Performing Arts

By Daniella Ignacio

This article was first published in DC Theatre Scene here.

If you were given free rein to say whatever you want about anything you want…how far would you go? And if you were the moderator of that kind of environment, at what point would you interfere? That’s what Norman Yeung explores in Theory, making its American debut at Mosaic Theater Company.

The play was originally written in Canada in 2009, but this story about freedom of speech seamlessly fits in with the culture of American college campuses today – especially the liberal arts universities of D.C. that profess freedom of speech, yet have professors and students who can be hypocritical when people are allowed to give their opinions. It succeeds as a cautionary tale, raising questions of empathy, complicity and the very extreme ends of the political spectrum.

When Isabelle (Musa Gurnis), a tenure-track film studies professor decides to create an unmoderated discussion board for her class, she aims to rile her students up and get them to dismantle the patriarchy, question authority and democratize their studies of the film canon. However, when the posts and videos on the board start to get questionable, offensive, downright abusive, life-threatening and invasive of Isabelle’s privacy, she becomes increasingly paranoid. She must decide if she should intervene, let the assignment play out, or shut down the board. All the while, her students, her wife and the dean of students challenge her.

The story is difficult to take seriously until Isabelle begins to go down the path of obsession. It becomes clear that there’s something else going on here – that it’s a thriller and not just your typical “hot take” on freedom of speech. In the beginning, Isabelle seems like a caricature of a professor, a satire on how professors who profess “freedom of speech” have no idea what they’re talking about. The way that Gurnis carries herself and speaks is so declaratory and self-important sounding that it’s no wonder that her students are resistant. One sitcom-like exchange between her and her students:

“Everything’s allowed here,” she proclaims.

“That’s a terrible idea,” one of her students responds.

Until the audience sees Isabelle’s relationship with her wife and understands the dynamics within their interracial marriage, it’s unclear who Isabelle is. Once this relationship begins to play out, you start to understand where she’s coming from and how much this means to her: the idea of giving these students the freedom to think, speak and share their voice when they may never have gotten to share their voice before. Gurnis portrays Isabelle’s idealism with fervent passion and by the dark, intense culmination of it all, succeeds in playing out these emotions in an absolutely captivating, gut-wrenching way.

Andrea Harris Smith plays Isabelle’s wife, Lee, in a way that makes her one of the most human characters of the play. Lee is a black tenured professor and author who’s heard her share of racialized hate speech, and Smith plays this character with just the right mix of coolness and firmness. She’s there for Isabelle at the beginning of the project, but becomes increasingly upset with Isabelle as she refuses to take down extremely offensive comments that began when Isabelle screens clips from “Birth of a Nation.”

The four students that Isabelle is drawn to the most, Josh Adams as Richard, Benairen Kane as Davinder, Camilo Linares as Jorge and Tyasia Velines as Safina, provide youthful voices who challenge Isabelle’s opportunity to challenge authority, which is an interesting dichotomy. They grow and learn to speak their minds in different ways. Some push the envelope a bit too far, like Jorge, and others, like Safina, learn to open their minds and think about films they initially did not want to even think about. Adams takes a star turn towards the end that sent chills down my spine.

A simple set (Daniel Ettinger) gives just enough specifics to establish all three main settings: the classroom, the living room of Isabelle and Lee’s house and Isabelle’s office. The stage is filled with accents of light greens on the chairs, the couch and panel walls, with a splash of orange in Isabelle’s office, as well, to give the illusion of warmth and openness.

The lighting design (Brittany Shemuga) supports this, illuminating the set with five lampshades with singular light bulbs hanging above, creating the constant feeling that they’re in the classroom. One particular lighting scheme that stands out is in the scene in which Isabelle plays one of her most contested film selections from start to finish, as Isabelle stands in a very dark stage with light only on her showing her paranoia.

Dylan Uremovic’s projection design reflects the dizzying, overwhelming effect of technology on the lives of Isabelle and her students; the films seep over from the classroom into Isabelle’s personal life, and display the toll that it takes on her. At one point, as Isabelle texts one of her students, a Bitmoji version of the student’s head pops up, which displays her unrealistic view of what she thinks the students are like.

Another level of anonymity and eerie thrill is added through the sound design (David Lamont Wilson.) As the posts are projected, different voices of the students read off those posts, line by line. You can never tell who is truly who or if they’re reading lines they actually posted. In between scenes, the techno music allows the audience to reflect on the events that have just transpired and adds to the dark vibe.

