Performing Arts

By Julian Oquendo 

This article was first published January 20, 2020 in DC Theatre Scene here. 

There is something very refreshing about being an audience to theatre outside of a theater. 4615 Theatre Company is  proving, as did the bar hopping runaway hit The Smuggler late last year, that theatre works perfectly well when set in a bar or restaurant, park, library, or town square.

In this case, Measure takes over the historic Flanagan’s Harp and Fiddle in Bethesda, and the bar couldn’t be better prepared for this production. The efficiency of arriving a few moments earlier, grabbing a drink and a bite before the start of the show, and knowing that you’ve still only spent a fraction of what a night out to the theatre in DC would cost, makes me wonder why more restaurants and theater companies aren’t capitalizing on this practice.

Measure, written and directed by Joe Calarco, is a surprise addition to 4615’s third season. Calarco told DCTS that he wrote the play in the years following a harrowing South Florida case where three teenagers doused Matthew Brewer in alcohol and set him on fire. Brewer survived, but the case made national headlines and became a national talking point on how, as a nation, we handle bullies and abuse. While it helps to go into this play knowing about the case, the play isn’t about Brewer. It’s about the bully who lit the match.

Specifically, it’s about one of the bullies, Derek (Ethan Miller) and the recently discharged, traumatized soldier Buddy (Scott Ward Abernethy) who hides Derek in his father’s bar in the days after the crime.

Miller performs the role of Derek with a frenetic energy, moving and weaving through the bar and audience like a trapped, but ultimately terrified tiger. He’s living in fear of Buddy, his shelter and, technically, his captor. Miller shows us Derek as Calarco wrote him: gross, maybe drug-fueled and desperate, a kid hoping to run away from his consequences.

Abernethy is outstanding as Buddy. His embodiment of physical and emotional PTSD are reflected in a limp to his right leg, in how his shoulders slump or grow at the call to violence. You see in his body a weight getting lifted when he sees a solution that violence might resolve, and you see that weight falling back when he weighs the consequences of his actions. This is his drive, and, to avoid spoilers, I will only say that Abernethy wonderfully portrays the desire to keep that weight off other people. 

Miller and Abernethy’s performances, when they’re staged together, within a foot of audiences, drive home the proximity to violence we are witnessing. When Derek holds a bat over Miller’s head, when you can feel the venue rock as one actor is shoved against the bar, we, the audience, feel a little closer to their tensions and fears.

Nick Torres (Teddy) also shines as Buddy’s father, and aging bar owner, struggling with signs of early dementia. There is a heart-wrenching moment in the play when Buddy needs to remind him which son Teddy is remembering. There are other moments that feel off, and are maybe just clues to the emerging sickness: he quietly struggles to remember where he keeps the beer glasses, he thinks the bar is out of scotch when there’s a bottle present on the bar’s rail (accident or no? I wasn’t sure).  Although Torres’ performance is exceptional, his character does seem to operate only as back story to drive Buddy’s emotional landscape.

Measure feels like a narrative from another era, when we could still pretend that bullies and abusers don’t win in the end. (Ha!) That empathy and a hug were the solutions needed to put a bow tie on our darkest emotions. It’s just hard to empathize when, in today’s era, you almost suspect Derek and Buddy’s actions would be forgiven with a pardon.

This play isn’t for you if you’re squeamish to violence. Calarco, in his writing and direction, effectively portrays the traumas and broken natures of these characters, and delivers back story via audio from the news coverage of Miller lighting his victim on fire. There’s a particularly jarring scene where we hear audio from Buddy’s time in the military.

The setting is perfect, and, saying that, I apologize to set designers everywhere. Harp and Fiddle serves as a great backdrop to immerse yourself in this world Calarco has built. (This is the first time Measure, set in a bar, has been produced in one.) The wafts of what I found to be a damn good burger and decent fried food coming from the kitchen build an atmosphere that can’t be replicated on a stage. Thirty-five years of beer soaking into the bar can evoke feelings of previous generations and the sadness of missing memories. The clink of bar glasses, the part of the floor that needs repairs, all serve to the play’s setting of a fragile world that will struggle to get fixed.

A Measure of Cruelty will perform for one more weekend on the 25th and 26th. Their early matinee shows are perfect for a lunch and theatre experience, with time left over to find things to do for the rest of the day. (There are other events happening at Harp and Fiddle on the same days that weekend.) There are audiences hungry for this type of theatrical event. Perhaps you are one of them.

This article was first published January 16, 2020 in DC Theatre Scene here.

A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini’s best-selling novel, explores the lives of two Afghan women, Mariam and Laila, both living in war-torn Kabul and married to the same man, Rasheed. Ursula Rani Sarma’s script has been successfully staged at theatres in Canada, London, and California. On January 21st, this theatrical adaptation will be performed for the first time at Arena Stage in Washington, DC.

Haysam Kadri joins DCTS for a conversation about this production, his role as antagonist Rasheed, and his own work as artistic director of The Shakespeare Company in Calgary, Alberta.

How are rehearsals going?

It’s a good group. It’s always a good process with Carey Perloff (the director) at the helm.

