Gary Tischler • September 10, 2014

If you watch the news in this town and our towns across the country, you’re bound to have been saddened, bewildered and not a little agitated over the furor and fury that has erupted in Ferguson, Missouri, where an unarmed young black man was shot by a white police officer. This horrible, tragic event was followed by demonstrations, clashes between the police and demonstrators as well as looters, fire and tear gas in the night almost every night, in ways that we have seen before throughout our troubled and often violent racial history.

Nothing has really been settled yet. Ferguson, a suburb of St. Louis with a predominantly black population and an overwhelmingly white police force, remains a cauldron of outrage, uncertainty, seething and explosive emotions, and conflicting and confusing accounts of what actually happened. The local police—heavily armed with high tech, military-style weapons—along side the county police and the highway patrol, and soon to be joined by the National Guard—have repeatedly clashed with demonstrators, many of whom have protested with their arms held high in the traditional “don’t-shoot” stance. The FBI is investigating the shooting and everything surrounding it. A video showing of the shooting victim, Michael Brown, and a friend allegedly stealing boxes of cigars from a convenience star was released several days later by the Ferguson sheriff’s department to outrage in the community. There have been at least two autopsies done on Brown’s body. The officer who shot Brown has been identified. The parents of Brown are demanding the arrest of the officer.

Ferguson has become a flash point for anger, another reminder that the racial divide in America appears in this case as wide and deep as ever. The situation was not new. The volatility of relations between the police force and the residents of Ferguson bubbled over with the shooting, but it’s also a part of a process which we have seen locally when Prince Georges County became a majority black county, even as the police force remained predominantly white. The same was true for Washington, D.C., in the wake of the coming of home rule until Marion Barry became mayor.

The echo of some of the imagery we’ve seen—the protesters in the streets, the heavily armed police force, acting very much like a military force, and the presence of familiar civil rights leaders like the Rev. Al Sharpton, who said, “Ferguson is the defining moment today in America”—reminded people of other times and other places—the shooting of Trevon Martin and Selma, to some.

Ferguson was a news story that became something way beyond itself. It was a reference story to the ongoing, often violent saga of race relations in this country and delivered its quota of tragedy, metaphors and memories.

Other things happened, of course. Ukraine remained a tinderbox, deaths from Ebola remained on the rise in West Africa, the truce in Gaza appeared to be holding amid the ruins and great tension. The United States — in a limited, but effective, way — helped slow the momentum of ISIS in Iraq with fighter and drone attacks.

We caught up with an old movie, “Dead Poet’s Society,” Peter Weir’s elegiac, lovely piece about the price of non-conformity at a 1950s prep school, where actor Robin Williams presided over and inspired a group of young students with “Carpe Diem.” It was a quiet, touching movie, every bit as memorable as Williams’s more manic efforts or the creepy “One Hour Photo.” It was also emblematic of the gifts of Weir, who gave us “Witness” and “The Year of Living Dangerously.” Williams’s suicide Aug. 11 and its manner touched cinematic tribal memories for anyone who watched television, laughed out loud often or went to the movies. It became a loss, like that of some never-forgotten friend from a distant land.

We also saw the new movie, based on a classic old tome of a novel: Lois Lowry’s 1993 novel for young people, “The Giver,” a book that found its way into many middle-school and high school curriculums as a thought-provoking work that let youngsters think about the kind of world which was best to live in.

Many years in the making—which, for what it was, did a respectable $12.8 million at the box office this weekend—it was an approximation of the book (which I gulped down over the weekend). It seemed almost hip and trendy in the sense that it caught the tail wind of two other movie version of teen books about heroes and heroines in a dystopian world, “The Hunger Games” and “Divergent,” helping to make the word “dystopian” very cool itself.

“The Giver”—which was helped into existence by the persistence of actor Jeff Bridges who has the title role—is about a world and a society, which has survived an unexplained catastrophe, called the ruins. In this brave new world, there are no emotions. There is nothing called death except the euphemistic “release” of the elderly and rule breakers. There is no music, no colors and no books. There is no conflict, racial or otherwise. There’s no unemployment, no war, no starvation, no unnecessary excitement, no love or hate. It’s all controlled by a ruling class, called the elders, and every one in it knows their place.

There is also the giver, the one person who holds all the memories of events, feelings, feelings, creativity and such that existed. He is there as a kind of wise man in waiting, who has the answers for any questions that might come up. In this society, everyone is given an assignment—and young Jonas, age 16 (he’s 12 in the book), is about to get his. He will become the new giver, a process by which the Giver himself fills him with all the memories that he has inside him.

Jonas soon s finds himself in conflict with the “community,” his family and his friends, not to mention a watchful head elder, played by Meryl Streep in the film.

This is, of course, a movie and it must have its heroics and action, but it is also a highly affecting work. I’m not sure why but the daily lives of Jonas, his family and friends and his adventures are a potent emotional brew.

We left the theater in Georgetown and wandered by the water fountain at Percy Plaza in Georgetown Waterfront Park, past the new restaurants at Washington Harbour. We saw the birds of the river and the family of man, chaotic, warm, energetic, enjoy the day and seizing it for its quality of gentleness and sunshine, the citizens of this town and our town, enjoying the fruits of whatever labor there is. I would not have been surprised to see a spry Walt Whitman singing the multitudes.

