie, in his hotel room in Memphis at the Lorraine Motel the night before his assassination. He’s alone working on his speech, but only briefly before the arrival of a woman who, at first, seems to be merely a hotel staff member navigating her first day bringing King the coffee he requested from room service. An assumed brief encounter turns into a heartfelt, intimate conversation. Camae (Carrie Mae), as her character pronounces it, played by Renea S. Brown, is utterly hilarious. She’s quick-witted, outspoken, edgy, and lyrically weaves curse words together to tickle your insides. King’s character finds himself in awe of her beauty, her light, and the way she shows up authentically. He unsuspectingly lets his guard down, discards his God-like persona, and allows her to see him vulnerable.

Throughout the brilliantly woven dialogue, Hall suggestively allows us to feel the looming darkness as King keeps describing not feeling well. Camae is never alarmed by his remarks as they share cigarettes and secrets throughout the night. King is frightened of the loud thundering noise from the storm, and Camae is his unexpected comfort. At a critical moment, King’s paranoia raises its head, suspecting her of being a spook, resisting the calling to see her more deeply, more spiritually, out of fear, out of what he knows has been whispering his childhood name, Michael.

King and Camae both take command of the stage, supported by the set design of the hotel room, thanks to Paige Hathaway. The actors are both keenly aware of their mannerisms and the space they occupy. There’s something special about their performance. They share chemistry, trust each other, and know where the other ends and begins. Brown and Boddie are evenly matched in talent and build off each other with each line. The actors have great respect and seriousness for their roles. Boddie as King is powerful yet gentle. He makes King human. He brings him down to his details, to what makes a man, to the heart of what it means to be a person. Both actors are brilliant and deserve our witnessing, celebration, and acknowledgment for giving their all to this production.

TOP: Renea S. Brown (Camae) and Ro Boddie (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.); ABOVE: Ro Boddie (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.) and Renea S. Brown (Camae) in ‘The Mountaintop.’ Photos by Margot Schulman Photography.

After the climax, there is a sweet, honest moment between Camae and King, arguably where the play could have ended. Instead, Hall shifts us to a montage of Blackness, a dreamlike passing of the baton by King. This part of the production seems disjointed and whimsically too hopeful. What if Delicia Turner Sonnenberg’s directing deviated from Hall’s ending into something more cunning, daring, and shocking? I love celebrating our Blackness, but I’m interested in narratives that allow minds to travel to an abstract end. I wanted the audience to be responsible for reflecting and contending with going further into our inner world. Finding joy when the darkness King felt is still alive feels forced. I have to ask Hall, who did you write this ending for? America is still America. Yet, as I wrestle with Hall’s creative choices, which are inspiration from her mother, I cannot help but be thankful for her talent. She’s undeniably one of the best storytellers we have now. From the stage to television, she skillfully entertains and seduces our intellect.

The Mountaintop is mandatory viewing!

By D. R. Lewis

This article was originally published in The DC Line, here.

Standing at nearly 6 feet 4 inches, Atlanta Mayor Maynard Holbrook Jackson Jr. was a formidable presence in national Democratic politics, both in spirit and stature, for three decades. Now, in Something Moving: A Meditation on Maynard, a new play from the Ford’s Theatre Legacy Commission program, playwright Pearl Cleage draws on her experience as Jackson’s speechwriter and friend to contextualize his political legacy through the voices of the people who first sent him to City Hall in 1973.

Something Moving invites audiences into an Atlanta high-school-turned-community-arts-center, where nine local actors have gathered to rehearse a play that tells the story of Maynard Jackson 50 years after his election as the city’s first Black mayor. Under the direction of a pseudo-narrator called The Witness, the actors assume their roles as citizens remembering Jackson’s political rise — first as a candidate for United States Senate against a segregationist incumbent and eventually as a three-term mayor — and in doing so examine the social progress since Jackson first entered politics. They recount his success in harnessing the voting power of the city’s Black residents following the passage of the Voting Rights Act, and the symbol of hope he quickly became.

