Gary Tischler • January 16, 2015

Actor Rod Taylor and Actress Anita Ekberg died within days of each other, in their eighties.

Taylor, a rugged Australian-born actor who moved to Hollywood to try his luck, racked up a large number of credits, had strong-chinned, blondish sex appeal, proved to have a flair for romantic comedy. He died just short of his 85th birthday.

Ekberg was a physically impressive, blonde Swedish semi-star around the same time—she had roles in everything from Jerry and Lewis comedies to a Chinese peasant woman in a John Wayne action flick called “Blood Alley.” She died at age 83.

Both Taylor and Ekberg starred in two films that were cinema classics in one way or another.

In 1963, Taylor was the heroic figure in the Alfred Hitchcock classic about nature run amok for no particularly good reason called “The Birds.” We all remember that one: for a long time, you cast suspicious, nervous glances at any gathering of more than two ravens or seagulls.

The movie, built to terrific levels of suspense and fright, featured Taylor as a local bringing new love interest Tippi Hedren to his fishing town home in Northern California. Hedren, cool and icy blond (and the mother of Melanie Griffith), right up Hitchcock’s blonde obsession alley (Kim Novak, Grace Kelly), traveled with a set of love birds, which may have, may not have, been some kind of clue for birds descending on the town, wrecking a diner and a gas station, attacking school children and killing several people, including the delightful Suzanne Pleshette.

Artistically, it wasn’t a great movie, but you can’t forget the damn thing. Taylor was a steady, stoic, presence of sanity throughout the film.

Ekberg had a large, impressive role in the 1960 Federico Fellini black-and-white epic about a jaded journalist (the unforgettable Marcello Mastrioanni) making his way drunkenly through the sophisticated world of celebrities , aristocrats and long-staring bon vivants tired of it all in Rome.

Ekberg played a movie star, bigger than life, in many ways, plagued by paparazzi. At one point, she jumps into the Trevi Fountain in Rome and prances, splashes and dances in it with the besotten Mastrioanni in tow. It’s an impressionistic moment in a film that was about a lot of things—religion, politics, sex, boredom, anarchy.

If you were a boy growing up around that time into late teenhood, that movie was disturbing, mainly because you hadn’t a clue what was going on, but it sort of made you sweat. That was Ekberg. She could do that.

One other thing: in the Washington Post obituary about her, Ekberg was said to be famous for her numerous romances. Her conquests, the Post stated, “were said to have included Frank Sinatra, Tyrone Power, Yul Brynner and . . . Rod Taylor.”

Gary Tischler •

In a telephone interview, the singer-actress Megan Hilty will sometimes tell you that she felt “terrified” on certain occasions in her career: when she took over the role Glinda in the Broadway smash “Wicked”, for instance, or when she performed in her first solo concert.

Yet, if you’ve seen her on stage or on television, solo or with a big cast, you notice something about Hilty. She’s a big voiced but rangy song stylist with a blonde and curvy, glittery presence. She is the epitome of people born to the stage, to the “gotta sing, gotta dance (and gotta emote and act)” world of the Great White Way. She’s a Broadway baby in the best and whole sense of the phrase.

The “Wicked” star and star of the Broadway musical version of “Nine to Five” is probably best known nationally for her turn as, well, a kind of Broadway baby in the television series “Smash,” which lasted two seasons and centered around the rivalries and tempestuous relationships and maneuverings involved in the making of a Broadway musical. For theater buffs, it was more than just a guilty pleasure, it was a high-dudgeon melodrama with love affairs, betrayals, scheming and battling for big roles on stage and behind the scenes, not to mention lots of singing and dancing production numbers. Hilty was paired with former “American Idol” star Katharine McPhee, competing for the female lead in a show being put together by the likes of Anjelica Huston and Debra Messing.

Hilty was a natural in it—the perfect fit for a dancer and singer—and comedienne– who was hungry for a starring role.

“That was a great experience,” she said. “It gave me a chance to really act, to use all of the gifts you have.”

The Washington state-born star started out wanting to be an opera singer, but “you know, you have to really start early, it’s like you’re just like an Olympic athlete. So, I turned to theater.” She’s a 2004 graduate of the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama and a recipient of the National Society of Arts and Letters Award for Excellence in Musical Theater.

Straight out of Carnegie Mellon, she auditioned for a part in “Wicked” and got a part as a standby for Glinda, in 2004. She took over the part in 2005 and ended her run in 2006 before reprising the role again when she originated the role in the Los Angeles production in 207.

