D.C.’s Most Important Event: Cappies Gala as Vanguard

As neither a politician (in the traditional sense) nor seasoned actor, I am not used to being on a stage and asked to speak passionately in front of a lot of people like I did this week at the Kennedy Center.

There are fewer more iconic stages in this country, especially outside of New York or L.A., than that at the Washington, D.C., Kennedy Center, whose concert hall holds 2,500, and where I am a frequent attendee for concerts by the National Symphony Orchestra and other things.

This Monday night, that venue was jammed to capacity for the 23rd version of the Cappies Gala, the revolutionary project launched in 1999 that organizes high school students as critics highlighting and reviewing productions of regional high school plays and musicals. Student critics and performers alike were present and honored, along with proud parents to jam the place to the rafters, and it is doubtful that more noise has ever, ever been generated there by the thousands of energized students screaming and howling at the top of their lungs for their friends as nominations and winners were being announced, which happened scores of times.

The last two years I’ve had the honor of being the first award presenter. Last year, when I opened by saying, “Happy Pride” (in recognition of the month’s celebration of LGBTQ+ people), the place went nuts.

This year, I started with, “This is probably the most important event going on in Washington these days,” and then explained. “It’s because we are now in a time when there is a big push to turn back the clock culturally and I am very proud to be among this rising vanguard to fight against that on behalf of creativity and inclusion,” I said. That brought cheers.

Frankly, I find the whole Cappies operation, including the annual gala at the Kennedy Center, to be the most upbeat and affirming exercise I can think of.

Seeing all the high school talent and their caring parents, teach- ers and mentors all moving around the lobby dressed to the nines, I couldn’t help but think of the famous saying by Eleanor Roosevelt that “beautiful young people are acts of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.” Everyone looked absolutely fabulous, and it was the collective affirmation of creativity and inclusion expressed in the hundreds of huge cheers during the show that was the most stunning.

When thanked beforehand by one of the event’s organizers for my role in supporting the Cappies, including by publishing all Cappie reviews in my newspaper, the Falls Church News-Press, I told her it has always been my conviction that journalism is among the arts and that this whole operation is a recognition of that.

This year, the Cappies of the National Capital Area, the original chapter that is now an expanding movement nationwide, involved 41 participating schools performing 37 plays and musicals, 282 voting critics, 1,813 reviews written and 254 reviews published.

Cappies organizers take pride that theirs is “the only high school theater awards program in the U.S. and Canada where the students, not the adults, decide who should be recognized with nominations and awards.”

And truly this represents the best hope for our democracy going forward. There is a direct, passionate link between free and fair voting, fair and equal treatment by our society’s institutions, and expressive affirmations of the inclusion of all in our society, of the inherent creative potential in each and all, and the beauty of love, compassion and their unconventional aspects.

Our society at this point has the choice between moving forward in the direction of even more diversity and affirmation, toward the day in our evolution when gender and race are completely blurred on behalf of a more advanced sense of our cosmic identity, or backward to our culturally prehistoric days of cruel male supremacist authoritarianism.

With the forward direction come the affirmations of the mind, of science and the magnificence of the universe of which we are a part, and in which science and beauty are one.

In the backward trending world, superstition and big cultural lies dominate a world where might makes right.

Our Man in Arlington

By Charlie Clark

As the nation celebrates July 4, Katie Cristol, after seven-plus exhausting years on the county board, will be embarking on vacation. And then a new job.

The news of her departure six months early came May 2 from her new employer, the Tysons Community Alliance, for whom she’d been consulting before being named its first CEO. Contrary to rumor, the business improvement partnership launched last February is not a tool of developers, but a government-funded “independent, non-profit community improvement organization committed to the ongoing transformation of Tysons, Virginia, into a vibrant, inclusive, globally attractive urban center.”

Cristol, 38, is not privy to board colleagues’ deliberations on whom to replace her, though Takis Karontonis took her slot on the Northern Virginia Transportation Commission.

In an interview with this columnist, Cristol — who will still reside in Arlington — looked back on highand low-lights and such subjects as the pandemic, political culture and contentious housing issues.

Cristol’s biggest moment, she says, was board approval in March 2019 of zoning changes that boosted access to affordable child care by changing home permits and parking.

“The date, March 9, was when my son was born seven weeks early,” she says, “and we took a virtual vote seven days later. When a person comes to the board with a different life experience, they elevate different issues, and being a new parent is incredibly meaningful.”

For her lowest, Cristol cites the early weeks of the Covid vaccine.

“The staff administered the vaccine incredibly, but it fell to the local government to decide who gets this life-saving resource,” she says. The crisis meant “a million little implementation decisions and creating a platform to assign times and dates,” with tradeoffs and challenges for seniors and teachers.

“Ultimately it provided dividends in high vaccination rates, and we should be proud.” But people were “homebound, terrified and stressed.”

On the tone of Arlington’s political discourse, Cristol notes that while her tenure began a year before the Trump presidency, she perceives a related change in attitudes. “People began assuming ill-intent, corruption and incompetence, rather than recognition that people disagree and that Arlington is a diverse community,” she says. “There’s a multitude of voices that don’t agree. County board members can listen but still reach a different conclusion.” She stressed her efforts to “bring in under-represented voices,” particularly people of color.

The Missing Middle rezoning approved in March “is a relatively conservative, progressive-endorsed way” to encourage homeownership opportunities “with the same size and shape of existing single-family homes,” she says. The debate arrived during a “perfect storm” when the county was confronting “existential problems. If you’re a renter looking for a future, we may be losing your generation,” she says. She rejects the notion that an embarrassed staff tried to “rebrand” Missing Middle—“a helpful slo- gan for a housing form largely absent in communities across the USA.” But “you couldn’t codify the status of the problem in the zoning ordinance,” hence the change to “expanded housing options.”

Cristol, who accepted no developer donations, acknowledges uncertainty on whether builders now planning countywide will actually create lowerpriced units. The policy is based on studies of Arlington and elsewhere, and she has faith in consultant Partners for Economic Solutions’ examination of likely market conditions, which forecast 20 per year.

She disagrees with critics who say Missing Middle was divisive. “It exposed divisions that already existed.”

***

The historically marked Rosslyn parking garage where Washington Post Watergate reporter Bob Woodward famously received leaks from “Deep Throat” is not long for our streets.

Washington Business Journal May 31 reported that after nearly a decade of deliberation, Monday Properties, owner of the site at 1401 Wilson Blvd., is removing tenants and making ready for demolition and construction of two new high-rises for offices and retail.

“Deep Throat,” I can now reveal (kidding), who helped bring down President Nixon in 1974, was Mark Felt, then second-in-command at the FBI. The historic marker will stay, allowing Rosslyn to continue on the scandal tours.