There were as yet no signs of ruins, only a pirate ship and two impressively sized yachts and dogs at play—these everyday things, far from Ferguson for now.

Gary Tischler •

These days, if you want to talk about immigration, or naturalization, or American citizenship, people are likely to get angry.

Immigration, long a feverish political issue, discussed in terms of amnesty or no amnesty, has become a flashpoint topic that divides the country politically. Several presidents and legislatures have failed to come together on solutions. Recently, a huge influx of illegal immigrants coming from Central American countries has added fuel to the flames of the debate.

All this bellicosity, anger, and paralysis has obscured something essential about the United States. Everybody still wants to come here, live here, work here, and in astounding numbers, wants to become a citizen. Immigration and naturalization occurs every day and every year, in simple, and quite emotional, occasions all over the country. It’s an ongoing process that appears to be little noticed in all the media and political tumult.

In 2012, by May, some 500,000 people from all parts of the world had become citizens through the process of naturalization. Some 600,000 have done so so far this year. Every year, there are special occasions for large naturalization events, celebrating the long standing virtues of the United States¬—that this is a place where—not always, but most of the time—the door has been open for people from elsewhere in the world.
On Aug. 1, 25 children from countries all over the world received citizenship certificates by dint of the fact that their parents had already become citizens. The event was held in the North Garden at Dumbarton House (its director Karen Daly is shown below at a podium) on Q Street with the help of staff from the U.S. Citizens and Immigration Services, and was hosted in conjunction with the D.C. region’s Star-Spangled Summer War of 1812 Commemorative programming.

This was not a political event, but rather a celebration of proud children and proud parents who had become citizens of the U.S. They came from El Salvador, Ethiopia, France, Iran, Iraq, Morocco, Pakistan, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Switzerland, Syria, Togo and Vietnam.

Naturalization events, in which immigrants pledge allegiance to the United States, after passing tests on American history and government, civics and English, were held in large numbers all over the country on the Fourth of July. On September 17, which is Constitution Day and Citizenship Day, similar events will be held at military bases, national parks, presidential libraries and historic sites, including Faneuil Hall in Boston; Glacier Point at Yosemite National Park; National Monument in Grand Junction, Colo.; the Harry Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Mo.; the National Archives in Washington, D.C.; the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas; Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii, and others.
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Gary Tischler •

Deborah F. Rutter, the new president of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, its first female president, and only the third to hold the post, was in the middle of her first official day at work September 2 when she took time to talk on the phone.
“My office looks terrible. There’s boxes and stuff all over the place,” she said. “We had a staff meeting to meet everyone which was absolutely great. It was a very warm occasion. I was so impressed with the people here, and I’m really looking forward to the daily process of working together.

“Actually, the most important part of the day was of course deciding what my daughter would wear to school,” she said and laughed.

Even in a half hour phone conversation, you get the impression that Rutter doesn’t stand on ceremony much. She’s down to earth, accessible, moving from conversation about day-to-day living, moving to Washington from Chicago, talking about how to engage new audiences, about music and its “power to transform.” She’s at turns eloquent and vibrant, funny, professional and warm. President of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association for over a decade, Rutter was named to succeed Michael Kaiser who ended his 13-year tenure on September 1. When the Kennedy Center presented her to the press last December, Rutter exuded both confidence and affability, embracing with gusto the challenge of leading what is often considered the nation’s premiere cultural and performing arts center.

There was, of course, a reason for the confidence. She was something of a transforming agent in Chicago, spreading the reputation of the CSOA out into the city and community, persuading legendary Maestro Riccardo Muti to head the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as its 10th music director and displaying a bent for collaborative efforts, city-wide festivals, large-scale educational efforts, a gift for fund-raising and a passion for the works of contemporary classical composers . During her tenure in Chicago, famed cellist Yo-Yo Ma became the first Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant.

Still, it’s plain that while under Rutter the CSOA became a force not only throughout the city of Chicago, but nationally and internationally as well, heading up the Kennedy Center is a different matter. That’s because of its various pieces—theater programming, jazz, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Washington National Opera, which came under the center’s wing only recently, Very Special Arts, Young People’s Program, the annual Kennedy Center Honors and the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, the last two of which result in very public red-carpet festivities and events.

“I realize the challenge,” she said, “and I look forward to it.” At the time of the announcement, she said “It’s an honor and a challenge to continue to build on the tremendous work that Michael Kaiser has done here for the past 13 years.”
While September 2 was her official first work day, she’s been busy meeting with people all along and scouting the city and the center. “We moved here and now live in American University Park, which we found to be a great place. It’s residential, it’s close to things, there are all kinds of things within walking distance. Our daughter Gillian goes to Sidwell, and she sings in a choir, which I think is terrific because that’s where you learn about working with others, about collaboration to produce beautiful music and sounds.” Her husband Peter Ellefson teaches at Northwestern and Indiana University and plays the trombone. Rutter herself grew up playing the violin and piano.

