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Making 'Sistahs' Sing: It's All Relative
From left, "Three Sistahs" company members Felicia Curry, Crystal Fox, Bernardine Mitchell and Roz White surround composer William Hubbard at MetroStage.
(By Colin Hovde -- Metrostage)
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The result is "Songs for a New World," the company's reinterpretation of composer-lyricist Jason Robert Brown's 1995 song cycle. It will run tomorrow through Aug. 26 at Round House Theatre Silver Spring. Military folks with ID can purchase 2-for-1 tickets.
Richard has taken Brown's variously dramatic, romantic, comedic, searching and spiritual songs about people on the brink of cosmic life shifts and with his permission infused the revue with a story about the emotional struggles of two soldiers going to Iraq, and of their families. With no dialogue, the saga will unfold through "a lot of acting choices, transition choices," says Richard, who is directing.
One song, "The Flagmaker, 1775," presumably about Betsy Ross, will surely hit home with its lyric "One more star, one more stripe, as you pray your child's not dead." Among the other songs in the "New World" cycle, "Stars and the Moon" has been covered by Audra McDonald and others.
"It took some doing in this town to get Jason Robert Brown's e-mail!" exclaims Richard, who says she got the sense that the contact info for the Tony-winning composer of "Parade" and "The Last Five Years" was classified. Then she asked Signature Theatre's well-connected Eric Schaeffer, who happily supplied the address.
Richard, who was born with osteogenesis imperfecta, is 4 feet tall and uses crutches, says she always tells her variously abled actors to "take care of each other" onstage -- not unlike soldiers in battle.
Follow Spots
· Theater J will reprise its recent well-reviewed production of "Pangs of the Messiah" Aug. 28-Sept. 16. Set in the future, Israeli dramatist Motti Lerner's play is about a family of Jewish settlers forced to leave the West Bank under a new peace agreement. Visit http:/
· Taffety Punk Theatre Company will present "The Devil in His Own Words," a study of Satan excerpted from many sources and performed by Marcus Kyd, directed by Lise Bruneau, with music written and sung by Kathy Cashel. It will run Friday through Aug. 26 at Flashpoint's Mead Theatre Lab, 916 G St. NW. Visit http:/
· Longacre Lea, the professional non-Equity troupe that performs only in summer, will do Harold Pinter's "The Hothouse" Aug. 15-Sept. 9 at Callan Theatre at Catholic University. Kathleen Akerley will stage the play, which takes place in a mental hospital. Visit http:/
