Arts & Society

Robert Devaney • May 9, 2014

Hundreds visited the home of Jeff and Elizabeth Powell on Dumbarton Street April 23 for the Patrons’ Party for the 83rd Georgetown House Tour, which will be held Saturday, April 26. The popular annual event brings neighbors, businesspeople, designers, church supporters and local media. The party was continued later at the George Town Club, which is on the tour. [gallery ids="101717,143012,143019,143017,142996,143000,143004,143009" nav="thumbs"]

Robert Devaney •

The Foundation Fighting Blindness, a nonprofit driving sight-saving research, honored Ryuji Ueno, M.D., co-founder of Sucampo Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and Timothy Olsen, M.D., of Emory University, with the organization’s Visionary Award, in recognition of their longstanding commitment to helping patients with eye diseases. More than 225 guests attended the 12th Annual D.C. “For the Love of Sight” Visionary Awards Dinner April 1, at the downtown Ritz-Carlton, raising $320,000 to benefit research. [gallery ids="116798,116805,116813,116789,116818,116823,116829" nav="thumbs"]

Ari Post •

It is mesmerizing to walk into a room occupied by raw, pure and simple color. In the same way that the smell of the ocean pulls us in and triggers a deep connection to our natural surroundings, there is a sensation in seeing plain color, unrefined and unadulterated by subject matter or concepts, that brings us closer to the very state of our senses. It is almost involuntary the way it attracts us—color is fundamental to the way we experience the world and so we cannot help but react to it. Over centuries, artists have fought with it, innovating new modes of thinking and creation in pursuit of its depiction. Particularly over the past century, from the groundbreaking early 20th century works of Russian artist Kazimir Malevich, to the color fields of Mark Rothko and the austere minimalism of Ellsworth Kelly, painters have developed brilliant and intoxicating approaches to communicating in the language color.

With Gravity’s Edge, on view through June 15, The Hirshhorn shines light on a time between 1959 and 1978 that signaled a shift in the way leading contemporary artists began approaching and perceiving color and abstraction. While throughout the 1950s the Abstract Expressionists focused on projecting personal ideologies and exploring their inner psychology through color and shape (greatly inspired by the writings of psychologist Carl Jung), this new generation of abstract painters moved away from these notions, giving prominence to and inspiring renewed emphasis on materials and technical processes. Led by artists Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, these artists began exploring the space of a painting in new ways, using both the force of gravity and the edge of the canvas as means of challenging the spatial and perceptual limits of their work.

They experimented with the way the paint bled down their untreated linen canvases, tilting it at different angles and letting the paint run out to the edge. They focused more intently on the edge in general, often painting around the canvas in the corners and along the perimeters, leaving the center empty and unpainted, which created illusions of both strict containment and endless expansion.

These effects, however, are very subtle, and the paintings generally feel quite simple. This is not to generalize or shrug off the more difficult, esoteric responsibilities of criticism, or to lazily thumb a nose at the frequent weariness and skepticism with which many viewers meet certain paintings such as these. This is just to say that despite and also in consideration of these perhaps lofty ideas, I believe that these paintings are meant to be approached simply and from the heart.

Along the walls of this exhibit, color and form are given the chance to radiate. The curved, diagonal lines in the paintings of Morris Louis, brightly hued and loose-edged, are soothing and playful. Helen Frankenthaler’s coarse layering of colors in messy blocks are wonderfully childlike in the way they search and explore such simple shapes and colors with thorough but spontaneous vitality. The graceful, organic outbursts of Paul Jenkins’ color washes are like flowers blooming with the explosive energy and immediacy of a firework.

A relative eschewing from so many exhibits on display in Washington right now, which are suffused with ambitious subjects and historical content (which is far from a denouncement but nevertheless quite prevalent), this is a show of art for the sake of art. It is for those of us who want to sit in front of a painting and let it wash over us. Frankly, it is a wonderful departure from the oversaturation of media and information that pervades our computers and trickles inevitably into our thoughts. Gravity’s Edge is a chance to lift that burden for a brief while, ignore the typical gnawing of time constraints and justification, and revel in something indefinably satisfying.