During the course of speaking with Rutter, I allowed that I hadn’t been interested in classical music when I was in high school, that I was a rock and roller. “Don’t kid yourself,” she said. “At one time or another, we’re all rock and rollers. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a fan of the Kinks, Sting or Dave Matthews, you listened to rock and roll at some point and it’s not forgotten.”
She said that she was “was amazed at the depth and breadth of the every-day programming at the Kennedy Center, and at the audiences’ interest in what the center offers.” “I was happy to be able to attend the NSO’s Labor Day concert which had to be moved inside to the Concert Hall because of the weather and it was absolutely thrilling to see how people were happy to be there.”

“There are so many tent poles, and silos, to the Center, the different departments, and one of the things I thought was that whatever event was going on—a concert, an opera, a ground-up musical, a dance or ballet performance, that the center’s various parts would interact and reflect individual productions—that a single project would resonate among and inspire the rest of the building.”

“Sure, I will miss Chicago. It’s a unique American city. It’s a tough place in many ways, strong and receptive, and all the myths and personas of the city are true,” she said. “But you don’t lose friends in this business. You will always see and connect with people who work in this field. And this city, as I’m beginning to see, has its own personality. It’s totally different.
“We have this historic place here. It’s connected to history, and it’s a monument as well as a performing arts center,” she said. “But there are always different ways to bring the arts to the community and the community to the arts.

She shared the experience of being at a concert for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s “Truth to Power” festival at which Jason Moran, the Kennedy Center’s jazz director, performed original blues compositions with conceptual artist Theaster Gates. “Jason is such a gifted, innovative player and person,” she said of Moran.

That kind of collaboration attracts here as well. “I’m very excited about the “Little Dancer,” she said, referring to the Kennedy Center’s musical production about the relationship between the Impressionist painter Degas and the model for his famous ballerina sculpture which begins in October and coincides with a special exhibition at the National Gallery of Art.

Gary Tischler • September 3, 2014

Joseph Marcell has become Lear again.

The native of St. Lucia, board member of Shakespeare’s Globe, member of the Royal Shakespeare Company and one-time global television star, is on another tour of “King Lear,” the Bard’s grandest, most difficult, most compelling tragedy.

This Shakepeare’s Globe production will be coming to the Folger Theatre for a limited run September 5-21, bringing Marcell in full dudgeon – raging, as Dylan Thomas said, against the dying of the light. Shakepeare’s Globe’s production of “Hamlet” played for a limited run earlier this summer.

Marcell is sure to be remembered not just as Lear but as Geoffrey, the imperious butler on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” the ’90s television sitcom which made Will Smith a huge star. It didn’t do badly for Marcell in the recognition department.

“I realized when we toured that this show struck a chord worldwide, from England to Turkey,” Marcell has said. He told reporters about an incident when he was touring with Lear at Brighton in England. There comes a point when Lear asks himself (and the audience to some extent), “Who is Lear, who am I?” Someone in the audience yelled: “You’re Geoffrey.”

He is the first black actor to portray Lear for the Royal Shakespeare Company. The part is exhausting for any actor, but “it strikes a chord with people,” said Marcell. “It is tremendously difficult, but it speaks to us. He’s a very complicated character. He is a warrior king, autocratic, prideful, but he’s become tired of 50 years of fighting and killing. He makes mistakes in judgment.

“He will not accept that he is old. That’s the crux of the matter. He can’t accept that he can’t any longer have his way and, tragically, he sets the stage for his own further downfall. It’s a generational battle as much as anything with the other two daughters.”

To Marcell, there is nothing like performing on stage.

“In touring, we’ve been in all sorts of venues, all kinds of theaters, big, small, outdoors, indoors, which makes every performance completely different. You cannot duplicate it. The outdoor-indoor thing is about space as much as anything. You have to project more, get the voice beyond the first two rows, and you’re also at the mercy – or, in one instance, the blessing – of Mother Nature.

“We had an outdoor performance once, in the afternoon, and right during the scene where Lear is wandering with the fool in the barren landscape, full of wind and fury, and he’s raging and blind in the dark and rain, why, we had a big storm come up, wind and rain and all that, and we played through, and it was like nature supplied our special effects. It was simply rough magic.

“In a theater like the Folger, indoors, compact, small, it’s different, things become more intimate, a kind of pact between actors and audience. There’s a world of difference between playing outside and inside, certainly there is.

“It’s very special to be where I am, to do what I do,” Marcell said. “But to be at the Globe, to be where it all started in some ways, to play The Big One, that’s challenge and gratifying.”

Gary Tischler • August 28, 2014

Remember this? During the summer of 1963, 17-year-old Frances “Baby” Houseman is on vacation in New York’s Catskill Mountains with her older sister and parents. Mesmerized by the racy dance moves and pounding rhythms that she discovers in the resort’s staff quarters, she can’t wait to be part of the scene, especially when she catches sight of Johnny Castle, the resort’s sexy dance instructor.

In 1987, this was the scenario for a little movie called “Dirty Dancing,” made by a small studio, and headed by a cast of little known performers named Patrick Swayze, as Johnny Castle (is that a great name or what?), Jennifer Gray as “Baby” (Is that a great name or what?) with Cynthia Rose as Johnny’s dancing partner Penny Johnson.

