MARDI GRAS FAT TUESDAY – MARCH 8 Rio, Mobile Alabama, New Orleans, Trinidad Tobago, Venice, Quebec City, Sydney, Belgium, Germany….Last party day before Lent. Here’s a clip from my friend Philip Day’s documentary “Inside Rio Carnival.” ACTORS,DIRECTORS, PRODUCERS The Department of Radio, TV & Film at Howard University presents CASTING AND AUDITIONING FOR YOU: THE [...]
Aside from being outstanding performers, what do Phylicia Rashad, Debbie Allen, Taraji P. Henson, Lynn Whitfield, Tracie Thoms, Isaiah Washington, Anthony Anderson, and Jeffrey Wright share in common? They were trained by Vera J. Katz. I was trained by Vera J. Katz as a playwright. Vera suggested and directed my first full-length play while she [...]
The New and Enclosed Arena Stage Once Arena Stage started their capital campaign to expand their complex, it became part of a larger urban plan for the Southwest waterfront area. At this point the new Mead Center for American Theater holds more than just the landmark Fichandler main stage and Kreeger stage inside the glass [...]
It’s festival summer time in DC. Hip Hop Theater Festival starts today. It’s hot-hot-hot. The Capital Fringe Festival opens Thursday, July 8 — “where everyone’s story has value!” Screen on the Green is back! I’ve heard rumblings that this free outdoor film festival on the National Mall (between the Lincoln Memorial and US Capitol) was [...]
“My identity is very clear to me now. I am a black woman. I’m free. I no longer have to be a ‘credit.’ I don’t have to be a symbol to anybody; I don’t have to be a first to anybody. I don’t have to be an imitation of a white woman that Hollywood sort [...]
The Washington Post’s Peeps Show/Contest has become one of my favorite spring traditions. And this year is no exception in terms of creativity and talent. I never thought Peeps were food in the first place. Always left them in my Easter basket. My favorites were the chocolate anything and the colored eggs. This year the [...]
All my life, I lived or was schooled by the adages “The show must go on.” “One monkey don’t stop no show.” What happened with Terrence McNally’s “Lips Together, Teeth Apart” at Roundabout Theater in NYC?? – Actress Megan Mullally quits before the April 9 preview performances and the show’s cancelled. Help me Ethel Merman! [...]
This is the last week of the Man Ray, African Art and the Modernist Lens exhibit at the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. If you know DC, you know it’s tough for a native like me to shell out $12 to see an art exhibit with all the free Smithsonians in town. But even with [...]
SYMPOSIUM: Cuba in the World: Literature, Politics, Performance Over the weekend, I had the pleasure of meeting Ariel Fernandez at the Future of Music Policy Summit. Ariel’s working on a new documentary “Hip-Hop in Cuba: a Revolution Within the Revolution.” He sent me an email to let me know that he’s in DC this week [...]
Vera Katz called me a week ago to give me the heads up on a reading she’s directing of a new work by Caleen Sinette Jennings. My ears immediately perked up. Caleen is a very talented playwright. I’ve shared the one-act festival stage with her at Source Theatre here in DC. There were those nights [...]
