Washington City Paper (May 25, 2018)

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Charter school consulting firm TenSquare claims that it can turn around struggling schools, but its results are thin and its publicly funded operations are impenetrable. P. 8

By Rachel M. Cohen

Housing: AnAcostiA sick of D.c. plAnning office 5 Politics: RepResentAtion foR heARing impAiReD 6 Art: ReplAce epA leADeRs with ActuAl weeDs 15

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INSIDE on tHe CoVer: tUrnaroUnD rUnaroUnD 8

Charter school consulting firm TenSquare has received millions of dollars from D.C. to turn around failing schools. But how they spend it remains a mystery.

DIStrICt LIne 5 housing complex: Continued frustration over the future of the Big K site in Anacostia 6 Make them hear you: Advocates fight to make local politics more inclusive for D.C.’s hearing impaired.

7 gear prudence

FooD 13 sauce-o-Meter: Ranking recent developments in the local food scene 13 hangover helper: Dacha Beer Garden’s Hangover Special 13 veg diner Monologues: Fancy Radish’s Rutabaga Fondue

artS 15 galleries: Capps on MORE or LESS at Hemphill and The Environmental Performance Agency (EPA): Department of Weedy Affairs at Transformer 16 curtain calls: Klimek on Saint Joan at Folger Theatre and The Small Room at the Top of the Stairs at Spooky Action Theater 17 opera: Jones on Washington National Opera’s Candide 18 short subjects: Gittell on First Reformed and Olszewski on Summer 1993 19 sketches: Keyes on A Right to the City at the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum

CIty LISt 21 26 27 28

Music Books Theater Film

DIVerSIonS 29 Savage Love 30 Classifieds 31 Crossword

Darrow MontgoMery 1900 Block of Martin luther king Jr. ave. Se, May 23

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DistrictLine Character Building

Eight years after D.C. acquired the Big K site in Anacostia, residents say they remain shut out of discussions.

By Morgan Baskin Months before forMer D.C. Mayor Marion Barry died in November of 2014, he testified before a panel of Historic Preservation Review Board officers to talk about the state of Ward 8.

It’s “a food desert,” he said. “A pharmaceutical desert. What we have now, up in Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, is junk. No offense to those on it, but it’s junk.” (He then criticized the overwhelming whiteness of the panel.)

Something that could help ameliorate those problems, Barry said, was the redevelopment of four parcels of land on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE that hosted two homes and the Big K liquor store. In 2010, the Department of Housing and Community Development acquired the land, bordered by Morris Road and Maple View Place SE, from a private owner.

Barry argued that the project would reinvigorate the area and bring much-needed relief to a part of the city that has historically not had fresh produce or grocery options.

Residents of the neighborhood are still petitioning the city for that same vision: a significant and attractive retail space to serve as an “economic catalyst” for the community.

They’ve been met, they say, with resistance.

DHCD originally planned to renovate the two houses “in a historically appropriate manner” and sell them at market rate, partially finance the rehabilitation of the Big K site, purchase another adjoining parcel, and help construct a five-story building with 114 units of affordable rental apartments (now called Maple View Flats) plus 14,500 square feet of retail space and two levels of underground parking.

Its development in the eight years since hasn’t been smooth. The project quickly ran into a series of problems, both financial and political: contentious Housing Preservation Review Board meetings and public roundtables, protests, and financial hurdles.

Perhaps the strongest and most recent public indictment of the project came from Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White, who staged a protest this spring in front of the construc-

Darrow Montgomery

housing complex

tion site at 2300 MLK Jr. Avenue SE. He said that the developer, Tim Chapman—who reportedly was awarded the site for $1—did not hire the required number of D.C. residents to work on its construction.

In March, White said that he requested a list of Ward 8 employees and subcontractors working on the project. Chapman gave him a list of 60 people, who White then contacted.

“Only 3 of the 60 people on the list were confirmed as actual employees,” White said, while “the remaining 57 contacts on the list denied having any employment status on the project.” White said Chapman’s involvement in the project embodies “‘pay to play’ politics in D.C.” (Chapman Development did not reply to a request for comment by press time.)

Allegations of that nature go back years, and they’ve played out in both private and public discussions with members of DHCD and the Office of Planning. Residents have complained about nearly every phase of the project: who got the bid to develop and construct it, the materials Chapman will use to build the apartment’s façade, how involved residents have been in the process, and what exactly the city is putting in the retail lot.

Their frustrations stem from an issue Barry gestured to in his testimony four years ago: a fundamental mistrust of District leaders when it comes to meaningful urban planning in Ward 8, and the belief that D.C. just isn’t in-

terested in adopting the suggestions of people who actually live in the neighborhood.

“Some people may not agree,” says LaTasha Gunnels, a four-year resident of the neighborhood, “but I think that socioeconomics plays a lot into it. We’re a working class community, the poorest ward in the city. Capitol Hill, Georgetown, all these other historic districts have a lot of retired attorneys, judges, doctors, accountants—people that can go to these [HPRB] meetings and really put pressure on the city. In Ward 8, a lot of people can’t take off of work and be on these politicians’ tails.

[The city] takes advantage of that.”

In July of 2016, a group of Anacostia residents and preservationists testified before AtLarge Councilmember Anita Bonds, chair of the Council’s housing committee, and Council Chairman Phil Mendelson. They raised a series of issues about the development of Big K, arguing that DHCD had flip-flopped on nailing down a plan for the site. They’d expected a retail space—the kind of mixed-use building that would turn MLK Avenue into a “grand boulevard,” as Barry testified in 2014.

Instead, the city planned on turning at least some of the 14,500 square feet into a child care facility. (The city has said a Starbucks will take up 3,000 square feet.) Jack Becker, then a three-year resident of W Street SE, told Bonds and Mendelson that “the project’s trajectory has been guided by ever-shifting goal posts,”

arguing that the city originally described the site as a potential space for an office building before moving onto a mixed-use retail establishment, then a housing complex and childcare facility when Chapman determined retail establishments wouldn’t be profitable.

Marcia Parkes, a neighborhood resident and member of the Historic Anacostia Preservation Society, condemned the city for allowing Chapman “to commission his own market study for the highest and best use [of the building], that ironically concluded that highest and best use for site would be a tax credit apartment building. It’s ironic because that’s the type of development that Mr. Chapman specializes in.”

She says that when she tried to raise these concerns to DHCD, she was “royally ignored.”

(A spokeswoman for DHCD did not return multiple requests for comment.)

Since then, residents say, not much has changed. They allege that District leaders, including those from DHCD and OP, refuse to meet with them. (One email from OP Director Eric Shaw, obtained by City Paper, shows that he declined a resident meeting request with a polite but curt thanks “for your continued interest in this project.”) Some neighbors claim that Chapman has co-opted their own, hiring members of the community to serve as “engagement” liaisons on behalf of his development team. They say that OP declined to show members of the community the materials—brick and fiber-cement panels—that Chapman plans to use on the building.

And they are offended, too, that the city managed to find $1.55 million to “enhance” a dog park in Columbia Heights, but haven’t yet finished restoring the historic houses adjacent to Big K. In a series of emails that date back to September of last year, Greta Fuller, ANC06 commissioner and 18-year resident of the neighborhood, told Shaw that the “material quality and colors that are proposed do not reflect the character or the history of Anacostia’s Historic District,” and outlined neighbors’ concerns in detail. She and other residents copied this reporter on about 30 similar emails sent to Shaw, DHCD Director Polly Donaldson, Mayor Muriel Bowser, and dozens of other city officials since late April.

Chris Delfs, Chief of Staff of the Office of Planning, says the issue of architectural equality is something he “talks about with Director [Eric] Shaw often. The idea of design excellence and equity in every ward. It’s an important priority for him, and we’ve concentrated a lot on this for the last two years. We want to have high quality design in all parts of the city.” He calls the design of Maple View Flats “very similar to those in other historic districts in D.C.” CP

washingtoncitypaper.com may 25, 2018 5

DistrictLinE

Make Them Hear You

D.C.’s hearing-impaired community seeks seats at the table in this year’s elections.

GrowinG up in the suburban North County area of San Diego, California, Georgetown University student Matthew Sampson was always aware he was different from those around him, especially his immediate family.

His mother, father, and sister are all deaf, but while his hearing is impaired, he can still hear some sounds. As he moved between the hearing and deaf communities, Sampson was inspired to use his privilege to bring together both worlds.

D.C. has a significant deaf and hearing impaired population in part because of Gallaudet University, the only university in the nation specifically designed to educate students who are hearing impaired. Despite that, deaf and hearing impaired residents feel excluded from the District’s political process because they are not made aware of resources that are available to them.

Sampson was so frustrated by this lack of clear communication that he and five friends started their own action group last summer. Deaf Urbanism hosts various meetings, trainings, and workshops in ASL, with the goal of getting more deaf people involved in local politics.

“We created Deaf Urbanism because we wanted to change and make a mark on our city,” says Sampson. “The deaf community knows next to nothing about the political process and has been waiting for someone to come in and teach them.”

Forming the group had an almost immediate impact on Sampson; he was never politically involved, but he knew that there was more he could do to improve the quality of life of deaf people in the District. He is now planning to run in the Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC) 2B01 election in November.

“I’m only running for ANC as an example,” Sampson says. “My dream is to have a deaf mayor or council person, but it doesn’t have to be me.”

Derrick Behm, a current graduate student at Georgetown University and member of Deaf Urbanism, believes that the political system in the District is to blame for the lack of participation in the deaf community.

“D.C. politics is not deaf friendly, and while they may not purposefully ignore us, the political system here is structured to exclude deaf people,” says Behm. “Their meetings are not accessible.”

Accessibility and communication are some

Darrow Montgomery

By Elizabeth Thomas

Matthew Sampson

of the main concerns for deaf people trying to participate in local politics. The District is required to follow Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act. This federal law requires state and local governments to make their programs accessible to individuals with disabilities, including individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing. In the case of ANC meetings, an individual would file a request for an ASL translator through the District’s Office of Disability Rights, which would then be sent to the relevant ANC commissioners. It would then be up to the commissioners to obtain a translator.

The ANC would then have to pay for the translator out of its budget. In 2016, the D.C. Council attempted to address these concerns by including $25,000 in the fiscal year 2017 budget to create an ANC Sign-Language Interpreters Fund.

Commissioners could withdraw money from the fund to pay for ASL interpretation services at ANC meetings and proceedings. But according to Gottlieb Simon, executive director of the Office of the Advisory Neighborhood Commissions, less than $1,000 of that fund was used.

Keith Doane, another member of Deaf Urbanism, believes the fund was barely used in part because no one told the deaf community about it. Simon says ANC commissioners were responsible for telling their constituents about this service and the fund.

6 may 25, 2018 washingtoncitypaper.com

“I could have been politically activated if I knew that the interpreters funds were available,” he says.

The ANC Sign-Language Interpreters Fund was a pilot program that was not renewed in 2018. At-Large Councilmember Anita Bonds has proposed dedicating permanent funds for ANCs to provide sign language interpretation services in the fiscal year 2019 budget.

Jamie Sycamore, an ASL interpreter and disability advocate, is running for D.C. Council in Ward 1 in part because he got tired of lobbying for disability access and it falling on, for lack of a better term, deaf ears. He too believes that more deaf people would be involved in politics if the system were more accessible and better explained to the deaf community.

“They don’t know about the types of resources that are available to them because there is no transparency,” he says. “It’s all about disseminating the information from the top down.”

Sycamore, who learned ASL at the age of 13, first became an advocate for those in the deaf community when he realized how hard it was for them to get housing in the District. If he is successful in his run for D.C. Council, he hopes he can help to be the representation in government that the deaf community is looking for right now.

“This election cycle is the first time I’ve actually seen the deaf community come together and start to advocate for more representation in their government,” says Sycamore. “While I myself am not deaf, I hope to be the vessel to provide direct access and communication to this community.”

Creating a government office in the District like the Maryland Governor’s Office of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing would help many people in the deaf community feel as if their issues are being addressed. The Maryland Governor’s Office of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing’s goal is to promote full access for those in the deaf and hard of hearing community that enhances their quality of life. Even though there are services in D.C. currently that provide assistance to the deaf community such as the Office of Disability Rights and the Metropolitan Police Department’s Deaf and Hard of Hearing Liaison Unit, it is unclear to people like Doane if those agencies are working together. He would like to see a watchdog agency created to ensure that these agencies know what each other is doing.

One of Sampson’s longterm goals is to get the U.S. Census Bureau to include ASL on their list of languages. He says that because there is no official count of hearing-impaired people in the United States and no official count of how many people communicate using ASL, it makes it easy for the needs of this community to be ignored.

“We’ve been begging to be put on the census,” he says. “We’ve been wanting to mark down that we are deaf and proud and that the government should count us, but our pleas have gone nowhere.”

From his early interactions with the political world Sampson has learned that if he wants to get something done, he likely has to start it on his own.

“We have to prove that the deaf community can get power,” says Sampson. “But not only that, we have to prove that D.C. is willing to step up and meet us halfway.”

CP

Gear Prudence Gear Prudence: I bet you $100 that those new electric scooters won’t be on D.C. streets in one year. Deal? Bikesharing has proven its longevity, but scooters have all the makings of a fad.

Plus, so many people I know, especially bicyclists, really seem to hate them. No way they last.

—Some Cash On Outlasting Trend Dear SCOOT: GP accepts this wager and looks forward to collecting in one year’s time a crisp Franklin or its equivalent in Grants, Jacksons, Hamiltons, or Javankas (should 2018 take a strange turn). Prognosticating is perilous, but you don’t need Delphic powers to believe that electric scooter sharing will kick around for a while, even if it seems faddish right now.

Three companies currently offer electric scooter sharing as part of the dockless vehicle pilot program overseen by the District Department of Transportation. Riders rent scooters by app, pay by the minute, and can leave them in the same general locations where people leave dockless bikes. They’re ubiquitous in denser, flatter parts of the city, but available throughout the District. By the looks of it, scooters seem to appeal to both tourists and locals.

I see a few different ways you can win the bet, but they don’t seem very likely.

1. The scooter companies could go Juicero and cash dries up once its revealed that the underlying product is ridiculous. This might happen eventually; fickle venture capitalists might invest their Javankas elsewhere. But all of the companies going belly up in a mere 12 months probably won’t happen. Unprofitable transportation ventures have survived a whole lot longer.

2. Backlash, led by angry bicyclists, could lead the government to ban electric scooter sharing.

It’s possible, but if some D.C. bicyclists hating another mode of travel was enough to get it banned, would the streets have a single BMW on them? Or taxicab? Or segway? Or horse? (At least scooters don’t leave droppings in the bike lanes.) Seems like a stretch.

3. People, of their own accord, simply decide to stop riding them. All fads reach that critical moment when something that seemed vital and worthy is exposed to be superfluous and lame. Could scooters be the transportation equivalent of Beanie Babies, Tamagotchis, or Pogs? Nope. Love them or hate them, electric scooter sharing seems to fill an actual transportation niche and one that isn’t going away.

They’re for the trips where walking would take a little too long (or it’s a little too far or it’s a little too hot) and for people who aren’t drawn to biking at that moment (or ever). These kinds of trips for these kinds of users aren’t going away and so long as the scooter remains an option, it will have an audience.

—GP Gear Prudence is Brian McEntee, who tweets @sharrowsdc. Got a question about bicycling?

Email gearprudence@washcp.com.

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Stephanie Rudig

8 may 25, 2018 washingtoncitypaper.com

D.C. leadership pushes struggling charter schools to hire TenSquare, a for-profit consulting firm. Is it effective— or just connected?

By Rachel M. Cohen

“EvErybody’s afraid.”

That’s a D.C. charter school administrator’s assessment of TenSquare, one of the city’s most connected, lucrative, and controversial charter consulting companies. And true to his word, he was talking anonymously.

Not many people feel comfortable discussing TenSquare publicly.