These paintings are beautiful and inspiring. Just enjoy them—there is much to love.

Gary Tischler •

Americans have dreamt and pursued the goal of driving across the USA in your Chevrolet or Audi, but here in Washington, D.C., they can go around the world in May.

That’s when Cultural Tourism DC presents its seventh annual Passport DC event, when the city’s unique array of international embassies open their doors to the public not only for visits but with a wide range of special events.

Passport DC has become a uniquely Washington event, because of the city’s embassies and because of a growing turnout every year, abetted by the city’s changing and growing population.

Passport DC starts off big-time with the Around the World Embassy Tour, May 3, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., in which 50 embassies from six continents invite residents and visitors alike to visit their countries by way of giving you a taste of various cultures, from food, to art, dance and music, Tango lessons, henna applications, Ceylon tea tasting, Dominican rum tastings, and even Thai massage.

On May 10, it’s Shortcut to Europe: European Union Embassies Open House. In fact, Passport DC came out of a European Union open house event which attracted thousands. Twenty eight embassies as well as the European Union Delegation to the United States are inviting visitors in to taste, see and hear the cultures of their countries.

On May 15, it’s the Embassy Chef Challenge, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center. This is also Cultural Tourism’s annual fundraiser. In this annual competition, world-class embassy chefs—of which there are quite a few—present special small plates of their countries culinary specialties. A panel of celebrity chefs and food critics select the winner of the Judge’s Choice Award, while guests can cast a ballot for the people’s choice winner. There’s also a live and silent auction.

On May 17, it’s the National Asian Heritage Festival, featuring the Fiesta Asia Street Fair, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., a fair that features more than 1,000 performers on five stages, representing some 20 cultures. There’s pan-Asian cuisine, a shopping bazaar, kid-friendly, interactive activities, a parade, Bollywood street dancing and crafts, all on Pennsylvania Avenue between 3rd and 6th Streets.

Here’s some links to all the activities:

CulturalTourismDC.org

www.facebook.com/CulturalTourismDC

www.twitter.com/dcculture

Hashtag: #PassportDC

Gary Tischler •

“Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezín” is never just a concert, a performance, a presentation of a masterpiece. The multimedia concert-drama, which has been presented many times, most recently at the Music Center at Strathmore on May 1, has always been something more, larger and larger still.

But it is also something as troubling and always evocable and intimate as the remembrance of the heart and mind of a people straining with music to be free in the midst of constant death.

The concert, as well as a documentary film of the same name, has been performed all over the world, and will continue to be performed. It is at heart the resurrection of what was an obscure but heart-rending and powerful story from the annals of the Holocaust, which hardly lacks for unique and powerful stories.

For Murry Sidlin, the founder and creator of “Defiant Requiem,” the Baltimore-born conductor and music educator at Catholic University in Washington, the story, the music, the concert has become a life’s mission. This mission has resulted in the creation of the D.C.-based Defiant Requiem Foundation and the telling and retelling and resurrection of a story of great courage and the indomitable spirit of one man.

For Sildin, it began on a sunny day in the late 1990s, when he was a faculty member of the University of Minnesota’s school of music. He ran across a used bookstore, the kind that you always saw in cities and universities in America. “There was a bin, a cart outside,” he said. “I stuck my hand in and pulled out a book, an old book.”

The book was “Music in Terezín”, by Joza Karas, a Czech writer and composer who had collected the music of Jews imprisoned at Terezín, a Nazi camp in Czechoslavakia, where thousands were killed and from which thousands more were sent to Auschwitz.

“I had picked the book out of sheer luck,” Sidlin said. “I opened it up and there was a chapter on a man called Rafael Schächter.”

“He was a composer, he was an opera coach,” Sidlin said. A Czech Jew, he had been rounded up and sent to Terezín carrying a lone, shopworn copy of the music of Verdi’s Requiem inside his coat.

Terezín in popular accounts is known as the camp which the Nazis tried to pass off as a model camp, to show Red Cross members and other inspectors that Jews were being treated well.

“That’s not exactly right,” Sidlin said. “They did that once, when the Red Cross came and it was then that Schächter, with 200 members of the camp, put on a recital of the Requiem in front of the Red Cross and the Nazis.”