As a college student of color who is studying media, I highly recommend catching this production, especially to other young people who are having conversations like the ones in this production every day. Theory is a welcome addition to Mosaic’s Season of Awakenings. Prepare to be awakened and shocked and, in Safina’s words, “wake up to the fact that this world sucks – so thank you.”

By Daniella Ignacio

This article was first published in DC Theatre Scene here.

In a season with high profile productions of Little Shop of Horrors on Broadway and across the country,  the DMV is getting its own taste of the Alan Menken sci-fi musical theatre classic this October, with a new twist. Little Shop of Horrors at Constellation Theatre Company may be in a small space, but they’re doing big things, especially with its innovative puppet design by the intrepid puppet designer/actor Matthew McGee. The four pods – designated as Pods One, Two, Three and Four – display the terrifying development of a plant into an alien-like monster.

As the puppets are moved around the space and adjusted to be in the right place for a photo call, McGee speaks fondly of them, calling each of the four pods “this guy” like an old friend throughout the interview. McGee said that as a son of puppeteers, who joined them as they toured around California doing shadow puppet shows at elementary schools, puppetry is a pivotal part of his life.

“I like to tell people I was raised by puppets because I’ve been exposed to puppetry my whole life,” said McGee. “Growing up with it, going to festivals in the summertime, taking workshops and learning about puppetry…over the years, I just started tinkering with it and learning more by experience.”

McGee’s recent projects include designing puppets for The Lion King, Jr. in Alexandria, Minnesota’s Andrea Theatre and My Father’s Dragon at Synetic Theater last winter, in addition to his own short film puppet theatre pieces.

He believes in the power of making the impossible happen through puppetry in theatre.

“I’m a big advocate of incorporating puppetry for theatre because it is, in my opinion, the closest thing to magic that you can get on stage besides doing actual magic,” he said. “You can go to the movies and get CGI and special effects, but to see a piece of live theatre and have it be just as fantastical as something you could see in a movie, that excites me. If you can get people to go ‘Whoah! What am I seeing?’ [and] if they think they’re seeing the impossible, that’s magic and that’s what I live for.”

McGee’s original inspiration for the puppets came from his love of the original Little Shop movie, which he said has some of the best puppetry in a movie that he’s seen. He wanted to bring the life, articulation and believability of the original Jim Henson puppets into this production, while also expanding upon the possibilities for making the puppets easy to maneuver yet still terrifying and progressively alien-like. He called the process a “primarily solo undertaking of monstrous proportions,” which started in August.

Oftentimes, with the bigger Pods Three (which sings “Get It”) and Four (the final man-eating version of Audrey II), the puppeteer has to sit or stand inside the puppet with their arms stretched out to control it, which McGee acknowledges is a workout.

In McGee’s designs, Audrey II is devised as an adaptation of a bunraku rod puppet where the puppeteer is not confined inside the puppet. Puppeteer RJ Pavel wears a black jumpsuit that covers him from head to toe, gets into a harness that’s connected to the back of Audrey II’s head through a rod and operates the plant from behind using that rig system. He uses handles that control the mouth through the leaves the mask him and is completely hidden from the audience.

“You get to see the stem of the neck, and you get to see the head moving and everything is alive,” McGee said. “Just seeing it in action – even for me, knowing how it works, I think ‘there it is, there’s the magic.’”

A lot of the material used for the plants is high density foam rubber sheet, which comes in sheets with different thicknesses and dry out patterns based on a model mockup. McGee blew out the pattern to the scale that he needed, and then traced it on the foam, cut it and glued it together to get the shapes of the heads and the leaves. They were then painted and coated in rubber to make them durable.

McGee said that he’s taken a lot of joy out of the differences in color patterns on the leaves, which are inspired by not only plants, but reptiles like lizards and frogs. The baby Pod One, “Twoey,” has leaves around his head that have highlights of greens and purples. By the time it progresses to Pod Three, he’s still got purples and greens, but the tips are blue, orange and yellow – it’s not exactly your typical “mean green mother,” but it’s definitely “from outer space.” When we spoke, McGee was finishing up Pod Four, which will be darker, with more of a grey tone.

“I’m excited by the contrasts of darks and brighter eerie neon greens and yellows, so it becomes less earthly,” he said. “The bigger he gets, the more alien he should become. It starts out looking like a little flytrap but by the end he has to have the essence of a flytrap that grows into something truly monstrous.”

McGee also uses his puppets to tie this production directly to the DMV area during the time period of Little Shop. McGee put Twoey in a Wilkins coffee can, a popular DMV coffee brand during the ‘60s, to pay homage to the fact that this production is being done in Washington, D.C., where Jim Henson got his start. To make this “puppet nerdy happy little Easter egg,” he found photos of the cans, edited the label from those photos, and Photoshopped it to put it onto the can.