Even in education circles, most people have never heard of TenSquare, a national for-profit consulting firm that currently operates in seven states and the District. It markets itself as a universal fixer for troubled charters—a one-stop shop for facility financing, staff recruitment, back-end operations, teacher training, and academic turnarounds.

The company has kept a remarkably low profile since its founding in 2011, in one case even contracting to work with a charter unbeknownst to the school’s own principal.

TenSquare has powerful allies in D.C., most notable among them the Public Charter School Board, or PCSB, which governs the city’s charters. “I would characterize their results as remarkably strong,” says Scott Pearson, executive director of the PCSB. “In every case where TenSquare has done a full turnaround with a D.C. charter school, their results have improved significantly.”

But a five-month City Paper investigation has raised a host of questions about TenSquare’s work. Available data do not show consistent improvements across the D.C. schools that hired TenSquare, and several schools got worse. Its business dealings reveal a crisscrossing web of repeat players, potential conflicts of interest, and in one instance the recurring appearance of an alleged far-right activist.

Yet it’s not a coincidence that TenSquare has

landed some of the most remunerative charter contracts in the city: While not every school leader disparages TenSquare, a number have said they felt real pressure from the PCSB to hire the company.

D.C. has paid TenSquare millions of dollars in taxpayer funds since 2012, according to Freedom of Information Act requests.

These disclosures revealed contracts between local charters and the consulting company. YouthBuild signed a one-year contract in 2015 for $735,000, followed by an additional five-year “school improvement” contract for $2.4 million. Perry Street Prep signed a one-year contract in 2014 for $585,000 and then a four-year, $2 million contract immediately after. Excel Academy signed two one-year contracts, in 2015 and 2016, for $300,000 each.

The list the PCSB supplied, however, was incomplete. City Paper discovered that TenSquare had more contracts than what the PCSB disclosed through FOIA, including a five-year, $5.8 million contract with the Cesar Chavez Public Charter network dated 2017, and a $78,000 contract with Septima Clark Public Charter School, a now-closed all-boys school, dated 2012.

When asked if he or the PCSB knew how much D.C. revenue has gone to TenSquare, Pearson said, “I’ve never added it up … it’s not something we’ve ever done an analysis of.”

How TenSquare spends its money is an even greater mystery. The Public Charter School Fiscal Transparency Amendment Act of 2015, passed by the D.C. Council, includes a significant caveat: an exemption for “temporary management services recommended by the eligible chartering authority to improve the

performance of a public charter school.”

Mikayla Lytton, who worked for five years at the Public Charter School Board as a senior manager of financial oversight, says it was no secret among her colleagues who would benefit from this “temporary management services” exemption. “We explicitly discussed that the Act, as written, exempted TenSquare from the transparency requirements,” she says. “I couldn’t, and still can’t, think of good reasons why TenSquare would be averse to additional transparency that other school management organizations—for- and non-profit—would be forced to accept.”

Lytton says she pushed back on adding language about TenSquare. “I was very clear at the time, to both the executive and deputy directors, that I refused to write the exemption on ethical grounds. Scott [Pearson] insisted on its inclusion.”

As a result, unlike virtually every other charter management organization operating in D.C., the PCSB still does not have the legal authority to go into TenSquare’s books to see how it’s spending public dollars.

TEnsquarE is ThE brainchild of Josh Kern, who graduated from Georgetown Law School in 2001 and founded Thurgood Marshall Academy—a legal-themed charter high school—immediately afterward. Kern led the academically distinguished charter for a decade, leaving in 2011 to start his consulting firm. “I felt like I had done what I came to do at Thurgood Marshall, but based on what I had learned I wanted to have more of a role in the [charter] sector and help other schools,” he says. He recruited a number of his Thurgood Marshall Academy colleagues to join him. Today, a fourth of TenSquare’s 28-person staff previously worked at Kern’s charter.

From the outset, the company has had an invaluable local champion: Pearson, the head of the PCSB. He and Kern are associates in the tight-knit D.C. charter world. Kern, who served on the boards of the DC Association of Chartered Public Schools and Friends of Choice In Urban Schools, was actually the top contender for Pearson’s job in 2011, but he turned it down, explaining recently that he viewed starting TenSquare as “a better fit with my entrepreneurial nature.”

TenSquare claims that it has essentially cracked the code for school turnarounds.

It comes into schools with problems—financial, academic, organizational—and, through some combination of direct management and consulting, attempts to reverse their bad fortunes. If schools are worried the PCSB will not renew their charter, TenSquare offers schools a way to reverse course—as well as a way to demonstrate to the PCSB that they are taking serious action.

When a school first hires the company, it performs a “comprehensive performance audit,” in which TenSquare consultants study

the school’s strengths and weaknesses and recommend next steps. These steps come as a “customized improvement plan” spanning four to five years with the possibility of extensions. The idea is to have TenSquare intensively manage a school in the beginning, and then slowly transition out.

“We have a pretty good understanding of what the conditions are for our turnaround work to be successful,” Kern says. “It’s clear to us that three to five years is kind of the minimum for what it takes to show the kind of improvement that the school is looking to show, and that we want to show.”

What TenSquare doesn’t say is that its muchballyhooed multi-year turnaround model has never been fully implemented at any charter school. It’s in year one of five at Cesar Chavez, year three of four at Perry Street, year two of four at Meridian Public Charter School, and year three of six at YouthBuild.

Earlier schools subjected to TenSquare takeovers for shorter stints saw many achieved gains drop precipitously after the consultants left. (Schools are evaluated using the Performance Management Framework, a tool developed by the PCSB to rank and evaluate charter school quality.) The short-term gains have fueled skepticism over the legitimate effectiveness of TenSquare’s work.

A number of charter leaders interviewed for this article cited the “Hawthorne Effect”—the psychology concept where people change their behavior when they know they’re being watched or evaluated. IDEA Public Charter School’s PMF score nearly doubled during its TenSquare intervention, for example, jumping from 28.4 in the 20112012 school year to 54.4 in the 2013-2014 school year. But when the contract between TenSquare and IDEA ended, scores dropped to 42.2 in the 2015-2016 school year. On the chart containing this data, TenSquare labeled IDEA as a school “that would not accept turnaround support.”

“Whenever you bring in a new organization to do a turnaround you’ll see a jump in that first year, it’s just what happens,” says one charter leader who agreed to speak anonymously for fear of retribution. “A new CEO of a company, a new school leader, everyone just kind of tightens up, acts on their best behavior. That has nothing to do with the expertise of TenSquare, it’s just what happens when there’s a new sheriff in town. And if you look at their record from over the years, you don’t see sustained growth and improvement.”

Another longtime charter leader who worked at Cesar Chavez described the pressure they faced from the PCSB to hire TenSquare as “insane” given the company’s thin track record. “They had never worked with a multi-campus organization, yet the public charter board wanted us to hire them for a five-year contract. They have limited experience, with limited outcomes.”

washingtoncitypaper.com may 25, 2018 9

Kern upholds the company line. “To the extent that there’s a story here, for us the story is that we are working with schools and doing great work and the schools are achieving great results,” he says, adding later that “our results are impressive” and “we have yet to see another organization who can claim such significant growth in such a short time.”

One common criticism of TenSquare is that its business model is, in a sense, circular: It can effectively hire itself. When TenSquare is brought in to assess a charter’s alleged deficiencies, it is well positioned to recommend that the charter correct those deficiencies with TenSquare’s own turnaround services.

When City Paper asked Pearson to comment on this dynamic, he replied, “I don’t think there is any surprise as to what they would do. The audit is not, ‘Let’s do an independent assessment.’ I don’t think anyone is surprised if the solution is for TenSquare to turn [the school] around.”

But many charter leaders disagree.

“It’s a racket,” says Jenny DuFresne, a former charter principal whose school contracted with TenSquare. “It’s a bunch of good old boys who are talking to each other and scratching each other’s backs.

Like honestly, that’s all it is. It’s not about children in my opinion.”

TenSquare first started working with Cesar Chavez Public Charter Schools for Public Policy in mid-October 2016. Their board co-chair, Sulee Clay, signed a $24,000 contract with the company for “interim/emergency leadership” services for most of October. Then between November and the end of March, Chavez paid TenSquare $75,000 per month for “continued interim leadership and a performance audit.” That fed into the five-year, $5.8 million turnaround contract, that began in April 2017.

Despite that contract, the PCSB voted eight months later to close one of the four schools in the Cesar Chavez network— Chavez Parkside Middle School—citing its low academic performance.

Parkside isn’t the only school to raise questions about TenSquare’s turnaround prowess.

In 2013, Pearson and Kern negotiated a controversial deal with the board chair of Septima Clark Public Charter School. Under the terms of the deal, the city’s only all-boys charter would be taken over by Achievement Prep, a high-performing coed school in the city.

A charter’s Performance Management Framework score determines whether it will be ranked as a Tier 1, Tier 2, or Tier 3 school.

Tier 3 schools are considered the lowest-quality and face high risk of closure. Septima Clark, a Tier 2 school, had been dealing with academic challenges, but its students had also been showing significant improvement.

The year before the takeover, students at

Septima Clark increased their combined passrate in reading and math by 17 percentage points, becoming the highest-ranking charter in terms of growth in the city, and the third-highest for growth among all D.C. public schools.

Nonetheless, TenSquare recommended the school be folded into Achievement Prep, the first such “merger and acquisition” for charters in the District. Public tax filings revealed that TenSquare CEO Josh Kern sat on the board of Achievement Prep in 2012, prompting concerns about entangled interests.

DuFresne, Septima Clark’s founder and longtime principal, says that her board chair approached her in January 2013, shortly after the merger decision was made, and asked her to sign a non-disclosure agreement in exchange for severance. She vocally opposed the merger and says she refused “the incred-

for “school improvement services” between 2015 and 2017, the PCSB voted unanimously in January to shutter the school.

And then there’s William E. Doar, Jr. Public Charter School, or WEDJ. This past fall, Barbara Smith, a Toronto-based educator who served as principal of WEDJ from July 2012 to May 2014, published a tell-all memoir about her time working at the school.

Smith’s tenure at WEDJ overlapped with TenSquare’s involvement with the charter, and in her 206-page book, A Charter School Principal’s Story, she details her frustrations with what she saw as the company’s high costs and harmful pedagogical recommendations. Smith wrote that TenSquare’s coaches “enforced the teaching of fact memorization” for standardized tests, and employed a “condescending approach to teach-

gained in re-enrollment before TenSquare got to her school. WEDJ’s score jumped further to 64.4 in the second and final year of working with TenSquare, but then dropped 15 points to 49.4 immediately after the company left in 2015.

“The TenSquare consultants positioned themselves as experts in how to increase school ratings,” Smith wrote in her book.

“Upon close review, I felt their analysis of the trends in achievement and growth scores was underwhelming.”

Smith says she was ultimately fired by her board after refusing to voluntarily resign. She wrote that her board chair offered her severance in exchange for signing a non-disclosure agreement, as DuFresne says happened to her a year earlier. Smith refused, was soon fired, and wrote her book.

The board chair who offered Smith her buyout, John Goldman, had a preexisting relationship with TenSquare. In 2012, TenSquare recruited Goldman to serve as executive director of IDEA Public Charter School. He had also been working in leadership positions at WEDJ starting in 2009. Form 990 tax documents show that between 2011 and 2016, WEDJ and IDEA collectively paid Goldman more than $1.1 million for jobs ranging from “chief financial officer” to “school improvement leader” to board chair. During this same time span, the two charters paid TenSquare more than $2.4 million for consulting services.

The D.C. Public Charter School Board hired Goldman as a senior manager of finance last fall. But in early January, a left-wing activist launched a shocking allegation against him: that he had been pseudonymously operating an altright blog with white nationalist associations.

Goldman confirmed that he had been operating the website under the pen name Jack Murphy, but denied any support for white nationalism, racism, or fascism. A Twitter account operated under the Jack Murphy pseudonym regularly lobbed attacks on diversity, feminism, and “illegals.”

One tweet laid out why a movement of proTrump “deplorables” would continue to grow: “Cultural Marxism, intersectionality, feminist over reach, mass immigration, globalist policies - these will continue to push people to us.” A number of tweets and blog posts produced during Goldman’s tenure as “school improvement leader” of WEDJ focused on the idea that feminists unconsciously long for violent sexual submission: “I can smell a feminist yearning for thrashing from a mile away,” the Jack Murphy account tweeted.

Goldman was placed on administrative leave in January pending an investigation, and a PCSB spokesperson confirmed in late April that he was no longer employed with the or-

“We explicitly discussed that the Act, as written, exempted TenSquare from the transparency requirements.

I couldn’t, and still can’t, think of good reasons why TenSquare would be averse to additional transparency that other school management organizations—for- and non-profit— would be forced to accept.” ibly insulting request” and resigned later that month. She adds that even when she was principal she wasn’t told about her school’s TenSquare contract until four months after it had been signed.

The Public Charter School Board, which was also closely involved in the merger, released a video in 2016 touting Achievement Prep’s takeover of Septima Clark as extremely successful. But in November 2017, the PCSB revealed that academic results at Achievement Prep had declined dramatically over the past two years. Once a Tier 1 school and star performer among D.C. charters, Achievement Prep now also faces a real risk of closure. As of November, its elementary school is ranked as Tier 3 and its middle school as Tier 2.

Excel Academy, another TenSquare client, will also be losing its charter at the end of this school year. (It will reopen as a DCPS school.)

Despite paying TenSquare at least $1.2 million

10 may 25, 2018 washingtoncitypaper.com

er development.”

Smith also challenged some of the Performance Management Framework gains that TenSquare takes credit for at WEDJ. While TenSquare claims that after one year of working with the school its PMF score jumped from 36.5 to 47.6, Smith says most of those gains should not be seen as the result of TenSquare’s efforts.

“One of the PMF metrics relates to how many students re-enroll,” Smith explained to City Paper. “When I started at WEDJ in 2012, we had a 57 percent re-enrollment rate at the beginning of the year, which was horrible. By the end of that year our re-enrollment rate was 87 percent, but because it takes so long to get precise data back, the D.C. Charter School Board doesn’t apply those re-enrollment points to a school’s PMF until the following school year.” In other words, Smith concluded that WEDJ

Stephanie Rudig

ganization. Goldman declined to comment on his employment status.

TenSquare routinely touts its headhunter services—its website states that the company “draw[s] on our extensive network of local and national education relationships to recruit top quality candidates; and our screening process is extensive.” When City Paper asked for comment on John Goldman’s hiring, Kern said his company “commonly refer[s] names of possible candidates” but that “ultimately the school board of trustees hires the leader.”

CharTEr TEaChErs and staff members have started speaking up about TenSquare’s practices.

City Paper conducted six on-the-record interviews with former WEDJ teachers, all of whom recounted broadly similar negative experiences of working with TenSquare.

Tanisha Nugent, who taught math at WEDJ from 2008 until 2014, says TenSquare quickly changed the culture in her school for the worse. “They did not build a relationship with the staff. Their vision for the school was not at all connected to what the staff knew or believed and it felt very much like a top-down dictatorship,” she tells City Paper. “Teachers were not able to voice their thoughts, it created a lot of isolation and a lot of teachers left as

a result, including me.” Nugent says “everything became about test scores” as the consultants “analyzed everything from a business perspective.”

Stevonna Cordova, the special education coordinator at WEDJ, also left one year after TenSquare started working at her school. “All of us were really on eggshells, worried about who was going to get fired. You had colleagues suddenly turning on each other because they were fighting to keep their jobs,” she says.

“And when Dr. Smith was let go it just really devastated the building.” Cordova says she’s been in education for 17 years and that Barbara Smith remains “the most dedicated principal” she’s ever worked for.

Kamilah Wheeler, who not only worked as a teacher at WEDJ but also sent her children there, echoed her colleagues’ feelings about a worsening morale. “TenSquare said they were there to fix things but it seemed like they were just trying to change everything,” she says.