“For those in the chorus – they were accompanied by a three-legged piano – it was an act of defiance, an act of courage. Schächter had them rehearse after every day of hard labor and impossible conditions in the basements of the camp,” Sidlin said.

“But the camp already had a lively culture – here were writers, singers, artists, professors, directors, composers, musicians from all over Europe, and there were lectures, cabaret music and singing, plays, operas, put on after the day was done. And Schächter was at the heart of it. He held 14 performances with 150 singers at the camp for the other prisoners.”

“The book and the story moved me in ways that I can’t begin to describe,” he said. “I wanted that story to be told and sung, and to be remembered. That’s what I’m doing, that’s what everybody that’s involved is doing.”

The result, in the end, was a foundation, the Defiant Requiem Foundation, with Sidlin as its president and Stuart E. Eizenstat as its current chairman. In turn, the foundation sponsors the Rafael Schächter Institute for Arts & Humanities. Next month, for the first time, the Institute will be held in the U.S., at American University’s Katzen Arts Center.
At Strathmore, 50 survivors of the Holocaust attended, including Edgar Krasa and Marianka May, who were members of Schächter’s Terezín chorus. Soloists including Arianna Zukerman (the daughter of Pinchas Zukerman), mezzo-soprano Ann McMahon Quintero, tenor Issachah Savage and bass Nathan Stark. D.C.-area theater star Rick Foucheux appeared as Schächter, with Rheda Becker, who often performs speaking roles with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, as the Lecturer.

Interspersed there were clips from the “Defiant Requiem” film, as well as clips from a Nazi propaganda film.

Schächter himself was sent to Auschwitz, where he survived until the remaining prisoners were sent on a death march, in which he perished.
The Strathmore concert was performed in memory of Fran Eizenstat and Amy Antonelli.

There will be a screening of the “Defiant Requiem” documentary as part of the Schächter Institute, June 8 to 12 at the Katzen Arts Center, with a book signing by Richard Breitman for his book “FDR and the Jews,” Phillip and Noreen Silver performing works by Terezín composers on piano and cello, a one-woman show “The Tin Ring” and a panel discussion led by Eizenstat on “Anti-Semitism in Europe Today.”

Gary Tischler • May 5, 2014

Randy Johnson, the director-playwright and three-ring-circus master of theater, knows his way around icons—iconic performers, singers and musicians, iconic music, iconic people, iconic times and events.

With Johnson, who directed and wrote “A Night With Janis Joplin,” which received no less than two successful runs at Arena Stage plus a Broadway run, everything is always different. If there is a trademark for Johnson productions, it’s that they’re going to be nothing that you might expect.

He’s back at Arena, directing “Smokey Joe’s Café, the Songs of Leiber and Stoller,” a 40 hit-song paean to the music of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who, Johnson says, “all but invented rock and roll.”

“This is a little different for me,” said Johnson, who is not to be confused with Randy Johnson, the famed and tall major league baseball pitcher. “This will be one of the few times that I haven’t also written what I’m directing.”

Johnson staged a flamboyant, nostalgically and emotionally exhausting “Janis” by turning the show about the late 1960s and 1970s rock and blues singer who succumbed to a heroin overdose into a partial rock-ous concert, which also included contributions from female black blues and rhythm-and-blues legends like Bessie Smith and Aretha Franklin, the sources of inspiration for Joplin.

“Smokey Joe’s Café” originally opened on Broadway in 1995 and proved to be a hit. “This will be different,” Johnson promised. “For one thing, we’re doing this in the Fichandler, which means theater in the round, which means you have to be acutely aware of the audience in so many different ways.

“For another, I’ve had the good fortune to be friends with Mike Stoller (Leiber died in 2011), which has given me some unique insights into the songs and music they created together,” he added.

Leiber and Stoller were a regular hit factory for any number of early rock and roll legends, including Elvis Presley, the Coasters, Ben E. King and the Drifters.

“You could make a very good argument that Leiber and Stoller created rock-and-roll,” Johnson said. “Certainly, rock-and-roll would not be the same without them.”