“It’s so satisfying,” he said. “I get to tie in all these things [together] and make it pertinent to not only the time period but also this show and the location.”

McGee was also involved in teaching the actors to use the puppets, and spoke highly of the puppeteer RJ Pavel, who’s had puppeteering experience before. Pavel bases the movements on a lot of the inflections and cues of Marty Austin Lamar (the voice of Audrey II), and translates it into the physical life and the plant’s body language.

By Ilena Peng

This article was first published in The DC Line here.

Mariinsky Ballet’s Paquita — on stage for the past week at the Kennedy Center — combines new choreography with that of its 19th-century predecessor in an updated production that maintains the same grandeur and classical technique that defined the original.

The first performances of the ballet Paquita occurred in Paris in 1846 with choreography by Joseph Mazilier, but the well-loved versions still performed today are based on a Paquita choreography by Marius Petipa that premiered the next year. The Mariinsky’s Paquita at the Kennedy Center since Tuesday is a new-millennium Paquita inspired by the Petipa iteration but infused with choreography by Mariinsky dancer Yuri Smekalov. 

One can conceive of the relationships between these two Paquita choreographies as something like the difference between the Lurman movie Romeo + Juliet starring Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio and a version of the same story performed by the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. Somewhat confusingly, while retaining some of the traditional choreography, this new Paquita produced by the Russian-based company incorporates elements of Miguel de Cervantes’ novella La Gitanilla, about a teenage girl born into an upper-class family who was kidnapped as an infant by gypsies. 

Both the original and new Paquita culminate in a glittering Act III Grand Pas wedding celebration, which is the only part of the Mariinsky’s new production that retains Petipa’s original choreography (with reconstruction and staging by Mariinsky’s Yuri Burlaka). Paquita is one of a handful of 19th-century works that have become synonymous with ballet. Giselle, another mainstay of the classical ballet repertoire, will be performed by the American Ballet Theatre at the Kennedy Center in February.

Maria Khoreva is a stunning Paquita, embodying the character’s youth both in her exuberant onstage energy and her actual age — Khoreva is only 19, having risen to the rank of first soloist in just her first season at the Mariinsky. DC balletgoers first met Khoreva when she performed the lead role in Le Corsaire at the Kennedy Center last year.

Yet Khoreva’s Paquita is also mature and independent — she commanded the stage Friday night in her ability to convey emotions from joy to despair in the first two acts and in her third-act portrayal of Paquita as both sophisticated and free-spirited.

The athleticism of the Mariinsky’s leading men seemed at times more than human, including seemingly effortless turns and jumps where the performers appeared to hover in the air. Konstantin Zverev’s portrayal of the male protagonist, Andrés, was notably elegant and was most expressive in Act II alongside Khoreva in the jail scene; Zverev’s pathos and sadness were palpable. Victor Caixeta, as the poet Clemente, commanded the audience’s attention early in the ballet with an Act I variation where his grand jete series sent him nearly floating across stage in a tuxedo tailcoat.

Smekalov’s choreography retains the same sense of grandeur as the Petipa Paquita but with added humor (including two dancers who donned a horse costume). Signs of the Mariinsky’s traditional technical style were evident throughout, including a focus on expressive upper-body movement, made eye-catching by colorful capes and skirts.

The Russian dancers’ acting skills were impeccable, allowing a narrative to be conveyed to the audience more clearly than in many similar performances. Particularly effective performances in this regard came from Maria Bulanova as Carducha, Alexander Romanchikov as the young man, and Elena Bazhenova as the old woman who raised Paquita. The ballet opened with Paquita being kidnapped by Bazhenova, who triumphantly lingered to show the audience her victory before scurrying offstage. Bulanova was convincingly jealous of Paquita in Act II, and Romanchikov maintained his relaxed demeanor into his bows, drawing laughs from the audience.

Maria Shirinkina stood out throughout the show as Paquita’s friend Cristina, most notably in her Grand Pas variation. Anastasia Lukina’s and Yana Selina’s Grand Pas variations were also exceptionally elegant. 

Smekalov’s new Paquita is part of an ongoing trend of reinterpretation of the classical story ballet. Area audiences may have seen what’s become a local holiday tradition — The Washington Ballet’s Nutcracker, choreographed by former Washington Ballet artistic director Septime Webre and set in a Georgetown mansion with George Washington as the heroic nutcracker. American Ballet Theatre artist-in-residence Alexei Ratmansky is reconstructing/re-creating several 19th-century ballets, part of an ongoing conversation about tension between innovation and preservation of classical ballet. 