“I was terrified, originally,” she said. “Kristin Chenowith is kind of the standard for that role.”

Hilty has done guest appearances on television—a memorable role in an episode of “Crime Scene Investigation”—”CSI”— with the resonant title of “Deep Fried and Minty Fresh” as the manager of a fast food restaurant called Choozy’s Chicken. “That,” she said, “was fun.”

But her favorite role was performing as Lorelei Lee, the gold-digging ambitious blonde of “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” a role made famous by two American entertainment originals, Carol Channing on stage and Marilyn Monroe in the movie version.

“I absolute love her [Monroe]. She was such a smart, funny and talented woman,” Hilty said. “It was a Encore production, a concert staging in 2012, but I felt so thrilled to be doing that. I’ve seen most of her movies.”

She wowed New York critic Ben Brantley, who wrote that Hilty performed with “a finely graded style that layers filigree comic flourishes over the raw will and stamina of a top flight athlete.” “Ms. Hilty,” Brantley wrote, “sets the tone for a production that locates the athletic, all-American verve in ‘Gentlemen.’ ”

“If I had a dream,” Hilty said. “I would love to do the role in a fully, big-time Broadway production.”

It might happen. Meanwhile, she’s in town to do her second Christmas stint at the Kennedy Center, this time at the Terrace Theater, singing standards, perhaps a song or two from her 2013 solo album “It Happens All the Time”, and Christmas carols, including “Jingle Bells.”

Life moves on. She married musician Brian Gallagher. In September, she gave birth to their daughter Viola Philomena.

“That’s her in the background,” she said during a telephone interview. And indeed, there was the sound of a baby complaining a little, making her presence known.

For Hilty, the song of Viola Philomena sounds like her very own Christmas carol.

Megan Hilty’s “A Kennedy Center Christmas” is at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater, Saturday, Dec. 13.

Gary Tischler •

George Stevens, Jr., has ended his long reign as producer of the Kennedy Center Honors, the annual star-studded, president-in-residence bash, honoring the nation’s cultural and performance art elites, and the television show that goes with it.

By now, this isn’t news, but many Washington cultural and media remain startled by the way the news was delivered.

Stevens, introduced by Kennedy Center board chairman David Rubenstein and flanked by his son Michael, came out on stage at the beginning of the second act of the Kennedy Center Honors production and said that he would not be returning as producer next year, nor would his son. He said that the chairman had told him he wanted a new producer.

Stevens was entering the last year of a contract and was in negotiation with the board. From the podium, Stevens said, “We accept that this will be our last honors. This is our good night.”

This was the 37th Annual Kennedy Center Honors, at which singers Al Green and Sting, actress and comedienne Lily Tomlin, actor Tom Hanks and ballerina Patricia McBride were honored Dec. 7. Stevens’s announcement came as a shock to the audience, and later this week, to much of Washington.

A longtime Georgetown resident, Stevens is the son of legendary Hollywood director George Stevens, who helmed such classics as “Shane,” “A Place in the Sun,” “Giant” and “The Diary of Anne Frank” as well as “Gunga Din.”

Stevens is a much honored producer, director, playwright (“Thurgood”), and former head of the American Film Institute. Stevens won numerous Emmys for the televised production of the Honors.

Kennedy Center spokesman and communications director John Dow issued a statement from the Kennedy Center which said that “This was the last year on George Stevens, Jr.’s contract and George announced from the stage of the Honors performance on Sunday night that he would be stepping down as producer. the Kennedy Center is enormously grateful for the contributions George and his son Michael have made to the Honors over the years. The Kennedy Center Honors have grown in stature over the past 37 years to become the preeminent recognition of the performing arts in America. With Sunday night’s news, the Kennedy Center will begin a search for an Honors producer that will build upon this strong foundation in the years to come.”

Gary Tischler •

Are you ready for the 2024 Olympics?

Some powerful folks in the District of Columbia are hoping that the city will get a strong shot at hosting the Olympics that year.

That includes Mayor-elect Muriel Bowser, who’s now joined a delegation heading to San Francisco tomorrow to make a final pitch for the District as a candidate to host the 2024 Olympics. The delegation, which includes Bowser, D.C. 2024 chairman and Caps and Wizards owner Ted Leonsis, Russ Ramsey, former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue and Montgomery County Olympic swimming superstar Katie Ledecky, will make the city’s final pitch in front of the U.S. Olympic Committee in the city by the bay.

