Alas, Poor Washington

Political Drama Defines D.C., but It's Conspicuously Absent on Area Stages

Jenifer Deal is aching to play Rachel Corrie. So taken was she with the one-woman play about the young American activist killed by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza in 2003 that the Washington actress tried to shop "My Name Is Rachel Corrie" around town. She even persuaded Theater J Artistic Director Ari Roth to test the waters by staging a reading of it at the D.C. Jewish Community Center, where the company is based.

Roth, however, decided that although "Rachel Corrie" was interesting -- with its implicit criticism of U.S. support for Israel -- it wasn't right for a Jewish theater.

It's apparent that no other Washington company is clamoring for it, either. Securing the performance rights at the moment is admittedly a problem -- the controversial work, originally produced in London and adapted from Corrie's e-mails, letters and journals, is being readied for a splashy off-Broadway debut next month.

Still, there's something illustrative about the utter lack of urgency toward this hot-button play among the theaters of the nation's capital: When it comes to putting politics on its stages, Washington is a pretty buttoned-up town.

You might think that this city of power, process and protocol would be one of the most receptive places on earth for topical art, for plays mirroring its day-to-day obsessions. And with the midterm elections coming up, there does seem to be a slight uptick this fall in works that play off the news: Arena Stage is importing "Nine Parts of Desire," a solo show about Iraqi women. Ford's Theatre is reviving "State of the Union," a post-World War II electoral comedy. Woolly Mammoth Theatre is playing host to "Get Your War On," an adaptation by a company from Austin of the popular online political comic strip.

Yet it's safe to say that on the subject of overtly political theater, this home to leaders seems to have little desire to lead.

Plays tackling the issues of our time are rarely born here, and those with such a focus arrive well after they have gained cultural traction. "Homebody/Kabul," Tony Kushner's sprawling saga of Westerners caught up in the turmoil of Afghanistan under the Taliban, wasn't produced locally until 2004 -- 2 1/2 years and several productions after its New York premiere. "Democracy," Michael Frayn's portrait of charismatic leadership in the former West Germany, bowed in London in 2003 and New York in 2004 -- and at last gets a Washington production at Olney Theatre Center, in the summer of 2007.

Some lag time might be unavoidable. Even so, some major writers, such as Kushner and David Hare, whose metier is often national and global affairs, have expressed a certain disappointment with the level at which Washington engages their work.

Although his recent plays have stirred audiences here, Kushner told me (at the time of his work "Homebody") that a desultory local response to his landmark "Angels in America," which stopped at the Kennedy Center a decade ago, still sticks in his craw.

Astonishingly, Hare's "Stuff Happens," an inventive reconstruction of the Bush administration's planning for the war in Iraq, has had no D.C. takers, even though -- with a cast of characters that includes Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and the president himself -- it is the most Washington of plays.

Hare himself was eager to see the play performed here, but he said in an interview in April, at the time of the "Stuff Happens" premiere in New York, that he was turned down.

"I've had responses from certain unnamed Washington theaters that said, 'Oh, we're always asked to do these kinds of plays,' " Hare recalled. He attributed the lack of interest in part to a sense that for all its worldliness, Washington remains an insular environment for the performing arts, especially in comparison with European cities, often the seats of government as well as culture.