The Mariinsky describes this Paquita as a modern “homage to the golden age of classical ballet — a mark of respect and gratitude” to Petipa. Taken in its entirety, the Mariinsky’s Paquita succeeds as a gimmick-free yet modernized display of classical technique.

By Mercedes Hesselroth

This article was first published in DC Theatre Scene here.

Theatre and religion have been intertwined since the beginning – the very, very beginning. One of the earliest forms of theatre developed in Ancient Athens with public festivals of music, poetry, and dance held to honor the Greek god Dionysus. Religion has also long served as inspiration for artists’ expression, from Leonardo da Vinci’s painting The Last Supper to Kanye West’s recent Sunday Service concert series. Faith makes for a rich topic of artistic inquiry as it is both highly individual and dependent on communities in order to survive. The tension between personal systems of belief and the public presentation of these beliefs can cycle from pushing faith forward to holding it back.

Boston-based comedian Brett Johnson adds his own contribution to this swirling dichotomy with Poly-Theist, a reverse testimony of sorts sharing the cascading series of events that led him to walk away from his faith, his monogamy, and his marriage. Johnson joins a roster of other writer-performers exploring their religious backgrounds through humor, such as Kevin James Doyle with his live show 30-Year-Old Virgin, Pete Holmes’ with his TV series Crashing, or Kumail Nanjiani with his film The Big Sick, which struck enough of a chord with Oscar voters to land a nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Not quite a stand-up special or one-man-show, Poly-Theist hovers closer to the kind of oral storytelling you might hear at a Moth open mic.

Johnson’s story starts like any standard rom-com. He meets his college sweetheart, Audrey, on campus and their relationship progresses quickly. At 21 years old, Johnson and Audrey marry within a month of his college graduation, not at all an uncommon experience at “ring by spring” schools – religious colleges where couples often get engaged before the end of their senior year. After a few years of marriage, they decide to open their relationship after agreeing they both want to see other people but not break up.

Relationships can be complicated enough between two people, so it stands to reason that the potential difficulty compounds with every new person added to the web of romantic attachments. The tale requires a massive amount of vulnerability to impart, which Johnson pairs with a heavy dose of self-deprecation. Bringing a nervous energy to the stage, he jokes he could pass as a “bisexual Luigi,” referring to the Nintendo character often overshadowed by his more famous brother, Mario. Johnson doesn’t lecture or judge the audience for its beliefs or choices, opting to judge himself instead. He recalls how he was unable to turn Audrey down when she wanted her boyfriend to spend the night at their house, making a joke rather than voicing how he really felt.

The show itself mirrors that impulse by tagging each tough moment or observation with another one-liner. While the balance of levity and gravity is a tricky line to walk, the piece succeeds most when it leans away from the mask of comedy and honors the inherent magnitude of the situation. Poly-Theist benefits from the moments when Johnson allows the story to breathe by giving the audience a broader context to latch onto. As shown by the inspirational figures in many a religious parable, sometimes you have to go through trials to come out stronger on the other side.

By Mercedes Hesselroth

This article was first published in DC Theatre Scene here.

In 2017, the American Psychological Association acknowledged the existence of a new psychological disorder: eco-anxiety. The disease can cause a spectrum of despair in response to the effects of climate change, including substance abuse, anxiety, depression, and chronic stress and fear. However, some psychologists do not classify eco-anxiety as a mental illness, despite many overlapping symptoms, because they believe the underlying cause is “rational.” As Swedish teenager and environmental activist Greta Thunberg said at the 2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference: “Until you start focusing on what needs to be done rather than what is politically possible, there is no hope. We cannot solve the crisis without treating it as a crisis.”

The variance of individual responses to communal concerns is one of many ideas confronted in The Edge of the Universe Players 2’s current production of My Barking Dog by Eric Coble. Staged in the round by director Michael Chamberlin, the play centers on two neighbors who don’t even acknowledge each other for a large chunk of the play until the mysterious appearance of a city-dwelling coyote outside their home. Most of the tale is imparted to us through interlocking monologues from the earnest Melinda (Tia Shearer), who works the graveyard shift at a printing plant, and the recently unemployed Toby (Christopher Crutchfield Walker), who lives near the largest cell tower in the world but can’t manage to get a connection on his hand-me-down phone.

