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Reviewed November 25
Running time 2:05 - one intermission
A competently constructed propaganda play in a spotty production at the Warehouse

Storyline: A group advocating full rights for the District of Columbia finally go all out and organize not just a protest but a full fledged secession from the nation that denies them voting rights. In alliance with groups opposing the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, they shut down the civil structure of the city for a while but are met with overwhelming force by the government of the United States.

The issue of the lack of voting representation in either the House of Representatives or the Senate for the residents of the District of Columbia, whose city government budget and legislative power is subject to Congressional control, is rarely examined in the popular literature either on page or on stage. Here is a healthy effort to dramatize the dichotomy of the reality of the district's status as the capital of a free nation and the rights accorded to its residents. Still, it is a dramatization that is missing any intellectually rigorous attempt to explain the origin of the policy now in place, or the refusal of the powers that be to rectify what Voss clearly sees as an unconscionable injustice. Without that balance, the play is - as is Gunatanamo - a shot across the bow of the proponents of the lamented policy and an effort to wake the unconcerned to the injustice. Such pieces can make effective propaganda but rarely make effective drama.

Director Randall's staging of the piece is impressive for its use of the available space, and for at least one fine use of slow motion. The Warehouse, with its deep and high playing space at one end of what was once literally a warehouse, is divided into multiple playing areas on the ground level and at a second story at the rear of the room. Randall uses the entrances and exits of individual characters and the glances off stage to create the very real impression that the world extends beyond the boundaries of the set. This serves the episodic nature of the play quite well. She, or fight choreographer Monalisa Arias, also impresses with a slow-motion confrontation between row after row of protestors approaching the White House and armed defenders. The slow-motion effect removes the scene from the sense of reality that would call attention to the fact that the ranks are just three groups of three who repeatedly approach, fall and retreat. Because it is so stylized, it is easy to accept this as a mass demonstration. Unfortunately, that marvelously effective scene is followed by a stodgy argument scenes with enough pregnant pauses to incubate an elephant. Each character recites her lines and then quietly and respectfully listens as others argue with their view. No one interrupts, no one speaks rapidly and none of the lines topple over each other and yet this is supposed to be a heated, heartfelt argument.

Barbara K. Asare-Bediako enunciates each telling political point as if reciting from a textbook as the supposedly charismatic leader of the movement, and an unsuitably soft-spoken Faith Dukes is the revolutionary from the streets. Only Josh Drew manages to make his lines as the manipulative behind-the-scenes organizer sound fresh and believable.

Written by Lisa Voss. Directed by Deborah Lou Randall. Fight choreography by Monalisa Arias. Design: Cat (set) Marianne Meadows (lights) Denman Anderson (sound) Lisa Helfert (photography) Kate Jeffries (stage manager). Cast: Barbara K. Asare-Bediako, Josh Drew, Faith Dukes, Michelle Evans, Kenny Littlejohn, Ali Miller, Alexandra Mudry, Wendy Nogales, Shelby Sours, Clementine Thomas, Michelle Urcuyo, Monte J. Wolfe.

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Reviewed May 5
Running time 2:55 - one intermission
Performed in the Attic at the Warehouse Theatre Sexual themes and violence

Storyline: A Puerto Rican woman in a big American city is fascinated by Herman Melville's novel as she interacts in reality and imagination with her lesbian lover, the spirit of Marilyn Monroe, and three sailors named John.

Cruz's script is lyrical and quotable but its very episodic nature makes this staging concept a problem. With quick shifts from locale to locale, the audience at times has just settled in when it is asked to move again to another room or to the other side of the same room. All the shifting adds time to the performance and the play is a lengthy one already. The result is that it takes nearly three hours to perform what might be much more interesting in a two hour version. While there is no nudity, there is a lot of skin exposed at very close range and the story itself includes painful episodes.

A stage manager leads the dozen or so audience members between rooms, carrying a digital music player which provides the equivalent of segue music, and indicating where the audience should stand or sit for the upcoming action. This could be a key role in the hands of an actor or actress who could inject some energy and interest into the unique staging concept. As done here by Michelle Evans, however, there is a lack of energy that puts a damper on the evening after the initial intrigue wears off.

As the Puerto Rican woman, Monalisa Arias is a strong presence with a smoldering moodiness that contrasts nicely with the energy and anger of Laura Rocklyn as her lover. The strongest performance, however, comes from Ellie Nicoll as Marilyn Monroe, who had been dead for thirty-five years by the time of the story. She manages to capture the essence of Monroe's public image without descending into a night-club impersonation. The three men in the story are really plot points rather than characters but they are played smoothly.

Written by Migdalia Cruz. Directed by Deborah Randall. Fight choreography by Monalisa Arias. Design: Jessica Palmer (costumes and properties) Denman Anderson (sound) Michelle Evans (stage manager). Cast: Monalisa Arias, Frank Britton, Terence Heffernan, Ellie Nicoll, Francisco Reinoso, Laura Rocklyn.

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April 16 - May 16, 2004
Ugly Ducklings

Reviewed April 18
Running time 2 hours 15 minutes
Playing at the Warehouse Theatre

Storyline: On the lakeside dock at a camp for young girls, campers, counselors and the camp administrator confront various problems arising from one counselor's unorthodox appearance, manner and apparent sexual preference.