The 40 songs in the songs in the show—performed by a cast that included Levi Kreis (Jerry Lee Lewis in Broadway’s “Million Dollar Quartet”), the incomparable E. Faye Butler and Nova Y. Payton and Jay Adriel, Austin Colby, Ashley Blair Fitzgerald, Michael J. Mainwaring, Stephawn P. Stephens and Kara-Tameika Watkins—are rock-and-roll and rhythm-and-blues classics.

“I don’t think there is such a thing as one American songbook,” Johnson said. “Yes, of course, we have Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Gershwin, Lerner and Loewe and Stephen Sondheim from Broadway. It’s generational for certain singers. But the works of Leiber and Stoller constitute a songbook of a different sort, the songbook of rock and roll for another generation.”

Those songs—Carole King and Burt Bachrach would provide later pop samples—are memorable because they had lyrics that stuck in your head just about forever, and, as Dick Clark might have said, “You could dance to them.”

It’s hard to think of Elvis, for instance, without “Jailhouse Rock” or “Hound Dog.”

“It’s great to be back in Washington and to be working with Molly [Arena Artistic Director Molly Smith] again,” Johnson said. “She has done spectacular work here.”

It’s a mutual admiration society. “Randy Johnson is a true theater artist,” Smith said of Johnson. “What sets him apart from others is that he is that rare breed of visionary director writer truly in a league all his own. I have rarely met anyone like him—he has the ability to move between theater, the broad culture, the concert world and everything in between…”

Johnson certainly doesn’t lack for ambition or vision, or social conscience. In the strictest sense of the word, he isn’t a theater director—that might be too much of a constricted space for him, although he’s certainly done well there.

Much of his work is flavored and driven by music—all kinds of music. Think of “Elvis, the Concert,” Michael Bolton’s World Tour with “Bolton Swings Sinatra,” in England “Songs My Mother Taught Me,” a tribute to Judy Garland or shows about Patsy Cline, (“Always Patsy Cline,” which re-opened at the original home of the Grand Ole Opry.) and Conway Twitty.

Johnson directed and co-wrote the world premiere of “Mike Tyson, the Undisputed Truth,” starring Tyson himself at the MGM Grand, and staged and directed Pope Benedict’s appearance in New York—giving us two men not usually mentioned in the same sentence. He also wrote and directed “The Wildest—The Music of Louis Prima and Keely Smith,” Smith being one of the most under-rated American pop singers ever. “Isn’t she though?” Johnson asked. “She’s also my godmother and just a truly remarkable singer. Period.”

“The people, the projects, the music I’m interested in are all a part of my life, a background to it and people of my generation,” he said. “This is what we grew up with, and these songs by Leiber and Stoller, are the songs we grew up with.”

Gary Tischler • May 2, 2014

Here’s a hot tip: “The Magic Flute” is coming.

Mozart’s last opera was a big hit at its 1791 premiere at the Freihaus-Theater auf der Wieden in Vienna, where it ran for an unheard-of 100 performances, though Mozart himself did not live to see that milestone.

It’s been a hugely popular opera ever since, with the whole-family appeal of its stirring fairy-tale story: a brave prince named Tamino, with the help of the Queen of the Night, attempts to rescue her daughter, Pamina, from the evil sorcerer Sarastro. Magic stuff indeed. It’s cliff-hanging adventure, fantasy, comedy and romance tonight, with the musical gifts of Mozart on display in full force.

So the news that Washington National Opera will be staging “The Magic Flute” would perhaps not be big news ordinarily. But the WNO production of “The Magic Flute,” which runs May 3-18, is no ordinary project or production.

Perhaps most importantly, this production of “The Magic Flute” will be sung in English, in line with Artistic Director Francesca Zambello’s initiative to broaden the WNO’s audience base. It’s a boon for fresh audiences and a challenge for singers, and it adds a new dimension to the opera, usually sung in German.

That especially concerns bass Soloman Howard, the Washington-born-and-raised bass who sings the part of Sarastro.

