Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Women’s voices are heard loud and clear in the District area’s triumphant WOMEN’S VOICES THEATER FESTIVAL

• By drediman
• October 29, 2015
• No Comments

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had the great privilege of attending a number of offerings from Washington, DC’s triumphant Women’s Voices Theater Festival. The festival was designed to address the glaring lack of representation from women playwrights in today’s theater world. Nearly all of the District’s top theater companies contributed – many in the form of exciting world premieres – to this ambitious festival, including big guns like Woolly Mammoth and Arena Stage. I’m pleased to report that the festival far exceeded my expectations. I was thrilled not only by the incredibly high level of polish I encountered, but also by the daring, often breathtaking, playwriting on display (I was expecting mostly to come across even-keeled, safe works). The rebellious, almost angry spirit that pervaded the festival is just what the industry needs to sit up and take notice of the talents and bravado possessed by the “other” sex.

IRONBOUND
Written by Martyna Majok
Directed by Daniella Topol
Round House Theatre

Martyna Majok’s tough, poetic Ironbound received a searing world premiere (in a muscular production directed by Daniella Topol) this fall courtesy of Bethesda’s Round House Theatre. The play, which tells the difficult story of Darja, a lower class immigrant from Poland who somehow is unable to progress with her life in this country, is gorgeously written by Ms. Majok in language that’s authentically down-to-earth working class yet deeply sensitive to the characters’ inner lives. As Darja, Alexandra Henrikson – in an astonishing performance – was a compelling mix of searing intensity and aching vulnerability. The play is headed next to New York’s tiny Rattlestick Theatre this spring, also to be helmed by Ms. Topol.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

WOMEN LAUGHING ALONE WITH SALAD
Written by Sheila Callaghan
Directed by Kip Fagan
Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

For me, Women Laughing Alone with Salad – courtesy of the always-irreverent Woolly Mammoth – was the poster child production of the festival. Through a trio of fascinating yet frustrating character studies, Sheila Callaghan fearlessly explores what it is to be a woman in the modern world – including their power and insecurities. Under Kip Fagan’s endlessly inventive direction, the production’s three top-notch actresses gave galvanic performances. However, I must single out Janet Ulrich Brooks, who gave an unforgettable gender-bending performance in this production that shook me to the core.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

DESTINY OF DESIRE
Written by Karen Zacarías
Directed by José Luis Valenzuela
Arena Stage

Karen Zacarías’s Destiny of Desire – a combustible combination of Shakespeare and telenovela – gets my vote as the most unadulterated fun I had at the mostly serious-minded Women’s Voices Theater Festival. The entire cast was a delight, and they were all clearly having fun performing this buoyant, if slightly overlong, play with music (as playfully directed by José Luis Valenzuela). Sometimes being entertained without any further agenda can be good enough.

RECOMMENDED

TEXTS&BEHEADINGS/ELIZABETHR
Created  and directed by Karin Coonrod
Folger Theatre

Perhaps the most experimental festival entry I saw was Compagnia de’ Colombari’s avant-garde texts&beheadings/ElizabethR at the Folger Theatre (the production was later seen at BAM’s multi-disciplinary New Wave Festival). For this production, Ms. Coonrod assembled a series of letters written by Queen Elizabeth I herself and had them stylishly performed by four versions of the queen (played by four different and quite fabulous actresses). Through this beautifully-curated collage, one got to see, through a beguilingly theatrical lens, the different facets of this complex and endlessly fascinating figure.

RECOMMENDED

ANIMAL
Written by Clare Lizzimore
Directed by Gaye Taylor Upchurch
Studio Theatre

For the Women’s Voices Theater Festival, British playwright (and noted director) Clare Lizzimore unveiled the world premiere of her latest work Animal at the ever-adventurous Studio Theatre. This compact and continually surprising new play closely chronicles the experiences of Rachel (superbly played by Kate Eastwood Norris in a raw performance), who suffers from post-partum psychosis, and those closest to her. The production was cleanly and effectively directed by Gaye Taylor Upchurch to maximize the disorienting sensations faced by Rachel as she navigates her world, even when she knows she’s had the rug pulled from underneath her.

RECOMMENDED

SALOMÉ
Adapted and directed by Yaël Farber
Shakespeare Theatre Company

Yaël Farber has in the past proved herself to be a master at revisiting classics we thought we knew and illuminating them from a slightly different, but totally unexpected, perspective (case in point was her sensational, steamy Mies Julie from a couple of seasons back). Her take on the tawdry Biblical tale of Salomé is no different. Ms. Farber – who also gorgeously directed her play with a sensuous inevitability – has concocted a princess Salomé that is less a victim of her unquenchable sexual appetite and more a martyr for a desperate revolutionary cause. This production at the Shakespeare Theatre Company was luxuriously appointed; I’ll not soon forget the series of stunning tableaux Ms. Farber created with her excellent, committed cast.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED