Arts & Society

Gary Tischler • July 26, 2011

“April hath put a spirit of youth in everything.”

William Shakespeare said that. Well, he wrote it. Maybe.

I think he did, no maybe about it. Otherwise why were we celebrating William Shakespeare’s 447th birthday instead of, say, Oxford’s?

He put “To be or not to be. That is the question” into Hamlet’s mouth, and he spoke them and took three hours answering the question before expiring from a poisoned sword tip. Every young girl from his time forward imagines herself as Juliet, helping Romeo up the balcony, because Romeo described her thusly: “But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.”

He wrote:

“April hath put a spirit of youth in everything.”

And he was right.

The evidence was on display at the Folger Library’s annual Free Family Party in celebration of William Shakespeare’s Birthday on Capitol Hill. Spring was there. The spirit of youth was in everything. And there were children, lots of them, who I am sure knew his poems.

To many Washingtonians—those who loved the Bard and bards, peonies and poems, madrigals and sword fights, and faint and fair maidens—this great celebration is the first official sign and stamp of spring.

No question, it was spring on Capitol Hill after all that harrumphing about closing down the government and the tea party that has neither tea nor does it party. At this gathering, a rhyme trumps a riot. and children and dogs are princes, princesses and canine royalty.

Hundreds turned out and did things they rarely do every other Sunday. Little boys picked up wooden swords and watched a demonstration of sword-and-broad-sword and other weapons fighting, with two or three members of the gentler sex bashing each other with fury that hell hath not, under the supervision of Brad Weller, who trains and designs medieval combat scenes from Shakespeare’s more warlike plays.

Children –and gleeful adults—stood in a small room and yelled Shakespearean insults at each other.

There was maypole dancing and actors on the Elizabethan stage doing excerpts from “Richard III,” doing their best to explain that he wasn’t such a bad guy. Rosalind appeared on stage from “As You Like It,” the most formidable female character ever put on stage. There was courtly dancing to be sure and much lording it over and bowing and beautiful feathered hats from folks who appear at Renaissance Fairs and look splendidly fair and handsome.

In the Elizabethan garden, open for the first time, you saw a sight to prove Shakespeare right: nearly a baker’s dozen of five or six year old girls, ensconced as if bewitched, watching and listening to the Larksong Renaissance Singers singer Renaissance music, medieval music, madrigals, in Italian, German, French and English, blessed by the presence of mothers and children as much as the music itself.

Everywhere, everyone wore bright garlands and danced. This is the occasion when the Folger airs out its venerable reading room with its century-old books and the scent and dandruff of scholars and the lights and youths come sparkling in to pose with Shakespeare.

I met a dog—a Maltese, miniature poodle mix—named Rosa Luxembourg, the 1920s revolutionary in Germany. Someone played, with dancing delight, an accordion.

Queen Elizabeth (the first) showed up to wave, her hair blazing. They handed out cakes, but not cupcakes, those not having been invented in Georgetown yet.

Spring reigned on Capitol Hill, where in a courtyard at a used bookstore down the street, a woman sang boogie-woogie music, a guy played rickety piano, someone strummed a guitar, and purple blossoms embraced a branch like benign boas.

“Now, every field is clothed with grass, and every tree with leaves; now the woods put forth their blossoms, and the year assumes its gay attire.”

Say happy 447 thbirthday, Master Shakespeare. It was a day in April when “the spirit of youth was in everything.”

John Blee •

At the National Gallery of Art, early American Modernism from the Shein collection is featured on the first floor of the East Wing. The National Gallery does not have a strong showing of works from this critical period in American art, and the Shein collection will help fill in the gap. There are some very strong pieces here by major players, including Marsden Hartley, Georgia O’Keeffe, John Marin and Stuart Davis. But it is the lesser-known artists that can sometimes surprise.

One such surprise is Patrick Henry Bruce’s “Painting (Still Life)” that rivals a similar piece by Davis. In many ways I prefer the Bruce, which has a quiet energized classicism. Bruce’s “Painting” was completed in 1919, in the heat of the fray. Davis’ “Unfinished Business” was finished in 1962, toward the end of Davis’ career. Bruce was a much more important painter than Davis in 1919. He was a friend of Sonia and Robert Delaunay and possibly influenced the stark reductivism Matisse adopted in the ’30s for his large “Dance” murals. Unfortunately, Bruce, a descendant of Patrick Henry, killed himself in 1936. Though Davis achieved more and left a greater mark on American abstraction, Bruce deserves to be remembered.

I recall James Rosenquist remembering his teacher Edwin Dickinson, who said that the light was all off in New York studios, since north in New York City was not true north. If there is a northern light, it exists in Dickinson’s work, including “South Wellfleet Inn,” circa 1950-60. It is off every beaten track as a painting, coming close to a kind of obscurist realism. It is playful and morbid, like most of the work of Dickinson’s I have seen.

One cannot escape the fact that O’Keeffe’s “Dark Iris No. 2” and Hartley’s “Pre-War Pageant” eclipse most of the rest of the show, with the exception of Marin’s “Written Sea.” The Marin is one of the most restrained I have ever seen. It is more of a drawing than a painting, but masterful. The O’Keeffe and the Hartley are both at the center of their respective identities. O’Keeffe’s “Iris” is resplendently sensual. With Hartley, I quote Georgia O’Keeffe on his shows at Steichen’s gallery and say it’s “like a brass band in a small closet.”

Going into the tower where Matisse’s cutouts used to hang is now as Zen a place as I have been in D.C. It’s the home of several of Mark Rothko’s darkest work in as perfect an installation as possible. Somehow the off-rectangle of the tower with its high ceiling could not be a better setting.