“It’s a part I’ve always wanted to do,” he said. “Singing in English is a challenge, and it’s the kind I like to face, but having the opera done in English, well, it’s a step that should bring in people who don’t normally go to the opera, or find it too intimidating. It makes things accessible, and this opera as a story, and a look and design, is already something everyone can embrace. Kelley Rourke, our dramaturg, did this new version in English, and she works with all of us singers. You have to find how to stretch or not different vowels, how low or high you can go with a word, a feeling in English, as opposed to German.”

Soloman is in his third and last year in the WNO’s Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program. In June, he will appear in the world premiere of “An American Soldier,” composed by Huang Ruo with a libretto by playwright David Henry Hwang, the season-ending American Opera Initiative production.

The biggest news is that he has signed a contract with the Metropolitan Opera Company to sing the part of The King in their fall production of “Aida.”

“I’ve been very fortunate, and it’s a great honor to get something like that,” he said. “But I’ve grown here, being able to perform here, getting out into the community, working with children in the area where I grew up. I’m going to miss it – the company, the director, all the people you work with. It’s like a family.”

Soloman, who has a phenomenal lower range that appears to come straight out of the ocean floor, has made big impressions and big strides here. He got to sing “Old Man River” in Zambello’s production of “Showboat,” he was a stirring and moving Muhammad Ali in the powerful “Approaching Ali” produced for the WNO’s new commissioning program for contemporary opera and he was a roaring lion in the wonderful WNO children’s production, “The Lion, the Unicorn and Me.”

“To me, seeing kids and going to the schools here is a way to make a difference. They see me, and they maybe recognize there’s all sorts of avenues out there,” he said. When we talked with him about Ali, he recalled his own growing up going to high school in Suitland, Md. “People wondered about why I was doing classical music. They’d say, Why aren’t you doing pop, or gospel or blues? Well, I can do that, I suppose. But the challenge is what’s important.”

Solomon is joined in the youthful “Magic Flute” cast by newcomers to the WNO Maureen McKay and Eri Nakamura as Pamina, Kathryn Lewek and Anna Siminska as the Queen of the Night, Joseph Kaiser and Paul Appleby as Tamino, Joshua Hopkins and David Pershall as Papageno, Jordan Bisch as Sarastro, John Easterlin as Monostatos and Ashley Emerson as Papagena.

WNO Music Director Philippe Auguin will direct the WNO orchestra and Harry Silverstein, who directed a popular “Marriage of Figaro” here, is directing the production.

Of particular interest are the costumes and sets designed by the brilliant Japanese-American set and costume designer Jun Kaneko, who has created a unique, high-tech look and environment that includes the use of projections. There will also be a special exhibition of his artwork in the Hall of Nations through May 19.

Opening night of “The Magic Flute” on May 3 will be part of the WNO’s popular and popularizing “Opera in the Outfield” program, in which the opera is broadcast live to the high-definition NatsHD scoreboard at Nationals Park beginning at 7 p.m. Admission is free and the gates open at 5 p.m.

As part of the ballpark program, there will be pre-game entertainment in the form of Taiko drumming, a meet-and-greet with Ms. Brown (“Chief Chocolate Officer” of M&Ms), photo ops with the living statue of Babe Ruth, cutouts of characters from “The Magic Flute” and a costume trunk.

On May 5, there will be a free preview performance of musical highlights from “The Magic Flute” at the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage, performed by members of the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program and other artists from the production.

In addition, there will be pre-performance education events called Opera Insights prior to every performance in the Opera House.

Performances for “The Magic Flute” are May 3 and 5 at 6 p.m., May 7 at 6:30 p.m., May 8 at 6:15 p.m., May 10 at 6 p.m., May 11 at 1 p.m., May 15 at 6:30 p.m, May 16 at 6:30 p.m., May 17 at 6 p.m. and May 18 at 1 p.m.

Gary Tischler •

No matter how much you change things, core things remain the same.

That was the case with the 30th annual presentation of the Helen Hayes Awards, held last Monday. The changes were big-time, sometimes startling, even confusing. But in the end, it was still the same old story – not a fight for love and glory but a celebration of the Washington-area theater community.

