Roger Catlin - Page 14

It was 100 years ago this year when Hugo Ball chose a nonsense word to label the anti-art movement of World War I - dada.

What happens when American women move to Paris for creatively fulfilling careers?

One of the funnier political bits of the season was one Bill Maher did last fall on 'The King Trump Bible,' reinterpreting the text using the pithy phrases of crude frontrunner.

Siri, the electronic personal assistant installed on every iPhone, can be helpful in very many areas, but has heretofore has yet to be recognized for theater criticism.

It seems like a howling musical about disaffected citizens rising up could be perfectly adapted for our confounding political times.

It might be inviting this jammed political year to escape all the televised debates, town halls and election coverage and simply take in a play. But it's more rewarding when that play presents, better than anything from a political podium, the very issue that keeps coming up this year and an audience is left enlightened, informed and moved by its implications.

Quantum physics and string theory are recent enough areas of study to still blow the minds of physicists and be a complete mystery to those unfamiliar with the science.

When Anthony Giardina's The City of Conversation opened at New York's Lincoln Center Theater in 2014, the depiction of a Georgetown political salon seemed so perfectly reflective of Washington, Arena Stage's Molly Smith rushed to get it staged here, and even succeeded in obtaining the same director, Doug Hughes.

Suzan-Lori Parks has made her name updating Civil War lore in striking modernist terms in Topdog/Underdog, the Pulitzer Prize winner from 2001, the same year she won a MacArthur 'genius' grant.

Nobody's quite sure of the birthdate of the greatest writer in the English language, but everyone is pretty sure William Shakespeare died in 1616, making this the 400th anniversary of his death, or as Michael Witmore, director of the Folger Shakespeare Library calls it, 'the fifth century of his afterlife.'

I was all ready and looking forward to the final installment of Back to Methuselah, the George Bernard Shaw epic that the Washington Stage Guild has been staging in chapters since 2014. But building the future, or more precisely, 'as far as thought can reach' proved too costly for the venerable D.C. group this year, so they put it off until next year, switching it with next season's planned revival of St.' Nicholas.

Artistic director Ari Roth's dream of a vibrant and important theater group addressing the most vexing problems of the world, is coming to full flower this year at the Mosaic Theater Company, where he has revived the Voices from a Changing Middle East Festival that he developed at Jewish Community Center's Theater J until his abrupt dismissal just over a year ago.

Every artistic company wishes it could come up with a seasonal title that could be come a holiday tradition - their own Nutcracker, Messiah or Christmas Carol to rely on every December.

Christmas productions come sweet or sour this time or year. It hardly matters which one - everybody seemingly has to do something connected with the holiday. as if it were the only thing that would lure people away from stores, parties and seasonal responsibilities.

It's not easy to maintain a balance in dark comedy.

Even 21 years later, the horrific atrocities of the Rwandan genocide is hard to wrap one's head around. How could 800,000 to 1 million Tutsis be macheted to death in just over three months by the country's other ethnic group, the Hutus - including thousands cowering in a single church?

Act locally, think globally is exactly what happened to Anu Yadav's innovative piece of activist theatre, 'Capers.' Her finely observed, remarkably accomplished reflection of families at a D.C. housing project forced from their home for development has come a long way since it first appeared more than a decade ago.

The anonymous hospital room full of false cheer. The middle aged woman, a little impatient about being cooped up there after a few days for some tests after a small stroke. The frazzled adult daughter, trying to do her best to take care of her mother's needs while having more than her share of her own problems.

It may be surprising and a little disappointing that one of the latest world premieres in the Women's Voices Theatre Festival is about a woman who fixates on a man to solve all her problems.

You'd hardly identify E.M. Lewis' world premiere, NOW COMES THE NIGHT, opening the season at First Stage in Tysons as a part of the Women's Voices Theatre Festival.