The intermittent playing of Morton Feldman’s “Rothko Chapel” makes it complete. Feldman has written of his music that, “I envisioned an immobile procession not unlike the friezes on Greek temples.” A friend of mine recalled what Rothko said, on visiting a temple in Greece, “I’ve always been painting them, now I am in one.”

Darkness is not a metaphysical state much in favor these days. The medical industry is making huge amounts of money as a result. But facing darkness — and rendering it — is tough. Shostakovich did especially in his 14th and 15th quartets, as did Beethoven in his late quartets. In painting it is rarer. I recall Turner’s “Peace – Burial at Sea,” who, when he was questioned on the black sails he had painted, replied “I only wish I had any color to make them blacker.”

Reflecting on Rothko’s pictures, they do seem to me to bear some relation to Ad Reinhardt’s black paintings — though unlike Rothko, Reinhardt was ironic in his black pictures. Rothko is closer akin Gerard Manley Hopkins’ in his poem “Carrion Comfort”: “Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.”

“American Modernism” runs through January 2, 2011. [gallery ids="99176,103189,103193" nav="thumbs"]

Ari Post •

In the jumbled lexicon of late 20th century fine arts, where endless styles and genres collapse into one another like a landscape of staggered dominos, few artistic voices have emerged with any lasting force. Chuck Close is one of the few. Famous for his large-scale portraits ranging in medium from painting and drawing to printmaking and photography, Close’s work has a mystifying staying power that attracts audiences with its grandiosity and astounding depth. “Chuck Close Prints: Process and Collaboration,” a retrospective at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, is perhaps the seminal exhibition of Close’s work — an immense yet intimate ode to the timeless appeal of portraiture and the boundless expanses of Close’s technical innovations in art.

Close’s colossal, hyper-realistic portraiture is as synonymous with his name as Jackson Pollock’s is with drip painting. He is one of a handful of working artists that can draw crowds well beyond artistic communities, and has played a large hand in reviving interest and relevance in realism after a tidal wave of artistic deconstruction and abstraction. His techniques have been groundbreaking, and the steady evolution of his work demands to be experienced.

The exhibition offers far more than a comprehensive collection of Close’s work. It delves further, inviting the viewer into his artistic process, which is in large part the source behind the awe his work inspires. “I think people can look at his work and understand what they’re looking at, but also be fascinated … and not quite understand how he’s managed to make the works that he’s made,” says Amanda Maddox, organizing curator of the exhibition. Thus, the show aims to help the audience understand Close’s work through his process.

Focused largely on his extensive body of prints, the show examines Close’s revisiting of printmaking in his visual experimentation. Ultimately, these experiments have resulted not only in some of Close’s most accomplished works, but new techniques and approaches that have greatly expanded the possibilities of the medium.

A piece in this show rarely just stands alone. Displayed is the geography of artistic process, a roadmap of studies leading up to a final image. Alongside his lithograph prints hang the actual lithographs used in the printing, with descriptions of his techniques and technical hurdles. The show displays the original grids that preceded each work, parchment rolls of matrices and proofs covered in scrawling notes by the artist. Color charts and value studies map the topography of Close’s artistic journey, a technical mastery wrought by compulsion and relentless experimentation. In a way, the show becomes a discussion of artistic tribulations, limitations, triumphs and revelations.

As a student, Close was primarily interested in abstract painting, claiming to have been something of a diluted, amateur Willem de Kooning, a painter he greatly admired. However, in 1967, he decided to abandon abstraction and turned his attention toward monumental, hyper-realistic portraits of himself, family and close friends.

He then took it a step further, abandoning the paintbrush for printmaking, a medium in which he had no expertise or facility, in order to challenge himself. His intention was to force a creative breakthrough. In 1972, with the help of printer Kathan Brown, Close created his first print, revisiting the archaic 17th century printing technique of mezzotint, the first printing technique to utilize halftones. The print, titled “Keith/Mezzotint” — displayed upon entering the exhibition — is an intricate study in halftones and textures, light and dark, producing a modern, layered effect while maintaining an astounding technical realism. This melding of photorealism inside abstract textures and patterns has become a trademark of Close’s work.

Over his career, and with the assistance of master printers and various collaborators, Close has created some of the most memorable images of the last 40 years. When making a print, Close and his team complete every stage of their process by hand, from translating an image onto a matrix to carving wood blocks, etching plates, and applying multiple layers of color. The sheer scale and technical complexity of his portraits, combined with this time-consuming process, often means that a single print can take years to complete. However, Close welcomes this challenge. “When you have very strict limitations,” he says, “you have to be … very creative to figure out a way of getting them to work for you. I found that kind of problem-solving very interesting.”

Much of the genius of Close’s work comes from the two contrasting views afforded to the onlooker in each piece — the audience must look at each work twice. From afar the portraits, while differing in tonal value and color pattern, range in appearance from photorealistic to a stylized, almost digitally altered realism. The way in which Close works from photographs dissected into grid, or incremental units, as he calls them, ensures that all his work will be anatomically accurate and perfectly balanced in reality, whether it is made with pulp paper multiples or his own fingerprints.

But the closer one moves in towards a piece, the more it begins to break up, until, inches from the paper, there is nothing to be seen but a kaleidoscopic field of colors and shapes and textures – a very real abstraction. As Maddox explains, “He’s interested in how much information you can convey or compact into a space, and then translate.”

In this regard, it really is the scale that mesmerizes. Reproductions of Close’s work fail to capture their essences much in the same way that Lichtenstein’s large-scale comic strip paintings, when shrunk onto paper, merely look like an excerpt from a comic. The shrunken copies, as the ones accompanying this article, are merely a shadow of the actual works, which are often more than six feet tall.

“I think the show presents an opportunity to really see his marks, and see how detailed his work is,” says Maddox. “Chuck is interested in scale and the destabilizing effect that scale can produce or impart. I think people find that fascinating more than anything else.”