What’s different about this production?

With any new script and any new story there’s an opportunity to discover things out of it. I run a Shakespeare Company back in Calgary. When you come back to a play you feel like you’re scratching the surface. This play is so topical now, it resonates with so many people. You travel around America and there’s an overwhelming response.

Every time I do this play I discover new things. I’ve been fortunate enough to do it in Canada as well. I’ve worn many hats for this play: there’s always something to unfold and discover. This will be my ninth or tenth time doing this production, so obviously, it’s doing something right. 

You’ve also directed this production in London?

London, Ontario and Vancouver. It looks like it’s going to continue to have a life in Canada and in the States.

Every time a new person inhabits a new role, they bring a new element to it. You’re always finding different dynamics, interpretations of the line, a different action, energies are different, so if things change. The stories of Layla and Mariam are elevated. They resonate differently with different people and Carey takes what we do across the country. “I discovered this moment here. It might help the actor in this particular case.”

Any particular changes to the play when you move closer to the nation’s capital?

We’re a little closer to the political pulse; we’re in the middle of the political pulse. I’m curious to see how the audience is going to react. We discover new things in different cities. Audiences are different in Canada.  American audiences seem to be very vocal, wanting to express how they feel during the show. Canadians seemed to be more reserved during the show. Americans are one degree away from the story— to Afghanistan. They have a different relationship to the political complexities of the story than Canadians.  It’s very curious to see what the DC and surrounding audiences will take out of it.

With A Thousand Splendid Suns, how important is that you’re seeing a degree of diversity on stage?

What’s important is that we’re giving a voice to the people of Afghanistan, a different voice you don’t see in the media or the news. This is a story set in Afghanistan but this story could happen anywhere. There’s a lot of domestic violence in the play, which is not reserved for one part of the world.

As we start to go and we start to see the voice of Afghan people, you start to see audiences that can relate to those characters. It’s not them and us. It’s a universal story.

This will be our ninth production of this play. It’s not a tour. We’ve spent over 3 1/2 years. It’s been a long process, page to stage. Audiences have been quite affected by it. We’re really excited to have 11 diverse people on that stage of South Asian and Middle Eastern extraction. When you get that, it doesn’t happen often.

Do you recommend the play for someone who hasn’t read the book?

You don’t need to read it. Actually, it’s one of those books you can’t put down; it’s a quick read. It has a built-in audience. it’s always difficult to transpose a novel into a play, to distill it into two hours, but I think we have a very successful adaptation on our hands. 

Tell us about your role as Rasheed.

Rasheed is very interesting character. The audience won’t like him, I will say that. What’s important is to find the humanity in a character that has not many redeeming qualities, and that’s been the challenge as an actor, to make this individual three dimensional human being. He does say things that are off-putting and actually offensive. What’s more important to me is to make this person a human being. He’s also a victim of society and ideology and a lot of the insecurities that he goes through are circumstances. 

How do you see the audience respond to him?

His version of love is distorted. His version of love is based out of a fear. He thinks he’s doing everything right. What makes a guy like Rasheed a villain is that people see his version of love and they’re just appalled by it. It’s quite an interesting character study and interesting to see audiences react. You feel the vitriol.

What’s something about you we won’t be able to find on Google?

I have three daughters. I love being a dad. [Thousand Splendid Suns] is a story about two women. I’m surrounded by women in my household. This play resonates when you see the friendship of two women: the adversity, the harrowing tale that they go through and the sacrifice of love. I think about my kids and it’s hard to be away from my family, but this play really puts into perspective the privileges we have in this part of the world. I don’t take for granted what it is to live in the western part of the world. Puts things into perspective as the father of three girls.

And I’m a Nationals fan. The Expo’s were my team when they moved.

What about your work as artistic director for The Shakespeare Company in Calgary?

Shakespeare became one of those things; I fell in love with it. I threw my art into the classical works. When I got to Calgary, it was just serendipitous. I got back and auditioned for the artistic producer role:  It’s been 7 years [I’ve worked] as an artistic producer.  And Carey Perloff just directed our version of Merchant of Venice. 

You also have something called Hammered Hamlet?

I’m always finding ways to make Shakespeare accessible. There’s always a stigma, because it’s taught in English class and taught in academic exercises, it’s quite a dry biscuit to swallow so we do shows that excite and inspire. And sometimes we do shows that entertain. We do shows where 3 of the 5 actors take shots in front of the audience before the show and we auction off to a king and queen of the house to dictate when the next shot goes. They’ll stop the play to say when the actors get to take another shot.

Let me tell you, Shakespeare sober is already quite a complex exercises. It was brilliant. We sold out three weeks before we opened.

It’s a novelty concept. We sprinkle that in there with our traditional shows. It brings a different demographic of people. We saw a completely different audience base. It was an exciting experiment and we learned a lot.

You aim to deliver a different accessibility to Shakespeare?

When high school students read it in English, it’s such a dry exercise because it’s being taught as an academic exercise. It’s taught cognitively and not creatively. Our attention spans are really short.  To sit down for three hours and hear English as a second language, it’s a tall task to ask from an audience, in my humble opinion.

