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Running time 2:00 - one intermission
Three distinctive, blues-tinged short stories
Performances at the Atlas Performing Arts Center on H Street NE

Storyline: Three short stories of life for black Americans in the first half of the twentieth century are treated with a touch of blues linking the three together. One involves an abusive marriage, another a love filled marriage tested by temptation, and the third captures the spirit of high-style of Manhattan's 125 Street during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.

"Spunk" is the title of a short story by Hurston, a novelist and short story writer known principally as a folklorist for her dedication to capturing and preserving the folk culture of black America of the 1910s, 20s and 30s. Her childhood was spent in rural Florida, site of two of the three stories included in this production. She then attended Howard University here in Washington before moving to Harlem, as that community north of New York's Central Park was exploding with up-to-the-minute artistic endeavors from jazz to dance, theater, painting, sculpture, fashion and literature. In 1988, George C. Wolfe adapted these three stories for the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. Later, it was mounted by the Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival.

The woman at the center of each of the three stories is played with intriguing distinctions between the three characters by Jessica Frances Dukes, who was so good in the Theater Alliance's The Bluest Eye last year at the H Street Playhouse just down the block from the Atlas where this production is playing. Shane Taylor, Andrew Honeycutt and Donovan Hagins share most of the male roles - most, that is, with the exception of a notable life-sized puppet designed by Marie Schneggenberger. Taylor creates characterizations as distinctively different from each other as they are from the condemned man he played so magnificently in the Round House production of A Lesson Before Dying, which also featured great work by KenYatta Rogers - that time as an actor instead of a director.

Tony Cisek's set seems simple at first, with ample open playing space on a stage constructed at one corner of the black box that is the Sprenger Theatre in the Atlas. Three receding structures of timbers toped by roof girders provide all the definition needed to establish locales in both the rural south and the urban north. The evolving personalities of the characters, the colorful costumes by Erin Nugent and the atmospheric music written by a composer with the unusual name of Chic Street Man, as well as a few blues numbers from the period, give the three stories unique touches.

Adapted by George C. Wolfe from the stories of Zora Neale Hurston. Directed by KenYatta Rogers.  Music by Chic Street Man. Music direction by William F. Hubbard. Choreographed by Michael J. Bobbitt. Fight choreography by Casey Kaleba. Design: Tony Cisek (set) Erin Nugent (costumes) Timothy Jones (properties) Marie Schneggenberger (puppets) Dan Covey (lights) David Lamont Wilson (sound) Cliff Russell (photography) Jay Kohn (production manager). Cast: Michel Baytop, Jessica Frances Dukes, Donovan Hagins, Andrew Honeycutt, Shane Taylor, Pam Ward.

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Running time 2:45 - one intermission
t A Potomac Stages Pick for an intriguing approach to an important slice of history as a play with music
Performances at the Atlas Performing Arts Center

Storyline: A troupe of "interpreters" work to provide simultaneous translations of the testimony before South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission between 1996 and 1998. They struggle first to maintain some semblance of objectivity and detachment from the horrors they describe day after day, but the stories of those abused and of the abusers which they have to put into words day after day become part of each of them. As a mixed race group, they bring their own backgrounds to the process and each reacts to different aspects of the horrors in a different way. In their off hours, they develop friendships and share the problems of their own families and friends.

Like The Laramie Project, this play is a highly theatrical presentation of the results of a team's exploration of a hard-to-believe slice of human history which gives faces to the usually anonymous perpetrators, victims and affected parties of atrocity. Like My Children! My Africa! it breathes life into the consequences of  prejudice, hatred, subjugation and fear. Like A Chorus Line, the play itself concerns the experiences of a group of dedicated individuals brought together in a common effort. While A Chorus Line deals with dancers trying to get into a show, Truth in Translation deals with interpreters trying to handle the day-to-day pressures of living with the stories they translate. This is "a play with music" and not a musical. Music here is an element used to add flavor and atmosphere to a story told principally in dialogue.