The sheer nature of the realism and the quirks of his techniques cannot be understood unless experienced. His process is engaging, and the variations are remarkable. From traditional Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints to silkscreen, aquatint, and spitbite etching, his repertoire of printing techniques is a history lesson in itself, and the subtle, palpable printing methods are only comprehensible when viewed from inches away — an unusual and welcome intimacy for such grandiose work.

The exhibition has been touring domestically and internationally over the last seven years. Running through Labor Day weekend at the Corcoran, “Chuck Close Prints: Process and Collaboration” is one of D.C.’s finest offerings this season. It is a piece of history as it is being told, and an open-ended invitation into the mind of a modern artistic genius. More than any show most will ever see, the exhibition illuminates the agonies and ecstasies of the artistic process as it is usually only experienced by art historians, curators and restorers.

The Corcoran has additionally made itself free to the public on Saturdays through Labor Day weekend this year. There is no reason to miss this groundbreaking collection and experience the corridors of details, the overwhelming scale, and the fragile intimacy of Chuck Close.

Contact the author at ari@georgetowner.com. [gallery ids="99182,103270,103259,103266,103263" nav="thumbs"]

David Richardson •

When I look at Mike Weber’s work, I sense the subjects of the late 19th- and early 20th-century photographs he incorporates into his work have been displaced into a contemporary setting where they are perfectly content and at ease. There is an enchanting mysteriousness to the work. Weber says, “I focus on subtle facial expressions of my subjects and many are looking at the camera or photographer as if it was the first time they had been exposed to a camera.” In less capable hands, the subjects could have been soulless, but Weber is able to create hosts who offer the viewer access to the artist’s own deft craftsmanship.

Weber hand paints or stencils letters into the work with quietness that does not overpower the central figurative themes. Even in the piece “In a Broken Dream,” where the word DREAM is painted backward and prominently across the picture, the viewer’s gaze doesn’t fixate but moves through the entire piece, taking note of Weber’s masterful use of dripped paint, pencil markings and color. One of the most interesting aspects of Weber’s pieces are the calligraphic lines he scrawls around the edges or over the photos. These black, red, blue or gold lines unify the work and fuse the sepia photos into the overall picture plane.

Jason Wright’s “Heartland” series is displayed opposite Weber’s and provides a good counterpoint. Write applies his paint impasto with a pallet knife, creating commanding, austere pieces. Like Weber, Wright generates a sense of mystery in his work, but with buildings on a landscape that verge on silhouette instead of portraiture. I sense he plans each picture carefully and then executes them in a quick, confident manner. From the titles such as “We Are Not the Same,” “Together” and “Nostalgias of Another Life,” one concludes these paintings are allegory and Wright confirms this by saying, “I wanted my work to haunt the viewer and evoke questions about their own feelings when it comes to a home.”

At first glance, three colors dominate Wright’s work: black, white and tan. He applies classic composition principles and linear ruled shapes that meet abruptly, creating scenes reminiscent of houses standing alone or in groups on desert or farmland horizons. All this happens in the central picture plane which gives way to something else: light. On the edges of the pictures, Write has left or painted in pinkish flakes that draw the viewer’s eye around the painting before resting again on the austere central theme of the work. The stark contrast of hue, value and intensity Write creates by juxtaposing tans, whites and blacks at the center of the pieces against the pinks on the edges gives his work vibrancy, charm and that little surprise that keeps a viewer’s attention.

The exhibits are on display at Plan B Gallery (1530 14th St.) until Aug. 29. [gallery ids="99183,103264" nav="thumbs"]

Ari Post •

If the Washington Gallery of Modern Art were mentioned in conversation, most would not register the name. It would likely be assumed that whomever speaking had been referring to any number of alternative DC art institutions – the East Wing of the National Gallery, the Hirshhorn, the American Art Museum, The Phillips Collection (famously America’s first museum of modern art). However, though few may remember it now, the Washington Gallery of Modern Art (WGMA), while only open for seven short years in the 1960s, was a major force in establishing the District in the forefront of contemporary art.

After the mid-century shockwave of painters like Jackon Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning, who had together incinerated centuries of artistic boundaries and limitations, the direction of fine art was aberrantly unclear to many. With such an undefined and endless landscape of possibilities, painting became an entirely new, somewhat chaotic domain, ushering in a wide influx of late abstract expressionism and countless subsequent movements and conceptual innovations.

New York City, as the perpetual colossus of world culture, had claimed near authoritarian control of the fast-paced society of modern art. Prophetic gallerist Leo Castelli had built a personal infantry of loyal artists led by Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg. The MoMA was acquiring amplitudes of new work and declaring the immediate genius of new artists almost as soon as they emerged from school – Frank Stella became among the elite museum acquisitions at the age of 23. Most major contemporary artists were working out of the city. There didn’t seem to be much noise coming from anywhere else.

On October 28, 1961, the WGMA opened its doors, bringing serious attention and notoriety to Washington’s art community, championing this new era of fine art and introducing one of DC’s own art movements into the vernacular.

Co-founded by Alice Denney – matron of the Washington avant-garde who went on to found the wildly successful community darling, Washington Project for the Arts – the gallery brought a wealth of influential American artists and works to the District, while garnering national attention to working artists within the city.

Incorporated as a nonprofit organization, the gallery resided in Dupont Circle, converted from the large carriage house of the headquarters of the Society of Cincinnati. (The Society of Cincinnati, founded in 1783 by the officers of the Continental army, is still the nation’s oldest patriotic organization, dedicated to preserving the memory of the American Revolution.) The gallery’s first director, Adelyn Breeskin, had just recently retired as director from the Baltimore Museum of Modern Art.