What we’ve done is we’ve reverse the stigma and the perception by calling it “Lean and Mean Shakespeare,” by making it exciting and by doing those little things: drunk Shakespeare, we did a zombie Shakespeare (people afflicted by the plague). We brought in a younger demographic and build up future audiences. We also do traditional shows: period and hard-hitting Shakespeare.

I did a version of Hamlet and took it down to 2 hours and 10 minutes. 

Thank you!

Exactly! Because I’m interested in making it accessible to a wider range of people. There are very few people, I’m gonna be honest, who are going to want to sit through a three and a half hour Shakespeare without getting bored. It hurts me to slash it, but you want to make it exciting and you want to bring people to the theatre.  It makes a difference that people go into a show and 7 and are out by 9:15 pm. Psychologically, that’s a big deal. “Great, I’m gonna go to another one.”

By Julian Oquendo

This article was first published January 10, 2020 in DC Theatre Scene here.

Charlene V. Smith is not shying away from a theatrical marathon. As the artistic director for Brave Spirits Theatre (BST), Smith and the company’s productions have often focused on learning contemporary lessons from historical, usually action-packed, plays. The company’s tagline: Verse and Violence, acknowledges the nature of what you can expect from them, an appreciation of the writing of that era, and an acknowledgement of the violent drama involved.

And this year, Smith will be the first woman in the world to lead an eight-play cyclical staging of one of the most dramatic arcs of William Shakespeare plays: Richard the Second, the Henry plays, and Richard the Third.

Starting with Richard the Second in January and culminating in a marathon performance of all eight productions during the summer of 2021, BST sees these plays through a feminist lens, and promises a look at they can reflect on issues of gender and race today.

Tell us a bit about yourself.

I’ve been doing theatre my whole life. My mother was one of the co-founders of Bay Street Players, a community theatre in Eustis, Florida. It’s where she and my father met, and where I grew up with my brother and sister. We all spent a lot of time together at the theatre, and there were several productions where all or most of us were involved. I knew from a very young age that I wanted to keep doing theatre for the rest of my life.

What brought you to DC?

I came to DC after college on what I assumed was a temporary stop on my way to New York City. I had heard there was a good theatre scene here, so it seemed like a friendly place to take the first steps into a professional theatre career. I was only here for about six months when I realized I wasn’t leaving.

Why this cycle, why now? 

In some ways, I’m doing the cycle as early as I thought I could get away with it! The longer answer is that I saw the Royal Shakespeare Company’s history cycle in 2008 and walked out of that experience determined to mount my own cycle at some point. Once Brave Spirits Theatre was growing and I started thinking about when we could do it, the year 2020 popped out to me. It was far enough away (at that point) to give us planning time, and it allowed me to make use of the clever tagline “History is 2020.” The year 2020 in of itself contains circles and repetition, and that hindsight always allows us to see much clearer the consequences of our actions, political or personal. I also knew then that we would be experiencing an election cycle during most of the project, though, of course, I couldn’t have predicted how painful and fraught our own political process would become.

I hope these plays will help us all think about the systems of power in our own society, the harms they cause, as well as who benefits from them, who is complicit in them, and who are the people always left cleaning up the messes.

What’s the story on how Brave Spirits got started?

So many coincidences and strange twists of fate! Victoria Reinsel and I were randomly paired together for a callback for The Comedy of Errors for the Virginia Shakespeare Festival in 2010. You always get very little time at these things to prepare with a stranger, but we went in together and something clicked. I remember thinking, “this woman knows what she is doing.”

We agreed that we loved how much Shakespeare there was in this area but we were both still yearning for a different kind of Shakespeare than what we were seeing. We wanted DC to have a company that was passionate about text work and that gave more focus to female artists and characters.

How did the Richard the Second rehearsal process look like for you and the actors? Are you prepping for the next production already?

I spent a couple of years on a very complex spreadsheet. I had to figure out how we would rehearse and perform eight plays on a non-equity schedule, ie, with only nights and weekends.

How does each play get the rehearsal hours it needs, and how do we do all this without burning people out who are also working other jobs? Due to venue availability, we ultimately split the project across two years and I think that has turned out to be a positive choice. We’ve been overlapping the first four plays in the rehearsal room since the beginning.

How many directors are going to be involved for this two year stint? 

Two. I am directing this year’s four plays and Jordan Friend, artistic director of 4615 Theatre Company, is directing next year’s four plays. The two of us have also had many conversations about the overall vision and arc of the project and we are staying involved in the other person’s half. He’s also composing and music directing for these first four plays, along with offering feedback to me from a director’s eye. I’ll be playing Margaret of Anjou in the second four plays when he takes over the directing reins.

Are you expecting to keep the same production team throughout the two-year period?

The hope is that the entire acting ensemble and production team will stay with the project the entire way through. 

Are there any moments from the cycle that you’re most excited about staging? 

I’m really excited about the Henry the Sixth plays in general – they are so rarely performed, even less so in three parts, and I love them dearly. For the plays I am directing, I have been most nervous from the beginning of the choruses in Henry the Fifth — how do we stage them in a way that makes sense in the context of the cycle as a whole and supports the way in which we want to critique these men in power?