“Is this a history play?” asks one of the actors, who are referred to as numbered “Citizens.” “Every play is a history play,” replies The Witness. But Something Moving does not emulate many other histories by fixating on the specific dates and details of Jackson’s political career. Cleage instead focuses on the personal aspects of politics — the way that Jackson made his constituents feel, the social shift he represented, and the widespread feelings of optimism that his election inspired across the South. She adds context by detailing the pre- and post-Civil War legacy of Atlanta as the capital of a former confederate state, as seen through the experiences of its inhabitants. Among the Atlanta residents the various Citizens portray are a Black housekeeper who has worked for the same white family for 20 years, a lesbian couple who live on the site of a former Civil War battlefield, a gay man who encountered Jackson when the mayor visited the historic Sweet Gum Head drag bar, and a young man Jackson met while spending a weekend living among constituents in the Bankhead Courts public housing complex.

It is in these moments of heightened, focused storytelling that the play is at its strongest. By fully developing individual characters and the world they inhabit, Cleage draws the audience in and successfully underscores Jackson’s impact on individual lives. She is then able to effectively convey the oppressive social pressures that many of Jackson’s constituents were living under, why he represented the promise of relief and change, and the ways in which many of those pressures persist today. But, generally, those compelling moments come too late in the play, which spends a great deal of time at the outset explaining the mechanics of its storytelling, perhaps at the expense of a greater breadth of storytelling. The play falls victim to its own structure, with form overwhelming the content.

From her entrance, The Witness (a very charismatic Billie Krishawn) asserts herself as a dramatic device. Breaking the fourth wall, she immediately points out that the audience is in a theater watching a performance and that the people onstage are portraying performers themselves (clearly a nod to the Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, which is a phrase that is repeatedly uttered in reference to Atlanta). But in a play that insists on connection between people and wishes to underscore the power of the individual (as implied by its subtitle, A Meditation on Maynard), The Witness’ commitment to referring to her characters only as numbered citizens and to present herself as a dramatic convention are not conducive to the play’s desired impact.

While the full title promises both the momentum of a political ascent and the careful consideration of a meditation, the play struggles to commit to either. Just as it deliberately avoids digging into the particulars of Jackson’s policy accomplishments, it quickly brushes over his constituents’ criticisms, focusing instead on the symbolism of his election and the magnetism of the man. Regardless, Cleage delivers a heartfelt love letter to her friend and former boss, and the affection and respect she holds for Jackson is both obvious and touching. Audiences will walk away from this production having learned more about an overlooked political icon and feeling encouraged to consider the impact that local heroes can have on their home communities as well as the national stage.

Cleage’s play is bolstered by a strong cast and production team. Under the direction of Seema Sueko, the apt ensemble buoys the material with standout performances by Kim Bey, Alina Collins Maldonado and Constance Swain. Ivania Stack’s costumes embrace modern fashion, but also nod to 1970s trends. Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew’s lighting appropriately evokes the industrial brightness of an aging community center, but in conjunction with Shawn Duan’s projection design can turn on a dime to transport the audience to a range of settings. But Milagros Ponce de León’s set may be the most effectual element of all. Utilizing the stage’s deep apron, the angled sides of her hyper-realistic set extend toward the audience like arms reaching for a welcoming hug.

Notwithstanding its limitations, Something Moving is a fitting selection for Ford’s Theatre. It’s not just that the flags festooning Abraham Lincoln’s box serve as a seamless yet noticeable buffer between this landmark of American history and Ponce de León’s municipal set, nor that the theater sits mere blocks from the centers of our federal government in a city that, at the time of Jackson’s election, had a population that was more than 70% Black. Equally important, Ford’s Theatre serves as an educational center, welcoming countless students from across the United States each year to engage them in both American history and the performing arts. Cleage’s play unabashedly joins in those efforts. For some students, it will be the first play they see. For far more, it will likely be their first introduction to a man who dedicated himself to building a better community. Through Cleage’s curation of historical stories and voices that are not so different from those of her modern audience, Maynard Jackson’s legacy endures.

Something Moving: A Meditation on Maynard by Pearl Cleage runs through Oct. 15 at Ford’s Theatre, 511 10th St. NW. Directed by Seema Sueko. Approximately 90 minutes and performed without an intermission. Tickets are available at fords.org or by calling the box office at 888-616-0270.

By Jakob Cansler

This article was originally published in the DC Line here.