“Dirty Dancing” turned out to be a smash hit, provided a few numbers to the soundtrack of our lives, especially “I’ve Had the Time of My Life” and made a sexy star out of Swayze, who did more of the same in “Ghost” and “Roadhouse.”

It also become a very successful musical with different productions in far-flung places like Australia, Germany and the West End in London. Now, it’s time for the North American tour of “Dirty Dancing—The Classic Story On Stage,” running Aug. 26 through Sept. 14 at the National Theatre in Washington.

This production is also a 10th anniversary celebration for the show which was first performed at the Theatre Royal in Sydney, Australia, in 2004. The show opened in 2011 in the West End in London with an 11-million pound advance.

Eleanor Bergstein, who wrote the original screenplay for the movie and the book for the show, said, “The company for the North American tour is beautiful and truthful.”

The show at the National, which kicks off an extended tour across the United States as well as Canada, has a brand new cast, headed by Samuel Pergande as Johnny and Jillian Mueller as Baby, with Jenny Winton as Penny Johnson. Mueller has had some experience in starring in a movie musical, heading a national tour of “Flashdance” recently.

With an orchestra and singers providing vocals with such songs as “Hungry Eyes,” “Hey Baby,” “Do You Love Me?” as well as the memorable hit “I’ve Had the Time of My Life,” “Dirty Dancing” is still the same old story. It’s all about the dancing, dirty and otherwise.

That’s a good thing for Pergande and Winton, both of whom bring considerable experience from the world of ballet, with both spending time with the renowned and very electric and eclectic Joffrey Ballet.

Pergande, who trained with the Milwaukee Ballet School, the San Francisco Ballet and the Bolshoi Academy in Moscow, has appeared with the American Ballet Theatre and with the Joffrey under Gerald Arpino, the co-founder of the Joffrey. Pergande was in two different companies of “Dirty Dancing”, including understudying Johnny in the London Cast. He’s also been with the U.S. national tour of “Billy Elliott” and worked with Cirque du Soleil.

“It’s very different, when it comes to dancing,” Pergande said. “The music is different. You do different things in terms of moving around. It’s edgier. Your body has to adjust to different stresses. Your energy level is different. In some ways, it’s harder. In other ways, it’s not. You bring different tools to dancing in this show.

“I loved working with Mr. Arpino,” Pergande said. “He taught me so many things. But the main thing is this: you present yourself as a man, as someone imposing, on stage. He caught me once in a rehearsal. I guess I was sort of striking a pose, looking up at the skylight. He said, ‘Sam, what are you doing? What are you looking at? You should be looking out for your woman.’ ”

“Mr. Arpino meant I should always be watching my partner, the ballerina, taking care of her, the woman dancer,” Pergande said. “Mr. Arpino said that’s what you’re there for, your partner relies on you and needs to feel safe with your strength and abilities.”

That’s probably even more true for a show like “Dirty Dancing” where the dancing is fast, sharp, full of lifts and girls leaping into the arms and strong hands of their partners.

“Exactly,” Pergande said. “You have to be there for her.”

Jenny Winton, who plays Johnny’s dancing partner, agrees. “Ballet is very different,” Winton said. “And for me, it’s the first time I’ve done anything like this and he [Pergande] has been wonderful. He’s a great dancing partner, and you learn so much from him. Your body has to make some adjustments to the music in the show. You’re doing something almost totally different—ballet is all about lines, and a kind of fluid movement. This is all about sharp cuts and quick moves.”

Winton was trained at the San Francisco Ballet School, a Bay area girl, whose parents still live in the Haight Ashbury—the hippie haven of the 1960s. She, too, has danced with the Joffrey Ballet in 2009. “Mr. Arpino had already passed [in 2008] by the time I came to the company, but everybody talked about him,” Winton said.

“It’s an amazing show,” Pergande said. “I’ve seen the audiences. They seem to know all the lyrics. They’re passionate fans of the show.

Pergande knows he’s having to deal with a shadow–the “ghost” of Patrick Swayze. “I know that’s there,” he said. “You can’t think about it. I mean, you bring your own gifts to the part, your skills, your own passion. It’s just something I don’t think about.”

Gary Tischler • August 25, 2014

When Matt Haley, the white-bearded Delaware restaurateur, died Aug. 19 of injuries suffered from a motorcycle accident in India, he was doing something that was almost typical for the kind of person he had become. It might have been extraordinary for almost anybody else.

Haley was traveling in India as part of a six-week journey through the northwestern part of the country and Nepal to continue one of many of his humanitarian efforts, planning to deliver stoves to villages in Nepal.

He was traveling with several other riders and international motorcycle expert Guarav Jani, when his cycle collided with a truck. He died of his injuries, while being taken by a medical jet to New Delhi.

The news of Haley’s passing shocked the restaurant world in the region and just about anybody that knew Haley and his story, which was one of redemption and giving back to the community from the get-go. Haley went from being a man with a prison record and addiction problems to one of the most successful restaurant owners in the area and was considered a culinary ambassador and philanthropist. With 25 operations in four states, he traveled as a speaker preaching the gospel of giving back.

As a result of his many efforts and a successful business which became Matt Haley Companies, he was given the 2014 James Beard Humanitarian of the Year Award.