Like his visitees, the coyote is a nocturnal creature who travels alone. Melinda and Toby both find a renewed purpose in their interactions with the unnamed and untamed animal. Melinda starts out by leaving meat for him to take while Toby begins a nonstop research quest to learn as much as he can about the canis latrans. Both Shearer and Walker excel in maintaining intimacy with the audience and choosing when to make critical eye contact. Leaning on her experience in children’s theatre, Shearer brings a wistful sincerity to Melinda’s direct address and guides us through what might otherwise be an abrupt heel-face-turn for her character later in the play. Walker serves up a balance of gallows humor and exasperation as the downtrodden Toby, whose resilience has been knocked down a few pegs since losing his job. Multiple audience members nodded in agreement to his miserable adages about unemployment, insomnia, and technology.

If it’s possible to have a scene-stealer in a show with only two characters, that designation goes to the impeccable scenic design by Giorgos Tappas. Though the floor is painted bright yellow, the set gives the feeling of a bunker or post-apocalyptic landscape. Columns of recycled newspapers stretch to the ceiling, framing the static-filled box televisions in opposite corners of the room and an unsuspecting pile of mulch arranged in a perfect circle. The seating arrangement of stools strategically placed around the edge of the gallery space also contributes to the initial sense of desolation.

If, as Toby observes, “the two hardest things about being unemployed are looking for work and not looking for work,” then perhaps the two hardest things about knowing of global catastrophes are trying to solve them and knowing you cannot. Luckily, we don’t have to do it alone. As the pre-show track “Road to Nowhere” by the Talking Heads invites us to do for the next 95 minutes, “come on inside/taking that ride to nowhere/we’ll take that ride.”

By Mercedes Hesselroth

This article was first published in DC Theatre Scene here.

With the holiday season quickly approaching, so do the stresses that accompany the tricky social etiquette around visiting and hosting loved ones. You might do your best planning and preparation – altering seating arrangements to keep divergent personalities away from each other, creating three different menus to appease everyone’s dietary preferences, diffusing every conversational time bomb – and still not foresee a yuletide crisis. But even if there is drama at your dinner table this year, take comfort in the fact that it certainly can’t be worse than the conflict that befalls the guests and hosts of The Wheel Theatre Company’s The Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare.

King Leontes of Sicily (Lee Havlicek) and his heavily pregnant wife Hermione (Elizabeth Ung) have welcomed King Polixenes of Bohemia (Colton Needles) into their home for nine months. Leontes is happy to extend his childhood friend’s stay, until he baselessly concludes Hermione and Polixenes have conspired to steal his crown by producing an heir of their own behind his back. Too deep in his own conviction to realize his accusations of adultery are unfounded, Leontes unsuccessfully plots the murder of his friend and forces Hermione to give birth in prison before subjecting her to a trial.

Needles’ performance as Polixenes stands out for his balance of steadfast rationality and sincere concern in the wake of Leontes’ jealousy. Highlighted in this production is the urgency with which Sicily’s court of advisors must act against a paranoid king’s rages. Yet, even when they present Leontes with his newborn, he still cannot bring himself to admit the child is proof of Hermione’s love.

We live in the era of the double-down. When those in the limelight make a mistake, be they lawmakers, comedians, or CEOs, rather than save face with a genuine apology it has become standard practice to shirk accountability and insist no error was made at all. Therefore, no effort is necessary to correct any harm or become a better person. This is the trouble that overtakes the prideful Leontes, but unlike the disappointing scenarios we see unravel in the public eye, Leontes eventually recognizes the gravity of his missteps and promises to reform, ushering a time jump of sixteen years to the lighter second half of the play.

Director Jack Read wisely lets the small size of the DC Arts Center theater guide a “less is more” approach to the production’s aesthetic. Paper snow and the soft haze of twinkle lights are enough to establish a cozy winter setting. The minimalistic design allows the Bard’s language to shine through, especially in the hands of such a capable ensemble. Since each player pulls at least triple duty to bring both timelines of characters to life, bright layers over loose, gray clothing help to distinguish their various ages and classes (costumes designed by Read, Grace Eda Baker, and Elizabeth Floyd). Of note are Mackenzie Larsen’s seamless shift from five-year-old prince Mamillius to lost princess Perdita and Moira Todd’s cheeky interpretation of the scammer Autolycus, who provides much of the comic relief and musical additions in the show.

The Winter’s Tale will be Wheel Theatre Company’s last local production before they head west to their new home in Nashville. It seems fitting they’ve selected one of Shakespeare’s more reflective works, and one of his final pieces, as their goodbye. Wherever your destination this holiday season, a trip to the DC Arts Center for this twisting tale of forgiveness and new beginnings is worth the visit.