Playwright Carolyn Gage may be writing a polemic but she dresses it up in the trappings of a theater piece concerned primarily with character development and revelation. She provides enough plotline to keep it from being static and gives a number of characters enough interesting traits and touches of individuality to draw a willing audience into the world of these young girls: both the young campers and the still-young counselors. While her views on what the ideal world would offer and on the injustices of both the official treatment of one counselor's unorthodoxy and the less institutional but no less disturbing suspicion of any individuality by the group are clear throughout, she manages to avoid excessive moralizing until trapped by the necessity to wrap up the plot points at the end.

MaConnia Chesser delivers the most moving performance as the lesbian inner-city, poverty-and-broken-home black girl who has inexplicably been hired by the experienced camp administrator as a counselor despite her array of body and face piercing jewelry, tattoos, rainbow-colored dreadlocks and the lack of traditional camping experience or interests (she explains that she can't swim by saying "it wasn't a survival skill on my street"). Chesser can be a bit wooden at the beginning of a scene but she can throw herself into an argument or a tender moment with a refreshing intensity. More polished but not reaching the same intensity are Cindy Marie Martin as the less obviously unorthodox counselor who, at the outset, doesn't know she's in any kind of closet and Linda Kenyon as the camp administrator who is the voice of the establishment.

The play is being performed in Warehouse's small space adjacent to the main lobby. This tiny room has had a series of interesting and effective set designs. For this play, Paul Kelm constructs a realistic boat dock with a sandy beach and sections of real canoes. The dock thrusts out to mere inches from the front of the four rows of seats putting some of the action all but in the audience's lap. After seeing the same space contain a claustrophobia-inducing prison cell designed by Kim Deane for the recent Deathwatch, it is fascinating to see it now offering a reasonable facsimile of the open spaces of a summer camp. Such is the magic of theater!

Written by Carolyn Gage. Directed by Deb Randall. Design: Paul Kelm (scenic design) Kerri Rambow (costumes) Lisa Helfert (photography) Nicole Franklin-Kern (stage manager). Cast: Anastasia Albinson, Rhonda Carter, MaConnia Chesser, Madi Ferguson, Rosalie Fischer, Madeline Hall, Destiny R. Jackson, Kathryn Kelly, Linda Kenyon, Cindy Marie Martin, Ellenor Riley-Condit, Annie Shenton, KC Wright.

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Reviewed July 30
Running time 1 hour 45 minutes

Storylines: The five short pieces involve such concepts as a jail-cell conversation between women imprisoned during the Civil War, a scene that turns the 1950’s song “Standing on the Corner Watching All The Girls Go By” on its head by making it girls who are watching the boys go by and the meeting of two sleepwalkers who must have been brought together by their dreams.

The five pieces are performed without an intermission in the tiny space behind the art gallery of the District of Columbia Arts Center (DCAC) on 18th Street. It is a very intimate space with black walls which feels isolated from the outside world. Director Deborah Randall takes advantage of the ability to use very dark black-outs to separate the pieces nicely.

There is a sense of camaraderie among the ensemble of five women emphasized by their entrance and exit too the tune of “bad girls.” This is not the only time that the sound system is used to make a point or set a scene. The vignette “Venus in the Morning” is scored with Gustav Holst’s music from the “Venus” movement of “The Planets.”

Last year’s summer festival, titled “Bad Girls, Women Behaving Badly,” included works by three authors. This year’s has the work of five including Lisa Voss who had a work in last year's festival as well. She’s the author of this year’s “Wolf Whistle” of girls scoping out the boys on the corner. The performers are different this year and this time they are all female.

Written by Evan Guilford-Blake, Mia McCullough, Kim Moore, Lisa Voss, Kristen A. Williams.  Directed by Deborah Randall. Design:  Alan Michael Scott (music) Angela Peterson (photography) Clementine Thomas (stage manager.) Cast: Elizabeth Darby, Donna Davis, Sara Fischer, Angela Lahl, Meg Taintor.

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August 12 – 25, 2002
Women Behaving Badly: Suffrage on Stage

Reviewed August 13
Running time 2 hours 10 minutes

The one-act format has the virtue of allowing writers to play around with interesting ideas and concept which could not or should not be stretched too far. The assembling of a number of one act plays in a single evening’s program has the virtue that if one misfires, it isn’t long until another one comes along to spark your interest.

Storyline: Stories range from a piece of theatrical propaganda in support of suffrage masquerading as comedy in which well-to-do activists convince one of their friends to get involved in the cause until she discovers that her own fortune is invested in sweat shops, to a short destruction of a fairy tale wedding story through the interjection of the facts a fairytale writer would have glossed over. The most carefully plotted is Lisa Voss’ Psychodrama of a stalking victim who turns the tables not only on the stalker but on the society that fails to protect her from such a threat, while the most intriguing may be Julianne Homokay’s two-woman play speculating on a meeting over lunch at a seaside cafe between sisters Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra of Greek fame. To help those whose command of Greek mythology may be a bit rusty, the theater includes a helpful précis in the program.

Written by Gertrude Jennings, Lisa Voss and Julianne Homokay. Directed by Deborah Randall and Carol Herin Jordan. Cast: Jjana Valentiner, Kate Revelle, Jason Lott, Jason Lemire, Cody Lindquist, Jessica Gotta, Dan DeLuca, Joshua McCarthy.