Dee Does The District doesn't appreciate a sad bit of race baiting reported from the marathon hearing on the DCPS teacher layoffs.

Harry Potter and the Urban School Nightmare despairs over their students' poor attendance. They write:

"Our school's enrollment is down, and attendance is lower than I've ever seen it. When I first started at my school, I routinely had between 25 and 30 students in my class each day. Now, I'm lucky if I get 12. Today, less than half of my students were in class, and last week the average was 55%. Now, the kids who are there every day are learning like FIENDS, but at this rate 45% of my kids are going to fail. So what gives?"

DC Teacher Chic reports from her classroom a new trend—the working lunch. They write:

"This past week, I welcomed my students into my classroom / office space to eat their lunches. At first, it started because a few students were finishing assessments while eating their lunches (so as not to miss further instruction). To say the students loved the idea is an understatement. In the days following, my working lunches have blossomed from four students to seven, with several more students showing interest in attending next week."

Borderstan reports property crimes and violent crimes were up in September according to the latest crime stats: "Total crime (both violent and property crimes) for the  month of September 2009 in the Borderstan crime area¹ is 27% higher than in September 2008 and 61% higher than September 2007." The blog has maps and stats.

The 42 does not miss the Real World folks. But if you do miss the cameras or the realty competition shows, the blog knows what film crews are coming next.

And Now, Anacostia admires some new display windows on MLK.

Southwest...The Little Quadrant That Could has an update on Arena Stage's redevelopment.

*photo by Darrow Montgomery

“Break a leg” is the traditional, if superstitious, pre-curtain benediction for actors. It is not meant to be taken literally. Sadly, one of the stars of Arena Stage’s Legacy of Light, Carla Harting, suffered compound fractures in her left femur and tibia after getting hit by a car while biking near the Jefferson Memorial over the weekend. Coincidentally, just ten days earlier, many DC cyclists met at the Jefferson Memorial to embark on the annual Ride of Silence to commemorate those injured or killed while riding bicycles.

An actress imported from New York, Harting had been playing Dr. Olivia Hasting Brown, an astrophysicist with ovarian cancer who searches for a surrogate mother to bear her a child. Harting will be unable to perform the final two weeks of this World Premiere run, which is scheduled to close on June 14. I was surprised to learn there were no understudies trained for the part. This meant both matinee and evening shows on Sunday had to be cancelled.

While Harting was undergoing surgery Sunday at George Washington Hospital, Director Molly Smith was scrambling to find a replacement. Fortunately, a talented veteran of the DC stage, Jennifer Mendenhall, was just closing the Solas Nua production of Woman and Scarecrow on Sunday. No sooner did one engagement close before Mendenhall was immediately thrust into rehearsals all day Monday and today. She is scheduled to jump into the roll tonight. We wish Harting a quick recovery, and for Mendenhall we bid you, “Good …”

Full press release after the jump. Bob Mondello's review of the Legacy of Light here.

(Washington, D.C.) Due to a bike accident in the D.C. area, actress Carla Harting has suffered a broken leg with compound fractures and will no longer be able to continue in the role of Olivia in the Arena Stage production Legacy of Light. Legacy of Light, written by D.C. playwright Karen ZacarÍas and directed by Arena Artistic Director Molly Smith, runs until June 14 at Arena Stage in Crystal City. For the remaining performances, Jennifer Mendenhall (Woolly Mammoth company member) will join the cast in the role of Olivia.

“We all send Carla our best wishes for a quick recovery, and we're grateful that the accident wasn't worse. She will be missed!” comments Smith. “Jennifer is a wonderful actress, who is intellectually sharp and quite funny – so many of us here in D.C. have enjoyed seeing her perform in area theaters. We're glad that she is able to join us at Arena, and I'm excited to experience her interpretation of the character of Olivia.”

*INDOGURATION UPDATE: Yesterday afternoon, following the President's latest round of cautious optimism, Ted Kennedy presented the Obama famiy with Bo, a six-month-old Portugese water dog .  The Post has video, a bombastic lede, and some Us Weekly-worthy niceties:

About 10 minutes later the First Family emerged again, racing up the hill, with the president doing a nifty maneuver to switch the leash from one hand to another to avoid getting tangled and tripping.

"Pshew! Close call," the episode concludes.

*D.C. Police have found James Duncan, whom they first reported missing last week.  (In unrelated news, they also found a gun).