Eleven years ago, celebrated Ukrainian playwright Sasha Denisova won Russia’s highest theater prize. That play was one of 25 she has produced in Moscow.

Today, though, none of her plays are performed there, or anywhere in Russia for that matter. 

Denisova fled Moscow for Poland shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022; since then, she has focused her work on the war, having written and staged four new plays. The world premiere of one of them, My Mama and the Full-Scale Invasion, runs through Oct. 8 at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in a co-production with Philadelphia’s Wilma Theater, where the show will be produced early next year.

Denisova specializes in political theater that combines documentary with fantasy, and My Mama certainly fits that bill, with the script inspired by ⁠— and, in some sections, taken verbatim from ⁠— conversations the playwright had with her mother, Olga. 

At 82, Olga decided to stay in Kyiv, where she has lived her whole life, amid Russia’s onslaught on Ukraine, including her city. That puts Olga on the frontlines of the war, both literally and in Denisova’s imagination.

At one point in the play, Olga tells her daughter that Russian soldiers are making their way to the “decision-maker.” 

“Apparently my mama regards herself as the decision-maker,” Sasha, played by Suli Holum in the show, says in response. In the increasingly fantastical scenarios that follow, Olga strategizes with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, flies a fighter jet and converses with other world leaders. 

The play “is a combination of a document and of a fantastic world,” Yury Urnov, the show’s director, said in an interview. “So the biggest ⁠— in a good way ⁠— challenge was how to give space to both of these, ⁠⁠the real reality and fantastic reality on stage and how they can coexist.”

The two extremes also make for a play that is tonally complex, as over-the-top comedic sequences segue into moments depicting the harsh realities of war. In one section, a lighthearted moment of song and dance is cut off by a nighttime air raid.

Denisova, Urnov and the rest of the creative team had to find a way to strike the right balance among all of these different elements. The result is a production that features a rotating set piece, a soundtrack that ranges from classical music to disco, approximately 100 custom-made projections, actor Lindsay Smiling playing a dozen characters, and deepfakes of the leaders of France and Germany.

Fitting all of that into a 90-minute play, and to make it cohesive, is challenging enough, but My Mama also had to be translated from Denisova’s native Russian.

“We had like a group of five people⁠ — bilingual and American⁠, and Sasha, certainly ⁠— in presence who were pretty much going line by line through this play and and trying to make it work in English,” Urnov said. “It’s not just about the words, it’s about the contexts. It’s about the associations that resonate with English-speaking audiences.”

For the creative team, the drive to overcome these challenges wasn’t just an artistic responsibility. A play like this comes with political and social responsibilities, too, which raises the stakes. 

More than a year and a half after Russia invaded Ukraine, during which time U.S. news coverage of the war has waned, My Mama serves as an explicit reminder of the toll Russia’s invasion has taken on Ukrainians. For Urnov, who was born and raised in Russia, the responsibility also feels personal.

“We are at a place where Putin’s regime is doing everything to normalize [the war]. There is a danger in the normalization of that,” he said. “We’re opening in DC. I think that’s the place where it needs to open. I hope people who can⁠ — who are politicians and the people who affect politicians’ decisions — will come and see it.”

And yet, to say that My Mama is simply a play about the war in Ukraine would be a mischaracterization. Much of it focuses on Olga’s life and her relationship with her daughter. Their dynamic is complicated, sometimes even antagonistic — and it shifts amid the war and after Olga decides to stay in Kyiv.

“At the heart of the play, really, is a mother’s love — not only for her child, but for her country,” said actor Holly Twyford, who plays Olga. “And she says I’m not going anywhere. And don’t you dare come here. And that is very powerful. I think it’s very powerful.”

After all, what most American media covers of the war is strategic, logistical or political⁠ — offensives and counteroffensives, bombing reports, document leaks, summits, aid deals. What is lost in that kind of reporting is the story of what it’s like for the Ukrainians on the ground, which is exactly what My Mama conveys.

As Twyford describes it, the play has both a “micro human element and very macro human element,” telling the story of Ukraine and the war through one woman’s thoughts and experiences. 

“It will absolutely make you laugh, but it also won’t make you forget the reality of the situation. And I think that’s, I don’t know, that’s kind of the definition of hope, isn’t it?”