Lessac is an American director based in New York where he helped found the Colonnades Theatre Lab in Greenwich Village along with Danny DeVito and Peter Scolari. He directed the adaptation of Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy at Arena Stage here in 1980. He's devoted much of the last six years to the creation of this piece, enlisting South Africa's Hugh Masekela in the project to give the piece its beating rhythmic heart. The spare set design features chairs and wheeled chests which can be set on end to create walls or laid flat to be tables and platforms. Adding to the mix is a collection of often disturbing film clips projected on a back-wall screen made up of many colored shirts. The cast is multi-racial, ranging in age from young-adult to mature with a wide range of accents and attitudes.

Lessac's determination to explore the work of the commission through the eyes of its translators is a fascinating one. The show begins with the newly hired translators being instructed "Do not get involved." It is an instruction that seems directed at the audience, a challenge to maintain some objectivity. While we are soon immersed in the matter-of-fact descriptions of outrages, we also see the translators trying to release some of their own tensions with drinking songs, dances and diversions. Each of the eleven in the cast has an individual story. But the play isn't about their stories. It is about their experience during the two year period of this one assignment. So each of these "back stories" functions as a way to make the individuals unique. Still, you do get involved in the issues affecting the television documentarian, the comforter and other individuals as they struggle with their task. As the translator, played by Jenny Stead, says so emphatically when a fellow translator slips and attributes something she translated to her instead of the witness: "I'm Clair. I interpret. But I'm always Clair."

Conceived and directed by Michael Lessac. Music by Hugh Masekela. Book by Paavo Tom Tammi, Michael Lessac and the Truth in Translation company of actors. Dramaturge and additional dialogue by Craig Higginson. Design: Gerhard Marx (set) Maya Marx (costumes)  Mannie Manim and C.J. Marshall (lights) Wesley France (original lighting design) Simon Mahoney (sound) Ruphin Coudyzer (photography) J.J. Marshall (stage manager). Cast: Quanita Adams, Nick Boraine, Andrew Buckland, Baby Cele, Sibulele Gcilitshana, Robert Koen, Bongani Gumede, Jeroen Kranenburg, Sandile Matsheni, Sello Clifford Sebotsane, Jenny Stead. Musicians: Ray Molefe, Sfiso Tshabalala.

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Storyline: Seven recipients of the nation's highest honor for valor among members of its military services, the  medal of honor, tell their own stories, not only of the acts that earned them the medals but of the lives they lived leading up to their moment of testing on battlefields in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. They include Senator Daniel K. Inouye who was cited for his bravery in Italy in World War II, Ross Perot's Vice Presidential Ticket-mate James Stockdale who spent seven long years as a POW in Vietnam, and Vernon Baker whose 1997 Medal of Honor ceremony at President Clinton's White House corrected the slight that no black soldier of World War II had been awarded the medal despite incredible contributions of African American troops in that war. 

The magic of this presentation is that each of the seven Medal of Honor winners are presented in old age, reminiscing about their award and the events leading up to their service. This humanizes the winners and adds perspective to the portrayal of their combat experiences. But the real magic is the way Lang de-mystifies these heroes. The message is that, as unbelievable as these men's actions on battlefields may have been, the important thing is that these are normal (one can't use the term average) Americans who responded to extraordinary times. As many of them say, "I was just doing my job."

Tony Cisek has designed a simple but effective set, a circular platform before a projection screen. When Lang first appears on the set it comes as a shock to see how small the playing space is. Soon the shock subsides and the focus centers on Lang's superbly crafted performance which creates seven very different characters with a simple change of shirt and a not so simple change in posture and body language.

The two hundred seat theater in The Women in Military Service for America Memorial  is an unknown jewel. You can drive over the Memorial Bridge from the Lincoln Memorial, round the traffic circle and proceed up Memorial Drive or you can take the Metro's blue line to the Arlington Cemetery Station. Subway riders coming up the escalator will find themselves looking down Memorial Drive toward the memorial which is the semi-circular structure at the end of the roadway. Arrive early and spend some time visiting the exhibits of the memorial and take one of the four staircases up to the roof level where views of Arlington Cemetery and Washington are spectacular.

Directed and adapted for the stage by Stephen Lang from the book by Larry Smith. Design: Tony Cisek (set) Dan Covey (lights) Tracy C. Couch (video)  Robert Kessler and Ethan Neuburg (music) Scott Burgess (sound) Diane Williams (photography) Roy A. Gross (stage manager). Cast: Stephen Lang.