Advocates of bringing the Olympics to the District argue that a number of factors make D.C. a great place to host the Olympics: the city is ready and able to handle large crowds with regard to transportation and security; it is located near other cities like Richmond, Annapolis and Baltimore, which could host some events; and has a number of areas that would benefit from Olympic-sized economic development.

According to reports in the City Paper, District Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, after hearing from Olympic bid advocates, moved the legislative portion of the committee meeting to Wednesday. That allowed the mayor-elect, who’s still a council member, to join the delegation in San Francisco to push for D.C.’s bid.

D.C. will face off against San Francisco, Boston and Los Angeles in front of the USOC. USOC can choose one city to present to the International Olympic Committee for further determination, or decline to endorse any U.S. city. The U.S. hasn’t hosted the summer Olympics since 1996.

Gary Tischler •

From a distance, you could mistake them for tourists checking out the sights at the Kennedy Center—mom, older brother, young sister.

That wasn’t the case, though. They’d been here before.

The boy, with a slightly brighter shade of blonde hair, was 12-year-old Henry Wager, with his mom, Nancy Tarr, and his young sister Naomi, 10.

Wager had just gotten his hair dyed so that he could look a little more like The Prince, or the title role in the Washington National Opera Company’s family holiday production of Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s “The Little Prince,” composed by Rachel Portman, and originally staged by WNO Artistic Director Francesca Zambello at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater Friday through Sunday, Dec. 19 to 21.

Wager—and his sister Naomi, who will be in the WNO’s Children Chorus in the production—is a familiar presence by now at the Kennedy Center and the WNO. Last year, Wager portrayed the part of the Angel in Jeanine Tesori’s world-premiere (and very popular) “The Lion, the Unicorn and Me.”

“Francesca asked me earlier this year if I wanted to play the prince, and I said sure, I was very honored,” Wager said. “It’s a lot different from anything I’ve done. It’s complicated, you know. He’s a prince, and he lives on this little planet by himself, and his prized possession, a rose. He’s kind of obsessive about it. And he meets this downed pilot in the desert.”

The family lived in Bethesda, but now live in Cooperstown, N.Y., home to the annual summer Glimmerglass Opera Festival, where Zambello is artistic director. For Glimmerglass, Wager performed the role of Winthrop in “The Music Man” and with the children’s chorus sang in Tobias Picker’s “American Tragedy.” So, Wager is already a fairly experienced performer in the opera world.

He’s thoughtful about “The Little Prince.” “The music isn’t like traditional opera, it doesn’t exactly sound like that, it’s modern, you now, like some American operas.”

Watching him and listening to him and his sister, you see something interesting. The young Wagers — Henry and Naomi — are very articulate about music and performing, and yet, there is no sense of self-importance, of being different from other kids. They compete, they talk each other up, they’re proud of each other.

“I want to be in a lead role someday, like Henry,” Naomi offered. “I want to travel to a foreign country.” The production of “The Music Man” traveled to Oman. “You know, the prince is really a kid, he doesn’t understand anything about adults, and he has that thing for the rose.”

“I don’t have any object like that,” Henry said. “We have the cats,” Naomi said. “They’re twins. Maple and Hennepin.”

“You know how he’s different,” Henry said of the prince, “he sees the world in numbers, that’s how he processes information.”

“They were both in the chorus,” Nancy Tarr said. “They work hard.”

“Music is a lot of lessons. I mean lots.And lots of practice.” Henry said.

“They have a normal childhood,” Tarr said. “That’s what I wanted for them. They play sports, they listen to music, they do what kids do. And they do this.”

Henry plays baseball, second base, and he lives in a town, which houses the Baseball Hall of Fame. “It’s cool to live there,” he said. His favorite baseball player Denard Span of the Washington Nationals.

“I listen to all kinds of music,” Henry said. “But I really like listening to movie scores. I love John Williams.”

Naomi currently likes singer Meghan Traynor. “That’s this week she likes her,” Henry said, skeptical. She, of course, likes Taylor Swift. “I liked “Shake It Off” and “Blank Spaces.”

They sound and look just like—still—kids. And they’re wise to it.

Naomi summed it up: “Henry’s got one year left. I’ve got three.”

What’s that? we ask. “Childhood. Henry has one year. I’ve got three.”