An article by Delaware Online quoted him as saying, “I’m a member of the most compassionate, caring industry in the world. There’s no other industry that would have been there for me. Everybody shut their doors on me when I got of prison 20 years ago.” Haley was a part of numerous charitable organizations, including La Esperanza, the Georgetown, Del., community service agency, that helps Spanish-speaking immigrant workers.

Haley’s restaurants in Rehoboth and all over the region employed approximately 1,000 people during the summer, grossing around $50 million in revenue. He was a well known figure in the Washington, D.C., restaurant and culinary community. The National Restaurant Association of Washington, D.C., recognized him this year for his humanitarian efforts.

Gary Tischler • August 22, 2014

We are always tourists in our own cities. Everywhere we walk, bike, run, stop and go, every park bench we sit on a summer’s noontime, history beckons us. Often, we’ve stopped and peered through the black fence, watched and stared at the pristine white of the White House. Turn around and you see in Lafayette Square Andrew Jackson waving astride his horse, and around the corner, the U.S. Treasury building, stolid Alexander Hamilton in a starring sculpture role.

Two hundred years ago on a dark night of a hot August 24, the White House, then known as the President’s House, was on fire, as were pretty much all of the federal buildings of Washington. What was then an uncompleted, but nonetheless sumptuous U.S. Capitol housing the House of Representatives, the Senate, the Library of Congress and the Supreme Court was torched by a relatively small force of around 800 troops and sailors of His Majesty’s armed forces. Americans who had stayed behind were weeping. The residents of Tudor Place and Dumbarton House in upper Georgetown could see the flames clearly throughout the night and then the smoke the following morning. The U.S. Navy Yard, with ships, war materiel, ammunitions and canisters were also set to flame, this time by Americans trying to prevent the invading British from gaining control of weaponry.

President James Madison had already left the city, lest he be captured, but his wife Dolley, the indomitable hostess with the mostest of her day, was, according to the stories, busy saving the Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington from the rapa- cious British. This was without question the lowest point for the fledgling U.S. republic during the course of the War of 1812. The very survival of the nation appeared to be at stake. United States negotiators in the Belgian city of Ghent, who were looking for a peaceful settlement, appeared about to receive onerous terms from their British counterparts.

Yet only a few months later, the climax to the whole war brought different results than one might expect. In the end, the war was a draw, not a victory, although it gave off the flavor of triumph. For the United States, still united, the Treaty of Ghent ended a war that had begun as an outraged and almost foolish declaration against the Mother Country over impressments of American sailors and commerce and trade. But the ending felt triumphant. In the aftermath of the burning of Washington, which we commemorate if not celebrate this month, came the bombardment of Fort McHenry in Baltimore. It was resisted bravely and witnessed by an American named Francis Scott Key, who was inspired to write a poem which would eventually become our national anthem, “The Star Spangled Banner.” It was followed by an American victory at Plattsburgh and the prospect of better hopes. Even as the ink was drying on the treaty, U.S. General Andrew Jackson pulled off a scorching, impressive and devastat- ing victory over British regulars at the Battle of New Orleans, which gave us another hugely popular song by Johnny Horton but also restored American pride and confidence.

In terms of popular culture and national memory, the War of 1812 remains a peculiar, selective historic event, remembered differently by its participants: Canada, Great Britain, the United States, as well as various Native American tribes. For Canadians, who fought off (with the English and Indian tribes) what can only be called an inept and foolhardy invasion by the Americans, it is a rare and celebrated point of military pride. For the British, the war was something of a sideshow compared to the long and difficult war with Napoleon’s France, and was fought in the manner of teaching the breakaway cousins a lesson. For the United States, it became a transforming experience, full of drama and trauma. It was a war bitterly fought in the political arena, with a congress and country, equally divided for and against—westerners and southerners were for it, northerners, especially New Englanders, were against it.

You can practically smell the smoke and brimstone fire and hear the cannonades if you read the recent “Through the Perilous Fight” by Steve Vogel, a veteran Washington journalist on military matters. (He was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team of Washington Post reporters writing on Afghanistan). The book is a dramatic and evocative telling of six critical weeks of the War of 1812, beginning with events leading up to and surrounding the British invasion and burning of the capitol. There is also “The Burning of Washington, The British Invasion of 1814” (The Naval Institute Press, 1998) by Anthony Pitch, a veteran historian who has also given Smithsonian tours and walks on the subject.

Vogel’s book reminds us of two things: that war and history are always about people, and that however confusing, the issues of this war, which sprawled into Canada, the Great Lakes area, and was fought along and on familiar native rivers, villages, country sides, hills and forests and cities, proved to have far-reaching consequences. Vogel paints graphic pictures of the fighting and destruction, as well as portraits of the characters of its principal protagonists. On the English side are the three commanders, Admiral Alexander Cochran, who harbored an intense hatred against America, the flamboyant and mercurial rear Admiral Sir George Cockburn and the beloved and stoutly brave Irish-born Major General Robert Ross. Among the Americans, we see the Madisons, Mr. and Mrs. in action or inaction; James Monroe, then Secretary of State, in the middle of various military actions; Commander Joshua Barney, arguably the ablest and bravest of American military leaders on the scene; Brigadier General William Winder, who seems often clueless; and Paul Jennings, the young Madison family’s slave and retainer who helped rescue the Washington portrait and witnessed the burning of the White House.