I’ve found in the past that the moments in plays that I am most nervous to work on end up being the most rewarding. I’m hoping that will prove true here as well.

With such a busy/tight marathon scheduling, how are you (and the actors) keeping your spirits up?

I know we are very lucky that this cast bonded quickly and easily and remains close and friendly. They are excited each night to be working together and that really is what makes this all possible. They’ve also found their own traditions – this is a cast that is drinking lots of tea together and they chat and catch up each night in the kitchen as the water is boiling and the tea is brewing.

Your Twitter seems to be set to post the same thing every day?

Yes, I do! For those who don’t know, every day at noon, my twitter account posts a reminder that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by almost 3 million votes. It is my own way of acknowledging the history we are currently living. And though my followers are used to it by now, every so often one of them responds because seeing it on a particular day hit them in a particular way. It’s an important reminder that more of us wanted to work for a better future and a sobering reminder of the way our antiquated and undemocratic electoral college subverts the will of the people.

There was this amazing study that came out a few years ago that tracked Hillary’s approval ratings – she was always more popular when she was doing a job and less popular when she was applying for a job or a promotion. Our society still punishes women for seeking power and I think about that a lot, especially with the material we are rehearsing now.

By Mercedes Hesselroth

This article was first published in DC Theatre Scene here.

Irish author James Joyce unfairly gets a bad rap for being “too difficult” to read. His first draft of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was rejected with a note from the editor saying “I can’t print what I can’t understand.” Joyce’s last and most ambitious work, Finnegans Wake, is often said to require a second book, A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake by Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson, to be read in tandem if one has any hope of understanding the heavily experimental writing style.

Most appraisals of his incomprehensibility are exaggerations, but for those who want a lighter introduction to the world of Joyce, director Robert McNamara has selected James Joyce’s The Dead as Scena Theatre’s holiday show. The musical is a Tony Award-winning adaptation of the final installment in Joyce’s short story collection Dubliners, in many ways a prequel to his best-known tome Ulysses. Joyce’s literary admirer T.S. Eliot called The Dead “the finest” of all the stories in the collection, and perhaps of any short story ever written. Like Joyce’s other writing, The Dead focuses on the everyday people of early 20^th-century Ireland and their search for meaning in the face of mortality.

Gabriel Conroy (Louis Lavoie) and his wife Gretta (Danielle Davy) attend a Christmas party at the home of Aunts Kate and Julia Morkan (Rosemary Regan and Andrea Hatfield, respectively). But over the course of the evening, lost love, failed careers, and family secrets threaten the joyfulness of the proceedings. Most problems with the show come from the process of adaptation and are unavoidable for any production. For one, there are twice as many characters than necessary (13 in total), which prevents several of the party guests from having any discernible arcs and leaves cast members cramped into various corners of the stage. Just as Joyce’s writing alternates between the planes of realism and symbolism, this production also mills between a natural and a constructed world.

As such, many of the songs come stacked in rapid succession at the beginning of the show. Less than a breath after finishing their own number, the characters immediately cajole another partygoer into performing. Though this series of songs interrupts all the conversations we just got a peek into, the majority of these threads are dropped entirely and don’t impact the ending of the show. Almost as soon as he arrives, Gabriel is told off by the Jo March-like Molly Ivers (Mo O’Rourke) for writing at a pro-English newspaper, but their debate about the future of Irish sovereignty never reaches a full conclusion. Aunt Kate insults the maid Lilly (Emily K. Collins) at dinner – implying she’s on the verge of hiring someone new in her place – but this tension never resurfaces.

The songs themselves are adeptly accompanied by music director Greg Watkins on keyboard. James Joyce’s The Dead has never received an official wide release cast album, but one wonders if the emotional resonance of the songs would have been clearer with more musicians supporting the cast.

Irish author James Joyce unfairly gets a bad rap for being “too difficult” to read. His first draft of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was rejected with a note from the editor saying “I can’t print what I can’t understand.” Joyce’s last and most ambitious work, Finnegans Wake, is often said to require a second book, A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake by Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson, to be read in tandem if one has any hope of understanding the heavily experimental writing style.

Most appraisals of his incomprehensibility are exaggerations, but for those who want a lighter introduction to the world of Joyce, director Robert McNamara has selected James Joyce’s The Dead as Scena Theatre’s holiday show. The musical is a Tony Award-winning adaptation of the final installment in Joyce’s short story collection Dubliners, in many ways a prequel to his best-known tome Ulysses. Joyce’s literary admirer T.S. Eliot called The Dead “the finest” of all the stories in the collection, and perhaps of any short story ever written. Like Joyce’s other writing, The Dead focuses on the everyday people of early 20^th-century Ireland and their search for meaning in the face of mortality.

But over the course of the evening, lost love, failed careers, and family secrets threaten the joyfulness of the proceedings. Most problems with the show come from the process of adaptation and are unavoidable for any production. For one, there are twice as many characters than necessary (13 in total), which prevents several of the party guests from having any discernible arcs and leaves cast members cramped into various corners of the stage. Just as Joyce’s writing alternates between the planes of realism and symbolism, this production also mills between a natural and a constructed world.

