Interview: Arena's THE CITY OF CONVERSATION Explores DC's Other Permanent Government

Before officials in Washington were judged on their social media prowess or how much they could fundraise, their political fortunes were heavily based on one thing: how well they could converse over dinner. It is a lost era of civilization, the dinner party, which Arena Stage will conjure up starting this week in The City of Conversation.

"The notion that you could have JFK receiving intelligence about Berlin or the Cuban Missile Crisis at a dinner party, and the lost sense of a world, the world of a dinner party is what the play is all about," says The City of Conversation's playwright Anthony Giardina just before rehearsals start at Arena. "It's really about the world of people like Joseph Alsop who created what seemed like a permanent government with these Georgetown dinner parties after World War II.

In The City of Conversation, Giardina skips the usual settings of Washington-based dramas, the White House Situation Room, the Pentagon etc., and instead sets it in the home of socialite Hester Ferris. The liberal maven's dining room is where political adversaries cease being adversarial and where the capital city comes to gossip. Things change though when her son arrives with his new girlfriend, who just happens to be equally politically ambitious although with a more conservative tilt.

The play starts in the late seventies, spans three decades and six presidential administrations ranging from Carter to Obama. Coincidentally enough, that same time span also encapsulates Giardina's relationship with Arena Stage. His first play, Living at Home, was staged at Arena in 1977 and he says it's interesting to see how DC has changed politically.

"When I arrived in DC, the political trajectory of the years had been that 1968-1976 [Nixon/Ford Administrations] were a hiatus and that 1976 was a restoration of this Democratic New Deal era," says Giardina. "Then of course you have the election of Ronald Reagan, which we see in the play, and the era that ushered in."

Giardina says it's interesting coming back to DC and to get a sense of history. With The City of Conversation, he hopes to remind the audience about the way DC used to be, to remember a sense of civility. The idea for the play dates back to a 1996 New Yorker article by Sydney Blumenthal, The Ruins of Georgetown. However, he didn't start writing it till over a decade later in 2009.

"The play is purely inventive in terms of characters - as much as Hester is drawn from the likes of Katherine Graham, Anna is drawn from people like Peggy Noonan," says Giardina.

An uncredited character who looms large over the play itself is history. With the play spanning 30 years, the audience not only gets to see how the characters develop, but how events shape them as well. One example he uses is the contentious 1987 confirmation hearing of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. As a playwright, he says being able to shape characters and have the audience see the effects of time is incredible.

"There is something to seeing characters who are shaped, and in some cases embittered, by history. For example, at the time, we had no idea what the Bork hearing would do to these characters, but then in the final scene we get to see the real stakes."

The City of Conversation first opened at Lincoln Center in 2014 to rave reviews. The most intriguing aspect, describes Giardina, was the audience's response to the play's political nature.

"The New York production was interesting because you had certain audience members saying, 'Hester is not my politics, but I'm moved,'" Giardina says. "When staging this with Doug [Hughes], we didn't want applause breaks at certain points because we didn't want to trumpet some ideas over others."

For Arena's production, Giardina is being reunited with The City of Conversation's New York Director Doug Hughes. They are rethinking it for a Washingtonian audience. A major change will be the staging, which has the play moving from a tradition proscenium stage at Lincoln Center to the Fischlander Theatre-in-the-round setting.

"We always felt that The City of Conversation has to be taken to Arena, but we have to be sure about certain important details because we're not just doing any play in DC, we're doing this play," Giardina says.

Prior to Arena's production, Giardina met with The Washington Post columnist Sally Quinn at her Georgetown home. Quinn, who along with her late husband, former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, was famous for hosting the dinner parties which are at the core of The City of Conversation.

"Fortunately I got to go to lunch with Sally Quinn, and in between hearing these amazing stories of dinner parties she used to throw with her late husband Ben Bradlee, she told me that there are a few lines I have to change, but that I got Hester's world right," Giardina says.

When asked why, with shows like Arena's Camp David, Gore Vidal's The Best Man and Irving Berlin's Call Me Madam, Washington lends itself to the stage so well; Giardina cites the drama inherent in the politics and the personalities that dominates it.

"It's going to be interesting, and valuable, at Arena to see the tension. However, when it comes to politics, we're used to seeing personality and strategy dramatized on stage. Whether it is on a theatrical stage like what we're doing at Arena or on the national-level, like the presidential campaigns going on right now and which will be going on during the run."

Photo: Anthony Giardina. Credit: Tony Powell.

The City of Conversation runs from January 29th - March 6th at Arena Stage, 1101 Sixth Street, SW, Washington, DC 20024. For more information and to buy tickets please call 202-554-9066 or click here.

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