“Like Big Brother, they were always lurking, looking for a reason to fire you or find problems in what you were doing.”

After leaving WEDJ, Cordova went to work at Cesar Chavez as their special education coordinator. But when she heard Chavez then planned on hiring TenSquare too, she immediately started looking for a

new job. “I told all my colleagues, ‘Leave now, leave now!’” Cordova now works at Friendship Public Charter.

Late this April, the unionized teachers at Chavez Prep Middle School staged two outdoor demonstrations in protest of their charter’s TenSquare contract. The teachers specifically objected to Chavez paying TenSquare $138,000 every month while also claiming to be unable to afford filling vacant teacher positions.

Christian Herr, a Chavez Prep science teacher who sits on his union’s bargaining team, says that a major change in his school since TenSquare’s takeover is a greatly increased emphasis on standardized test prep.

“It’s not like we needed to spend $140,000 a month to have someone tell us to do more test prep,” he says. “It was really hard for us when our school board decided some things needed to be restructured, but didn’t even come to us, didn’t even ask what we the teachers thought. They have these buildings full of people who live in these neighborhoods and have worked in these schools for a long time, all this expertise, yet you make the choice to bring in someone who knows nothing about it and pay them massive amounts of money.”

TenSquare, in turn, has mounted a vigorous self-defense.

In a recent interview with The Washington Post, Kern called his company’s work at Chavez “essential” and “absolutely necessary to improving the school.”

Following the protests, Emily Silberstein, a TenSquare employee placed as “resident CEO” of the Chavez network, emailed a letter to the schools’ staff. “Hiring TenSquare was the right decision for the Chavez network,” she wrote, with Chavez board chair Richard Torres. They added that “to continue ... in this high stakes environment, we must show immediate and dramatic improvement,” which can be accomplished with “TenSquare’s proven plan of support.” unlikE TradiTional publiC schools in the city, individual D.C. charters are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. But D.C.’s charter law does require schools to submit third party contracts for more than $25,000 to the PCSB, where they can be subject to public disclosure requests.

In theory, at least. When City Paper requested all TenSquare contracts from the PCSB, the resulting disclosure was messy, inconsistently redacted, and obviously incomplete.

At least one school with a known TenSquare contract was missing. After a request for complete information, the PCSB produced Ten-

washingtoncitypaper.com may 25, 2018 11

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Square contracts for four additional schools, plus an Excel spreadsheet with what they said was their full list of submitted contracts.

But those disclosures were still incomplete. City Paper learned of TenSquare’s $5.8 million, five-year contract with the Cesar Chavez Public Charter network while investigating an unrelated story about the unionization of that network. During an interview with the union’s attorney, City Paper found out that the Cesar Chavez schools signed a major contract for school turnaround services with TenSquare in 2017. The lawyer shared a copy of this signed agreement, obtained through collective bargaining. The PCSB had not shared this contract in response to public disclosure requests.

Several weeks later, DuFresne of Septima Clark Public Charter School shared another undisclosed TenSquare contract, this one for $78,000. Dated September 2012, this signed agreement had not been included in public disclosure requests or requests made to TenSquare itself.

Though TenSquare currently does business in seven states and the District, Kern notes the company is “based in D.C. [and] we grew up in D.C.” When asked what percentage of his company’s revenue comes from the District, Kern said, “We don’t categorize our revenue by state.” Kern did not respond to repeated emails seeking clarification of that statement. Alexandra Pardo, a TenSquare partner, also declined to name the schools her company works with, citing respect for their clients’ “privacy.”

Despite the extreme difficulty of tracking financial links between D.C. schools and TenSquare, the PCSB is taking steps to make oversight even harder. This spring, the body announced its desire to revise its contract policy, raising the cutoff for publicly submitted contracts from $25,000 to $150,000. Asked about this proposed change in March, Pearson said the PCSB was trying to set the right balance between “collecting information and burdening schools.”

During the course of reporting, this reporter submitted a public comment opposing the proposed policy change on transparency grounds.

The PCSB board, which consists of seven members, appointed by the mayor and approved by the D.C. Council, nevertheless voted to raise the contract disclosure threshold to $100,000 in April. It will go into effect July 1.

The PCSB maintains it did not require Council approval because it’s an “internal policy.”

Local officials have also acted to shield TenSquare from financial disclosure in more direct ways. Three years ago, in the wake of several charter fraud lawsuits led by D.C.’s then-attorney general Irvin Nathan, public pressure mounted to tighten up financial oversight of charters. Both schools that were sued for fraud had passed the PCSB’s financial inspection, with the board concluding the schools had demonstrated “no patterns of fiscal mismanagement.”

The D.C. Council responded to these scandals by passing the Public Charter School Fiscal Transparency Amendment Act of 2015, a

law that did little to expand charter oversight to individuals and government agencies outside the charter school sector.

“The original charter access law here is extraordinarily limited with far less transparency of meetings and records than we see in most states,” says Fritz Mulhauser, an attorney and leader with the D.C. Open Government Coalition. He adds that his coalition pushed in 2015 for more protections but that “the Council had no appetite for more openness than in the narrow bill the charters had drafted as the most they could live with.”

While the D.C. Council refused to expand FOIA access or subject charters to the Open Meetings law, it did grant the PCSB increased authority to look into the books and records of private companies making substantial revenue from D.C charters. TenSquare managed to escape this oversight through the exemption that Lytton refused to write, but she says Pearson insisted on.

GoinG forward, TEnsquarE’s business prospects look bright. In D.C., the company has framed its services as a necessity for charters, given the increased regulatory requirements and high standards charters are expected to meet. “In this environment of ever-arising accountability, it is especially important that schools enlist help before issues worsen,” Kern explained in April. “Also, schools are not immutably high or low performing. In any school, there’s always need for improvement and the possibility for success.”

And not everyone in the charter ecosystem is critical of TenSquare. Mark Jordan, the board chair of YouthBuild Charter School, says that he felt no pressure to hire the company, and credits them with many things: helping his board think through what their school should look like, pushing them to be more data-driven and technologicallyminded, and building their staff ’s instructional capacity. YouthBuild’s score on the Performance Management Framework has increased since contracting with TenSquare in 2015, reaching Tier 1 status after the 20162017 school year. That contract continues until June 30, 2021.

Sarah Medway, who managed charter renewals for the PCSB from 2012 to 2015, worked closely with TenSquare, which represented schools that were up for these high-stakes reviews. “I always found TenSquare to be professional and knowledgeable about D.C. charter policies and processes,” she says. “I think the larger concern is that the PCSB has opened so many charter schools that struggle and then turn to TenSquare or other outside consultants for help.”

Yet inside schools that have undergone TenSquare takeovers, frustration and suspicion appear much more common. “If you talk to charter people off the record around the city, you’ll find most are afraid to speak honestly about TenSquare,” says Donald Hense, the now-retired founder and CEO of Friendship Public Charter School. “But they’re also afraid if they don’t hire the company then their charters will be revoked.”

CP

DCFEED

what we ate this week: Laotian stuffed lemongrass with ground pork and a jaew dipping sauce, $11, Doi Moi. Satisfaction level: 4 out of 5. what we’ll eat next week: Beet hash with onions, hash browns, feta, and a sunny side egg, $12, The Good Silver.

Excitement level: 4 out of 5.

Grazer

Sauce-O-Meter

Veg Diner Monologues A look at vegetarian dishes in the District that all should try

How recent food happenings measure up

By Laura Hayes

Alexandria’s bastion of fine dining, Restaurant Eve, will close its doors June 2. Its owners have redirected their attention to The Wharf.

HangoverHelper

Brunch is back at The Passenger. The bar’s new chef, Matt Almquist, will serve Nashville hot chicken on a biscuit and huevos rancheros paired with drinks meant to perk you up, like an espresso martini made with coconut cold brew.

Tim Ebner

Price: $16

The Dish: Hangover Special Where To Get It: Dacha Beer Garden’s weekend brunch menu, 1600 7th St. NW; (202) 350-9888; dachadc.com

What It Is: Dacha offers a heap of hangover relief every weekend. The beer garden’s “Hangover Special” is a dish that could be split between two people, but is also perfect for anyone riding the struggle bus on Sunday. A mound of kimchi, chicken sausage, and home fries comes topped with bacon and fried eggs.

How It Tastes: Dacha brought in Chef Sasha Felikson, formerly of Doi Moi, to revamp their menu in March. The hangover special combines a wide array of flavors. The fermented kimchi adds

Stephanie Rudig

Laura Hayes

Mega-restaurateur Stephen Starr has inked a deal to open a location of his Brooklyn steakhouse, St. Anselm, in D.C. It should open near Union Market this summer. Now he’s thinking of bringing a location of the legendary New York bistro Pastis to Adams Morgan.

The Dish: Rutabaga Fondue Where to Get It: Fancy Radish, 600 H St. NE Price: $14 What It Is: A perfect little tray featuring a warm soft pretzel roll, a dish of assorted pickled vegetables, and a moat of the vegan fondue itself. Though it tastes complex, the dish incorporates but a few simple ingredients in addition to rutabaga. Miso lends an umami flavor, while the cheesy taste comes from nutritional yeast. Chef Richard Landau calls the yeast an “old vegan hippie trick.”

Darrow Montgomery

Sushi Nakazawa, the omakase sushi restaurant inside the Trump Hotel opens next month. Owner Alessandro Borgognone famously dissed the D.C. dining scene in a 2016 interview.

Bluejacket is debuting two new cans Friday at their bottle shop: Open Window, a double IPA with tropical fruit and tangerine notes ($18 for a fourpack), and Sanctuary, an intensely hoppy IPA with apricot, grapefruit, and orange notes ($15 for a four-pack).

The second location of vegan fast casual restaurant Shouk opened near Union Market at 395 Morse St. NE). It serves the most satisfying veggie burger in the District, as well as bowls and pitas full of Israeli street food flavor.

The Passenger

The Bird can’t keep a chef. Ryan Hackney is the latest chef to part ways with the poultry-focused restaurant, following Tracy O’Grady and Michael Bonk. Hackey says he didn’t see eye-to-eye with the restaurant group, EatWellDC.

MUMBO SAUCE

Bluejacket

Laura Hayes

LAME SAUCE

D.C. Rising: Chef Jeremiah Langhorne won a James Beard award for his cooking at The Dabney, beating out local finalists Amy Brandwein of Centrolina and Tom Cunanan of Bad Saint. Chef Kevin Tien of Himitsu was just named one of Food & Wine’s best new chefs of 2018.

acidity and spice, and there’s a heavy helping of slightly salty potatoes. But the true winners are the toppings—two slabs of bacon and runny eggs.

Why It Helps: The hangover special is literally an everything-but-the-kitchensink breakfast to relieve you from your dark post-drinking hours. The eggs and chicken sausage will revive you with protein. Meanwhile, the spicy kimchi and potato starches will help to tame an upset stomach. And when you’re ready for it, order up das boot—a refreshing German Kölsch—because a little hair of the dog never hurt anyone. —Tim Ebner

The Story: Landau first began serving a variation of this dish that was similar to a Welsh rarebit at his esteemed Philadelphia eatery, Vedge. Over time, it evolved into a whipped topping described by the staff as a rutabaga “cheese whiz,” that paired perfectly with the soft pretzels prepared by pastry chef Kate Jacoby, Landau’s wife and coowner. When Landau first announced that he was planting his flag in D.C., he was deluged with emails from eager diners inquiring whether or not the fondue would be on the menu.

Why Even Meat Eaters Will Like It: Fake cheese is possibly the only vegfriendly food more maligned than fake meat, and rightfully so. Faux dairy is almost always a rubbery, bland, chemical-tasting letdown. Fancy Radish’s rutabaga fondue shakes that bad reputation. “I don’t believe in trying to imitate anything,” Landau says, preferring to let the rutabaga’s own delicate flavors shine instead of forcing an overtly cheesy taste. “To me, it’s going to be the next big vegetable.” Don’t be surprised if your dinner party scrapes at every last morsel of this dish, proving that Landau might be onto something.

—Stephanie Rudig

washingtoncitypaper.com may 25, 2018 13

Ballet Nacional de Cuba Don Quixote (May 29 & 30) (Minkus/Alonso after Petipa)

Giselle (May 31–June 3) (Adam/Alonso, based on Coralli and Perrot)

Free post-concert discussion!

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Additional support is provided by Virginia McGehee Friend, Amalia Perea Mahoney and William Mahoney, The Irene Pollin Audience Development and Community Engagement Initiatives, and the Artes de Cuba Festival Committee.

Support for Ballet at the Kennedy Center is generously provided by Elizabeth and C. Michael Kojaian.

International Programming at the Kennedy Center is made possible through the generosity of the Kennedy Center International Committee on the Arts.

Don Quixote, photo by John Rowe

Alicia Alonso, Artistic Director

Maria Baranova

CPArts In the Weeds

Two new gallery exhibitions showcase heady abstractism—both in practice and thematic purpose.

The Environmental Performance Agency (EPA): Department of Weedy Affairs At Transformer to June 16

MORE or LESS

At Hemphill Fine Arts to June 9

By Kriston Capps Good protest art skewers its subject. Great protest art roasts everything in reach: the topic, the genre, even the audience. Then there is a third category of protest art, the sort of answer that doubles back on the question. The Environmental Performance Agency most definitely falls in this last category.

The show on view at Transformer might be a reaction to Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency whose excesses mark a steady beat in the daily news. And Pruitt makes an appearance in places in The Environmental Performance Agency (EPA): Department of Weedy Affairs, namely in the news clips fastened to a bulletin board on the wall. But no talking head has come close to the solution offered by the artists in this show: Replace Pruitt with a weed. Replace the entire agency administration with weeds.

“Elect Mugwort for U.S. EPA Science Advisory Council Campaign Sign” (2018) is exactly what it describes: a yard sign endorsing Artemisia vulgaris for an elected post. The piece— does it makes sense to describe these projects as discrete artworks? I’m not so sure—seems to suggest that our elected leaders are no better than the weeds that cause our allergies. But that’s hardly the point of the show, which is at least as enthusiastic about rewriting our framework for urban plant species as it is critical of Republicans.

The work of four artists (Catherine Grau, andrea haenggi, Ellie Irons, and Christopher Kennedy), the project features elements of social practice, institutional critique, and performance without falling neatly into any camp. “Department of Weedy Affairs Staff Directory” (2018), a series of framed pressed plants, elevates invasive species (Japanese hops; ragweed) to positions of authority (non-human resources specialist; deputy director assistant)—as if they were portraits on an org chart. “Urban Weeds Garden at 1067 Pacific Street” and “Embodied Science Experiment” (2018) are two photos of vacant lots with weeds bursting through cracked concrete to shoulder height; one features a figure, kneeling on all fours, with his or her head buried in a bouquet of unplanned urban greenery. The images showcase the routine operations of a dullish federal agency from a de-

galleries

“Interdimensional Realms I” by Amber Robles Gordon (2017)

Gallery view of “The Environmental Performance Agency (EPA): Department of Weedy Affairs” at Transformer

lightfully bonkers alternative America.

Of course, the point is to say that ours is the timeline that’s gone crazy, where elected officials have deleted all reference of climate change from official government platforms and rolled back dozens of common-sense standards for safeguarding our water and air. A good protest show might have made the point through biting satire. But Department of Weedy Affairs is rather joyful—or rather, it feels normal. The project imagines a nation that values and protects marginal ecosystems, which is to say, one that prioritizes environmental justice. A country in which this work is not just per-

Performances of Arena Stage’s musical Snow Child in Alaska have been canceled. washingtoncitypaper.com/arts

formed, but one in which it is boring—another given, like death and taxes.

