Decamping D.C.: Venus Theatre Moves To a Laurel 'Shack'

"Ithought I would really miss the city, but I don't," says director and actor Deborah Lou Randall, founder of Venus Theatre.

Late in 2005, Randall and her edgy feminist company were doing Lisa Voss's "A Little Rebellion Now" at the Warehouse. An underground explosion on Seventh Street NW blew off a manhole cover and caused power outages at the theater. "I thought perhaps the Goddess was speaking to me," jokes Randall. She took the hint and left downtown to reinvent Venus in Laurel, where she and her partner, guitarist-composer Alan Michael Scott, were living.

Randall found a storefront at 21 C St. in a historic section of Laurel -- a quiet block peopled by independent artisans. There she created the Venus Theatre Play Shack -- making the risers for the stage, laying the springy Masonite floor herself and finding a sound system at Target.

With theater artists who stuck with Randall after the move and some newcomers, Venus now offers original musicals for kids (they just closed "Beatrice! or Boogsnot and the Disco Dancing Meltdown of the Snows"), a Gymboree-style mommy-and-baby exercise class, and summer camps to teach girls ages 10 to 14 how to express themselves theatrically.

"I want to get them finding their own voices and telling stories," says Randall. And she wants the campers to learn proper theater skills: "I can't stand when people get bad training, especially when they're young."

When response was slow in the Play Shack's early days last year, Randall detoured from Venus's new kid-centric agenda and performed two solo works: "Molly Daughter" (recently published, it's part of her obsession with the Molly Maguires) and "How She Plays the Game," about female sports icons. "Every once in a while, people came," she jokes.

But Randall isn't joking about keeping Venus's feminist core. She still holds monthly readings and has a 10-year goal of finding another nearby space for new-play workshops while the Play Shack remains for children.

City folk can hear Venus's trademark roar at this summer's Capital Fringe Festival in July, when Randall presents her riff on Aristophanes' antiwar comedy "Lysistrata." Titled "Lysistration," it's her answer to rape.

Mostly, though, Randall does her Play Shack thing and dreams of more. "It's wonderful having a home," she says. "It's like I can breathe."

ArtStream

The space alien with the nose and tail of a fox observes earthlings sitting at a diner and surreptitiously records: "Fox's log number 4003 . . . these terrestrials wear strange uniforms. . . . Fox out."

Corey Fox, from a planet of anthropomorphic fox creatures, learns that the folks in the diner are actually superheroes and that their efforts to save the world are undermined by a villain who hynotizes one of their comrades.

"Lost in a Dream at the Super Hero Diner (observations by a fox)" is an original play created by a group of adults with cognitive and physical disabilities, working with theater professionals in ArtStream Silver Spring Inclusive Theatre Company.