As such, many of the songs come stacked in rapid succession at the beginning of the show. Less than a breath after finishing their own number, the characters immediately cajole another partygoer into performing. Though this series of songs interrupts all the conversations we just got a peek into, the majority of these threads are dropped entirely and don’t impact the ending of the show. Almost as soon as he arrives, Gabriel is told off by the Jo March-like Molly Ivers (Mo O’Rourke) for writing at a pro-English newspaper, but their debate about the future of Irish sovereignty never reaches a full conclusion. Aunt Kate insults the maid Lilly (Emily K. Collins) at dinner – implying she’s on the verge of hiring someone new in her place – but this tension never resurfaces.

The songs themselves are adeptly accompanied by music director Greg Watkins on keyboard. James Joyce’s The Dead has never received an official wide release cast album, but one wonders if the emotional resonance of the songs would have been clearer with more musicians supporting the cast.

Davy delivers the strongest vocal performance of the night, singing of a distant memory in “Goldenhair” and relaying the story of her first love to Gabriel in “Michael Furey.” Lavoie also serves as an able narrator, guiding the audience through the offstage action of the play.

All together the cast builds a believable camaraderie, the kind of laughter between old friends potent enough to make you forget what was so funny in the first place. Like the characters, this feeling of community is all one can hope for during the holidays while we celebrate loved ones past and present, as well as those we have yet to meet.

by Mercedes Hessleroth

This article was first published in DC Theatre Scene here.

Over the course of its 20-year run, Nickelodeon cartoon SpongeBob SquarePants has been blamed for everything from causing ADD to promoting violence. Despite these criticisms, the show has survived to earn over $13 billion dollars across its many iterations of books, movies, video games, and even roller coasters. Given the franchise’s reach, a Broadway musical was inevitable – it’s success, however, was not. Luckily, Nickelodeon was smart enough to get experimental director Tina Landau to usher the stage show to life. Landau translated the unfocused mania of the cartoon into the perfect amount of theatrical quirkiness and joy, landing the musical a whopping 12 Tony nominations.

Now, the innovative production has been put to film in The SpongeBob Musical: Live on Stage!, a slightly edited version of the Broadway show. The action opens on a regular day in Bikini Bottom, with SpongeBob (Ethan Slater) heading to work as a fry cook at the Krusty Krab. When a nearby volcano threatens to destroy the town and all its residents, it’s up to SpongeBob to save everyone from the impending apocalypse. But failed restaurateur Plankton (Wesley Taylor), whose ponytail is as slimy as his personality, plans to take over Bikini Bottom in the pre-disaster chaos. This recording, directed for television by Glenn Weiss, forever preserves Slater’s dynamic Tony-nominated performance as SpongeBob.

Though the characters in the show are more humanoid than their animated counterparts, Slater seems to be made of rubber as he fully commits himself to the immense physicality of the role, somersaulting, slipping between ladder rungs, and doing the splits. The relentless optimism he brings to the character convincingly turns SpongeBob from a loser with a dead-end job who can’t drive into an endearing sponge with unrealized potential.

Adding to the uniqueness of the show is the unconventional way its score was assembled. Each number was written by different musicians established outside of musical theatre, from The Flaming Lips to John Legend to Panic! at the Disco, often switching genres from song to song. The result should be a mismatched set of disparate tunes, but music director and orchestrator Tom Kitt strings together both the zany and heartfelt extremes of the score. One of the standout contributions is “No Control,” a reworked David Bowie track from his 1995 dystopian concept album Outside. As Bikini Bottom reckons with its mortality, the bass voice of reporter Perch Perkins (Kelvin Moon Loh) sings out “No fish knows the future/Not a single shark or soul/It’s all deranged/No control.” Not exactly what you’d expect from a children’s show, but The SpongeBob Musical packs a goodie bag of delights that get more unpredictable as the story goes on. Another track worth noting is “When the Going Gets Tough,” a T.I.-penned rap battle between Plankton and SpongeBob that rivals the bars spat on any Hamilton track.

The songs and book are accompanied by live sound effects from Foley artist Mike Dobson. Bookwriter Kyle Jarrow carries over memorable gags from the TV show, like using title cards to signify the passage of time, while injecting the show with plenty of original humor. A favorite moment is a reenactment of SpongeBob and his scientist squirrel friend Sandy (Christina Sajous) climbing the volcano as a Cabbage Patch Kid and American Girl Doll, respectively. Further Easter eggs can be found hidden in the costumes of the hardworking ensemble, designed in tandem with the set by David Zinn, who serves up one visual feast after another. As for the projection design by Peter Nigrini, it’s refreshing to see media embedded into the DNA of a show, rather than as a shortcut or afterthought.

A filmed performance should incite jealousy for the live experience, and The SpongeBob Musical: Live on Stage! does just that. Seeing how this recording captures its whole cast and creative team at the top of their game, it’s a wonder why more producers wouldn’t want their work immortalized in this way. Hopefully the producers of tomorrow won’t be as camera-shy, but for now, SpongeBob is part of a handful of productions leading the way in making theatre accessible to current and future generations. It’s not often a truly all-ages show comes along, but there’s something here for everyone to enjoy, whether you despise the source material or want the “nautical nonsense” to continue another 20 years.