Video is key to this show, which otherwise approximates a conference room with a mood board. (It’s unmistakably an art collective’s vision of a federal agency.) “Department of Weedy Affairs Training Sessions” (2018) features EPA artists (or agents) hugging patches of weeds and carving minimalist shapes out of asphalt. Consider the source material—the almost unbelievable real-world EPA—and nothing about The Environmental Performance Agency seems so far fetched. process-based abstraction has always been a staple of painting in D.C. The Washington Color School was built by artists who defined their work by their approach to the canvas, whether by staining it or draping it or something else. MORE or LESS, a group show on view at Hemphill Fine Arts, shows how new trends in contemporary painting continue to line up with the work that put D.C. on the map in the 1960s and ’70s.

First are the Washington Color School works themselves: “Javelin” (1974), a tightly wound stripe painting by Gene Davis, and “Tenth Apple” by Thomas Downing (1978), a much looser series of acrylic dots on a brown paper bag. These works could be bookends to a show that otherwise features emerging artists (few of them regulars from Hemphill’s staple). Amber Robles-Gordon’s “Interdimensional Realms I” (2017), a piece that looks like an Alma Thomas painting shredded into ribbons, shows how some of the new D.C. vanguard are still processing works by the older generation.

Ryan Crotty has been on a roll since his New York gallery debut earlier this year, and the Nebraska artist’s rich paintings have a strong resonance in D.C. Made with acrylic, gloss gel, and modeling paste, Crotty’s paintings feature deep, seductive surfaces that call to mind the work of Hemphill artist Leon Berkowitz. (His 1979 painting, “Coronation,” is a highlight in the National Gallery of Art’s East Building.) Crotty’s “Eyes Closed to the Sun” (2018) shares the Ab-Ex love of heavy luminous pools of paint, but it’s rimmed with bolts of throbbing color. It’s like looking at a Mandelbrot set that melts before your eyes.

Robert Otto Epstein’s “6DJ39$aW23f49!” (2018), a zigzag painting of chevrons made up of tiny squares of colored pencil, conveys a state of frantic urgency that is in fact highly proscribed and contained. Zany on the surface, his works share the same bearing as much heavier process paintings, from Robin Rose’s “Deep Breathing” (2018) to Douglas Witmer’s “When in Doubt” (2015). Another point of relief comes in Anna U. Davis’ “Pandora’s Box” (2016), a figurative, almost low-brow drawing that wouldn’t normally fit the gallery’s abstract sensibility. Yet the figures blend together, more like a pattern than a crowd.

The highlight in MORE or LESS is Amy Pleasant’s “Bust (front) and Bust (back)” (2017), a silhouette of a woman’s torso in the style of an Ellsworth Kelly shape or a Matisse cutout.

Less is more in this winking Minimalist drawing. More is more throughout the show—a satisfying essay on the durability of abstraction.

CP 1404 P St. NW. Free. (202) 483-1102. transformerdc.org.

1515 14th St. NW #300. Free. (202) 234-5601. hemphillfinearts.com. washingtoncitypaper.com may 25, 2018 15

TheaTerCurtain Calls Saint Joan

ANGELS AMONG US Saint Joan

By George Bernard Shaw Directed by Eric Tucker At the Folger Theatre to June 10 Actors need to work like the rest of us, so you can’t blame them if they’re a little sore at Eric Tucker. The artistic director of the New York-based troupe Bedlam brings an MTV Unplugged aesthetic to material more often staged with arena rock levels of bombast. By stripping the number of players in Saint Joan—George Bernard Shaw’s 95-year-old chronicle of the trial and execution-by-flame of the 15th century French hero who would become a Catholic saint—from more than two dozen to four, Tucker has made the show perhaps four times as entrancing as a lavishly budgeted production with lots of gainfully employed actors saying very little.

Saint Joan was the test vehicle for Bedlam, the no-frills company Tucker and Andrus Nichols founded in 2012. They’ve continued to tour the show in the years since while bringing their minimum-overhead, maximum-intimacy aesthetic to Hamlet and Sense and Sensibility, among others. With the shrunken cast list, simple costumes (also by Tucker), and barely any set to speak of, the Bedlam method of conjuring antiquity is a cheap date for theaters.

The troupe has made Saint Joan at home in the Folger space, putting part of the audience on the stage and occasionally putting actors in the audience (and in the rafters). This iteration features two original cast members, Tucker and Edmund Lewis, each playing many roles; relative newbie Sam Massaro plays several distinct characters, too, sometimes within a single scene. Only the remarkable Dria Brown—new to this production, but admirably filling the military tunic that got

Joan charged with cross-dressing, among other heresies, back in 1430—has just the one part to play. And it’s no strike against Brown’s conviction in the role when I wonder whether she doesn’t envy her castmates just a little.

After all, they get to embody bishops and lords, officers and farmers, men of frailty and competing passions. They get to adopt various accents and gaits and postures. But Brown is just steady, saintly Joan, visited by angels and instructed by God to drive the English invaders out of Orléans.

Shaw, who was writing from transcripts of Joan’s trial, insisted this is a play without villains because Joan’s accusers and judges upheld their primitive ideas with honor. But to us, a confederacy of dudes who can spend an evening (historically, it was more than a year) bickering over whether or not they ought to set a teenage girl on fire for being a better soldier and more reliable exponent for the word of God than her elder male officers and clergymen, respectively, can’t not seem villainous. And as is usually the case, these let’s-call-them-antivillains seem to have a lot more fun for most of the three-hour show than the actor stuck playing the hero/martyr.

Maybe that’s why Saint Joan doesn’t really find its groove until its second hour, when Tucker makes his first appearance as Warwick, a feudal lord who frets Joan’s populist charisma could upend the caste system from which he has so richly benefitted. Though all of the characters are English or of various nationalities now collectively referred to as “French,” only Warwick speaks in what registers to modern ears as a British accent. The way Tucker threads a note of superciliousness into every hyper-elocuted syllable, and turns every laugh into a mirthless chuckle, made me wish that all the other performances were as richly drawn (or that Tucker had distributed the show’s juiciest speeches a little more equitably).

Massaro’s pious Cauchon and Lewis’s hysterical John de Stogumber are both holy men with their own reasons to fear Joan’s battle-

16 may 25, 2018 washingtoncitypaper.com

field successes: If God is speaking and acting through an illiterate 17-year-old farmgirl, who needs the Church?

Tucker’s low-fi staging ideas succeed in periodically refreshing our attention while remaining just this side of cute: I don’t know why he announces scene changes by having a headset-wearing stagehand walk out with an anachronistic cassette recorder playing warbly interstitial music in each hand, but it’s just the right amount of punctuation. (Tucker is credited as the production’s sound designer, too.)

When Joan is finally put on trial, lighting director Les Dickert puts her in a shaft of illumination and lets her prosecutors hurl accusations at her from the surrounding darkness. I especially liked that in Saint Joan’s epilogue, set 25 years after Joan burned, the angels of all the characters we knew in life wear glasses. They’re easier to carry around than wings, presumably.

—Chris Klimek 201 East Capitol St. SE. $35–$79.

(202) 544-7077. folger.edu.

In this updated telling, Grace (Casie Platt, returning to the stage from a long hiatus) has just married Henry (Michael Kevin Darnall), an enigmatic and wealthy man, following a courtship that was brief enough to alarm her mother and sister (Mindy Shaw and Carolyn Kashner, respectively.) Henry gives Grace the run of his extravagant home, attended by his full-time housekeeper Jenny (Tuyet Thai Pham, radiating a Nurse Ratched-like disapproval though she’s obligated to obey Grace’s commands). But there’s one tree whose fruit Henry forbids his wife to eat.

There’s a narrative and often visual opacity to this darkness-shrouded production that frustrates, even though the performances—especially Darnall’s volatile seducer and Pham’s imperious servant—are compelling enough, and Helen Murray’s direction inventive enough, to make you squint to try to puzzle it all out. When characters speak to one another, then report that conversation to a third character some time later, those shifts in time and location are clear and propulsive.

The Small Room at the Top of the Stairs

A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN The Small Room at the Top of the Stairs

By Carole Fréchette, translated by John Murrell Directed by Helen R. Murray At Spooky Action Theater to June 10 the French Folk tale about Bluebeard, the serial spouse-killer whose latest bride tries to avoid meeting the same bloody end as his prior wives, was Quebecois dramatist Carole Fréchette’s inspiration for The Small Room at the Top of the Stairs, a psychological mystery getting its U.S. premiere at Spooky Action Theater, which increasingly specializes in such international curiosities.

Murray has staged The Small Room in the round, and set designer Jonathan Dahm Robertson uses three slatted, stained-wood cubes— two standing up like wardrobes, one lying like a large coffee table—to suggest a large and forbidding mansion, relying on Brittany Shemuga’s low-wattage lighting scheme and David Crandall’s gurgling sound design to bring a sense of menace to moments when Grace is exploring the house alone. There’s even a nice, subtle observation of class and privilege that comes from Grace’s desperate attempts to buy Jenny’s silence using pieces of jewelry she’s plucked off her own yoga-and- green-juice-fortified body.

“What lovely skin you have, Jenny,” says Grace, offering her a gold bracelet. “The color is subtle but intense.” That describes Fréchette’s observations on trust and intimacy, too.

—Chris Klimek 1810 16th St. NW. $20–$40. (202) 248-0301. spookyaction.org.

TheaTeropera

A GAY OLD TIME Candide

Music by Leonard Bernstein Lyrics by Richard Wilbur Book Adapted from Voltaire by Hugh Wheeler, in a new version by John Caird At the Kennedy Center Opera House to May 26 If you read the news these days, it’s easy to see the metaphorical glass as half-empty. Stories about war, natural disasters, religious conflict, and political turmoil can put a person in a pretty sour mood. Perhaps the way to cure this is to fully embrace optimism by sitting in a theater for two-and-a-half hours and taking in a show dedicated to that specific concept. While Washington National Opera’s production of Candide might not completely eliminate the cloud of existential dread hovering over D.C., it’s still a perfectly pleasing and very funny reflection of life’s ups and downs.

This production of Candide is presented as part of the Kennedy Center’s Leonard Bernstein at 100 celebration, and director Francesca Zambello has rightfully put the emphasis on the Washington National Opera Orchestra and Bernstein’s lush, soaring score. As contempo-

rary musical theater composers opt to pare down orchestrations, it’s refreshing to hear this opera-musical hybrid backed by dozens of musicians. The classically trained vocalists have the pipes to sing over them.

The approachable music and familiar story, based on Voltaire’s satirical short novel, make this an ideal production for opera newbies. It’s sung in English and full of silly jokes, so it feels less stuffy than the French and Italian tragedies one normally associates with the genre.

We meet the titular hero (Alek Shrader) in Thunder-ten-Tronckh, Germany, where he, the illegitimate son of the baron’s sister, studies with his cousins, the vain and shallow Cunegonde (Emily Pogorelc) and the dull but jealous Maximilian (Edward Nelson), under the tute-

lage of Dr. Pangloss (Wynn Harmon). Pangloss espouses a philosophy of optimism, ensuring his pupils that they live in “the best of all possible worlds,” an idea that Candide fully embraces. A kiss with Cunegonde gets him banned from the castle and sets him off on a series of adventures across multiple continents. Along the way, he encounters war, torture, and earthquakes, tragedies that would shake the faith of a lesser man, and yet he still, somewhat dopily, persists until he gets what he wants.

It’s clear that the cast is having fun with roles that force them to perform physical comedy.

Shrader projects Candide’s shock, horror, and slight self-satisfaction when he accidentally kills one of Cunegonde’s suitors, a feat that’s not easy in a venue that seats more than 2,300, and Pogorelc distills Cunegonde’s essence— that she’s hungry for money and men—in a lively rendition of “Glitter and Be Gay.” Hamming it up the most is D.C. native and opera icon Denyce Graves as the Old Lady, who serves Cunegonde and is missing a buttock. Graves, who’s stolen the Opera House stage plenty of times before, has developed the perfect uneven gait of someone missing half their ass.

The story itself feels timeless—trying to make sense of all the challenges life presents is eminently relatable—but Zambello has added in a few winks to contemporary pop culture.

When the Old Lady meets Cacambo (Frederick Ballentine), Candide’s mixed-race servant, she acknowledges him by crossing her arms in an X across her chest.

Yes, the Wakanda salute is alive and well in Candide’s world.

Speaking of pop culture reference points, the set design appears to be inspired by the spare, multitiered wooden structures soon to be seen on the Opera House stage when Hamilton comes to town. Even the ensembles of both shows, decked out in beige underclothes, dress similarly. Is it derivative? Maybe. Does it allow for quick changes of scene?

Most definitely.

This lighter style of opera seems to suit the Washington National Opera and its audiences. Candide still features the drama of disease and lost love that one would find in La traviata, but delivers it with a wink instead of a sob.

Bernstein’s somber moments sound even better as a result. When the characters, after traveling around the world, reunite to sing “Make Our Garden Grow,” it’s enough to make one believe that amid chaos and disaster, there’s a reason to remain optimistic. —Caroline Jones 2700 F St. NW. $45–$275. (202) 467-4600. kennedy-center.org.

Directed by Marc Bruni Choreography by Denis Jones Music Direction by Todd Ellison

Starring

Skylar Astin

John Michael Higgins

Joaquina Kalukango

Becki Newton

Nova Y. Payton

Michael Urie

Betsy Wolfe

Follow the rise of J. Pierrepont Finch as he uses a powerful little book to climb the corporate ladder from lowly window washer to high-powered executive. With a full cast and onstage orchestra, this semi-staged concert features the brightest stars direct from Broadway.

June 6–10 | Eisenhower Theater TICKETS ON SALE NOW! KENNEDY-CENTER.ORG | (202) 467-4600

Tickets also available at the Box Office. Groups call (202) 416-8400.

For all other ticket-related customer service inquiries, call the Advance Sales Box Office at (202) 416-8540.

Theater at the Kennedy Center is made possible by

Major support for Musical Theater at the Kennedy Center is provided by

Kennedy Center Theater Season Sponsor

Comedy at the Kennedy Center Presenting Sponsor

Additional support is provided by The Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation and Ambassador Elizabeth Frawley Bagley.

washingtoncitypaper.com may 25, 2018 17

FilmShort SubjectS

summertIme, AnD the LIvIn’ Is uneAsy

First Reformed

Summer 1993

Directed by Carla Simón

Inner Demons First Reformed

Directed by Paul Schrader Whatever filmmaker Paul Schrader does with his remaining years on this tortured planet, the first lines of his obituary will mention the work he did four decades ago, writing the screenplays for Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, and playing second fiddle to star auteur Martin Scorsese. It will likely overlook 21 feature films he has directed, including standouts like Blue Collar, American Gigolo, and Auto Focus. If there is any justice, it will mention his latest, First Reformed, a ferocious drama that bears more than a small resemblance to one of his most iconic works.

In a dazzling performance, Ethan Hawke plays Reverend Toller, pastor of a small, historic church in western New York. His job is mostly symbolic. His weekly sermons draw in only a handful of parishoners. Behind his back, the pastor of a neighboring mega-church (a brilliantly cast Cedric the Entertainer) refers to his as a “souvenir church.” So when Mary (Amanda Seyfried), a young pregnant woman, asks Toller to counsel her depressed husband, Toller jumps at the chance to do something meaningful.

Her husband Michael (Philip Ettinger, evoking a young Mark Ruffalo) is an environmental activist who is losing his battle with despair.

In a long, luxurious scene together, Toller tries to counsel him, and Schrader gives equal time to both Michael’s frustrations and Toller’s thoughtful faith. “This social structure can’t survive the stress of multiple crises,” Michael tells him. Maybe neither can Toller, who eventually comes to shoulder the burden of Michael’s activism.

Over the course of Schrader’s incisive script,

Toller’s past and current traumas collide, aided by professional pressure, and he starts to lose the battle with himself. He channels his own personal demons into a newfound political spirit that puts him at odds with the benefactor of his church (Michael Gaston), a corporate giant responsible for some nasty environmental degradation.

