Roger Catlin - Page 7

Write what you know, authors are often advised. And 'This Bitter Earth,' a vivid tale from prolific playwright Harrison David Rivers reflects a partnership between a back writer and a white activist in Minnesota that is very similar to his own.

The week the stock market erases its year's gains may be just the right time to open a not-often produced play about swift changes in fortune.

Walking into the Nu Sass world premiere 'Weep' is like stepping into the living and work space of its characters.

When her husband suddenly dies in a traffic accident, an opera singer mourns, but also wants to get in touch with the organ recipient. Who received the heart of her husband, and did it carry with it more than just the tissue and muscle?

There is certainly a dramatic story to be told behind the highly successful '60s folk-rock duo Simon & Garfunkel, from their brief high school success that got them on 'American Bandstand' to their later 1960s stardom, their love/hate relationship and mutual artistic dependence. All of that is barely mentioned, though, in the nationally touring 'The Simon & Garfunkel Story,' currently in a three show run at the National Theatre.

The traveling ballet works that tend to fill the Kennedy Center Opera House are usually the big, brand name costumed works - 'The Nutcracker,' 'Swan Lake' (a version of which played last week; another is coming in April) and 'The Sleeping Beauty,' which in fact the National Ballet of Canada is doing through Sunday.

If there's a D.C. theater company that would approach presenting James Joyce, it'd be the literary-minded Washington Theatre Guild, which has made its mark by presenting everything written by George Bernard Shaw, among other ambitious projects.

Some of Aretha Franklin's greatest performances happened at the Kennedy Center - chief of which may have been a 2015 performance of '(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman' at the Kennedy Center Honors that made Barack Obama shed a tear in the Presidential box.

The 2003 romantic comedy 'Love Actually' airs every year, so why not the parody of it as well?

Because Christmas is mandatory on entertainment stages all month, it's no surprise that a cabaret at Signature Theatre is again devoted to the Yuletide songbook. But in a clever and very welcome variation, they've approached the holiday through the classic interpretations of one of America's favorite labels.

If Charles Dickens were working today, he'd likely be enlisted to write for one of the serialized television dramas on which millions feed on and binge. In his day, the equivalent was writing serialized dramas for publication to boost readership.

Before he became the last president of Czechoslovakia - and the first president of the Czech Republic -- the famous Eastern European freedom fighter Václav Havel was a playwright. His works before the revolution spoke to issues arising from Soviet rule, as did the plays that followed it.

Kudos to We Happy Few artistic director Kerry McGee for researching 'obsessively' the works of female playwrights of the 17th and 18th century, and for finding one in particular that can speak to modern audiences with some verve and relevance.

There are signs that the grandaddy of role-playing games, Dungeons & Dragons, is making a comeback, even among the kind of kids who'd usually be glued to their computer games. But its depiction - and general celebration - in Qui Nguyen's 'She Kills Monsters' currently being revived by Rorschach Theatre at the Atlas Performing Arts Center, only seems to show it fading into the past faster than it did the last time it unfolded on this very stage in 2014.

Just as African-American artists have sought to reclaim the racist imagery of the past to confront contemporary viewers, the entryway to the Theater Alliance's performance of 'Day of Absence' at the Anacostia Playhouse is decorated with oversized posters advertising blackface minstrel shows.