One of the gallery’s earliest exhibitions, which caught the attention of the art community at large, was the Franz Kline Memorial Exhibition in October 1962, put up almost immediately following the artist’s death in May of that year. Denney was curator of the exhibition.

The gallery’s collection included works from Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Indiana, Marcel Duchamp, and a cultivation of contemporary American art movements from the ‘50s and ‘60s. Late abstract expressionism, color field painting, minimalism, and pop art were all represented. Their “Popular Image Show” in 1963 brought to the District many of the most highly prized contemporary artists of the day; Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, George Brecht, Claes Oldenburg, and James Rosenquist among them.

At the gallery’s turbulent “Pop Festival,” also in 1963, composer John Cage performed with the Judson Dancers, and Rauschenberg debuted his now famous performance piece, “Pelican.”

However, what propelled the WGMA to the forefront of the artistic community was its 1965 breakthrough show, “Washington Color Painters.” Touring around the nation, the exhibition introduced the art world to a group of local DC painters now known as the Washington Color School, which included artists Kenneth Noland, Gene Davis, and Morris Louis. With bold, thick lines of colors, harmonious compositions, and clean shapes, the Washington Color Painters created iconic reflections of Matisseian joy and the subconscious melancholy behind all beauty.

Towards the mid 1960s, with the expansion of the National Gallery of Art, a more active contemporary arts program at the Corcoran, and the loudly touted development of the Hirshhorn Museum, the WGMA, small and relatively modest, lost its unique foothold in the Washington art community. The Oklahoma Art Center, now the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, purchased the WGMA’s 154-piece collection in September 1968 and the gallery shut down.

The WGMA came and went like many of the art movements of its time: riveting, innovative, and short-lived. The Hirshhorn still frequently displays pieces by the artists of the Washington Color School, including masterworks by Noland and Louis. While the gallery is long since closed, it brought life and national attention to Washington’s art community when it was in dire need. And in the richness of the DC art community, the echoes of its spirit can still be felt today. [gallery ids="99188,103298" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

Cool and hip may not be the first things you think about when you think of the Music Center at Strathmore.

After all, the gorgeous, nearly 2,000-seat acoustic paradise is a haven for classical music fans and performers, from the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra to the likes of Joshua Bell and Yitzhak Perlman. Rockers come — there’s been nights where you can catch the still-there Beach Boys or Jerry Lee Lewis — but full-scale rock-a-mania isn’t usually on the menu.

Except in the summer, except in August. That’s when Strathmore hosts its annual tribute concert, produced by Bandhouse Gigs, the major local musician group that often showcases (and assists) local artists, of which there is an abundance.

The tribute concert, held every year now for seven years, is an occasion for gifted local musicians, young and new, veteran and seasoned, famous or not, to pay tribute to the rock and roll and pop giants of old. This year — specifically, tonight and tomorrow — the causes for tribute and celebration is the British Invasion, that sudden outburst of British musicians whose work and personas hit our shores in the middle and late 1960s, from the Beatles to the Rolling Stones, to posters and hit-tine stars like Tom Jones, Petula Clark and the incomparable Dusty Springfield.

This year marks the first time — due to popular demand — that the tribute concert has expanded to two days, and there are plenty of reasons to celebrate that turn of events.

“We sold out last year’s concert so that a lot of people actually couldn’t come,” Ronnie Newmyer, a veteran local musician and spokesperson for Bandhouse Gigs, said. “Although, just so you know, we have a CD that from last year’s concert that will be sold at [this year’s] concert. I think things have just gotten bigger and bigger every year, so this represents an opportunity to honor some really terrific performers, bands and singers. This is what the tribute concert is always all about — you can see the influence these performers have had on present-day musicians.”

Past tributes have included — as performed specifically in the concert hall where proceedings moved from free outdoor concerts — Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and the spectacularly triumphant Woodstock concert of last year.

Actually, the concerts, which in and of themselves are always a parade of great music and songs — just run the Dylan canon through your head sometime— do something else, which may transcend the individual tributes. All of the songs — with some exceptions —are performed by local musicians. Some of them are nationally well known — Jon Carroll and Bill Danoff who came up with half a reunion of their Starland Vocal Band (“Afternoon Delight”) last year, for instance — but others are legends in specific arenas of, say, acoustic folk music circles. All of them perform regularly in the region, and many have recorded with major labels. After witnessing the last three tributes I can say all of them are gifted, professional musicians, many of them revealing themselves to be up-and-comers, including The Craving Dogs, newcomer Margot MacDonald or the gravelly voiced Patty Reese, who practically channeled Janis Joplin in last year’s Woodstock Concert.

“It’s a great showcase, it sure is,” Newmyer said. “I think it really shows off the local music scene, the people in it, how talented they are.”

Some of the performers, like MacDonald, have been Artists in Residence at Strathmore, a yearly program there for new and talented musicians and artists. Others have performed both locally and around the country, sometimes top billed, sometimes opening for other acts. They’ve been at the Birchmere and often at Jammin’ Java in Virginia.

The British Invasion Concert is a good way to have your eyes and ears opened to just what’s been going on around here musically. The music features, besides The Beatles and Stones and Jones and Clark and Springfield, the work of Peter and Gordon, The Who, The Hollies, The Kings, The Animals, the Zombies and many others. “These were people who wrote and recorded great individual songs, they practically perfected the genre,” Newmyer said. “The big bands like Cream and Led Zeppelin, with the long guitar work and numbers came right after when we got into Woodstock and everything that happened.”

Reese will be handling (perhaps uncharacteristically) the stylings of Petula “Downtown” Clark. Other artists include Carroll, Julia Nixon, The Hall Monitors, Tone Rangers, MacDonald, Last Train Home, 5 Doctors, The Lofgren Brothers, Billy Coulter, Marti Brom, David Kitchens, Tom Lepson, Jeff Watson and Brian Simms, to name a few among a total of over 60 performers.