Schrader’s brilliant film seamlessly incorporates the personal, the political, and the spiritual into one dynamic and immersive narrative. He stays close to Toller’s perspective, leaning on Hawke’s brooding naturalism to draw us in. It’s a complex role that Hawke, who does manic desperation and casual hipsterism equally well, uses his full range of acting tools to embody. As Toller internalizes Michael’s frustrations, his despair becomes universal. His efforts to counsel and communicate produce one failure after another, and in his desperation, he flirts with the course of the zealot: considering violence and martyrdom as his only salvation. Hasn’t anyone frustrated with the realities of making change considered, in their darkest moments, doing the same?

It’s a story Schrader has told before in a different setting. There is the naive man haunted by violence (in Taxi Driver, it’s the Vietnam War; here, it’s a personal trauma in Toller’s past), the young blonde woman he sees as his salvation, the strides toward violence when he realizes she cannot provide it, and the violent, ambiguous ending. There is even a nod to the famous shot of Travis Bickle watching an Alka-Seltzer fizz in his water; in First Reformed, it’s Pepto-Bismol in a whiskey. Some might argue that it recalls Schrader’s most famous work too specifically, and that First Reformed fails to stand on its own. I say, if you’re going to steal, then steal from the best. Especially when it’s yourself.

—Noah Gittell First Reformed opens Friday at Landmark E Street Cinema and Landmark Bethesda Row Cinema.

18 may 25, 2018 washingtoncitypaper.com

in Summer 1993, a daughter pays for the mistakes of her mother. Six-year-old Frida is left an orphan after her mom dies and is taken in by her aunt and uncle, moved from Barcelona to the unfamiliar and unappealing countryside. They have a daughter of their own, 3-year-old Anna, who makes her presence known the morning after Frida arrives by singing loudly outside her room. Right after the rooster crows—and then it’s time for weirdtasting fresh milk.

Writer-director Carla Simón’s engrossing feature debut is autobiographical; she was once the adoptee, having lost both her parents to AIDS. It’s the disease that plays a role but is never named here, referred to only in

les), but her petulance extends only to telling her that she can’t touch her dolls. (Anna, meanwhile, is nothing but sweetness to her new sister.)

Soon, though, Frida gets a ’tude. She pouts on her way to a doctor’s appointment and lies to Marga that she’s upset about her hair, then throws the comb that Marga offers out the car window. She refuses to tie her shoes, saying that she doesn’t know how— and then Anna copies her, which her mother isn’t thrilled about. Both acts are fairly harmless. But you get the feeling that it’s only a matter of time before Frida’s actions have more serious consequences. Indeed, one incident has Esteve so furious that he asks Frida, “Are you stupid?” Stupid, maybe. In mourning, definitely.

Spain’s submission for the 2018 Academy Awards’ Best Foreign Language Film consideration is a pleasantly ambling rumination on different ways of expressing grief.

Simón, who wrote the script with Valentina Viso, tells the story from Frida’s perspective, filling her first summer in her new home with not only brattiness and feeling like an outsider (which Simón conveys expertly) but also delights of the season such as swimming and ice cream. And she gets remarkably natural and, more impressive-

Summer 1993

glancing descriptions: Frida’s mother had “a new virus” and, according to her grandmother, “made bad decisions.” When Frida (Laia Artigas) skins her knee playing with other kids, a formerly friendly mom shrieks, “Don’t touch her!” to her concerned daughter.

It’s a puzzle whose pieces Simón sprinkles throughout the film but is kept mostly in the background. The fact that the girl lost her mother may also be pushed to the back of your mind as you watch Frida act out. At first, she’s very quiet, and you marvel at how well-behaved she is as she obeys Aunt Marga (Bruna Cusí) and Uncle Esteve (David Verdaguer).

She’s initially not as nice to Anna (Paula Rob-

ly, emotional performances out of her two leads; if Artigas and Robles hadn’t been able to step up, the film wouldn’t have worked as well as it does.

After 90-odd minutes of Frida—and, in turn, Marga and Esteve—acting hot and cold, Simón offers a touching end that’s abrupt but feels absolutely right. The outburst at its heart will surprise you as much as the characters—and it’s so expertly played, you may feel as if you’re watching a documentary.

—Tricia Olszewski Summer 1993 opens Friday at Landmark E Street Cinema.

GALLERIESSketcheS

Urban Fight A Right to the City

At the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum to April 20, 2020 On the neighbOrhOOd-based social media site NextDoor.com, a debate is raging among Southwest D.C. residents. An increasingly dense development in an area formerly known as “The Little Quadrant That Could”—at 4th and M streets SW—has residents riled up over the prospect of even more residential development.

But a new exhibition at the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum called A Right to The City, which looks back over decades of activism and development in six neighborhoods in the District, shows that this is far from the first time Southwest has been targeted by developers.

Curator Samir Meghelli says the battle in this once predominantly African-American and partly Jewish neighborhood began with the federal policy of urban renewal back in the late 1940s and early ’50s. Many of the stories in this exhibition are about people of color, and their victories and defeats against those who tried to turn their neighborhoods into havens for the haves versus refuges for the have-nots.

“Washington, D.C., being the seat of national power, was ground zero for urban renewal policy, and one of the first neighborhoods to be targeted was Southwest, D.C.,”

cy group ONE DC, says fair and affordable housing in the District, as well as neighborhoods of color, are still under attack in 2018.

“Absolutely under siege,” declares Moulden, who is featured in a video in the exhibition about Shaw. “Our government doesn’t have a commitment to the human rights of the working class blacks in D.C. It has no understanding about what the right to the city is all about.”

In the 1960s, residents of the quiet, tree-lined Brookland neighborhood absolutely understood what a right to the city meant. Meghelli explains how an interracial group of residents won their fight against the North Central Free“Tenant Protest in Adams Morgan” by Nancy Shia (1978) way, which would have required the demolition Meghelli explains, pointing at a 1949 photo of hundreds of homes in Brookland and Takoof the 700 block of 4th Street SW between G ma Park. The exhibition features pictures and and H streets. It shows an independent neigh- artwork on display, some of which was used to borhood with its own commercial market and galvanize residents against the project.

“The fact of the matter is that urban retheaters, ensconced in an area with churches and a synagogue. But the federal government newal disproportionately affected AfricanAmericans. But in each of these neighborlooked at the area and saw “blight.”

“It was seen as a perfect prime opportunity to hoods, communities came together around try this experiment of urban renewal, which at their shared interests, which were a need to the time was really a policy of large scale demo- have an effective way to shape the change that was happening in their neighborhoods,” lition and … slum clearance,” Meghelli says.

Some business owners fought back against Meghelli says.

One of the reasons Meghelli thinks this exthe demolition, which eventually displaced more than 23,000 people and 1,800 business- hibition is so important is that it celebrates hises. But armed with the landmark eminent do- tories of neighborhood organizing and activmain 1954 U.S. Supreme Court Case, Berman ism that transformed the District in ways that v. Parker, the neighborhood was decimated. many have overlooked. He also thinks it exSome public housing was built, but the major- plores a subject—urban renewal—that remains ity of the construction was high-rise, market- very much on the minds of residents currently rate apartments. Many Southwest residents dealing with rapid gentrification in neighbormoved to Anacostia, which is currently in the hoods around the city. There are lessons to be learned, not only for other U.S. cities including midst of its own urban renewal.

As the exhibition shows, other District Chicago, Atlanta, and Brooklyn, New York, but neighborhoods, such as Shaw, looked at South- globally in places like London and Brazil.

“My hope is when people are walking west and prepared for battle. An organization called the Model Inner City Community Orga- through the exhibition, they get the sense nization (MICCO) worked for the community of the real damage and destruction that to have input into the planning process for ur- was meted out by local and federal govban renewal that would preserve their homes ernments,” Meghelli muses. “It is a conand the historic Black Broadway. A Right to the tinuing struggle for neighborhoods and City chronicles some victories, including the residents to shape and reshape their neigh1969 construction of the Lincoln Westmo- borhoods in ways that serve their interreland apartments at the corner of 7th and S ests and that is never going to be resolved.”

—Allison Keyes streets NW, the first building to rise in the area after the 1968 riots following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But Dominic 1901 Fort Place SE. Free. (202) 633-4820.

Moulden, a resource organizer for the advoca- anacostia.si.edu.

K A

E R B THE

RUL ES JOSÉ ANDRÉS & FRIENDS PRESENT

JUNE 6

Tickets at dinendash.info

washingtoncitypaper.com may 25, 2018 19

20 may 25, 2018 washingtoncitypaper.com

CITYLIST

thh

NEW MUSIC VENUE

NOW OPEN THE WHARF, SW DC

DINER & BAR OPEN LATE!

Music 21 Books 26 Theater 27 Film 28

Music

CITY LIGHTS: FRIDAY

FRIDAY Blues

Rock & Roll Hotel 1353 H St. NE. (202) 388-7625.

Robert Finley. 8 p.m. $18–$20. rockandrollhoteldc. com.

COuntRY

PeaRl StReet WaReHouSe 33 Pearl Street SW. (202) 380-9620. The Walkaways. 8 p.m. $12. pearlstreetwarehouse.com.

DJ nIghts

HoWaRd tHeatRe 620 T St. NW. (202) 803-2899.

Reggae Fest vs. Soca. 11 p.m. $20. thehowardtheatre.com.

MAY CONCERTS

u StReet MuSic Hall 1115 U St. NW. (202) 588-1889.

U Sleaze. 10:30 p.m. $5–$10. ustreetmusichall.com.

TH 24

THE 9 SONGWRITER SERIES: JUSTIN TRAWICK • VIM & VIGOR • GUY PALUMBO • CAROL ANNE BOSCO • DARYL DAVIS • RYAN JOHNSON • JUSTINA JOHNSON • DANTE POPE • ELENA LACAYO

F 25 SA 26

THE WALKAWAYS & CRAVIN’ DOGS MISS TESS AND THE TALKBACKS w/ WOODY WOODWORTH AND THE PINERS

SU 27

HONKY TONK HAPPY HOUR with HUMAN COUNTRY JUKEBOX

eleCtROnIC

ecHoStaGe 2135 Queens Chapel Road NE. (202) 503-2330. Afrojack. 9 p.m. $30–$50. echostage.com.

FOlK

9:30 club 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. Rising Appalachia. 7 p.m. $20. 930.com.

FunK & R&B

biRcHMeRe 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria.

(703) 549-7500. Rahsaan Patterson. 7:30 p.m. $55. birchmere.com. blueS alley 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. (202) 3374141. Mousey Thompson’s James Brown Experience.

8 p.m.; 10 p.m. $25. bluesalley.com.

hIp-hOp

SonGbyRd MuSic HouSe and RecoRd cafe 2477 18th St. NW. (202) 450-2917. Cozz. 8 p.m. $18. songbyrddc.com. union StaGe 740 Water St. SW. (877) 987-6487.

Oshun. 8 p.m. $15–$30. unionstage.com.

pOp

u StReet MuSic Hall 1115 U St. NW. (202) 588-1889.

Jake Miller. 7 p.m. $20–$35. ustreetmusichall.com.

ROCK

black cat 1811 14th St. NW. (202) 667-4490. The Sidekicks. 7:30 p.m. $10–$12. blackcatdc.com.

sAtuRDAY FOlK

9:30 club 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. Lissie. 8 p.m. $25. 930.com.

FunK & R&B

u StReet MuSic Hall 1115 U St. NW. (202) 588-1889.

Jussie Smollett. 7 p.m. $20. ustreetmusichall.com.

JAzz

blueS alley 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. (202) 3374141. Lori Williams. 8 p.m.; 10 p.m. $27.50. bluesalley.com.

ROCK

black cat 1811 14th St. NW. (202) 667-4490. Gymshorts. 7 p.m. $10. blackcatdc.com.

PeaRl StReet WaReHouSe 33 Pearl Street SW. (202) 380-9620. Miss Tess & The Talkbacks. 8:30 p.m. $15. pearlstreetwarehouse.com.

AFROJACK

FREE SHOW AT 2PM!

Ready to get jacked? That's probably not an odd question to ask people that have an appreciation for the international dance music scene. But do not worry if you aren’t privy to Nick van de Wall, better known by his stage name, Afrojack, a Dirty Dutch EDM remix virtuoso. Afrojack is the nearly 7 foot DJ from the Netherlands whose mixes are typically speckled with hip-hop and doused in electronica for good measure. While the relatively lesser-known 2010 single “Take Over Control” was the beacon that first catapulted him to a top DJ spot in the Netherlands, he has worked with some of the biggest names in music since then—and has crafted straight bangers.

If you’re even a little musically inclined, you’ve heard his work riding airwaves ad nauseam in Beyoncé’s “Run the World (Girls)” and Pitbull’s “Give Me Everything” featuring Ne-Yo. These days, it’s not unusual to hear the producer’s mixes permeating the streets of Dupont. Don’t miss the chance to hear them live. Afrojack performs at 9 p.m. at Echostage, 2135 Queens Chapel Road NE. $30–$50. (202) 503-2330. echostage.com.

—Mikala Williams Rock & Roll Hotel 1353 H St. NE. (202) 388-7625.

She Wants Revenge. 8 p.m. $25. rockandrollhoteldc. com. union StaGe 740 Water St. SW. (877) 987-6487.

Stone Driver. 6:30 p.m. $12–$20. unionstage.com.

WORlD union StaGe 740 Water St. SW. (877) 987-6487. Protoje & The Indiggnation. 10:30 p.m. $25–$35. unionstage.com.

sunDAY ClAssICAl

Wolf tRaP filene centeR 1551 Trap Road, Vienna. (703) 255-1900. United States Marine Band. 8 p.m.

Free. wolftrap.org.

COuntRY tHe antHeM 901 Wharf St. SW. (202) 888-0020. Willie Nelson & Family and Sturgill Simpson. 7:30 p.m. $95–$175. theanthemdc.com.

PeaRl StReet WaReHouSe 33 Pearl Street SW. (202) 380-9620. Human Country Jukebox. 3 p.m.

Free. pearlstreetwarehouse.com. black cat 1811 14th St. NW. (202) 667-4490. Chad Valley. 7:30 p.m. $13–$15. blackcatdc.com.

FOlK dc9 1940 9th St. NW. (202) 483-5000. This Is The Kit. 8 p.m. $15. dcnine.com.

ROOSEVELT DIME & GOODNIGHT MOONSHINE

JUNE CONCERTS F1

BOOKER T. JONES

SA 2

KAREN JONAS & THE LINEMEN w/ CARY HUDSON (BLUE MOUNTAIN) ADRIAN AND MEREDITH

SU 3 TH 7 F8 SA 9 SU 10 TU 12 TH 14 F 15 SA 16

eleCtROnIC

union StaGe 740 Water St. SW. (877) 987-6487.

Laura Veirs. 8 p.m. $18–$20. unionstage.com.

TH 31

w/ RON HOLLOWAY TRIO

FREE SHOW! 2PM DOORS

GOOSE FREE SHOW! AMY HELM w/ THE MAMMALS KINGSLEY FLOOD w/ GLENN YODER AND THE WESTERN STATES & HUMBLE FIRE FEUFOLLET 3PM CAJUN DANCE PARTY! SAM LEWIS w/ THE COWARDS CHOIR BEN CAPLAN RUTHIE AND THE WRANGLERS ROOSEVELT COLLIER TRIO w/ ROBERT LIGHTHOUSE TRIO

TICKETS ON SALE! pearlstreetwarehouse.com

washingtoncitypaper.com may 25, 2018 21

CITY LIGHTS: sAtuRDAY

Space, the Next Frontier NATIONAL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Emil de Cou, conductor actor

JOHN CHO novelist and screenwriter John Cho

Nick Sagan

NICK SAGAN singer-songwriter

GRACE POTTER progressive rock band Grace Potter

Coheed and Cambria

COHEED AND CAMBRIA Emmy®, Golden Globe, Grammy® and Academy Award®-winning composer

MICHAEL GIACCHINO singer-songwriter and composer Michael Giacchino

will.i.am

WILL.I.AM

June 1 & 2 at 8 p.m. | Concert Hall Free post-concert party for ticketholders on June 1. View the special NASA exhibit in the Hall of Nations, May 27–June 3. Visit kennedy-center.org for more information!