Gary Tischler •

Even though the holidays are technically over, at a function like the 2015 Inauguration of Muriel Bowser as the seventh mayor of the District of Columbia, you start to feel like a political Ebenezer Scrooge. Look, here are the ghost(s) of elections past. Here are today’s leaders,  ensconced, and here is generation next, proclaiming the future of the city.  

“This is an auspicious day,” said WUSA Channel 9 reporter Bruce Johnson, presiding at the Washington Convention Center ceremony. He should know, since he’s been doing the presiding for years and presents himself as a familiar, affable ghost of politics past, present and future.

It was indeed, with all those timelines crisscrossing. Here was Muriel Bowser, who had rolled over formidable opponents to be here on the dais being handed the city seal in a formal handover of power from Mayor Vincent Gray,  proclaiming in a empathic windup to her speech that “I’m ready to get to work.”

Here was a generational moment and occasion, with three newly elected and energetic District Council members making their presence felt with speeches laced with optimism — and with two more council member seats (Ward 4 and 8) to be filled, making for a council full of relatively new faces.

Elissa Silverman—a policy analyst but also well known for years as a reporter and “Loose Lips” on the irreverent City Paper—won an at-large seat. Our process was  “keep it simple and make it fun.” Brianne Naldeau, upset the long-time Ward 1 rep, the always bow-tied (along with former mayor Anthony Williams) Jim Graham. Charles Allen, the young chief of staff for Tommy Wells in Ward 6, won his boss’s seat after Wells ran unsuccessfully in the Democratic Primary for mayor.

There was also the dynamic Kenyan McDuffie, winning his first full term as Ward 5 Council Member easily after a special election to replace the disgraced Harry Thomas, Jr., gave him a seat on the council.  McDuffie duly noted the importance of ethics and honesty in politics, and he did not have to go into specifics for people to understand what he was talking about.  Thomas and the two Browns, former chairman Kwame, and former at-large member Michael,  were the ghosts and shadows of politics past, promising politicians and elected officials who had run afoul of the law. (The three were not in attendance.)

Consider, then, the also auspicious presence of Karl Racine, the Washington lawyer, who became the District’s first-ever Attorney General.
           
The future—impatient, with its own set of challenges, problems to be solves, obligations to be met—was invoked often by all the people sworn in, the incumbents, the newcomers,  those elevated—like Bowser and Racine—to new responsibilities.

“Fresh starts,” embraced by just about everybody, might have been a part of the swearing-in oath, so often was it invoked by speakers—that and “Let’s get started,” “We must work together so that all of the city’s residents are served,” “Let us move forward” and “affordable housing . . . ”

The ghosts made their way into the speechifying machinery. “Marion, you are not forgotten,”  Bowser said at one point, to cheers from the audience.  Former Mayor Marion Barry, who passed away Nov. 23, still seemed a vivid presence at the inaugural proceedings, like a ghost not yet invisible. His memorial was held in the same hall less than a month ago.

Bowser, whose confidence grew with every appearance and interview and debate—“Actually, I kind of liked the debates”, she said, even though she was criticized for not having enough of them during the general campaign—burst onto the dais in full bloom. 

She was empathic, full of hope and plans: “We’re going to tackle homelessness head on,” “We need good jobs “ and “Si se puede [yes, we can,” “We’re going to allocate $100 million for affordable housing” and “We’re going to bring the Olympics to the District.”  She is the second female mayor, the second youngest (Adrian Fenty was the youngest), and the seventh elected mayor.

When you listen to Bowser talk like in this manner (and in person), you can see how see she’s grown. She touted her hometown beginnings. “I’m in Ward 4.” “My parents, as everybody knows, are in Ward 5, and my siblings are in Ward 6 and 7, but I aim to be a mayor for all eight wards.”
           
You could see a friend helping a couple, who said they were not “from here or from this country,” explain the ward system by drawing a diagram on the inaugural program for them.

An inauguration is a kind of spectacle of hope, memory and forgetfulness—judges and children move up with the new council members and the old ones.  Allen’s two-year-old daughter, once on the dais, seemed reluctant to leave her daddy.  “Actually, if you know two-year-olds, that was pretty good,” Allen said.  District Council Chairman Phil Mendelson’s daughter gently padded her dad’s partially shiny dome. 

One shouldn’t expect detailed policy speeches from those recently—seconds ago—sworn in.  It is the tone and the key words that count—”humble” was another word used one and all,  and the tone throughout was one of gratitude, of inclusion,  community, and uniform support for the promise of statehood . . . eventually. 

It was all strangely intimate.  