Finally, and most full bodied, there is Georgetowner Francis Scott Key, whose presence touches on so many of the young country’s concerns but who became entirely unforgettable with his penning of a poem that became our national song. He was a father of 11 children, a devoted church goer, (at St. John’s in Georgetown, where he resided on M Street), a husband, a slave owner sympathetic to the plight of slaves, but a legalistic defender of the institution. His brother-in-law and great friend was Chief Justice Roger Taney who authored the Dred Scott Case. He is buried with his wife at Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Frederick, Md., where you can see the Confederate flag flying over the graves of Confederate soldiers. Key was asked to act as a negotiator for the release of an American prisoner and ended up having dinner with the two British admirals and General Ross, who was, a short while later, killed in a battle leading up to the siege of Fort McHenry. Key watched the bombardment, a hellish, non-stop affair, and “by dawn’s early light,” saw our flag was still there.

The poem became a song, became an anthem, became history, the song we sing at each and every sporting event. Can you imagine Francis Scott Key at Woodstock in 1969? But his song was there, played in singular fashion by revolutionary rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix. Washington in flames inflames us still. In some way it’s part of the dust of sidewalks and guided tours and the way we see history. After the war, America changed. It stopped being the creation of the founding fathers with Virginia presidents, and became something else and more, the Republic going westward democratically, making itself large and permanent. Ahead loomed the last challenge to its local validity, the Civil War, the last war to be fought on American soil. All that was burned was rebuilt and the country and city rose out of the ashes to become itself.

Gary Tischler • August 20, 2014

“Sometimes, it’s hard to believe it all,” said Eric Schaeffer, the Artistic Director of Signature Theatre, which has begun its 25th anniversary with a characteristic production—in terms of the theatre’s history—of Stephen Sondheim’s “Sunday in the Park with George,” now running through Sept. 21.

This anniversary season will be full of what you might call Signature’s signature, its outlook, viewpoint, production history, interests, mission and style, and yes, there will be some emphasis, to paraphrase the late Robin Williams’s riff from “The Birdcage,” on “Sondheim, Sondheim, Sondheim” throughout the year.

Sondheim provided the theatre and Schaeffer with its breakout hit back at the start of the 1991-92 season, when it mounted an electric, critically acclaimed production of “Sweeney Todd,” Sondheim’s dark and exciting take on the murderous barber of Fleet Street. “It was just our second season, and that, for sure, jumped us right out into the public eye. It’s still a little startling when you think about it.” The show won a slew of Helen Hayes awards, which was a big deal for a theatre that was only in its second season, operating out of a renovated garage in an iffy neighborhood in Arlington, Virginia.

“You’ve got to remember a little of what theater in Washington was like twenty-five years ago,” Schaeffer said. “Outside of Woolly Mammoth, which was always edgy, and reveling in plays by new playwrights, it was pretty much a large-venue scene,” Schaeffer said. “In terms of musicals, certainly, and straight plays, we were doing something different, and we still are.”

Schaeffer clearly has an affinity for Sondheim, whose often dark, daring works don’t necessarily travel well into the hinterlands. “I think he’s unique in the history of American musical theater—certainly what he did was a departure from what came before. You never know what he’s going to do next. I mean, who else would write a musical about a serial killer in Victorian England, about presidential assassins, a very dark version of Grimm’s fairy tales, and the life and loves of the French Iimpressionist scene.”

The theatre was started 25 years ago by Schaeffer and Donna Magliaccio and has consistently pioneered all kinds of theater efforts. It’s stated mission was “to produce contemporary musicals and plays, reinvent classic musicals, develop new work, and reach its community through engaging educational and outreach opportunities.”

It’s fair to say that Signature has done just that, mounting plays by new authors, serving up Sondheim (and Sondheim-like) musicals, and workshopped and fully formed new musicals (“Giant,” a musical version of the George Stevens film class and Edna Ferber move comes to mind), as well as providing new playwrights, many of them local, a venue to explore their work.

There’s more. In 2007, Signature moved to new digs in Shirlington Village, a spiffy space with a main stage and two black box theaters. The relocation caused a certain amount of economic revival in the area, much as Arena and Studio, and Woolly and the Shakespeare Theatre have done in their respective neighborhoods. It attracts about 70,000 theatergoers a year.

Schaeffer been a true theatrical pioneer. He directed key productions in the hugely successful and celebrated Sondheim festival at the Kennedy Center a number of years ago. He’s been a champion of collaboration. Recently Signature’s co-production of “Hello Dolly” with Paul Tetreault’s Fords Theater shared a Helen Hayes Award for best resident musical. The rewards have been many—320 Helen Hayes Award nominations and 82 Hayes Awards.

“I think the collaboration, working with others, and with authors, encouraging new scripts, keeps everything exciting,” Schaeffer, who’s now working on a production of “Gigi” for the Kennedy Center’s theater season, said.

In December, the curtain goes up on the world premiere musical version of the hit movie, “Diner,” by pop-rock star Sheryl Crow and film director Barry Levinson. A revival of the musical “Elmer Gantry” and “Sex With Strangers,” a new play by Laura Eason directed by Aaron Posner hit the boards in October.

