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

By Jane Horwitz
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, May 30, 2007

"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.

The 45-minute piece will be presented over the next two weekends at Round House Theatre's Silver Spring space. (Visit http://www.art-stream.org.) ArtStream, a nonprofit founded by Patricia Woolsey, grew out of her experience directing shows for kids with special needs at Imagination Stage in Bethesda. The New Jersey native trained in theater at Catholic University and has a graduate degree in mythology and psychology.

For disabled kids who loved doing theater, there was no place to go after their teen years in Imagination Stage's program and, Woolsey notes, "the need was great." She took over two groups from Imagination Stage and formed two more. ArtStream operates one program in Silver Spring, one in Arlington and two in Gaithersburg.

Although people must audition, "we do our best to accept everyone, as long as they don't have any severe emotional disabilities and can get along in a group," says Woolsey. "Our mission is to bring art to as many people as we can."

Groups of 10 to 15 adults with disabilities can take drama classes or sign up for the longer-term theater projects. The ArtStream shows are based on the participants' improvisations, eventually scripted by a director and rehearsed. The whole process represents six months of weekly two-hour sessions. It costs $550 to attend.

In "Lost in a Dream," Russell Lefurgy, 23, plays the space visitor. Lefurgy has high-functioning autism and loves "furries" -- anthropomorphic animals. He invented the character of Corey, whom he calls a "fursona."

Audiences for ArtStream shows tend to be family and friends of the actors, but even then, says Woolsey, "I think it challenges the expectations the audience members have of people with disabilities."

Follow Spots

· At the intimate theater space it owns at 14th and T streets NW, Arena Stage will hold a reading on Monday at 7 p.m. of a new play about Hurricane Katrina. "The Breach," by Catherine Filloux, Joe Sutton and Tarell McCraney and based on interviews they did in New Orleans and Mississippi, is having readings across the country and will get full productions in September at New Orleans's Southern Repertory Theater and in January at Seattle Repertory Theatre. Jennifer L. Nelson will direct Arena's reading. Visit http://www.arenastage.org or call 202-488-3300.

· Actors' Theatre of Washington has changed its name to Ganymede Arts. The company, which performs at Source Theatre, specializes in plays by or about people who are gay, bisexual or transgender. Ganymede (from Greek myth about a Trojan boy taken as a lover by Zeus) will also present dance, musical performances, poetry readings and art shows. Visit http://www.ganymedearts.org.

· The Liz Lerman Dance Exchange will present "Farthest Earth From Thee: A Suite of Sonnets" (the title borrows from Shakespeare's Sonnet 44), Saturday and Sunday at American University's Greenberg Theatre, 4200 Wisconsin Ave. NW. Commissioned by VSA Arts and developed with the help of Suzanne Richard of Open Circle Theatre as part of the Shakespeare in Washington fest, the piece will feature performers with and without disabilities. Call 202-885-2587 or visit http://www.american.edu/academic.depts/cas/greenberg.