They’ll be doing such hits as “You Really Got Me,” “She Loves You,” “Needles and Pins,” “The Kids Are All Right,” “Satisfaction,” “Doo Wah Diddy,” “She’s Not There,” “To Sir With Love,” “Don’t Bring Me Down,” “We Gotta Get Outta This Place,” “Go Now” and a personal favorite, “Ferry Across the Mercy,” as well as a Herman’s Hermits Medley.

Showtimes are 7:30 p.m., with tickets ranging from $19 to $22. For information go to [www.strathmore.org](http://www.strathmore.org).

Gary Tischler •

At the Playhouse
—
Move over, New York. Here’s a look at some promising theater productions to send off Washington’s fall theater scene, rapidly securing status as one of the best in the nation.

The Return of Sarah Ruhl
The Woolly Mammoth Theatre on Sixth Street kicks off its season early and with one of the most intriguing productions of the season, “In the Next Room, or The Vibrator Play,” which starts Aug. 23 and runs through Sept. 19.The play is about the unintended or unanticipated consequences of new technology.

Sounds dry, but it’s anything but, not when the new tech is a little electrical device that landed in the medical community around the same time that electricity started to be used everywhere. The device is supposed to calm female hysteria, but it creates havoc in the households of patients and doctors instead because …well, you can guess from the title.

But that’s about all you’re going to be able to guess, because the play is the work of Sarah Ruhl, one of this generation’s most gifted and unusual playwrights. Now in her 30s and a mother of young twins, Ruhl has been very, very good to Woolly Mammoth, the theater du jour for new and cutting-edge works, with productions of her celebrated “The Clean House” and “Dead Man’s Cellphone” enjoying popular and critical success there. “In The Next Room” was the talk of New York during its run.

Expect nothing: one of the hallmarks of Ruhl’s work is that her characters don’t say or do what the play’s situation might indicate they would do and say. The Woolly Production is directed by the very busy Aaron Posner and features Woolly regulars Kimberly Gilbert and Sarah Marshall.

A ‘Sanctified Show’ at the Lincoln Theatre
The new award-winning gospel comedy “Sanctified,” by Javon Johnson, hits the Lincoln Theatre in October, with original (and presumably with gospel flair) music by Derrick Sanders, running Oct. 21 through Nov. 14.

“Sanctified” won six 2009 Black Theater Alliance Awards. The play follows the fortunes of the East Piney Grove Baptist Church when it tries to stave off financial woes by entering a gospel revival.

I’m Henry the Eighth, I Am
No, this isn’t the Herman’s Hermit song, but it IS a rarely done production of “Henry VIII” by William Shakespeare, presumably the last of the Bard’s works, which comes complete with some authorship issues and the fact that the Globe Theatre burned down during its run. The Folger Theatre will be doing the royal honors beginning Oct. 12. Ian Merrill Peakes plays the king, who’s a big hit on Showtime’s “The Tudors.”

‘Something You Did’ is Something to See at Theater J
Theater J also gets an early jump on the season with its production of “Something You Did,” a new play by Willy Holtzman about a group of people trying to reconcile their youthful radicalism with who they are now. Rick Foucheux stars as a former radi-lib turned neo-con media star and Deborah Hazlett plays a woman serving a 30-year prison sentence for an anti-war bombing in which a police officer was killed. (Aug. 28 through Oct. 3).

‘The Scarlet Letter’ and ‘Dinner With Friends’
Something old and something new at Olney Theatre, where Artistic Director Jim Petosa presents the area premiere of Donald Margulies’s Pulitzer Prize-winner “Dinner With Friends,” about two couples enduring a divorce (Aug. 25 to Sept. 26). The National Players, at 60 America’s longest-running touring company, will bring their production of an enduring American classic, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter.” (Sept. 17-18).

Checkmate at ‘Chess’
Signature Theatre in Shirlington got way ahead of everybody by resurrecting the popular rock musical of yore, “Chess,” for a run through Sept. 26. Directed by Signature’s guiding light Eric Shaeffer, with lyrics by Tim Rice (“Jesus Christ Superstar” and “The Lion King”) and music by the folks who brought you “Mamma Mia,” “Chess” is about an American and a Russian competing not only for chess supremacy but the love of a woman. What else could it be?

A New Era for Studio Theatre
The venerable 35-year-old Studio Theatre will not have Joy Zinoman as its artistic director this season after her retirement. Instead, there’s young (35) star David Muse, who’s directed “Blackbird” and Neil LaBute’s “Reasons to be Pretty” at the Studio and scored successes at the Shakespeare Theatre.

Two on-the-edge and talked-about playwrights will kick off the season at Studio: Annie Baker’s “Circle Mirror Transformation” begins Sept. 8. In this play, all the world’s a stage, especially at an amateur theater class in Vermont. “Circle” is followed by “Superior Donuts,” a new comedy by the talented and ambitious Tracy Letts, who hypnotized audiences with her three-hour-plus family saga “August: Osage County.” (Begins Nov.10.)

‘Sabrina’ Is Back…
And she’s not a witch. Rather, it’s the charming, twice-made-into-a-movie play about a chauffeur’s daughter who manages to charm two brothers who are members of the rich super-business class. The play, 50 years old or so, is about things that still matter: class, race, economic divides and, of course, romance. (Audrey Hepburn dazzled William Holden and Humphrey Bogart in the first film.) “Sabrina” starts off the Ford’s Theatre season Oct. 1.