*SWDCBlog offers some stunning renderings of the Mead Center, Arena Stage's new, er, stage, which is still under construction.  (On its own site, Arena offers a webcam of the construction.)

*WISH LISZT: This evening, the Washington Performing Arts Society hosts a presentation on Franz Liszt's devilishly difficult "Transcendental Études" as part of the "What Makes It Great?" series.  (These études, Mike Paarlberg observes, "showed off Listz’s chops as an unmatched performer and the hardest working touring musician in Europe—something of the Black Flag of his day.")  Will Erik Wemple, noted classical music enthusiast, attend?  Only one way to find out!

*Creative DC is back, while Arjewtino is no more.

*The Prince of Petworth still loves you, Cleveland Park!

But with no shortage of theater in DC, audiences value quality over quantity.

To woo subscribers, theaters assemble line-ups that include must-see classics, beloved musicals, and Tony-award winners. And then there’s Woolly Mammoth, which on Saturday unveiled an entire season of brand-new shows no one has ever heard of...just as they have done for 30 years in a row. It takes a brave and trusting subscriber to buy a series sight-unseen.

To introduce Woolly’s débutantes, artistic director Howard Shalwitz and dramaturg Miriam Weisfeld led company members in readings from each new play. In trademark Woolly style, these push the envelope on what can be considered a play, but based on the titillating readings, each show promises to be provocative and entertaining.

Shalwitz wanted an anniversary season that engages its audience in a discourse on democracy and “our historic moment.” Of course, as he reassured us, “Comedy is our home. We like shows that don’t take themselves too seriously.”

The season opens with the world premiere of Eclipsed by African playwright and actress Danai Guirira, who astounded local audiences in her Helen Hays Award-winning performance of In the Continuum (2007 HH award for best actress, best non-resident play), about an African woman struggling with cultural mores in announcing she has AIDS. Eclipse continues to highlight experiences of African women by exploring the five wives of Liberian warlord Charles Taylor and the fallout from civil war.

If you can’t take East German censorship circa the fall of the Berlin Wall sitting down, you don’t have to. The actors and audience alike will perambulate Woolly’s theaterspace—so wear comfortable shoes. Playwright Charles Mee’s adaptation of Brecht’s Full Circle is more of an event than a play, featuring seven company members including Shalwitz, and asking the question, “Can a disgraced artistic director restore a nation’s moral bearings?”

The next non-play is a one-man dialogue with Mike Daisey, who challenged Fringe Festival audiences last summer with If You See Something, Say Something. When Woolly commissioned the world premier of The Last Cargo Cult. In preparing the piece, Daisy visited Tanna, an island in the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu, where locals worship symbols of American capitalist power—especially cargo left by ships during World War II.

Clybourne Park takes Lorraine Hansberry’s Raisin in the Sun as a point of departure, but changes the perspective to that of a white neighborhood in 1950s Chicago faced with a black family moving in. In Act II, playwright Bruce Norris trains his lens closer to home by peeking in on that same neighborhood in present day.

Woolly was surprisingly furtive about the 5th play of the season, refusing to announce even the title until two weeks from now so as not to steal the thunder from the theater where it will premiere. However it has Mammoth footprints all over it, as the play absurdly follows an “anti-romantic” boy and girl, jumping forward and backward in time throughout their lives.

Perhaps in an attempt to make sure the Obamas don’t get homesick, Woolly has also booked two prominent Chicago troupes. Legendary political sketch comedy group Second City will present Barack Stars as an offering in this summer’s Fringe Festival. In December, the Neofuturists will bring back Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, whereby they stage 30 plays in 60 minutes, choosing plays each night based on the roll of a dice.

As the Mammoth turns 30, Shalwitz remarks that “Becoming an adult is scary because Woolly wants to be youthful, forward learning and provocative.” C’mon Woolly, you may grow old, but you’ll never grow up.

UPDATE ~ 4:45 p.m., 3/5/09: Arena Stage has shortened its 2009-10 subscription offerings in order to prepare for the return to its renovated home in Southwest D.C. The decision was not financially based, but was intended to avoid overproducing during a transition year. When it opens in Fall, 2010, the Mead Center for American Theater will add a third stage, thereby enabling more programming than Arena’s typical eight-show subscription. Thanks to Kirstin Franko for correcting me on this.

Disclaimer: Sheffy Gordon is a season usher at Woolly Mammoth as well as other theaters in DC. The views expressed here are his alone.