Newcomers, millennial types, mixed with officialdom, and officials past—hello, Harold Brazil, now a practicing lawyer, there’s Bill Lightfoot, who, while not running himself, has helped many to run, and media types, Tom Sherwood and legendary photographer Lateef Mangum and a pat on the back for Jim Graham from old constituents.  

There were politicians from the past or elsewhere: D.C. mayors Adrian Fenty and Anthony Williams—the recent past–former Maryland Lieutenant Governor Anthony Brown, who lost his bid for governor—and current stars—Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.

And so . . . as they might say, the newly minted “honorable” and the mayor herself, wrapped around a prayer breakfast, a gala: “Let us begin,”  “moving forward” and “l’m ready to get to work”—and, for sure, “God bless us, everyone and the District of Columbia.”
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Gary Tischler •

Only two days in and newly sworn-in District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser was already on “Meet the Press.”

What caused all this ruckus? No ruckus. It appears that Chuck Todd of NBC News, himself a newbie as “Meet the Press” moderator, happened to notice, if not a trend, an actual first as of Sunday.

While women make up at least half of the population, their representation is not near that percentile for representation in legislatures and public executive positions. The leadership of Washington, D.C., is a stand-out with a female triumvirate in power.

With the swearing-in of Bowser Jan. 2, Washington, D.C., becomes—yes—the only city among the country’s 50 top municipalities to have women in the three leading jobs of mayor, school chancellor and police chief.

Thus, in a heavily promoted Sunday morning segment, “The Women Who Run Washington,” Todd of “Meet the Press” interviewed Bowser, D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson and Metropolitan Police Department Chief Cathy Lanier in full uniform.

Bowser happily announced, “We want the whole world to know we are a city on the move.”

Todd noted that “Meet the Press” was a show usually dominated by discussions of national and international events with interviews with such female leaders as Hillary Clinton. “Well, guess what, the city is already run by all women,” he said.

Todd twice pressed Bowser—who was upbeat throughout—whether she would sue Congress over its opposition and possible challenge to enactment of Proposition 71, the marijuana legalization proposal approved by voters. Bowser, didn’t exactly take the bait, saying only, “We’re going to explore every option” and “We want to work with our Congress, and we want the will of the residents of D.C. to be enforced.”

Henderson was also upbeat, saying more and more families were opting to send their children to D.C. public schools, although many of those are sending them to charter schools, which are a part of D.C. public schools.

Addressing the issue of protests in the streets—which have been largely peaceful in the District—in the wake of Ferguson and New York, Lanier said, “I think it’s really about building those strong relationships with the community and you really have to do it every single day.”

The discussion did not include comments about recent incidents in which one man was shot and killed by police who said he fired on them, and another was wounded.

Talking about transportation in another conversation over the weekend with NBC4 News, Bowser seemed especially enthusiastic about public transportation, especially Metro, and especially buses. “Our Metro system is really the engine of this region and we have to make sure that the system has the money that it needs to continue.

“I think, really,” she said, “that our future is in the bus.”

Gary Tischler • January 13, 2015

Every year we commemorate and remember. It’s our human nature, especially at newspapers, to take stock, to look back and to remember the lives and presences we lost during the course of the year.

The losses add up in different ways in different years. In our world in Washington, where local news is national news and vice versa, some losses loom larger than others, and they seem to be both anticipating and evaluating history.

That was certainly the case in the passing of Marion Barry and his long goodbye recently, and in the loss of the stylish and classy, fearless Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, who reigned over a history-making national, international and local newspaper at its zenith, even as the digital age began to whittle away at the important role of newspapers and anticipated its decline.

Barry’s death was still a shock. He had the kind of personal charisma and size, and a potent place in the city’s political and electoral history that was outsized, so that his death seemed sudden, implausible. After all, he was a four-term, media-dubbed and self-proclaimed “mayor for life” of the District of Columbia. His efforts to open the city’s job markets and government to include more African Americans radically changed the city. He was scandal-steeped, to be sure, and he was an often divisive figure in the city’s cultural, economic and racial divide. If his political fiefdom had shrunk to “East of the River” in his later years on the council, it remained a citywide phenomena in the public imagination—black and white– for better or worse.

Barry was of a generation, which had held sway since the beginning of home rule. His death signaled the end of something—the District Council is gaining some brand new members, and the new mayor Muriel Bowser is of a different generation.