By Daniella Ignacio

This article was first published in DC Theatre Scene here.

Professional productions of Fiddler on the Roof traditionally feature the iconic Jerome Robbins choreography from the original production. The 2015 Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof was the first major production to get permission to use new choreography, created by Hofesh Schechter and his company. That revival is now on tour across North America, with the choreography restructured by Christopher Evans, Schechter’s associate choreographer.

Evans has a long working relationship with Shechter, having worked with him since 2005, and was instrumental in the process of developing the choreography for Broadway. I caught up with Evans in the week leading up to the national tour’s stop in D.C. at the National Theatre.

What intrigues you about Israeli styles of dance – particularly Hofesh’s style?

CHRISTOPHER EVANS: I met Hofesh at such a young age [Evans was a student at the London School of Contemporary Dance] that I wasn’t really that hardened by training yet. I could still kind of go anywhere with my training, I hadn’t been fully disciplined, there wasn’t a lot of “unlearning” to do with me. And I think, naturally, that kind of grounded, slightly animalistic way of moving really suited me because I was into martial arts. I always found dance to be just another kind of movement that I had been doing previously. Martial arts is just movement and dance is just movement. I wasn’t interested in particular styles or vocab, I just liked moving.

[Hofesh] came from a folky background but then got involved with Batsheva and Gaga. His way of moving was more about turning imagery into flesh, rather than having very recognizable technique. For me, when I first met him, it was like watching him through the Wild West, I couldn’t categorize it, so I was really enjoying that. Learning how to move like that whilst making a piece was really useful because it meant you could really understand what was going on, not just do the movement thing, but how it’s used to communicate.

How does the choreography differ from the original Jerome Robbins choreography for Fiddler? 

EVANS: It feels, as far as I’m concerned, very far away from what I would consider musical theatre vocabulary, or how [that vocabulary] can sometimes present itself: that kind of cleanliness or the frontal nature of how that dance could be. For me, Hofesh’s movement could be very grounded in detail and grounded in community. When people watch Hofesh’s work, whether they’re dancers or not, they always get the slight feeling like, “I can do that, that looks like something I could do,” it doesn’t look like that kind of virtuosity that’s flashy where you enjoy it because you could never do it. Like, this is connected to something quite human, which I think is perfect for Fiddler because I think it’s ultimately about a community of people who celebrate being alive at every opportunity and any opportunity to dance, and move, and be physical.

What [Hofesh] enjoys communicating with Fiddler, is that in every movement [there] is this feeling of “we are together, and there is something above us, there’s something bigger than us.” In some moments, it sits slightly more into the ancient or timeless, almost tribalist, message of “we are humbled by something bigger than us, in service to something great.” And in other moments, it has that kind of bravado [and] virtuosity, that comes, in my opinion, in a very small, undulating, articulate way.

What I always loved about Jerome Robbins’ choreography is its strength, and drive, and its lines, and its very sure, defined gestures. The power that can come from his choreography is a lot about definition and throwing energy in very specific directions, whereas Hofesh’s work’s power comes mainly from its use of unison: how you can get a whole group of people to do very very tiny things that are actually quite smoky and you’re seeing a lot of unity onstage but you’re not seeing clones of people, you’re seeing people who are sharing some very specific idea, but they don’t have to be exact movement in the same way. So it looks very complex and quite organic. I guess that’s the best way I could articulate dance over the phone. (laughs)

Which moment do you think defines that the most in the show?

EVANS: I would say probably “L’Chaim” is one of those great examples. There are two conflicting energies in the room and it is obviously loaded with tension because of the politics and the context of the story, but all of those tensions subside mainly through this idea of “we’re gonna loosen up and we’re gonna dance, we’re going to enjoy life and we’re going to show off.” What I like about that scene is that it gives the opportunity for virtuosity to be the thing that two opposing groups can share. So it’s a nice opportunity for swingy, smoky, slightly messy, tumbly style of the Jews who are just going to get up and dance slightly drunk, but we’re going to show off. Then there’s the very clean, powerful, sure movements of the Russians. And of course it’s all going to be amalgamated into a big number and it’s just purely about enjoying life.

What are some of your favorite elements of the choreography?

EVANS: In terms of a pure feel-good wave of energy coming towards you, I love “Tradition” because it’s one of those rare opportunities when the entire cast is dancing together and people of different ages are dancing with the feeling of “we are dancing now because these are the moves we have always had, these are the movements that represent this community and God” and it’s nice that everyone has that at the beginning of the show.

How did you restructure this new choreography for the tour?

EVANS: I think of all the things that were streamlined, the dancing element, because it always had a feeling of being a flexible style to work with, I feel that the dancing got changed. There are very, very small spacing changes that we have because the show now has to accommodate different kinds of venues. I have preferred watching shows on tour in a slightly more compromised space sometimes because I think Hofesh’s style lends itself to that feeling that you’re in the room with the dancers, and there’s not huge leaps or crosses. I’ve enjoyed seeing the dancers being more particular and more skillful with their bodies and space.