And in 2015, there will be “Simply Sondheim” in April. It’s an original tribute and revue created by Schaeffer featuring six Signature performers and a 16-piece orchestra celebrating the gifted American genius and in many ways, Signature’s inspirational soul. Signature has done 23 productions of Sondheim works over the years, including this second go-around with “Sunday in the Park with George.”

The George in question is impressionist painter Georges Seurat, famous for his “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” which is the focus of the musical. The musical, by Sondheim and James Lapine, won a Pulitzer Prize for drama, one of the few musicals to ever win that award.

“Sondheim’s creations were different from anyone else,” Schaeffer said. “That’s also what we’re trying to do—new and original shows, new ways of approaching old shows.”

Gary Tischler • August 18, 2014

Our city is just like any other mid-sized-creeping-up-on-major-sized city in America—we’ve got our neighborhood picnics, our street-corner musicians, our restaurants and music festivals and farmers markets, and baseball teams and theaters and charities and yard sales and dog parks, just like anybody else.

Except when we’re not just like everybody else. On a day-to-day basis, that would be the presence of the seat of the Government of the United States of America and all of its branches, what with the president, and the Supreme Court justices, and all our elected officials on the Hill and their sundry staff members and the bone-white Capitol and White House. That would be the monuments and the free museums. And that would be the embassies of every country recognized by United States, which on a day-to-day basis add a special international flavor to the city. In other words, we have a lot of people in this city who are from somewhere else and not just from Scranton or San Francisco.

Sometimes, a whole bunch of them come at once, and gather together for the kind of traffic-stopping, street-packing, siren-filled confab with flag-fluttering official black limos rarely seen anywhere else in the country. That happened last week with the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, hosted by the White House, in which political and economic leaders from nearly 50 countries from Africa came and stayed from Aug. 1 to Aug. 4 for a series of talks, meetings, discussions, group brain storming, dinners—and some more dinners—all over the city, led President Barack Obama, whose father hailed from Kenya.

In this mind-boggling gathering, tackling issues of economics, entrepreneurships, women’s rights and place in society, culture and business, climate change and global warning, the growing threat of Ebola in Western Africa, the threat of terrorism throughout the region, locals could hear the echoes of the issues on their television screens, in local coverage, on the Internet and in newspapers, or even just talking with cab drivers, a major proportion of whom, in the District, hail from Ethiopia, and Eritrea and Nigeria.

Several African leaders spoke at the National Press Club during the course of the summit. The last of them—Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaore—summed up the gathering in a Newsmaker talk in the club’s Zenger room last week.

Compaore, who has been president of the smallish country, bordering Mali and Niger in West Africa since 1987, is the founder the country’s political party, the Congress for Democracy and Progress. In 1983, a military coup, led by Captain Thomas Sankara, Compaore and others toppled Major Jean-Bapstiste Ouedraogo and created a Marxist-flavored government. In 1987, Compaore came to power in another coup, in which his friend Sankara was killed.

Over time and several elections—it is not clear yet whether Campaore will run again next year—the Burkina Faso president reversed much of the country’s Marxist policies and has tempered his role and burnished an image as conciliator and negotiator among warring factions and with the region’s radical groups.

Speaking in French, Compaore called the gathering a success and noted that Africa, as a continent of numerous diverse governing bodies, cultures and countries, needed to work together with each other. With the help and leadership of the United States, Compaore said, “Africa is rising. But no one can do this by themselves.” He noted the troubles in neighboring Mali, the threat of Ebola and the need for women to have a bigger role in each country’s economic, and governing and politics. “Everyone is entitled to an education,” he said. “We must make sure that women in our countries receive their entitled and fair share, not just young men.”

“I think we are making progress in this as a nation, and as a continent, although there are still pockets of resistance to the idea of women playing a major role in society, not just in the home, but in schools, as entrepreneurs, as leaders,” Compaore said.

In this civil press club setting or in the many stories in the press, some of the focusing on the fashion style of the first lady of Cameroon, or on the dinner gatherings in posh restaurants all over D.C., the immense difficulties—from hunger, AIDS, political unrest, terrorist groups, the control and development of resources—seemed a continent away.

What was evident in the event, hosted by the Press Club for a president of a country whose name even politically smart residents of our city might be hard pressed to recognize, there were opportunities presented and opportunities taken by visitors and locals alike to have a closer look at each other and exchanges ideas. Or just mingle and socialize at restaurants like Mintwood Place in Adams Morgan, Equinox, Acadiana or Bourbon Steak in Georgetown — or even at a reception held by the Women’s Ambassadors Foundation at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center after the talk.

Gary Tischler •

They stuffed the news in right at the end of a local news broadcast, leading into a national one, yesterday: “We’ve just learned that it appears that Robin Williams has died” or words to that effect.

It was an eye-blink moment, as if you’ve just heard something that wasn’t quite right, couldn’t be true. No details, just a Joe Friday just-the-facts.

Until the news was confirmed by online news sites and midway through the nightly news, I didn’t quite believe it. Williams was such a motor mouth, such a force of nature. How do you put the shut-up quiet on that?