OutBReAK: epIDeMICs In A COnneCteD WORlD

If movies and television programs are to be believed, most global pandemics are the result of ungodly experiments gone horribly wrong. Well, guess what: If all you know about outbreaks is what you saw in the movie Outbreak, then brother, you don’t know very much about outbreaks. From the bubonic plague that ravaged Europe in the 14th century to the deadly flu pandemic of 1918 to the various swine/bird/insert-animal-here flu scares that periodically afflict our modern world, outbreaks are often the product of environmental changes exacerbated by travel. A crowded airplane, an infected passenger, an uncovered sneeze, and before you know it the streets are filled with old crones pushing corpse-carts and yelling “Bring out your dead!” This is scary stuff, but an ounce of knowledge is worth a pound of panic. So get yourself to the National Museum of Natural History, where a new exhibition, Outbreak: Epidemics in a Connected World, tells the story of pandemics past, present, and future: the way they spread, the toll they take, and the amazingly competent people who often must race against the clock to contain them before it’s too late. The exhibition is on view to 2021 at the National Museum of Natural History, 10th Street and Constitution Avenue NW. Free. (202) 633-1000. nmnh.si.edu.

—Justin Peters

FunK & R&B

kennedy centeR MillenniuM StaGe 2700 F St. NW. (202) 467-4600. DCPS Music Festival Week: Leftist. 6 p.m. Free. kennedy-center.org.

hIp-hOp

tuesDAY

fillMoRe SilveR SPRinG 8656 Colesville Road, Silver Spring. (301) 960-9999. OutKast Tribute Dance Party and Concert with Black Alley. 8:30 p.m. $10–$20. fillmoresilverspring.com.

JAzz blueS alley 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. (202) 3374141. Akua Allrich & The Tribe. 8 p.m.; 10 p.m. $25. bluesalley.com.

ROCK

KENNEDY-CENTER.ORG | (202) 467-4600 Tickets also available at the Box Office. Groups call (202) 416-8400.

For all other ticket-related customer service inquiries, call the Advance Sales Box Office at (202) 416-8540.

David M. Rubenstein is the Presenting Underwriter of the NSO. AARP is the Presenting Sponsor of the NSO Pops Season.

Support for NSO Pops: Space, the Next Frontier is provided by Siemens Government Technologies and United Technologies Corporation.

22 may 25, 2018 washingtoncitypaper.com

WORlD

HoWaRd tHeatRe 620 T St. NW. (202) 803-2899.

The Earth, Wind & Fire Tribute Show 7th Anniversary Concert. 8 p.m. $15–$40. thehowardtheatre.com.

9:30 club 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. The Gaslight Anthem. 6:30 p.m. $45. 930.com. biRcHMeRe 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria.

(703) 549-7500. 10,000 Maniacs. 7:30 p.m. $39.50. birchmere.com.

SonGbyRd MuSic HouSe and RecoRd cafe 2477 18th St. NW. (202) 450-2917. Corey Flood. 8:30 p.m.

Free. songbyrddc.com.

MOnDAY ROCK

9:30 club 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. The Gaslight Anthem. 6:30 p.m. $45. 930.com.

COuntRY

biRcHMeRe 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria. (703) 549-7500. Justin Townes Earle. 7:30 p.m. $29.50. birchmere.com.

FunK & R&B

blueS alley 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. (202) 3374141. Lauren White. 8 p.m.; 10 p.m. $22. bluesalley. com.

ROCK

tHe antHeM 901 Wharf St. SW. (202) 888-0020. Jack White. 8 p.m. $65–$85. theanthemdc.com. dc9 1940 9th St. NW. (202) 483-5000. Michael Rault.

8 p.m. $12. dcnine.com.

Wolf tRaP filene centeR 1551 Trap Road, Vienna. (703) 255-1900. John Fogerty and ZZ Top. 7 p.m. $45–$95. wolftrap.org.

WeDnesDAY Blues

biRcHMeRe 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria.

(703) 549-7500. The Taj Mahal Trio. 7:30 p.m. $55. birchmere.com.

washingtoncitypaper.com may 25, 2018 23

Take Metrobus and Metrorail to the...

LESLIE ODOM JR.

R+R=Now (A Robert Glasper Supergroup)

#DCJAZZFEST

CITY LIGHTS: sunDAY

Maceo Parker

AlOng the pOet’s nARROW ROAD

SATURDAY JUNE 16, 2018

DC JAZZFEST AT TICKETS ON SALE NOW VIA TICKETFLY For tickets, artists and a complete schedule, visit DCJAZZFEST.ORG PRESENTING SPONSOR

PLATINUM SPONSORS

The Washington Post is the official media sponsor of DC JazzFest at The Wharf GOLD SPONSORS

SILVER SPONSORS

MEDIA SPONSOR

The photographs in Fred Zafran’s exhibition at Multiple Exposures Gallery, Along The Poet’s Narrow Road, are as moody and contemplative as you might expect for a meditation on a 17th century Japanese poet’s journey. Zafran, a Leesburg-based photographer who has previously exhibited works taken in downtown D.C. and Miami, followed the path of Matsuo Bashō, a famous Edo period master of haiku who cast off his possessions and hiked 1,500 miles through a wilderness region, mostly by himself, and wrote poetry. By the time of Zafran’s pilgrimage, the scenery he saw included modern elements like train stations, restaurant kitchens, and bits of new architecture, but in most of the images, the quiet remains, even in nominally busy settings. “In prior trips, I traveled to Japan to photograph Japan. This time was an interior journey, exploring through photography my own evolving relationship with this country,” Zafran says. Of special note is an image of a woman standing statue-like on a train platform, “an image of waiting,” in Zafran’s words, and “a portent of the journey to come.” The exhibition runs to June 17 at Multiple Exposures Gallery at the Torpedo Factory Art Center, 105 N. Union St., Studio 312, Alexandria. (703) 683-2205. multipleexposuresgallery.com.

—Louis Jacobson

hIp-hOp fillMoRe SilveR SPRinG 8656 Colesville Road, Silver Spring. (301) 960-9999. Tech N9ne with Krizz Kaliko. 8 p.m. $29.50. fillmoresilverspring.com.

SonGbyRd MuSic HouSe and RecoRd cafe 2477 18th St. NW. (202) 450-2917. Foggieraw, Kelow, and K.eYe.D. 8 p.m. $10–$15. songbyrddc.com.

JAzz blueS alley 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. (202) 3374141. Peter Beets Trio. 8 p.m.; 10 p.m. $25. bluesalley.com.

pOp 9:30 club 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. Japanese Breakfast. 7 p.m. $18. 930.com.

ROCK The DC Jazz Festival®, a 501(c)(3) non-profit service organization, and its programs are made possible, in part, with major grants from the Government of the District of Columbia, Muriel Bowser, Mayor; with awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, an agency supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Office of Cable Television, Film, Music & Entertainment; and the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development; and, in part, by major funding from the Anne and Ronald Abramson Family Foundation, The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, Gillon Family Charitable Fund, Wells Fargo Foundation, The NEA Foundation, Venable Foundation, The Dallas Morse Coors Foundation for the Performing Arts, The Max and Victoria Dreyfus Foundation, The Reva & David Logan Foundation, John Edward Fowler Memorial Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation. ©2018 DC Jazz Festival. All rights reserved.

24 may 25, 2018 washingtoncitypaper.com

tHe antHeM 901 Wharf St. SW. (202) 888-0020. Jack White. 8 p.m. $65–$85. theanthemdc.com. black cat 1811 14th St. NW. (202) 667-4490. Red Hare. 7:30 p.m. $10–$12. blackcatdc.com.

Wolf tRaP filene centeR 1551 Trap Road, Vienna. (703) 255-1900. John Fogerty and ZZ Top. 7 p.m. $45–$95. wolftrap.org.

WORlD

HoWaRd tHeatRe 620 T St. NW. (202) 803-2899.

Burna Boy. 8 p.m. $20–$25. thehowardtheatre.com.

thuRsDAY Blues

biRcHMeRe 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria.

(703) 549-7500. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. 7:30 p.m. $49.50. birchmere.com.

PeaRl StReet WaReHouSe 33 Pearl Street SW. (202) 380-9620. Roosevelt Dime. 8 p.m. $15. pearlstreetwarehouse.com.

ClAssICAl

baRnS at Wolf tRaP 1635 Trap Road, Vienna. (703) 255-1900. Steven Blier & Wolf Trap Opera Soloists. 2 p.m. $48. wolftrap.org.

MuSic centeR at StRatHMoRe 5301 Tuckerman Lane, North Bethesda. (301) 581-5100. Baltimore Symphony Orchestra: Gershwin’s Piano Concerto. 8 p.m. $35–$99. strathmore.org.

DJ nIghts

flaSH 645 Florida Ave. NW. (202) 827-8791. LTJ Bukem. 9 p.m. $10–$20. flashdc.com.

Merriweather Post Pavilion • Columbia, MD JUST ANNOUNCED!

DC101 KERFUFFLE FEATURING

Fall Out Boy • Rise Against • Awolnation and more! ........................ JULY 22 On Sale Now

THIS THURSDAY!

Jason Aldean w/ Luke Combs & Lauren Alaina ..................................... MAY 24

THIS WEEK’S SHOWS

JUNE 2 & 3 - SOLD OUT!

ALL GOOD PRESENTS

Rising Appalachia w/ Be Steadwell & Arouna Diarra ............................ F MAY 25 Lissie w/ Van William ..................................................................................... Sa 26 Japanese Breakfast w/ LVL Up & Radiator Hospital ................................. W 30 MAY

Flight Facilities ....................Th 31 JUNE

Dirty Projectors w/ Buzzy Lee Early Show! 6pm Doors .......................F 1 Real Friends?: Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Kanye West, Rihanna, and Drake Dance Night with DJ Dredd and Video Mix

by O’s Cool Late Show! 10pm Doors ..F 1

D NIGHT ADDED!

FIRST NIGHT SOLD OUT! SECON

This is a seated show.......................Th 21 AN EVENING WITH

VANS WARPED TOUR PRESENTED BY JOURNEYS FEAT.

STEEZ PROMO PRESENTS

Lady Antebellum & Darius Rucker

M. Ward ....................................Sa 16 Houndmouth ..........................Su 17 Story District’s Out/Spoken The Feelies ..............................F 22 Ghastly ....................................Sa 23 Old 97’s ......................................F 29 JULY

The Glitch Mob w/ Elohim .......Su 3 Hop Along w/ Bat Fangs & Bad Moves ...........Tu 5 Francis and the Lights ..........W 6 Parquet Courts w/ Goat Girl ...Th 7 White Ford Bronco:

Steve Hofstetter This is a seated show. 14+ to enter. .....Sa 7 Hot In Herre: 2000s Dance Party

DC’s All-90s Band .......................F 8

The Bumper Jacksons • Justin Trawick and The Common Good • Louisa Hall • more TBA! ........Sa 14

MIXTAPE Pride Party

w/ DJs Matt Bailer • Keenan Orr • Tezrah ................Sa 9 D NIGHT ADDED!

FIRST NIGHT SOLD OUT! SECON

Chromeo w/ Pomo ...................Tu 12 Ben Harper & Charlie Musselwhite ...........W 13 WPGC BIRTHDAY BASH FEATURING

E.U. with Sugar Bear • Kid ’N’ Play • Big Daddy Kane . Th 14 American Aquarium w/ Cory Branan Early Show! 6pm Doors .....................F 15

Who’s Bad: The World’s #1

Michael Jackson Tribute Band

Late Show! 10pm Doors .....................F 15

MANY MORE SHOWS ON SALE!

9:30 CUPCAKES

Earth, Wind & Fire • Ledisi • Butterscotch and more! ................... JUNE 1

Florida Georgia Line .............................................................................. JUNE 7 Robert Plant & The Sensational Space Shifters w/ Sheryl Crow & Seth Lakeman........................................................... JUNE 12 Luke Bryan w/ Jon Pardi & Morgan Wallen ........................................... JUNE 14 Paramore w/ Foster the People & Soccer Mommy ............................ JUNE 23 Sugarland w/ Brandy Clark & Clare Bowen ............................................. JULY 14 Dispatch w/ Nahko and Medicine for the People & Raye Zaragoza ..... JULY 21 David Byrne w/ Benjamin Clementine ..................................................... JULY 28

JUNE (cont.)

U STREET MUSIC HALL PRESENTS

CAPITAL JAZZ FEST FEATURING

with DJs Will Eastman and Ozker • Visuals by Kylos .........................F 13

The Circus Life Podcast 5th Anniversary Concert feat.

The Get Up Kids w/ Racquet Club & Ageist ...........Su 15 Deafheaven w/ Drab Majesty & Uniform ........Sa 21 Sleep w/ Dylan Carlson ............Su 22 That 70s Party featuring Champion Sound (Live) and Vinyl DJs Gudi & John Eamon .........Sa 28

AUGUST

George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic .Th 2 Andrea Gibson w/ Mary Lambert This is a seated show. ..........................F 3

930.com

3OH!3 • August Burns Red • Less Than Jake and more! ....................... JULY 29

w/ Russell Dickerson ........................................................................................AUGUST 2 CDE PRESENTS SUMMER SPIRIT FESTIVAL FEATURING

Erykah Badu • Anderson .Paak & The Free Nationals • Nas • The Roots and more!..................................................................... AUGUST 4 & 5

Jason Mraz w/ Brett Dennen ................................................................AUGUST 10 AUG 11 SOLD OUT!

Phish ................................................................................................................AUGUST 12 CAKE & Ben Folds w/ Tall Heights .................................................AUGUST 18 Kenny Chesney w/ Old Dominion ......................................................AUGUST 22 Portugal. The Man w/ Lucius..................................................................SEPT 21 The National w/ Cat Power & Phoebe Bridgers ...................................SEPT 28 • For full lineups and more info, visit merriweathermusic.com • 930.com

The Modell Lyric • Baltimore, MD

THE DECEMBERISTS ............................................. SEPTEMBER 12 Ticketmaster • Modell-Lyric.com

Lincoln Theatre • 1215 U Street, NW Washington, D.C.

Gomez:

Bring It On 20th Anniversary Tour ....JUNE 9

Eels New date! All 6/11 tickets honored. w/ That 1 Guy ..................................JUNE 12 Blackmore’s Night w/ The Wizard’s Consort ................ JULY 25 Amos Lee w/ Caitlyn Smith ...... SEPT 18

Blood Orange ........................ SEPT 28 The Milk Carton Kids w/ The Barr Brothers ....................... OCT 13 AN EVENING WITH The Tallest Man On Earth NOV 9 MADISON HOUSE PRESENTS Kamasi Washington ...........NOV 10

• thelincolndc.com • U Street (Green/Yellow) stop across the street!

The best thing you could possibly put in your mouth Cupcakes by BUZZ... your neighborhood bakery in Alexandria, VA. | www.buzzonslaters.com

9:30 CLUB PRESENTS AT U STREET MUSIC HALL Jake Miller w/ Devin Hayes .......... F MAY 25 Jussie Smollett w/ Victory Boyd ....... Sa 26 Bruno Major ................................ Tu JUN 5 Logan Henderson ................................F 8

Shwayze & Cisco: 10th Anniversary Summer Tour

w/ Cam Meekins ..................................... Sa 9 Night Riots w/ Courtship & Silent Rival .................... Su 10

• Buy advance tickets at the 9:30 Club box office • 930.com

TICKETS for 9:30 Club shows are available through TicketFly.com, by phone at 1-877-4FLY-TIX, and at the 9:30 Club box office.

9:30 CLUB BOX OFFICE HOURS are 12-7pm on weekdays & until 11pm on show nights, 6-11pm on Sat, and 6-10:30pm on Sun on show nights.