…So Is Sam Shepard’s ‘Fool For Love’
The Keegan Theatre — home of both classic Irish and American theater — is bringing back playwright (and sometime actor) Sam Shepard’s most popular play, “Fool for Love,” at the Church Street Theater Oct. 16. It’s a brawling, sexy play about the outer edges of love and hate, sex and violence when Eddie and May go at it in a hotel outside the Mojave desert.

Let Your ‘Hair’ Down at the Kennedy Center
The first true musical heralding the Age of Aquarius and rock ’n’ roll is coming to the Kennedy Center Opera House Oct. 16 for a run through Nov. 21. “Aquarius,” “Hair,” “Let the Sun Shine In” and a host of songs your parents (or grandparents) might still be humming are back along with really long hair, hippie girls, afros and the Vietnam War.

Paddy Chayefsky Was the Man
Paddy Chayefsky didn’t just author the screenplay of “Network.” He was a pioneering playwright for television (“Marty”), won Emmys and Oscars and was something of a prophet with some of his socially conscious plays. “The Tenth Man” is relatively mellow and optimistic, a fable about love and faith, of all things, even though it’s about a Jewish exorcism. It plays at the American Century Theater in Arlington’s Gunston Arts Center beginning Sept. 17.

A Lope De Vega Classic at Gala Hispanic
In “El Caballero de Olmedo” (“The Knight of Olmedo”), a play from Spain’s golden age by a playwright often compared to Shakespeare, two lovers get caught up in a tragic rivalry between two Spanish towns. Lope De Vega’s classic kicks of Gala Hispanic’s season at the Tivoli Theater in Columbia Heights beginning Sept. 17, a collaboration with the Spanish company Accion Sur.

‘The Talented Mr. Ripley’ at Round House
Patricia Highsmith wrote nasty, quirky crime novels, of which “The Talented Mr. Ripley” — with its murderous anti-hero — is the most famous (Matt Damon played Ripley in the film version). Now it’s a play by Phyllis Nagy, adapted from the novel and gracing the stage at the Round House Theatre in Bethesda beginning Sept. 8. A regional theater premiere directed by Blake Robinson.

Two Openings for The Shakespeare Theatre Company
Shakespeare Theatre will keep both of its stages busy this fall, starting with “All’s Well That Ends Well,” directed by Michael Kahn and featuring Marsha Mason at the Lansburgh Theatre beginning Sept. 7.

For something entirely different, and for anyone seeking some clue about what’s going on in Afghanistan, there is the visit of the Tricycle Theatre company from the United Kingdom, which is bringing the three part play (actually 12 short plays) “The Great Game: Afghanistan,” which traces Western involvement in Afghanistan from its English, Russian and American ventures. It’s at the Sidney Harman Hall Sept. 15-25.

And, A Shakespeare Special for Free
The Shakespeare Theatre Company’s annual Shakespeare Free For All is alive and well August 19-September 5 with a production of “Twelfth Night” at Sidney Harman Hall. Visit www.shakespearetheatre.org/about/ffa to enter the ticket lottery.

Scorched In Silver Spring
Along somewhat similar lines, “Scorched,” Lebanese-born playwright Jajdi Mouawad’s haunting play about twins going to the Middle East to search for their heritages, will premiere in D.C. at the Forum Theatre beginning Sept. 30 at the Round House Theatre’s Silver Spring venue. Forum received major critical praise and two Helen Hayes Awards for its awesome production of “Angels in America” last year.

From Page to Stage at The Kennedy Center
For anyone wanting to get an idea of the scope, range and volume of theater in the Washington area, the Ninth Annual Page to Stage New Play Festival at the Kennedy Center is worth a visit. It features the works of more than 40 metropolitan D.C. theaters in free readings and open rehearsals of plays and musicals under development. Take your pick with works by Adventure Theatre, the Doorway Arts Ensemble, the Folger Theatre, the Georgetown Theatre Company, the Hub Theatre, the Washington Improv Theater, Synetic Theater and a host of others. (Go to www.kennedy-center.org for a complete listing.)

Kid Stuff
Adventure Theatre at Glen Echo Park, Washington’s longest-running children’s theater, presents the American premiere of “Spot’s Birthday Party,” based on children’s book author Eric Hill’s hugely popular “Find Spot” books. The play is directed by Joe Banno, who has directed Shakespeare at the Folger and opera, and who finds himself returning to his roots. Spot is, of course, a very, very famous dog, with friends like Tom the crocodile, Helena the Hippo and Steve the monkey. What a party! Begins Sept. 17 running through Nov. 2.

At Bethesda’s Imagination Stage, dogs and cats figure prominently in “Bunnicula,” about the visit of a strange and menacing new member of the Monroe household , a creature with long ears and big teeth, with a taste for … what? A musical adaptation of Deborah and James Howe’s book. Begins Sept. 25.

Synetic Comes to Crystal City
Arena Stage, celebrating its 60th anniversary, will end its residency in Crystal City this year, but Synetic Theater, the handiwork of the dynamic, multi-award-winning Georgian husband and wife duo Paata and Irina Tsikurishvili, will celebrate its 10th anniversary by filling in the now-vacant play house. The company, which began life in Dupont Circle and moved to Shirlington, has garnered high critical praise from the start with its “silent” approach to classic and epic theater and plays. The season begins with “King Arthur,” which would appear to lend itself to the unique talents of this company, starting Sept. 30.

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Music
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The reason Washington arts patrons have the opportunity to see so many famous is that the area has two major world class performing arts centers. Here are some of the highlights:

Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
The Kennedy Center, with its varied music, symphony, dance, theater and special programming, marks another major year with the first season of Christoph Eschenbach’s as music director and conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra, which has its home at the center’s Concert Hall. This season also happens to be the orchestra’s 80th.