It’s a community that sometimes seems to be bursting at the seams, reflecting the almost boomtown growth of the city. But it’s also a community that seems to be coming more and more together in collaborative and identifiable ways. Here’s a change: the folks at Theatre Washington decided to hold the awards ceremonies at the National Building Museum. It’s a great space for what used to be called the biggest cast party ever, but not so much a theater space.

The proceedings – more often than not held at the Warner Theatre or the National Theatre, followed by a trip to a hotel ballroom for the big shindig – were altered in a way that proved in the long run to be more efficient. The whole thing was over by 10 p.m. (although the partying went on).

The set-up was three sessions of award-giving, with two very strict 20-minute intermissions. It began with food and drink, lots of both, and continued that way through the intermission. The effect was sometimes as if you were at a show on a cruise ship, which resulted in a lot of jostling, intermittent dancing and non-stop schmoozing.

And the business at hand, the handing out of awards got done almost – but not quite – at a fast and furious pace, with merry singers shuffling recipients off the stage if they got too long-winded. During the intermissions, an ominous gong that sounded almost like a cannon called folks back from partying.

As for the awards themselves, there were a few real surprises and a shock or two in the mix, but they seemed mostly about spreading the wealth, as opposed to honoring juggernauts.

What you saw was a parade of talented, gifted, high-spirited, often funny actors, performers, directors, leaders, costume and sound and set designers get their just rewards in the spirit of being honored by their peers and being part of a greater whole.

Having been to most of these affairs over the years – 30 years is a long time – this is the heart and soul of the awards. It’s what sets the Helen Hayes Awards apart from the Tonys or the Oscars, for instance. A play, after all, is always a collaborative effort, and so is a happening and celebration like this.

Victor Shargai, the longtime chairman of the Helen Hayes Awards and Theatre Washington, received the Helen Hayes Tribute for nurturing and helping to build and expand the group into one of the city’s major cultural forces. It is hoped that Shargai’s award is at least as much for his singular and original spirit and character, which was always on display, as for his achievements.

The Aaron Posner-penned play “Stupid Fing Bird,” a modernist take on Chekhov’s “The Seagull,” received numerous nominations, allowing every host on the stage to gleefully drop the F-bomb on a gathered multitude of close to a couple thousand people. E. Faye Butler, the not-ever-demure performer who really should be a Washington treasure even though she lives elsewhere, gave the title a full-throated bluesy note when she tackled it.

And the winner for best resident play?

You guessed it. “Stupid Fing Bird.”

Probably a bit surprising were the wins for ensemble cast and best resident musical by “Hello Dolly!” This joint production by Ford’s Theatre and Signature Theatre, staged at Ford’s, signals the rise of such projects. We saw it before in Arena Stage’s cooperative efforts with other companies in its O’Neill Festival and the citywide Shakespeare Festival a number of years ago. Kudos to Paul Tetreault at Ford’s and Eric Schaefer at Signature.

We saw familiar faces march up there or mingle: Ted van Griethuysen for a supporting actor award for Studio’s “The Apple Family” and Rick Foucheux, best actor for Round House Theatre’s “Glengarry Glen Ross.”

And we saw new faces in the crowd and on stage. The affair is always listed as black-tie, but from the beginning this has been an affair for young theater people, people who dress in bright colors, do outrageous dos, wear bowties that sparkle and shoes that have polka dots, and just generally dazzle with their high spirits. And they dance, they yell, they scream.

This year, they had a longer time and a bigger playpen. Break a leg indeed.

THE RECIPIENTS OF
THE 30th ANNUAL
HELEN HAYES AWARDS

OUTSTANDING DIRECTOR,
RESIDENT MUSICAL
Alan Paul, “A Funny Thing Happened on
the Way to the Forum,” Shakespeare
Theatre Company

OUTSTANDING DIRECTOR,
RESIDENT PLAY
Mitchell Hebert, “Glengarry Glen Ross,” Round House Theatre

OUSTANDING CHOREOGRAPHY,
RESIDENT MUSICAL
Karma Camp, “Hello Dolly!,” Ford’s
Theatre and Signature Theatre

OUTSTANDING MOVEMENT,
RESIDENT PLAY
Irina Tsikurishvili and Ben Cunis,
“The Three Musketeers,” Synetic Theater