HAPPY HOUR DRINK PRICES impconcerts.com AFTER THE SHOW AT THE BACK BAR!

PARKING: THE OFFICIAL 9:30 parking lot entrance is on 9th Street, directly behind the 9:30 Club. Buy your advance parking tickets at the same time as your concert tickets!

930.com washingtoncitypaper.com may 25, 2018 25

3701 Mount Vernon Ave. Alexandria, VA • 703-549-7500

may

5/25 macy gray 5/26 macy gray -by popular demand-

june

6/2 joe clair & friends comedy show (2 shows 7/10pm)

6/3 rare essence 6/4 bethesda blues and jazz youth orchestra 6/5 midge ure & paul young 6/7 & 6/8 jesse colin young 6/10 be’la dona go go brunch 6/16 cheryl lynn 6/17 confunkshun (fathers day - 2 shows 1 pm brunch/ 7pm)

July

7/1 happy together tour 7/20 musiq soulchild (2 shows 7/10 pm)

7/21 musiq soulchild (2 shows 7/10pm)

7/22 vicki lawrence 7/28 chrisette michele 7719 wisconsin avenue bethesda, md (240) 330-4500 www.bethesdabluesjazz.com two blocks from bethesda metro station/ red line

CITY LIGHTS: MOnDAY

For entire schedule go to Birchmere.com Find us on Facebook/Twitter!

Tix @ Ticketmaster.com 800-745-3000

May 24

MARC COHN 25 RAHSAAN PATTERSON 27 10,000 MANIACS 29

Lily JUSTIN TOWNES EARLE Hiatt

30 2018 Blues Music Awards Entertainer of The Year!

Jamie THE TAJ MAHAL Trio McLean 31 BIG BAD VOODOO DADDY June 1 HERE COME THE MUMMIES 2 JASON D. WILLIAMS & THE NIGHTHAWKS

7

In the

!

AMADOU & MARIAM 8 KELLY WILLIS & CHRIS KNIGHT 9 CHARLES ROSS’

RY COODER & His Band Joachim Cooder 12 DAVID SANBORN

11

MATTHEW SWEET tJ 14 DAVE ALVIN & JIMMIE DALE GILMORE

ustin rawick

13

(Backed by The Guilty Ones) w/Dead Rock West

FREDDIE JACKSON 16 PIECES OF A DREAM 15

17 Mike Seeger Commemorative 12th Annual

OLD TIME BANJO FESTIVAL

feat. DOM FLEMONS, CATHY FINK & MARCY MARXER & MUCH MORE!

GORDON LIGHTFOOT Zane 19 ROBERT EARL KEEN Campbell

seCRet CItIes: the ARChIteCtuRe AnD plAnnIng OF the MAnhAttAn pROJeCt

When I visited Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in 1996, the late local newspaper editor Dick Smyser told me how, back in the 1960s, he ran a sharply worded editorial after a major mercury spill. The angle was not the environmental hazard, it was the sad loss of $160,000 of mercury. Few company towns were as single-minded as Oak Ridge and its once-secret peers in the Manhattan Project, Los Alamos, New Mexico, and Hanford, Washington. These three locales are the subjects of Secret Cities, a National Building Museum exhibition that traces their architectural precursors (the advent of planned cities and prefab homes), their rapid-fire, utilitarian construction in the hinterlands, and their integration into the postwar landscape. It features vintage photographs, home movies, and artifacts, including modestly radioactive dinnerware. Notably, the exhibition lays bare the racial segregation at all three sites, including "hutments" for black workers that were no more than tents. A more positive footnote: There were women who dominated some technical jobs at Oak Ridge because they adapted more quickly than their older, male counterparts. Unlike the mercury spill editorial, Secret Cities maintains a humanist perspective. The exhibition is on view to March 3, 2019 at the National Building Museum, 401 F St. NW. $7–$10. (202) 272-2448. nbm.org.

—Louis Jacobson

18

20

2018 Blues Music Awards Winner!

THE ROBERT CRAY BAND

21 The Knitting Factory Presents

CHAD PRATHER 22& 23 TOWER OF POWER “50th Anniversary!”

JONATHAN BUTLER "Plays Well 26 LERA LYNN With Others" w/John Paul White & Peter Bradley Adams

24

SERGIO MENDES 29&30 LYFE JENNINGS 28

26 may 25, 2018 washingtoncitypaper.com

eleCtROnIC

9:30 club 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. Flight Facilities. 7 p.m. $25. 930.com.

FunK & R&B

union StaGe 740 Water St. SW. (877) 987-6487.

Boomscat. 8 p.m. $15. unionstage.com.

JAzz

blueS alley 1073 Wisconsin Ave. NW. (202) 3374141. Roberta Gambarini. 8 p.m.; 10 p.m. $30–$35. bluesalley.com. tWinS Jazz 1344 U St. NW. (202) 234-0072. Kristina Koller Perception Tour. 8 p.m. $12. twinsjazz.com.

pOp

black cat 1811 14th St. NW. (202) 667-4490. Black Moth Super Rainbow. 7:30 p.m. $15. blackcatdc.com.

ROCK

Rock & Roll Hotel 1353 H St. NE. (202) 388-7625.

The Bouncing Souls. 8 p.m. $25. rockandrollhoteldc. com.

Books

PaMela dRuckeRMan Pamela Druckerman speaks about her new book There Are No Grown-Ups: A Midlife Coming-of-Age Story, a meditation on all things related to coming of age during your midlife.

Politics & Prose at The Wharf. 70 District Square SW. May 31. 7 p.m. Free. (202) 488-3867. tHoMaS b. ReSton Author and former politician Thomas B. Reston discusses his latest work, Soul of a Democrat, a book chronicling the history of the Democratic Party, its once unifying ideological messages and principles, and how the party can look to the future to return to those ideals. Politics & Prose. 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW. May 30. 7 p.m. Free. (202) 3641919.

1501 14th St. NW. To June 17. $20–$85. (202) 332-3300. studiotheatre.org.

Theater

caMelot This musical based on Arthurian legend is the winner of four Tony Awards. From its stunning score to its story’s legendary Round Table, Camelot is an ode to idealistic leadership that champions the potential of humankind. Sidney Harman Hall. 610 F St. NW. To July 1. $44–$118. (202) 547-1122. shakespearetheatre.org.

GiRlfRiend Todd Almond and Matthew Sweet’s vibrant coming-of-age musical duet makes its D.C. premiere. In 1993 small-town Nebraska, collegebound jock Mike and aimless Will find themselves drawn to each other. What follows is a rush of firsttime love, full of excitement, confusion and passion.

Signature Theatre. 4200 Campbell Ave., Arlington. To June 10. $40–$84. (703) 820-9771. sigtheatre.org. tHe inviSible Hand From Ayad Akhtar, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of Disgraced, comes a thriller about an American options trader and Citibank executive, whom a fringe radical group holds hostage in Pakistan. He must use his trading strategies to find a way out in the midst of violence, corruption, and inequality. Olney Theatre Center. 2001 OlneySandy Spring Road, Olney. To June 10. $49–$74. (301) 924-3400. olneytheatre.org. tHe ReMainS Starring Maulik Pancholy (Weeds, 30 Rock, Star Trek: Discovery), this production centers on Kevin and Theo. Ten years after their wedding, the pair host a dinner for their families and reveal the truth of their seemingly perfect union. Studio Theatre.

tHe ScottSboRo boyS In 1931, nine African-American teenagers were taken off a train, falsely accused of a crime, and hastily tried and sentenced to death.

Nominated for 12 Tony Awards and making its D.C. premiere, The Scottsboro Boys transforms an event that gripped the country into a compelling musical.

Signature Theatre. 4200 Campbell Ave., Arlington. To July 1. $40–$89. (703) 820-9771. sigtheatre.org.

SHeaR MadneSS A famed concert pianist who lives above the Shear Madness unisex hair salon dies in a scissor-stabbing murder. Set in modern day Georgetown, this interactive comedy whodunit lets its audience solve the crime. Kennedy Center Theater Lab. 2700 F St. NW. To June 10. $54. 202-467-4600. kennedy-center.org. tHe SMall RooM at tHe toP of tHe StaiRS The Small Room at the Top of the Stairs centers on Grace, who finds herself irresistibly drawn to a mysterious and forbidden room. From the award-winning French Canadian playwright Carole Fréchette and her acclaimed translator John Murrell. Spooky Action Theater. 1810 16th St. NW. To June 10. $20–$40. (202) 2480301. spookyaction.org. tituS andRonicuS Synetic Theater’s visionary founding artistic director Paata Tsikurishvili produces the 13th addition of the “Wordless Shakespeare” series, showcasing this revenge-driven tragedy about fiery passion, energy, and vengeance. Synetic Theater at Crystal City. 1800 South Bell St. , Arlington.

To May 27. $15–$35. (866) 811-4111. synetictheater.org.

Roseda Farms NY Strip $19.99/lb Harvey’s Homemade Pork sausages $9.99/lb Free Range Whole Chickens $3.99/lb

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Hours of Operation: Tues. - Sun. ~ 8am - 8pm

We Proudly Feature: Roseda Beef, Berkshire Pork, Benton’s Bacon In-house butcher every day!

202-544-0400

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tHe undeniable Sound of RiGHt noW Making its D.C. premiere, Laura Eason’s The Undeniable Sound of Right Now revolves around Hank, a

CITY LIGHTS: tuesDAY

nAKeD eYes: CeleBRAtIOn OF lIght

L’Enfant Plaza gallery ARTECHOUSE’s Naked Eyes: Celebration of Light is a dreamlike sensory experience, designed to make viewers lose all sense of space. The gallery, continuing its run of dazzling immersive programming, presents its latest exhibition as “a choreography of light,” featuring four new site-specific installations from Paris-based artist studio Nonotak, a collaboration between optical illustrator Noemi Schipfer and musician-architect Takami Nakamoto. The installation “Zero Point One,” for instance, presents the user with an interactive fiber optic grid like something out of a futuristic science fiction movie that you can wander into, creating your own light-tripping narrative, accompanied by electronic music. Get transcended to a Tron-esque plane of existence with the exhibition’s help—or with the help of chacha, a Georgian pomace brandy served at the gallery bar that will make the future go down more smoothly. The exhibition is on view to June 30 at ARTECHOUSE, 1238 Maryland Ave. SW. $8–$15. artechouse.com.

—Pat Padua washingtoncitypaper.com may 25, 2018 27

CITY LIGHTS: WEDNESDAY

CITY LIGHTS: THURSDAY

THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS

In March of 1931, nine black boys were pulled off a train in Paint Rock, Alabama, and were wrongly accused of raping two white women on a train traveling through the South. The first unfortunate set of trials for this group of boys was held in the court of Scottsboro, Alabama, thus beginning the saga of the Scottsboro Boys. Signature Theatre will bring the story's musical adaptation to D.C. in celebration of the work of John Kander and Fred Ebb, bringing the oft forgotten story of this injustice to a generation that might find the themes quite familiar. The theatrical story of the Scottsboro Boys made its Broadway run in 2010, lasting only a two-month stretch that proved nevertheless historical. Nominated for 12 Tonys, the play didn’t capture one win, setting a record in futility for Tony nominees. During its run, the play also found protestors railing against the use of minstrel framework in the show, despite the intentional use of minstrelsy to uncover the evil of the artform and the American criminal justice system. Clearly ahead of its time, the musical will hit Signature with an all-black cast—with the exception of the Interlocutor, necessary in any minstrel. The show runs to July 1 at Signature Theatre, 4200 Campbell Ave., Arlington. $40–$89. (703) 820-9771. sigtheatre.org.

—Hamzat Sani struggling rock club owner in 1992. When his daughter starts dating a star DJ, he comes to realize the destructive power of the Next Big Thing. Keegan Theatre. 1742 Church St. NW. To May 27. $35–$45. (202) 265-3767. keegantheatre.com.

Waitress Featuring original music and lyrics from Grammy-winning pop star Sara Bareilles, this uplifting musical tells the story of Jenna, a waitress dreaming of a way out of her little town and loveless marriage. Based on Adrienne Shelly’s beloved film of the same name. National Theatre. 1321 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. To June 3. $48–$98. (202) 628-6161. nationaltheatre.org.

Film

Book CluB Diane Keaton, Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen, and Mary Steenburgen star as four lifelong friends whose lives are changed after reading the 50 Shades of Grey erotic novel series. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information) BreakiNG iN Gabrielle Union stars as a mother fighting to protect her family after her home is invaded. Co-starring Billy Burke and Richard Cabral.

DeaDpool 2 Deadpool, the foul-mouthed Merc with a Mouth, puts together a team of rogues to defeat the

villainous Cable. Starring Ryan Reynolds, Josh Brolin, and Zazie Beetz. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information) First reFormeD The solitary life of the pastor of a small church in upstate New York begins to spiral after an encounter with a member of his church and her radical environmental activist husband. Starring Ethan Hawke, Amanda Seyfried, and Cedric the Entertainer. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information) liFe oF tHe partY Melissa McCarthy plays a newlydumped housewife who decides to make the most of her situation by going back to college to complete her degree. Co-starring Gillian Jacobs and Debby Ryan. sHoW DoGs A Rottweiler police dog must go undercover as a show dog with his human partner to avoid a disaster. Starring Will Arnett, Alan Cumming, and Stanley Tucci. (See washingtoncitypaper.com for venue information) solo: a star Wars storY Han Solo meets beloved Star Wars characters Chewbacca and Lando Calrissian on an adventure into a criminal underworld years before joining the Rebels in this prequel to A New Hope. Starring Alden Ehrenreich, Donald Glover, and Woody Harrelson. (See washingtoncitypaper. com for venue information)

28 may 25, 2018 washingtoncitypaper.com

THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER

The AFI Silver’s tribute to Robert Mitchum continues with a dreamlike 1955 thriller, The Night of the Hunter, that gave the actor one of his most iconic roles. Mitchum stars as an ex-con who poses as a preacher in order to sweet talk a seemingly helpless widow (screen legend Shelley Winters) out of the $10,000 her bank-robbing husband hid before he was executed. With the words “LOVE” and “HATE” tattooed across his fingers, Mitchum’s charismatic performance created one of those rarefied cinema villains who has earned pop culture immortality in a Simpsons episode. In his sole credit as a director, actor Charles Laughton adapted Davis Grubb’s Southern Gothic novel of the same name, inspired by the true story of a lonely hearts killer who murdered two widows and three children in West Virginia in 1931. The Night of the Hunter was a critical and commercial failure upon its release, but, fortunately for viewers, it has since become one of the most beloved movies of its era. The film screens at 3 p.m. and 9:15 pm. at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center, 8633 Colesville Road, Silver Spring. $8–$13. (301) 495-6700. afi.com/ silver.

—Pat Padua

SAVAGELOVE I like watersports, and I heard about a guy in a rural area who holds piss parties in his backyard.

I found a mailing list for those interested in piss play, and it wasn’t long before he posted about one of these parties. People on the list talk a big game, but no one else has stepped up to host something, including me. (I would, but four neighbors look into my backyard.) The host has very simple rules for who can attend: You have to identify as a guy and wear masculine attire. I get to the party, and there were about four guys and the host. I had a good time. The host had plenty of drinks out, towels, chairs, canopies, and candles to ward off the mosquitos. I’ve been back a couple of times. Everyone is friendly enough and there’s the right amount of perversion. So what’s the problem? The host. He’s loud and annoying. He insists on putting classical music on (it doesn’t set the mood very well). He tells the same lame jokes every time he’s pissing on someone. He will complain that people say they’re coming and don’t show. If you are having a moment with someone, he will invariably horn in on the action. Without being rude, I’ve tried to make it clear that we are not looking for company, but he doesn’t take the hint. It’s his party, and props to him for hosting it—but it takes the fun out of it when the host doesn’t know when to back off. I’ve gotten to the point where it’s not worth the effort to go.

Do I just get over it, or say something privately?