Death has its ways, as it turns out. Williams had already been gone for a number of hours at that point, found dead in his home in Tiburon, in Marin County outside San Francisco, Calif., apparently a suicide by asphyxiation at the age of 63. Williams was known to suffer from depression — as sometimes the people who make you laugh the hardest do — and to have gone back into rehab. He openly battled alcohol and drug addictions throughout his life, a process which sometimes found its way into his standup comedy routines. (“Cocaine,” he quipped, “is God’s way of telling you you’re making too much money.”)

Mostly, Williams was a wizard, one of those non-stop brilliant imagineers, blessed and cursed with great talent, an ability, for instance—to play with literally an army of toy soldiers and individualize and talk with each and every one of them as a child—to create worlds that spilled out of his mouth, his mind, heart and soul with alarming rapidity, full-blown, uncensored, profanely funny. He became others fluently, with both facility and intensity, almost at will.

When Robin Williams got on a stage and grabbed a mike, he was a one-man parade. He was the trombone, the drummer, the cheerleader, the politician waving to the crowd, the clown in full, sloppy makeup, the baton twirler, the confetti and the Shriners doing wheelies — and, boy, did we love his parade.

He really was a gift and gifted. It’s easy to think of him in any number of ways, in so many parts. He was a comic, to be sure, a clown, for sure, but he was always a hard-working, convincing actor who explored as many arenas of human experience as he could, on stage, but on the screen as well. He was a bona fide movie star, and on the small screen, where he first and forcefully invaded our consciousness as the Mork of “Mork and Mindy,” a goofy alien send to study earthlings, he nano-nanoed his way into our living rooms along with the bewildered, sweet Pam Dawber.

His inspiration was Jonathan Winters, the man of many parts, who slid easily and with remarkable aplomb in and out of characters who sprang fully blown, with beady eyes, onto a stage or in front of a camera. He was Winters on steroids, in a way, but mostly he was Williams, hairy, curly haired, sometimes bug eyed, profane as all get out, pacing like someone who’s just escaped a straight jacket.

President Obama, in a White House statement, captured him movingly, referencing his movie roles: “Robin Williams was an airman, a doctor, a genie, nanny, a president, a professor, a bangarang Peter Pan, and everything in between. He was one of a kind. He arrived in our lives as an alien, but he ended up touching every element of the human spirit. He made us laugh. He made us cry.”

Williams first arrived on the movie screen as “Popeye,” a big-screen version of the sailor-man hero of the daily comics, directed by none other than Robert Altman. I will admit to liking it and him a lot—although I was in a critical and popular minority on that one. It was a comic truly envisioned as otherworldly and totally believable, bulging muscles, tattoo and love for Olive Oyl (aggressively played by Shelley Duvall), it was all colors and magic.

But he found his stride as both a comic actor (the memorable, manic “Good Morning Viet Nam” and “Moscow on the Hudson” and the dazzling “Mrs. Doubtfire”) as an actor-actor (“Good Will Hunting,” for which he won an Oscar, the understated (yes, a quiet Robin) and inspiring teacher in “Dead Poet’s Society” and a turn in “The Fisher King.”

Critics preferred Williams’s darker roles as opposed to “Dead Poets,” which they saw as sentimental, a quality they react to in much the same way as the Wicked Witch of the West reacts to Toto. He was praised for creepy and even bad guy roles in “One Hour Photo,” which hardly anyone saw, and “Insomnia,” in which he was paired with Al Pacino and Hilary Swank in a brisk but atmospheric cop and killer noir thriller set in Alaska.

Williams and Steve Miller, comedians both, found the humor under the direction of Mike Nichols in a brief-run Broadway production of Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” in which Vladimir and Estragon at one point yelled at each other, taking turns abusing each other verbally: “Critic,” Williams hurled at Martin, a game-ender, that one.

His imagination, even in not-so-hot-movies, and the recent attempt at a television return, called resonantly “The Crazy Ones” (cancelled), was always running wild.

I had seen him in person once, when he was one of the saluters and razzers for the Kennedy Center’s first Mark Twain Prize for American Humor which honored Richard Pryor. Williams—and a host of his peers—four-lettered in characteristic fashion, giving an impression of how a possibly Irish, shocked Kennedy Center usher might have reacted. “Oh my god, they used that word again, and the other ones, too.” It remains a mystery how Williams managed to avoid receiving the Twain award over the years. George Carlin, one of his idols, won it posthumously.

Still, that news flash about Williams’s death was hard to take, hard to shake, and the days news only made things more final. How do you slow down that dust devil of a performing energy? Truth: You don’t.

I sat in front of my computer and watched his ironically and sadly entitled “Weapons of Self Destruction” standup show. As he downed about 40 plastic bottles of water and paced across the stage like a mountain climber, I watched him go from forest fires to coyotes, to Osama Bin Laden, to Obama, to Schwarzenegger, sprinkling profanity like four-letter, scented and exploding prunes throughout.

I watched, and I listened and I laughed until it made my sides ache. In tribute, I would say this, because it was his gift: I laughed my ass off.

Nothing today is totally final. Something is always left behind, like his trail of funny stuff, a funny man past pacing himself. Wherever he goes, he will land on his feet, motoring.