Next to Normal at Arena

D.C.’s Arena Stage has been doing its fair share of boasting lately. In less than two months, goes the hype, not one but two Arena shows will be running simultaneously on Broadway. As if that weren't enough, Arena is calling itself the first regional theater to claim this honor twice, having sent a pair of shows to Broadway in the 1979-80 season as well.

What's their secret? What makes Arena Stage and D.C. in general such an attractive launching pad for a Broadway show?

"Quality of production departments," says Arena Stage Artistic Director Molly Smith. She credits the staff, many with decades of experience at Arena, for putting "Principles over personalities." Take that, Broadway!

33 Variations celebrated its world premiere at Arena in August 2007. The Broadway version stars Jane Fonda as a music historian trying to deduce why Beethoven, after initially refusing to compose variations on a waltz, obsessively wrote the titular thirty-three. In the spirit of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia and Indian Ink, 33V creates parallel contemporary and historic worlds to unravel an academic mystery.

Next to Normal, which opens on tax day, presents a nuclear family facing a case of mental illness initiated by a traumatic event. Although it’s a musical, this show about bipolar disorder, drug abuse (prescription and otherwise), and death eschews a toe-tapping score and a feel-good ending: N2N literally zaps any Broadway formulas.

"Each of these projects are unusual theater pieces and shows the range of the work we produce at Arena. New York is always looking for strong projects on subject matter that hasn't been seen before," Smith wrote in an email.

While I know Broadway is more than its hackneyed image of outrageous chorus numbers strung together with implausible love stories and sophomoric humor, I haven't found many Broadway plays that deal with chronic illness (RENT notwithstanding). Yet Arena is sending New York two shows centered on sickness. Just as Beethoven dealt with deafness, Fonda's character in 33V is stricken with ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease). Maybe all this talk of health care coming out of Washington is infecting spheres beyond politics.

To be fair, N2N actually premiered at New York's Second Stage (Off-Broadway)—so Arena is more of its foster parent. In fact, the show's five Helen Hays nominations are in "non-resident production" categories (Best Show, four acting nominations including one for Alice Ripley). Nonetheless, Smith is proud that while already known for producing new work, Arena also "gives new work a chance to become completely formed in the first, second or third production."

Yet all this success makes me wonder about another fantastic Arena musical that premiered last year, The Women of Brewster Place. This stunning adaptation of Gloria Naylor's best-selling novel dazzled audiences with a powerful fusion of drama, music, artistry, and raw talent. But audience reaction and critical acclaim aren't enough to bring a show to Broadway, Smith says—you need commitment from the producers to take it to the next production.

Arena is generally a producing house geared towards a D.C. audience. (Although this season, while renovating its main stage in SW D.C., it’s importing a boatload of shows.) Yet, for 33V and N2N, Arena partnered with NY producers with an eye towards Broadway: Tectonic Theater/Moises Kaufman (of Laramie Project fame), and David Stone, respectively. In May, Arena welcomes yet another "pre-Broadway engagement", Looped, which replaces Arena's canceled Sweet Bird of Youth.

Of course, Smith also credits Arena's success to "a very bright, intelligent audience that can understand and fall in love with any type of great theater." Aw, shucks.

]]> http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/2009/02/24/with-33-variations-and-next-to-normal-arena-stage-gives-its-regards-to-broadway/feed/ 6 http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/2008/08/27/dress-like-princess-leia-and-win-tickets-or-perhaps-a-poster/ http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/2008/08/27/dress-like-princess-leia-and-win-tickets-or-perhaps-a-poster/#comments Wed, 27 Aug 2008 17:29:16 +0000 Andrew Beaujon http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/?p=6511

Princess Leia! Wasn't she the one who saved the universe despite being, like, C-3PO's daughter or something? Well guess what? PRINCESS LEIA IS BACK!!!!!

Except now she lives in the D.C. area and is you.

In anticipation of Leia-portraya Carrie Fisher's one-woman show Wishful Drinking, which will bow Sept. 5, Arena Stage is holding a Princess Leia lookalike contest. Just take a picture of yourself dressed like Luke Skywalker's girlfriend or whatever (but don't stick Cinnabons on your ears and hold a spray bottle, because some wag has beaten you to it), and e-mail it here by Sept. 7, and you could win tickets to the show or at least bring a signed poster from Wishful Drinking back to your little robot farm on Tatooine.

Those are fleeting pleasures, though, compared to the pride you'll feel when your coworkers see you dressed like one of Jabba the Hutt's hootchies. Hey, those aren't the droids you're looking for!