OUTSTANDING MUSIC DIRECTION, RESIDENT PRODUCTION
Jon Kalbfleisch, “Gypsy,” Signature Theatre

OUTSTANDING SET DESIGN,
RESIDENT PRODUCTION
Clint Ramos, “Appropriate,” Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

OUTSTANDING LIGHTING DESIGN, RESIDENT PRODUCTION
Andrew F. Griffin, “Henry V,” Folger Theatre

OUTSTANDING COSTUME DESIGN, RESIDENT PRODUCTION
Merrily Murray-Walsh, “Mary T & Lizzy K,” Arena Stage

OUTSTANDING SOUND DESIGN,
RESIDENT PRODUCTION
Eric Shimelonis, “Never The Sinner,” 1st Stage

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING
PERFORMER, VISITING PRODUCTION
Samantha Marie Ware, “The Book of Mormon,” The Kennedy Center

OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTRESS,
VISITING PRODUCTION
Rachel York, “Anything Goes,” The Kennedy Center

OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTOR,
VISITING PRODUCTION
Christopher John O’Neill, “The Book of
Mormon,” The Kennedy Center

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTRESS, RESIDENT MUSICAL
Erin Weaver, “Company,” Signature Theatre

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTOR, RESIDENT MUSICAL
Bobby Smith, “Spin,” Signature Theatre

OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTRESS
RESIDENT MUSICAL
Diana Huey, “Miss Saigon,” Signature Theatre;

Jessica Vancaro, “A Chorus Line,” Olney Theatre Center

OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTOR
RESIDENT MUSICAL
James Gardiner, “The Last Five Years,”
Signature Theatre

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTRESS RESIDENT PLAY
Dawn Ursula, “The Convert,” Woolly
Mammoth Theatre Company

THE JAMES MACARTHUR AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTOR, RESIDENT PLAY
Ted van Griethuysen, “The Apple Family Plays,” The Studio Theatre

THE ROBERT PROSKY AWARD FOR
OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTOR,
RESIDENT PLAY
Rick Foucheux, “Glengarry Glen Ross,” Round House Theatre

OUTSTANDING ENSEMBLE, RESIDENT MUSICAL
“Hello, Dolly!,” Ford’s Theatre and
Signature Theatre

OUTSTANDING ENSEMBLE,
RESIDENT PLAY’
“Glengarry Glen Ross,” Round House Theatre

THE CHARLES MACARTHUR
AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING NEW
PLAY OR MUSICAL
“Stupid Fing Bird” by Aaron Posner, Woolly Mammoth Theatre

OUTSTANDING VISITING PRODUCTION
“The Book of Mormon,” The Kennedy Center

OUTSTANDING PRODUCTION,
THEATER FOR YOUNG AUDIENCES
“Anime Momotaro,” Imagination Stage

OUTSTANDING RESIDENT MUSICAL
“Hello Dolly!,” Ford’s Theatre and Signature Theatre; “A Chorus Line,” Olney Theatre Centre

OUTSTANDING RESIDENT PLAY
“Stupid Fing Bird,” Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

Mary Bird • April 25, 2014

In his remarks to the Washington Ballet’s presentation of “Peter Pan” at the Kennedy Center, Septime Webre, who choreographed the ballet in 2001, said he was “happy to see it take flight again.” The audience was enchanted at the April 17 performance as Peter danced by Jonathan Jordan and Wendy danced by Maki Onuki took to the air and foiled the treacherous Captain Hook embodied by a dashing Luis Torres. The Darlings’ beloved pet Nana and the crocodile were scene stealers. A number of dancers and ballet supporters enjoyed an after party on the POV Rooftop Terrace at the W Hotel. [gallery ids="116729,116741,116736" nav="thumbs"]

Georgetowner •

The Preview Night of this year’s Smithsonian Craft Show took place at the National Building Museum on Apr. 9. The several-day show is widely regarded as the country’s most prestigious juried show and sale of American sculptural object and design featuring over 120 artists. This year’s highlight was the presentation of the first Visionary Award to metal sculptor Albert Paley and furniture artist Wendell Castle as artists who have risen to the pinnacle in the world of sculptural arts and design.