By Jane Horwitz
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
His voice raised to a booming and dramatic flourish fitting the occasion, Mayor Anthony A. Williams proclaimed "May 12, 2005, as Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company Day" to celebrate the troupe's spanking-new home at 641 D St. NW.
After the speeches, the public was invited to check out the building and the 265-seat courtyard-style auditorium, in which some rows and boxes wrap around the side walls toward the stage.
High above said stage hung a charred-looking car chassis (a Ford from Rent-a-Wreck, we were told), a key prop for "Big Death and Little Death," which opened last week. The unfinished look of the space -- cinder-block walls, splashes of color -- is geared to Woolly's unvarnished, slightly subversive aesthetic.
Artistic Director Howard Shalwitz said proudly Thursday, "Nowhere else in America has a theater company that's so edgy gotten so far," referring partly to the new home that cost nearly $7 million. (Woolly raised more than $8.5 million in its capital campaign -- $2 million from the city, the rest from foundations and private donors.)
Shalwitz concluded: "This new theater will be a beacon for every weird, oddball theater company" that starts up anywhere in the nation.
Not-So-Simply SondheimCostume designer Anne Kennedy's pooch Newly wanders among the actors onstage during pauses in the rehearsal of "Pacific Overtures" and sits out in the house while they sing. Newly occasionally barks. Everybody's a critic.
The Signature Theatre cast, in white Kabuki makeup, black wigs, brightly colored robes and bare feet, sing "Someone in a Tree" -- about ordinary people recalling a historic occasion witnessed long ago. Stephen Sondheim has said he loves the song best of all he's written.
Ten actors will play upwards of 40 characters in Artistic Director Eric Schaeffer's intimate rendering of the show, which starts previews tonight. (Quick costume changes are causing a "rat race" backstage, he admits.) Though he has staged many a Sondheim musical, Schaeffer says that for this one (with a book by John Weidman) he waited until he "felt like I could tackle it, because it probably is one of his hardest shows."
"Pacific Overtures" tries to imagine, from the Japanese point of view, the cultural earthquake of 1853 in Japan, when American Commodore Matthew Perry, followed by the European powers, sailed into the long-isolated nation and insisted it trade with them or else. The aftershocks are both comic and tragic.
Schaeffer studied photos of the original production -- it had an epic-size Broadway debut in 1976 -- and knew he had to reinvent it for Signature's small space. He's using the recently revised script and new orchestrations (by Jonathan Tunick) from last winter's revival at New York's Roundabout Theatre. "We made our own Kabuki style up," says Schaeffer, who also designed the sets. It has been an effort to "make our own language to tell the show" differently than it has ever been done.
Music director Jon Kalbfleisch will lead a seven-piece orchestra with two percussionists (occasionally using Japanese instruments). He says Sondheim wrote Western music but with tonalities that evoke Japanese music. He likens Sondheim's songs to the richness of Shakespeare's texts.
"All the information the actors need is in the score," Kalbfleisch says. "If they get the notes and the words right, the characterization is there."
Keeping the FaithActress Deborah Kirby co-founded Journeymen Theater as a reflection of her faith. Seeing companies focusing on African American life, Jewish themes and gay-lesbian issues, she and some friends thought, why not Christianity?
The company, which is wrapping up its first season with "The Colorado Catechism" at the Clark Street Playhouse through Saturday, is "not about evangelistic theater -- but is about producing plays that address moral and ethical issues and dilemmas" from a Christian perspective, the producing artistic director says.
Kirby's own faith is "fairly mainline Christian," and she is "not dogmatic, not condemning," she says. "I'm more about kind of the love that Jesus Christ said we were supposed to have for other people." Thus, while the company's core members are Christians, she says, its hiring practices for shows will be open. "My job and our theater company's job is to love and support and encourage these people in the theater community," Kirby says.
Earlier this season at the Church Street Theatre, Journeymen presented the medieval morality play "Everyman" and Stephen Dietz's "Private Eyes," which explores infidelity. In "The Colorado Catechism," two drug and alcohol abusers forge a friendship in rehab. Kirby co-stars with Cecil Baldwin. Jeff Keenan directed.
There's nothing wrong with "pure entertainment," says Kirby, 45, who worked for years as an Equity actress (and is a legal secretary by day), "but the plays that we pick, including comedies, I want to make sure that they're . . . addressing some kind of dilemma." She says she's in no hurry to grow the tiny troupe. "I would rather us make slow, steady steps and be around 20, 30 years from now than burn out."
Next season, Journeymen will present "The Boys Next Door" (Sept. 14-Oct. 15) by Tom Griffin, about a group home for mentally challenged men; "An Experiment With an Air Pump" (Dec. 28-Jan. 28, 2006) by Shelagh Stephenson, which looks at the eves of two new centuries, 1799 and 1999; and in the spring, "Manicures & Monuments" by Vicki Caroline Cheatwood, about a nursing home resident and the woman who comes in to give her manicures. The first two shows will be at Clark Street. Location and dates for "Manicures" are not set.
Follow Spots· Beam me up, Willy! Washington Shakespeare Company, as part of its off-night readings of the Bard's canon, will do "Hamlet" tonight at 7:30. The benefit ($25 tickets) will feature a few moments, including the Gravedigger's scene ("Alas poor Yorick!"), in Klingon, the language of "Star Trek" fame invented by local linguist Marc Okrand.
· Teatro de la Luna will receive the Elizabeth Campbell Award from the Arlington branch of the American Association of University Women on Saturday for "remarkable achievements and important contributions to our community." Its show "Continente Viril/Virile Continent," a satire set in Antarctica, opens Friday at Gunston Arts Center and will offer English surtitles. Call 703-548-3092 or visit http://www.teatrodelaluna.org/ .