But restructuring things for the tour, it’s been pretty glorious and I guess the biggest, biggest, biggest change was an enormous staircase that came up the back and underneath the stage. On Broadway, they came from the bottom of the stage as a shadowy, ghost of the past up and it’s a lovely image but trying to negotiate and find the same punch to start the show up was a cool challenge. I think what we settled on, now having watched it many times on tour, I really can’t remember how the beginning of the Broadway show would have gotten anywhere near the same kind of punch. We have such a percussive start to “Tradition” now. It’s one of those creative challenges where you have to make it work, I think it really does.

How do you feel about this cast?

EVANS: For me, my visits now get less and less frequent. And I think what strikes me is the cast that we have for the tour, I’m always completely staggered by the quality and integrity of the people who absorb every drop of information. I’m so impressed by the cast that we have now. I was blown away by what they achieved in the time I was there. I think it has something to do with the touring mentality; it’s not just the show these people see, these people really travel and they see a lot together and accumulate this wealth of experience together, which for a show like Fiddler on the Roof about such a tight-knit community, it just matures and strengthens. I think the touring life comes out on the stage. Every time I see it, it incrementally gets better.

As associate choreographer, how much of a say did you get in determining the choreography when it was on Broadway?

EVANS: The first time, my job was to audition all the dancers, understand and work out which people are going to understand that world of dance very quickly. Once we had that group of people, there was a beautiful two and a half weeks where it was just me and them and my job was to lead them through the style, unlearn a few habits and help them unlock parts of the body that are really crucial to execute the movements like the pelvis as an anchor to get your agility really from the floor. I think it’s amazing how we can train our bodies to be very specialized. And during that journey of training up for a few weeks, we also played with choreography while waiting for Hofesh to arrive. We’d already started playing with compositions musically and in the movement, so by the time Hofesh arrived, we’d not only had the training in place but we had little pockets of things for him to look at. I personally felt very integrated into the process and we were very closely working together to work out this code of moving which has lasted all this time.

Why should people see this production of Fiddler?

EVANS: I really think the choreography is incredible. It’s just very, very high quality movement that slightly sits just outside of what you expect in a musical theatre setting. Hofesh is a contemporary dancer and he created basically a small dance company within a musical, which I think is quite rare. But also I just think Bart [Sher] is a very clever man and he made a show that is about what it is to be a human being, he managed to achieve the action, the beat and the rhythm, the important stuff that gets it right into that naturalism.

By Julian Oquendo

This article was first published in The DC Line here.

Once you know who wrote the play, there’s little doubt about whether Dear Jack, Dear Louise has a happy ending. The playwright — Ken Ludwig, one of DC’s most prolific and most produced comedic theater writers — is the younger son of the main characters, and the Arena Stage premiere wrapping up this weekend focuses on how his parents met.

The writer has over two dozen performed productions in his repertoire, with a quarter of them having premiered in DC-area theaters. Ludwig is widely recognized for the classics Lend Me a Tenor, Moon Over Buffalo and others. With Dear Jack, Dear Louise, Ludwig — who’s best known for his parodies and farces — has taken a slightly different approach in writing the story of how his mother and father first met and fell in love in the early 1940s. 

Before they ever saw each other face-to-face, Army doctor Jack Ludwig and Broadway chorus actor Louise Rabinoe wrote letters to each other — at the suggestion of their parents — while Ludwig was stationed in Oregon and Rabinoe auditioned for roles in New York City.  

“When you’re a playwright, you think about, ‘What means most to me?’” Ludwig said in a recent interview. “I adored my parents. I knew they have lived through this very interesting past of meeting by letter and spending the first part of their relationship only knowing each other by letter. Because it was World War II and they were 3,000 miles apart, it’s always been on the back of my mind of writing a play [about my parents].”

What results is not just a story about Ludwig’s parents, but a snapshot of how members of the “Greatest Generation” found connections in a fractured world. 

When asked about casting choices, Ludwig says he wasn’t going for physical resemblance. 

“I didn’t base the choice on look-alikes at all,” he said. “A couple of people who knew my parents said that [the actors] both kind of look like my parents, with the wire-rim glasses for my dad and my mom as a brunette. I was looking for people who could capture the spirit of these characters.”

He explains that he wasn’t aiming just to tell the story of his own family — though their distinctive personalities help enliven the play while offering a look at the World War II era.

“I was trying to represent the spirit of the age,” Ludwig said. “Dad was a serious, shy, soft-spoken doctor who took doctoring very seriously, and mom was a much more flamboyant young woman who wanted to be in the theater.”

Expertly portrayed by actors Jake Epstein and Amelia Pedlow, the two have an inherent charm and chemistry on stage. They don’t read directly from the letters they’re sending out, but instead have a conversation with each other while facing out to the audience. 

Ludwig cited a reviewer who likened the postal courtship to online matchmaking today — a gratifying element in the play, he says, though it was entirely unintentional.

“[As the writer pointed out,] seen on stage, writing letters looking outwards is not dissimilar to people currently getting to know each other on social media. I didn’t think about that for one instant while I was writing the play,” Lugwig said. “The fact that it feels like that is great. It just shows that meeting and getting to know someone is a universal feeling that probably hasn’t changed in 2,000 years.” 

When writing the play, Ludwig knew that in order to tell the story in this format, he would have to build it from the memories of the letters, rather than from the letters themselves.

“Before my mother passed away, she destroyed the letters,” Ludwig said, explaining that his mother saw the letters as an intimate portrayal of their relationship. “I had to make the letters up from scratch. I knew the outlines of what happened. I knew that my mother met my father’s very large family all at one time. … I knew all the important points.”

In retrospect, Ludwig says not having access to the actual letters proved both pivotal and fortuitous.

“I was thinking recently, maybe having the letters would have been stifling and not produced the same kind of play,” he said. “Accuracy was not my goal: This is a play. I needed to dramatize it, make it enjoyable to watch — tragic and comic, and all the things we do with plays. I think it ended up being a very good reflection [of] them as how they must have been at that age.”

As a DC resident since the mid-’90s, Ludwig has seen the city and its theater scene evolve. He moved to the city to be close to his family; he and his brother have generally lived within three or four blocks of one another throughout their adult lives.

“I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else,” he said, highlighting his affinity for the National Mall and its museums and galleries. “It’s a great place to raise my family — a wonderful place to live.”

Ludwig ties those feelings to an “innate optimism” that also explains his affinity for comedy. He just wishes it were more widely shared.

“That’s why I write plays — to give us a sense of hope,” he said. “When people do Shakespeare classes, they teach Hamlet, King Lear, the Scottish play, all the tragedies. They don’t teach the comedies. There’s no reason for that. It’s crazy. The comedies tell us as much or more about life than the tragedies do. … I think what gives us hope for the future and makes us better people and makes us think about each other in a kindly way is comedies that give us a sense of hope. That’s what I try to write.”

Edgar Dobie, executive producer for Arena Stage and a longtime friend of Ludwig’s, finds that hope present throughout his body of work. Arena has produced a number of Ludwig’s plays, including Shakespeare in Hollywood and Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery. “His biting wit and ability to find grace within farce have brought him international acclaim,” Doble notes in the program for Ludwig’s latest play.

As far as Ludwig is concerned, DC merits recognition as one of the great theater cities of the world.

“It’s a vibrant, vital, wonderful theater community — dozens of professional theater companies doing tremendously great work, and I love the theatre community. I wish we did more comedies — but maybe I don’t, maybe that’s the reason I can do my comedy,” said Ludwig, pivoting to an examination of the art form. “When I say comedies, I don’t mean frivolous comedies; I mean works that give us a sense of hope.”

In the production’s program, Arena Stage artistic director Molly Smith describes Dear Jack, Dear Louise as a standout from much of Ludwig’s work, a romance that swept Smith in each time she read the script: “Dear Jack, Dear Louise is a departure from Ken’s usual writing, and I think it’s his finest play yet. True, there are fewer hijinks, less door slamming, and only two actors; yet the play manages to capture all that we love about Ken’s voice — his ability to close the void between people with compassion and laughter.”

Having written prolifically for years, Ludwig is no stranger to changes and evolution in his craft. After focusing early on farces, he shifted toward more complex comedies and adaptations, drawing multiple awards, including two Olivier Awards, two Tony Awards and — locally — two Helen Hayes Awards. 

For DC’s Everyman Theatre, he created a new adaptation of Thorton Wilder’s version of the classic restoration comedy The Beaux’ Stratagem. For the Adventure Theatre in Glen Echo, Maryland, he has adapted multiple works, including Tiny Tim’s Christmas Carol and ’Twas the Night Before Christmas. 

His most produced work, Lend Me a Tenor, is widely renowned and performed across the nation, with two Broadway runs and more than 25 productions set for 2020. Described by publisher Samuel French as “a madcap, screwball comedy,” the play is not without the potential for controversy — set in 1934, the zippy show as recently as 2015 included a moment when a character, preparing to play Othello, donned blackface. 

Amid the political controversies surrounding politicians such as Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Ludwig said he has reconsidered the original staging and removed this element from upcoming productions.

“The issue was never ever raised in the history of doing this play, but I just felt that, in terms of where our world is, and what is the right thing to do, I just changed the play,” he said. 

At least one company that had planned to mount Lend Me a Tenor raised objections to the revisions and canceled instead.

As far as the reaction to his most recent premiere, Ludwig looks forward with optimism — though he’s made no decision as to whether any future plays will resemble the scale of Dear Jack, Dear Louise.

“I’ve been thrilled that people are going and that people are loving [Dear Jack, Dear Louise],” Ludwig said. “I’m just happy people like it. Now, for the first time I’ve written a play that had just two people on stage and digging deeper into their lives. I don’t know if this will continue as a trend or not.”

Might we see more productions that touch on an emotional and historical core?

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe, when I sit and think what my next play is gonna be. If the next idea is a comedy, I’ll do that. It truly goes play to play.”