D.C. an Unwilling Canvas For His Works of Protest

Unless passersby ask him what he's up to, he keeps to himself. Time is often short before he'll be interrupted by security guards. It's okay with Shoshan, though, if his intent remains oblique: "Even though many people won't know what I'm doing, I know what I'm doing."

At the conference, however, Shoshan said he expected the freedom to perform anywhere in the hotel's meeting areas and to display his camouflage flag in a prominent place. But he arrived to find that the association wanted his flag to go in a ballroom doubling as a book exhibition hall. He suggested hanging it outside. Uh-uh, said hotel management. A hotel staffer assigned to assist Shoshan offered to hang the flag above an escalator connecting the hotel's two meeting levels. Much better, Shoshan thought.

Not so fast, said management. The flag had to go back somewhere downstairs. Shoshan felt sure it was because of the flag's political message. Jon Lockwood, the hotel's marketing director, says that wasn't the case. Shoshan hadn't gone through proper channels, Lockwood says.

Later, when Shoshan started a "Paper Bombs" performance in the meeting-level lobby, hotel staff intervened and forbade Shoshan to continue. Lockwood says the hotel was not informed by the association of Shoshan's plans: "We asked him, 'What are these?' He said, 'They're paper bombs.' We thought that was not a good idea. We take the word 'bomb' very seriously."

At that point, Shoshan says he gave up on the conference to focus on performing elsewhere in the city.

On Sunday, as conference attendees waited to check out, several were asked what they thought of Shoshan's camouflage flag. Most said, well, they hadn't noticed it.

Davis Performing Arts Center

Georgetown University will unveil the Royden B. Davis, S.J. Performing Arts Center -- the first academic building constructed at Georgetown in 20 years -- tomorrow at an open house.

Designed primarily for use by the theater program, the Davis Center, located near the university's main gate at 37th and O streets NW, features the Gonda Theatre, a 235-seat proscenium space, and the Devine Studio Theatre, a flexible "black box" space that will seat 80 to 100. Rehearsal studios, classrooms, costume and scene shops, and faculty offices are also included in the center.

"Theater was marginalized as an academic discipline," says Maya Roth, director of the university's theater program and artistic director of the Davis Center, which she calls "a move toward putting arts at the center of the intellectual life of the university community."

The complex will be open to the public tomorrow from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. The inaugural production at the center, "Our Country's Good," opens Saturday.

For more information, call 202-687-3838 or visit http://performingarts.georgetown.edu/davis .