Bradlee’s death marked the end of something, too—the beginning of the end of the critical importance of newspapers—major and minor—in how Americans get their news and digest it. While the Washington Post and the New York Times still maintain a posture of seriousness and importance, they are thinning like an old man’s hair, and, especially in the Post’s case, which was bought by Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos, geared toward younger audiences and readers. Social media, bloggers, Twitter and the huge, very full spaces of the Internet, make a hashtag of confusion in how information is digested and rob newspapers of their capacity to deliver news that hasn’t already been broken.

Bradlee presided over a newspaper that toppled a presidency, braved government reprisal over the publication of the Pentagon Papers. With Bradlee, charismatic and profane, Wasp and buccaneer, the paper also gained a lot of Style (Section) flash and dash.

Barry’s passing shared the news here with the arrival of a kind of permanent demonstration in Washington, the presence on a daily basis of young activists—black and white—protesting and demanding action in the wake of three police killings of three black men by police. The deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Eric Garner in New York, and 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland have sparked the kind of disruptive but peaceful protest for social and government action that a young man named Marion Barry once led as a civil rights activist in the South. They seem today not only like portents of future change but echoes of the past.

Death is personal to all of us—to those left behind, to ourselves who are chroniclers, it leaves behind not only loss but larger meanings or personal memories to define. Here at the Georgetowner we lost friends who meant more than stories to us—the recent death of Michele Conley, the founder of Living in Pink, who lost her last battle with cancer, and Georgia Shallcross, a friend, writer and supporter of our newspaper for years. Food and restaurant writer Walter Nicholls, beloved by many, succumbed to cancer. We—and our village—also lost Suzi Gookin, a sparkling social writer for our publication, and an outspoken citizen of our town. And we mourned the loss of Richard McCooey, talented restaurant owner and designer, and raconteur.

Over the course of time, one finds oneself writing many stories, meeting many people, and remembering the meetings. The Washington theater community lost two of its gifted actors—the redoubtable, graceful Tana Hicken who had the gift of being unforgettable in her roles, and in her life and Tom Quinn, ex-Marine, boxer and coach, Wall Streeter, Irishman, New Yorker and finally Georgetowner. He became a memorable actor late in life, a performer of red-faced intensity at local theaters like Arena, Studio and Woolly Mammoth and in films, including “The Pelican File.”

There is a whole category of death as indiscriminate robber of life which results in flowers by the side of the road, balloons in a field, and the shock of sudden violence—the torments of horrible storms, earthquakes, floods and tornadoes, two Malaysian Airlines crash with a loss more than 400 persons, one downed by a missile over Ukraine, another lost without a trace over the Indian Ocean (supposedly). There were school shootings, mass shootings, the thousands of victims of Ebola in Western Africa, the gruesome victims of Isis, and the thousands dead in the Syrian civil wars.

Closer to home, we will miss the kind presence of St. John’s Episcopal Church’s secretary Kimberly Durham Bates, a bright and beautiful presence in her Adams Morgan and Lanier Heights neighborhood, who leaves behind two children Naomi and Theo Bates.

We mourn and note the passing of 54 persons who died homeless in the District of Columbia in 2014. Their names were read aloud Dec. 19 on Homeless Memorial Day, following a candlelight vigil organized by the People for Fairness Coalition at Freedom Plaza.

Here are additional losses from 2014:

Pete Seeger—The giant of folk music, inspiring, redoubtable: “If I Had a Hammer,” “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” singing songs of freedom.

Mike Nichols—Astonishingly versatile stage and film director, adept with Neil Simon and Arthur Miller, directed “The Graduate” and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf”.

Phil Seymour Hoffman—The man of many characters, the movie star as character actor, “Capote”, lost to an overdose.

Maya Angelou—The stirring national poet, who became hugely popular while never losing her cache as inspired Nobel Prize-winning articulator of the yearning for freedom.

Richard Attenborough—The British director with epic visions in “A Bridge Too Far” and “Gandhi,” and not a bad actor, either.

Lauren Bacall—One of the last of the old big movie star, she was Bogey’s baby first, and his best love in “The Big Sleep,” “To Have and Have Not,” “Key Largo.” She knew how to whistle, too, and became late in life a Broadway star.

Thomas Hale Boggs—Otherwise known in D.C. and at his law firm as Tommy, a lobbyist with high-class qualities

James Brady—Suffered grievous wounds in the attempt on President Ronald Reagan’s life, inspired gun control laws and kept a warm sense of humor.

Sid Caesar—Maybe the funniest and most eccentric of early television comedy, a giant on “Your Show of Shows,” who should have gotten more applause.

Oscar de la Renta—The fashion designer as red-carpet superstar.

Thomas Duncan—The first Ebola victim in the United States.

Phil Everly—As in Phil and Don Everly, the Everly Brothers, the chart-busting rock and roll and country singers who had a string of major hits, including “Wake Up Little Suzy” and “All I Have to Do is Dream.”

Al Feldstein—Founded Mad Magazine, the most unusual comedy and humor magazine ever.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez—Nobel Prize-winning Colombian Novelist and guiding light of magical realism in “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” and “Love in the Time of Cholera” among many great novels.

James Garner—Major Hollywood and All-American star on television “The Rockford Files” and “Maverick” and in films “Sayanora”, “Murphy’s Romance”, “Duel at Diablo and others.

Gerry Goffin—With Carole King, wrote super hits like “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?”

Bo Hoskins—British character actor, famous for being a private eye in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.”

Tony Gwyn—One of the best hitters ever, Hall of Famer, San Diego Padre.

Martha Hyer—High-class dame in 1950s films, including “Some Came Running With Frank Sinatra.

Dick Jones—For television western fans of the 1950s, he was “Buffalo Bill, Jr.,” and the Range Rider’s sidekick. He was the voice of “Pinochio.”

Casey Kasem—The big national deejay.

Lorin Maazel—Music director or the Cleveland Orchestra and New York Philharmonic; founded the Castleteon Festival.

James MacGregor Burns—Political historian of great American eras.

Brittany Maynard—The young woman dying of cancer who chose to end her life in a cause-building public manner.

Tommy Ramone—The last of the Ramones.

Paul Revere—As in Paul Revere and the Raiders, 1960s rock group.

Johnny Rivers—Texan blues guitarist supreme.

Jane Mondale—The wife of former Vice President Walter Mondale.

Maximillian Schell—Oscar winner (for “Julia”) and star “Judgement at Nuremberg” and chronicler of Marlene Dietrich.

Elayne Stritch—Eccentric, magnetic Broadway star.

Eli Wallach—Of Brando’s generation, starred in “Baby Doll” and was the bad guy in “The Magnificent Seven” (You came back. Why?, the dying words).

James Schlesinger—Former defense secretary, exemplary Georgetown citizen and presence.

Ralph Waite—The good father on television to John John Walton and Leroy Jethro Gibbs on “NCIS.”

Shirley Temple—The first super child star in the Depression, ingénue in “Fort Apache” and UN Ambassador.

Ralph Kiner—Detroit Tigers supreme slugger.

Robin Williams–The zaniest, wildest, most profane and faster-than-the-speed-of-laughter creative comic, to suicide.

Joan Rivers — Always in your face, always on your mind, the female comic as outsized performer.

Joe Cocker — Rock and blues singer, best known for his rendition “With a Little Help From My Friends.”

Gary Tischler • January 5, 2015

Let’s hear it for Francesca Zambello.

If she has done or does nothing else, the Washington National Opera’s artistic director has just about managed in a very short time to institutionalize her cherished goal of involving children in opera as performers and audience members by programming children’s and family fare.

It’s a successful effort to which families and children stream to happy effect, as illustrated by the WNO staging of “The Little Prince,” based on the famed fable and book by French writer Antoine de Saint Exupery and on the original production staged at the Houston Opera and directed by Zambello.

To be sure, “The Little Prince” is not your usual fable, fairy tale or children’s book—it’s wispy, philosophical, and not easily digested as a story. But it is full of magical creatures and beings, as well as the little prince himself, who is a denizen of a tiny planet, where a rose is its most important apparition. He joins a human pilot whose plane has crashed in the desert on earth.

The narrative is not quick and fast, but the music—by film composer Rachel Portman—is accessible to children and adults alike, melodic and digestible.

“The Little Prince” is a kind of survivor’s fable which offers, instead of real adventures, nuggets of hope, tools not only to use to get by but to forge ahead and enlarge heart and soul.

It’s full of characters that are a performer’s (and costume designer’s) delight—a breathy, oily snake, a rose, the warm lamplighter, a king, a hunter and a warm, exquisite fox, played and sung in dazzling style by Aleksandra Romano.

This is the third children’s opera staged under Zambello—preceded by “Hansel and Gretel” and the lovely Christmas tale, “The Lion, the Unicorn and Me,” last season. “Cinderella” is coming up in the WNO spring season.

