Roger Catlin - Page 15

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.

Washington National Opera began what may be one of its more artistically challenging seasons Saturday with the most crowd-pleasing production.

Twenty-six years ago, the day after thousands of soldiers in China's so called People's Liberation Army cleared Tiananmen Square, killing what could have been thousands of students who had been protesting there, a lone man with plastic grocery bags stood in front of a line of advancing tanks there.

Celebrating more than 50 world premiere plays by women at Women's Voices Theater Festival.

D.C.'s ambitious Women's Voices Theater Festival this fall involves more than 50 regional theaters premiering what's billed as the largest number of original works by female writers in history. It has begun, humbly, in the modest Callan Theatre at Catholic University, where patrons have to led through a couple of doors and up some stairs to their seats.

DC Culture's Source Festival likely gets its name from its central place of operation, the Source Theatre on 14th St NW. But the name also pays homage to the source of the festival itself: the dozens of playwrights whose work are being produced.

It's surprising that in its 45 years, D.C.'s venerable Shakespeare Theatre Company has yet to produce either of Moliere's most famous plays. Perhaps, artistic director Michael Kahn suggests, they were waiting for the right one.

How would they turn iTunes most downloaded podcast "Serial" into a stage show? "All Things Considered" or "60 Minutes" never went on the road quite like this.

Nobody really says we get the theater we deserve (they do say that about government, though). But that's one way to approach The Shipment, the purposely provocative current show at Forum Theatre in Silver Spring.

'The No Rules Sketch Show' at Signature Theatre actually pretty much follows every rule of contemporary sketch work by including some slightly topical humor, some celebrity impersonations, broad physical comedy and a lot of bawdiness meant to be enhanced by the available cocktails.