Expect a big season opening at the annual NSO Opening Ball Concerts on Sept. 25, where Eschenbach will make his debut accompanied by the country’s most noted soprano, the legendary Renee Fleming (performing Richard Strauss “Four Last Songs”) and renowned pianist Lang Lang, playing Liszt’s “Piano Concert No. 1.” Eschenbach’s official debut of the regular season comes when he conducts the Orchestra Sept. 30-Oct. 2 in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9.

But there’s more early on at the Kennedy Center. There’s the big Celebrate Mexico festival throughout the center Sept. 11-Oct. 3, commemorating Mexico’s 200 years of independence. The celebration will be part of the annual Kennedy Center Open House Arts Festival (Sept. 11), the Multicultural Children’s Book Festival (same date) and a host of other events.

The National Symphony Orchestra Pops Series, beginning its 11th year under Marvin Hamlisch, will debut Oct. 28 with an evening with singer, Broadway star, actress and all-around dynamo Patti Lupone on Oct. 28. Another highlight is the Thanksgiving salute to legendary Broadway lyricist Frank Loesser on Nov. 26 with music from “Guys and Dolls,” “The Most Happy Fella” and other great Loesser shows.

Major things to look forward to next year are the big India Festival in the spring and the all-performance art tribute to “The Presidency of John F. Kennedy: A 50th Anniversary Celebration Jan. 20-Feb. 11.

Washington Ballet at the Kennedy Center
You’re also going to run into the Washington Ballet at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater Nov. 3-7 when Artistic Director Septime Webre brings his adaptation of “Romeo and Juliet” (with music by Sergei Prokofiev) here.

The Music Center at Strathmore
The Music Center at Strathmore, on the outskirts of Bethesda, MD, has proven to be a major and welcome venue addition to the Washington area.

Its partners include the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Marin Alsop, splitting a portion of its season with Strathmore in addition to its season at its home base at the Meyerhoff in Baltimore. The Season for the BSO at Strathmore begins with a Prevue Concert Sept. 10 with Alsop and Ilyich Rivas sharing conducting of a program of Prokofiev, Mahler, Bach, Schumann, John Williams, Mozart, Barber and Shostakovich.

There’s also the National Philharmonic Orchestra, which kicks off its season at Strathmore with Mahler’s “Resurrection” on Oct. 9, under the direction of Piotr Gajewski.

Strathmore also partners with the Washington Performing Arts Society. Its own programming will feature the celebration of the guitar in a season-long guitar festival which will include performances by world-class guitarists in all fields: classical, jazz, country, acoustic.

A highlight early on will be an appearance by the legendary songwriter, actor, country/folk musician and guitarist, the gritty Kris Kristofferson (Nov. 13).

Also on tap in the fall: The Dave Brubeck Quartet and the Callaway sisters (Ann Hampton and Liz) in “Boom,” a look at the 70-year jazz career of Brubeck, on his way to being an American icon.

On Nov. 14, the Washington Post will hold an intimate conversation with today’s most enduring creator of musicals, Stephen Sondheim. On Oct. 7, classical guitars Paul Galbraith will appear. “Asperia,” the soprano and lute duo will appear Sept. 23.

The renowned Academy of St. Martin in the Fields with Jonathan Bliss on piano will present an all-Mozart program at the Music Center Nov. 3.

It’s as big day for family entertainment on Oct. 30, when Grammy Award winners Cathy Fink and Marcy Marx will present their 25th Annual Family Music party.

The Washington Performing Arts Society

The WPAS has been around for 40 years, providing education opportunities for young people and performance showcases for renowned world artists at theaters all over the Washington area.

The WPAS Men, Women and Children of Gospel choir will perform at the Arts on Foot Festival at Seventh and F Streets on Sept. 11 at 4 p.m. The festival, by the bye, offers a great opportunity for a sampling of many of the area’s performance arts groups. For more information, go to www.artsonfoot.org.

Renowned and glamorous violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter will perform at the Kennedy Center’s Concert Hall Nov. 13.

Sweet Honey in the Rock, the locally nurtured gospel-folk-blues group of long standing, will perform at the Warner Theatre Oct. 23.

Ravi Shankar, now famous not only as an iconic sitar player, but also the father of two famous performing offspring (Anoushka Shankar and Norah Jones), will be at the Kennedy Center’s Concert Hall Nov. 7.

Yo-Yo Ma will appear at the Kennedy Center Oct. 21.

Pianist Andras Schiff will perform at the Music Center at Strathmore Oct. 20.

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Through the Opera Glass
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Washington Concert Opera
The Washington Concert Opera opens its 2010-2011 season on Oct. 24 with Francesco Celia’s “Adriana Lecouvreur.” WCO Artistic Director Anthony Walker will conduct the performance at George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium.

Featured performers are James Valenti as Maurizio, Mary Elizabeth Williams as Adriana, Elizabeth Bishop as Princess de Bouillon and Donnie Ray Albert as Michonnet.

Walker has headed the Washington Concert Opera since 2002, makes his New York Metropolitan Opera Debut in 2011, conducting Gluck’s “Orleo.”

Washington National Opera
Five productions, all new to Washington, mix with a grand old tradition in the Washington National Opera’s 2010-2011 season, its 55th.

Under the leadership of General Director Placido Domingo, the season begins Sept. 11 with Verdi’s dramatic “Un Ballo in Maschera” (“The Masked Ball”), a soaring, powerful story of forbidden love and revenge which takes place during the 18th-century reign of Sweden’s King Gustavus III.

In this opera, King falls for Best Friend’s wife, a not unfamiliar theme in opera and theater. Best Friend plots his murder and things move forward. But it’s a Verdi opera, which means the kind of musical embellishment that heightens every emotion in the story, with soaring orchestration and straight-to-the-heart melodies.