Precisely because it’s an opera (with non-traditional opera components) that doesn’t go down like your favorite ice cream but leaves room for food for thought, the reaction is all the more remarkable. I think the way it’s staged, the production fills up the heart and prods the imagination of adults and children alike.

Twelve-year-old Henry Wager, who played the angel last year in “The Lion, the Unicorn and Me,” sings movingly as a boy soprano, but it’s his stage presence that is undeniable. Slight, often somewhat bewildered but always open and curious, he’s the true heart of the production.

The production is aided by members of the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program and the Washington National Opera’s Children Chorus.

In fact, the latter stir up the audience beautifully at the end of the first act, when they form double rows of lamplighters in the aisled of the Terrace Theater.

But “The Little Prince” is a little about education—the prince’s view of earth and adults and humans, the pilot’s education about the prince. Two notable lines remain in the mind: “What is essential is invisible to the eye” and the prince’s insight that “Grownups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.”

Mostly, “The Little Prince” was an exemplary example of the growth of WNO’s opera for children and the rest of the family, a production that left a rose-like imprint on the holidays.

Gary Tischler •

Ari Roth may no longer be the artistic director of Theater J, but the reactions to his firing by the D.C. Jewish Community Center in mid-December continued all through Hanukkah and Christmastime.

Roth was, according to reports in the Washington Post, fired by Carole Zawatsky, CEO of the JCC, on Dec. 18, with the stated cause being “insubordination.”

Roth had been the artistic director of Theater J for 18 years, years in which he grew the theater—which is a part of the D.C. Jewish Community Center—into a formidable force among Washington theaters, but also nationally as a prominent company presenting Jewish theater.

Theater J and Roth received accolades for the many Jewish-themed and Jewish-authored plays—the Arthur Miller canon, including a dramatic production of “The Price,” starring the late Robert Prosky and two of his sons. The theater found a wide audience throughout the region. Roth encouraged new plays and playwrights, including an original, ground-up musical based on the life of King David, and foraged for plays that centered often on plays with political and issue-oriented themes.

No one questioned Roth’s artistic prowess and his abilities as an artistic leader—even Sawatsky, in the initial burst of information about Roth leaving, said that “Ari Roth has had an incredible 18-year tenure leading Theater J, and we know there will be great opportunities ahead for him. Ari leaves us with a vibrant theater that will continue to thrive.”

Roth, in a statement reported by Post drama critic Peter Marks, made it clear that he was “terminated abruptly.”

In building Theater J’s reputation as an outstanding theater, Roth was often the flashpoint for controversy, especially when dealing with plays that focused on Israel’s political history. One such play was “Return to Haifa,” a play by Israeli playwright Boaz Gaon focusing on the plight a Palestinian family which returned to their old home in Haifa abandoned in the wake of the 1948 War for Independence. The play was performed by the Cameri Theatre of Tel Aviv, a company composed of Israeli and Palestinian actors. At an opening night production in 2011, some older members of the audience complained vocally about the play and its sympathetic treatment of the Palestinian characters.

Another Roth innovation, the Voices from a Changing Middle East festival was sometimes criticized for its political content and was not on the schedule this year. Another controversial play by another Israeli playwright Motti Lerner, “The Admission,” which was about an alleged massacre which occurred in a Palestinian village in 1948, was pared down to a staged reading.

When news came of Roth’s firing, the national artistic community responded quickly.

Playwright Tony Kushner of “Angels in America” fame, whose play “The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures” was Theater J’s second production this season, wrote that Roth “was fired because he refused to surrender to censorship.” In all, artistic directors of 60 national theater companies protested the firing in an open letter — including Robert Falls of the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, Joe Dowling of the Guthrie Theater in Minnesota, and Howard Shalwitz of the Woolly Mammoth Theatre and Michael Kahn of the Washington Shakespeare Company in Washington.

Roth is reportedly organizing planning for a new theater company, which he will lead called the Mosaic, which may begin performing at the Atlas Performing Arts Center on H Street in the fall.

In a letter to the arts community, Zawatsky, in part, wrote, “I want to assure you that DCJCC will continue to support Theater J as a vibrant, creative and provocative outlet for great theater. Our commitment to Theater J is as strong as ever and we will resist efforts to politicize our output.

“Ari’s creative vision—which included significant works of a political nature—were always defended and supported by Theater J and DCJCC. Our commitment to that never wavered. But Ari’s failure to maintain basic professional conduct and standards made it impossible to continue his employee relationship of the DCJCC.”