In Europe, this opera startled many patrons at a time when most of the countries and empires of Europe were ruled by kings and emperors and a plot about a king’s murder did not sit well with the ruling class. This prompted the setting to be moved to America, where there are no kings. Some productions still do the American version.

Tenor Salvatore Licitra returns to Washington in the role of King Gustavus, sharing the part with American Frank Porretta. Also in the double-cast production are sopranos Tamara Wilson and Irene Theorin, and baritones Luca Salsi and Timothy Mix. James Robinson directs, and Daniele Callegari conducts the WNO orchestra. The production runs through Sept. 25.

October will feature Richard Strauss’ still astonishing operatic telling of the tale of “Salome,” with the gifted Francesca Zambello returning to direct Deborah Voigt in her WNO debut. Voigt is considered by many critics to be “one of the great Strauss interpreters of all time” and the definitive Salome of her generation. Strauss shocked the world with his opera, which includes a score that’s highlighted by “Dance of the Seven Veils”, as is, of course, any version of the Salome tale British tenor Richard Berkeley-Steele is Herod. In this story, Salome is a temptress who not only turns heads but causes at least one to fall. (October 7-23.)

That’s not all. The WNO will again offer a free simulcast, this year at the Washington Nationals Park, called “Opera in the Outfield” on Sept. 19, of “Un Ballo in Maschera.”

This season also inaugurates the Placido Domingo Celebrity Series, a concert series featuring opera’s most exciting popular stars. They’ll be performing their best-known works alongside the WNO orchestra. The concerts will start in the spring with Peruvian Tenor Juan Diego Florez on Feb. 11 and Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel on March 12.

“Series O,” a specially discounted subscription series for audiences 35 and under, is also being initiated this year as a way to bring younger audiences to the opera.

The National Endowment for the Arts Opera Honors will be held Oct. 22 at the Kennedy Center’s Opera House, with the WNO as the producing partner for the awards ceremony and concert.

The spring portion of the season includes “Madame Butterfly,” Gluck’s “Iphigenie en Touride” and Donizett’s “Don Pasquale.” [gallery ids="99189,103299,103310,103306,103303" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

It’s fair to say that “Mary Poppins” (the Sir Cameron Mackintosh/Disney-produced hit musical now ensconced at the Kennedy Center’s Opera House) has pretty much engulfed Anthony Lyn’s life.

Lyn is the tour director of the popular musical version of the old Disney movie musical which won Julie Andrews an Oscar as the super-cali— well, you know — nanny, and is the current director of the long-running (four years) Broadway production. For Lyn, it’s Mary here and Mary there pretty much all the time.

So what else is there?

“Well, I did just get married recently,” Lyn offered in a telephone interview. “There’s that.”

After congratulating Lyn, we wanted to know just what a tour director does. In the past, we knew that a stage director has a big part in the casting, runs rehearsals and then sits in the back of the theater biting his or her nails on opening night.

That doesn’t apply to Lyn or any tour director of major Broadway musical bonanzas, where you’re more like a visiting CEO visiting the plant regularly, changing this, overseeing that, making sure things are running properly and that the product is fresh and appealing.

“I’m here in Washington right now because as these kinds of shows go, with kids in them and all, we’re doing a bit of recasting, adding new performers,” he said. “The thing about kids is that they grow, they change.”

Lyn has a certain kind of show business in his veins, to put in British terms. He’s Welsh (the Lyn without the extra “n” says so), and that puts him in good theater company: think Catharine Zeta-Jones, Richard Burton and so on. He cut his theater teeth at Swansea Grand Theater in Wales, where they remember him fondly on the company’s Web site, charting his career from doing pantomimes to hosting musical shows to appearing with Zeta-Jones in a Swansea production of “The Sound of Music.”

From there, he went on to performing on cruise ships, getting a part in a production of “Anything Goes” with Elaine Paige, and landing a role in “Les Miserables.” That’s about the time he got interested in directing and talked his way into a job with Cameron Mackintosh. Next up: an assistant to Julie Taymor, who was directing the spectacularly successful “The Lion King” for Disney.

“She is just an amazing talent,” he says. “You have never seen such an eye, such creativity, it was an absolutely wonderful experience for me to work with the likes of her.”

It wasn’t that far removed from “Mary Poppins,” which now occupies a big part of his life.

“I know what critics think of Disney, that it’s this big business, giant corporation, heartless bottom-line and hokey stuff,” he says. “It’s nothing like that. You go to the Disney offices in New York, and it’s all theater folk like me.”

Still, the logistics of doing a national tour of “Mary Poppins” can be problematic.

“Everywhere you go is different,” he says. “Some of that has to do with the size of the venue. The theater in St. Louis, for instance, has 4,000-plus seats, and that requires a different level of projection. There are casting changes all of the time — actors sign a contract for a certain length of time and leave — the children, the sets, the physical opportunities and constraints. I think being a performer myself before has helped me in what I do. I know what it’s like, the whole touring thing, the changes, the pace, all of that.

“You know what it is about ‘Mary Poppins’?” he asks. “In all honesty, the show is full of heart, it’s about change and the parents, and the children, about that bond and imagination. I don’t mind saying so: it moves me still. You stay with a show long enough, all that coming and going, you form attachments. Every time there’s a cast change, there are goodbyes. You get to know people.

“It’s a funny thing that happens sometimes when there’s changes. An actor, even a child actor, will have their own views of things and they’ll make suggestions, and often it fits. You learn to listen. That way, you make sure things don’t get stale or change radically. I remember a long absence once, and an actor was playing his part in a way that changed everything. I didn’t recognize the show.”

Most of the time, “Mary Poppins” is a way of life for Lyn. A life a long way off from the Swansea Grand.

“Mary Poppins” runs at the Kennedy Center Opera House through Aug. 22.