—Person Exasperates Enthusiast The advice I gave a different reader about dealing with a guest horning in on the action at an orgy applies in your case: “Even kind and decent people can be terrible about taking hints—especially when doing so means getting cut out of a drunken fuckfest. So don’t hint, tell. There’s no rule of etiquette that can paper over the discomfort and awkwardness of that moment, so you’ll just have to power through it.”

Swap out “drunken fuckfest” for “drenchin’ piss scene,” and the advice works—up to a point, PEE, because the person in your case who needs telling, not hinting, isn’t one of the guests, he’s the host. (And he sounds like a gracious host. I mean, drinks, towels, and canapés* at a piss party? Swank.) But your host’s behavior sounds genuinely annoying. Hosting a sex party doesn’t give someone the right to insert himself into someone else’s scene, and stupid jokes have the power to kill the mood and murder the boners.

So what do you do?

Well, you could send your host an email or give him a call. Thank him for the invite, let him know you appreciate the effort he goes to (such delicious canapés!), and then tell him why some people say they’re coming and don’t show: You’re too loud, your music is awful, you have a bad habit of horning in on the action, and you need to learn some new jokes to tell

when you’re pissing on someone (or, better yet, not tell any jokes at all). But I don’t think ticking off a list of his shortcomings is going to get you anywhere other than crossed off the invite list to future parties.

So why not make your own piss party? You don’t need a big backyard—I mean, presumably your place has a tub. Supplement your tub with a couple of kiddie pools on top of some plastic tarp laid down on the living room or basement floor. Ask your guests to keep it in the tub, pool, or on the tarp. You get to choose the guys, you get to select the music, and, as host, you can lay down the law about making jokes and horning in on the action: Both are forbidden, and joke-telling horner-inners will be asked to pull up their pants and leave.

So why not make your own piss party?

You don’t need a big backyard— I mean, presumably your place has a tub.

One last thought: If you have it in you to invest some time in getting to know this guy—if you treat him like a human being—you might be able to draw him out on something that clearly frustrates him: guys who say they’re coming to the party but don’t show. If he seems genuinely baffled, PEE, that’s your opening to ask him if he’d like some constructive feedback. If he says yes, you can very gently run through your list of ways to improve his parties: no jokes, better music, and a “no horning in” rule for all (not just for him). * Yes, I know: There were canopies at the party, not canapés—tents, not hors d’oeuvres. But I read it as canapés at first, and the mental image of piss players daintily eating canapés between scenes was so much more entertaining than the mental image of piss players huddling under canopies that I stuck with my original reading.

—Dan Savage I had a MMF threesome with my husband and a man we met on Instagram (of all places)! Everyone had a good time, and there was no awkwardness afterward. I think things went so well

because after years of reading Savage Love, we knew to “use our words” and treat our “very special guest star” with respect! Thanks, Dan! —My Ultimate Fantasy Fulfilled You’re welcome, MUFF!

—DS

I’m a cis woman and recently came out as a lesbian after identifying as bisexual for three years. After having sexual encounters with men and women, I finally admitted to myself that I am gay. Now that I’m finally out, I don’t want to do anything that would make me feel like denying it again. My question is, am I a bad lesbian if I sleep with a guy?

I’m currently working 50 hours a week and going to school. I don’t have time for a relationship, and am finding casual hookups with women are difficult. A male friend I know and trust recently propositioned me. At first I said no, but now I’m rethinking it. Sex with men doesn’t compare at all to sex with women for me. On a scale of 1 to 10, it’s definitely in the below 5 range. But my mind says, “It’s still sex!” and I would enjoy it to a point. But I worry that doing this would call my sexuality into question. I feel like I’d definitely have to hide this from my friends. And if I feel guilty enough to hide it, maybe I shouldn’t do it? Finally identifying as a lesbian was like breathing out for me. I feel way more like myself and am way happier now.

But I worry that even being willing to consider this makes me seem bi. I guess I’m looking for permission and absolution. Would this make me a “bad” lesbian? Or would it mean I should identify as bi?

—Girl Asking You I’ve often been accused of having a pro-dicksitting bias, GAY, so I decided to recuse myself and pass your question on to a couple of lesbians.

“She is way too concerned with labels,” says Lesbian #1. “I used to slip on a dick once every few years—before I quit drinking tequila—and that didn’t make me any less of a raging, homo-romantic dyke. And if her friends give that much of a fuck about who she bones, she needs friends with more interesting hobbies.”

“I don’t think there is anything wrong with her or any lesbian wanting to sleep with a guy,” says Lesbian #2. “I wouldn’t sleep with a guy, but I do agree that women trying to casually hook up with other women is much more difficult than men with men, or even men with women. Women instantly want to be your long-term partner after one hookup—the UHaul jokes are fucking real. But if identifying as something is important to her, I think identifying as queer might be a better option for now rather than struggling to figure out if she is only bi or only lesbian and only those forever.”

—DS Email your Savage Love questions to mail@savagelove.net.

AN EVENING WITH

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June 5, 2018. Contact: bids@briya.org Urban Teacher fellows receive a master’s KIPP DC PUBLIC degree from the Johns CHARTER SCHOOLS Hopkins School of REQUEST FOR PROEducation, one of the POSAL (RFP) top 10 graduate schools Food Service Manageof education in the ment Services country, and become dually certified to teach KIPP DC is advertising in either elementary the opportunity to bid education, secondary on the delivery of breakEnglish or secondary fast, lunch, snack and/or math, and special eduCACFP supper meals to cation. Urban Teachers children enrolled at the offer more comprehenschools for the 2018-19 sive coursework and school year with a pospersonalized support sible extension of (4) than any other teacher one year renewals. All training program. Their meals must meet at a participants take part minimum, but are not in a residency as they restricted to, the USDA work alongside an exNational School Breakperienced teacher in an

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BER 27, 2017 AND HAS FILED ARTICLES OF DISSOLUTION OF The decision to sole CORDOMESTIC FOR-PROFIT source due THE to the PORATIONisWITH DISTRICT fact that they provide OF COLUMBIA CORPORATIONS DIVISION teacher trainexcellent ing that is unmatched in ADC.CLAIM AGAINSTtoTRAVISA DCI wishes enter OUTSOURCING, MUST into a contract INC. with UrINCLUDE THE NAME OF THE ban Teachers for teacher DISSOLVED CORPORATION, fellows canOF THE INCLUDE that THE we NAME place as full timeA teachCLAIMANT, INCLUDE SUMMAers ourFACTS classrooms as RY OFinTHE SUPPORTING our schoolAND continues toTO THE CLAIM, BE MAILED 1600 INTERNATIONAL DRIVE, grow.

The fee to provide SUITE 600, MCLEAN, VA be 22102 these services will contingent upon how ALL CLAIMS WILL BE BARRED many teacher fellows UNLESS A PROCEEDING DCI secures for each TO ENFORCE THE CLAIM IS COMschool MENCED year, WITH at IN 3$25,000 YEARS OF for each teacher fellow PUBLICATION OF THIS NOTICE IN ACCORDANCE WITH SECTION KIPP DCOFPUBLIC 29-312.07 THE DISTRICT OF CHARTER COLUMBIA SCHOOLS ORGANIZATIONS ACT. INVITATION FOR BID (IFB) Two Rivers PCS is soliciting Food Service Manageproposals to provide project manment agementServices services for a small construction project. For a copy of the RFP, please email procurement@ KIPP DC is advertising tworiverspcs.org. the opportunityDeadline to bid for submissions is December 6, 2017. on the delivery of breakfast, lunch, snack and/or CACFP supper meals to children enrolled at the schools for the 2018-19 school year with a possible extension of (4) one year renewals. All meals must meet at a minimum, but are not restricted to, the USDA National School Breakfast, Lunch, Afterschool Snack and At Risk Supper meal pattern requirements. Additional

specifications outlined in Legals the IFB such as; student data, days of service, DC SCHOLARS PCS REQUEST meal quality, etc. may FOR PROPOSALS – Modube obtained beginning lar Contractor Services - DC on 5/25/18 Dionna Scholars Publicfrom Charter School Day 202-223-4505 or solicitsatproposals for a modular dionna.day@kippdc.org: contractor to provide professional management and construction services to construct Proposals will be a modular building to house four classrooms accepted at 2600 Virand oneAve. faculty offi ce suite.

The ginia NW, Ste. 900 Request for Proposals (RFP) Washington, DC 20037 specifi cations can be obtained on on 6/18/18, not later and after Monday, November 27, thanfrom 3pm.

2017 Emily Stone via comAll bids not addressing munityschools@dcscholars.org. all areas outlined All questionsasshould be sent in in thebyIFB willNo not be calls writing e-mail. phone regarding this RFP will be acconsidered. cepted. Bids must be received by 5:00 PM on Thursday,YU December WASHINGTON 14, 2017PCS at DC Scholars Public YING Charter School, ATTN: Sharonda REQUEST FOR PROPOSMann, 5601 E. Capitol St. SE, ALS Washington, DC 20019. Any bids Busaddressing Servicesallduring not areas as outField lined inTrips the RFP specifi cations will not be considered.

Washington Yu Ying is seeking competitive Apartments for Rent bids for bus services for periodic student field trips. These field trips will be scheduled during the academic school year and summer school sessions. Typically, the student field trips will start and end on Yu Ying’s campus at 220 Taylor St. NE, WashingMust DC. see! Spacious semi-furton, nished 1 BR/1 BA basement apt, Deanwood, Bids must be$1200. able Sep. entrance, W/W carpet, to provide proofW/D, of kitchen, fireplace near Blue Line/X9/ insurance coverage.

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SOMERSET PREP DC Construction/Labor PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL NOTICE OF INTENT TO ENTER A SOLE SOURCE CONTRACT Student Assessment Services POWER DESIGN NOW HIRING ELECTRICAL APPRENTICES OF ALL LEVSomerset PrepSKILL DC Public ELS! Charter School intends to enter into a sole about the position…with The source contract Do you love working with Achievement Network your hands? Are you interfor student assessment ested in construction and services to help idenin becoming an electrician? tify and close gaps in Then the electrical apprentice student for the position learning could be perfect for 2018-2019 school year. you! Electrical apprentices are able to earn a paycheck full benefiPrep ts whileDC learn* and Somerset ing theCharter trade through firstPublic School hand experience. constitutes the sole

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WASHINGTON GLOBAL PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL NOTICE: REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS Washington Global Public Charter School in accordance with section 2204(c) of the District of Columbia School Reform Act of 1995 solicits proposals for the following services: * Facility Management/ Maintenance Services Proposal Submission A Portable Document Format (pdf) election

version of your proposal Miscellaneous must be received by the school no later NEW COOPERATIVE SHOP! than 4:00 p.m. EST on Wednesday, June 13, FROM EGPYT THINGS 2018 unless otherwise AND BEYOND stated in associated 240-725-6025 RFP’s.

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* Somerset Prep DC Public Charter School constitutes the sole source for PowerSchool for student information systems for the 20182019 school year. * For further information Get Wit It Productions: Profesregarding this notice sional sound and lighting availcontact sspdc_bids@ able for club, corporate, private, somersetprepdc.org wedding receptions, holiday no later than 4:00 pm events and much more. Insured, Friday, June 2018. competitive rates.1, Call (866) 531-

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2204(c) of the District of nightlightproductions.club and Columbia School Reform submit stories to me Happy Act ofyour 1995 solicits Holidays! James K. West proposals for vendors wpermanentwink@aol.com to provide the following services for SY18.19: * Maintenance/HVAC Services Proposal Submission A Portable Document Format (pdf) election version of your proposal must be received by the school no later than 4:00 p.m. EST on Tuesday, June 5, 2018.

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30 may 25, 2018 washingtoncitypaper.com

SOMERSET PREP DC Events PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL Christmas in Silver Spring NOTICE: FOR PROPOSSaturday, December 2, 2017 ALS FOR DATA CONVeteran’s Plaza SULTING SERVICES 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.

Come celebrate Christmas in Somerset PrepSpring DC at our the heart of Silver Public Village Charter School Plain Vendor on Veteran’s accordance with section za. There will be shopping, arts 2204(c) of kids, the District and crafts for pictures with Santa, music and entertainment of Columbia School to spread holiday and more.

Reform Act ofcheer 1995 Proceeds from the market will solicits proposals for SY provide a “wish” toy for children 2018-2019 in need. Join us at your one stop shop for everything Christmas. * ForData moreConsulting information, contact Services Futsum, info@leadersinstitutemd.org or Proposals should be call 301-655-9679 submitted in PDF format General and for any further information regarding this Looking to to sspdc_bids@ Rent yard space for notice hunting dogs. Alexandria/Arlingsomersetprepdc.org ton, VA area only. Medium sized no later than 4:00 pm dogs will be well-maintained in Friday, June 1, 2018. temperature controled dog houses. I have advanced animal care SUPERIOR COURT experience and dogs will be rid OF free ofTHE feces,DISTRICT flies, urine andOF oder.

Dogs will be in a ventilated kennel COLUMBIA so they will notDIVISION be exposed to winPROBATE ter and ADM harsh weather etc. Space 2018 000464 will be needed as soon as possiName of Decedent, ble.

Yard for dogs must be Metro Doris E. Reed, Notice of accessible. Serious callers only, Appointment, Notice call anytime Kevin, 415- to 846Creditors and Notice to 5268. Price Neg. Unknown Heirs, Monica D. Thomas and Suetta Counseling J. Freeman, whose addresses MAKE THE are CALL9506 TO START Granhaven Ave., Upper GETTING CLEAN TODAY. Free 24/7 HelplineMD for alcohol Marlboro, 20772& drug addiction treatment. Get and 74 Michelle Rd.,help! It is time toRoyal, take your back! Call Front VAlife22630 Now: 855-732-4139 were appointed Personal Representative of the Pregnant? Considering Adopestate E. Reed tion?

CallofusDoris first. Living expenses, housing, and continwho died medical, on October ued 15, support 2017, afterwards. without aChoose Will adoptive your choice. and willfamily serveof without Call 24/7.Supervision.

877-362-2401. All Court unknown heirs and heirs whose wherabouts are unknown shall enter their appearance in this proceeding. Objections to such appointment shall be filed with the Register of Wills, D.C., 515 5th Street, N.W., Building A, 3rd Floor, Washington, D.C. 20001, on or before 11/17/2018. Claims against the decedent shall be presented to the undersigned with a copy to the Register of Wills or to the Register of Wills with a copy to the undersigned, on or before 11/17/2018, or be forever barred.

Persons believed to be heirs or legatees of the decedent who do not receive a copy of this notice by mail within 25 days of its publication shall so inform the Register of Wills, including name, address and relationship.

Date of first publication: 5/17/2018 Name of Newspaper and/or periodical: Washington City Paper/Washington Law Reporter Name of Person Repre-

Puzzle FIND YOUR OUTLET. RELAX, UNWIND, REPEAT CLASSIFIEDS HEALTH/MIND, BODY & SPIRIT

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SOMERSET PREP DC PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL NOTICE: FOR PROPOSALS FOR SPECIAL EDUCATION CONSULTING SERVICES Somerset Prep DC Public Charter School in accordance with section 2204(c) of the District of Columbia School Reform Act of 1995 solicits proposals for SY 2018-2019 * Special Education Consulting Services Proposals should be submitted in PDF format and for any further information regarding this notice to sspdc_bids@ somersetprepdc.org no later than 4:00 pm Friday, June 1, 2018.

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Furnished room in the North Wing of my house for $850.00. Plenty of sun on a very nice block in Bloomingdale. Seeking a non-smoking professional. Will have access to kitchen, private bathroom, sun deck, and laundry facility. I am a single, working professional male with a quiet lifestyle. Utilities are approximately $100 per month. kekemappa@gmail.com

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SUPERIOR COURT OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA PROBATE DIVISION Fully furnished suite 2018 ADM 000477 for rent in Brentwood, Name of Decedent, MD. Private bedroom http://www.washingtoncityJoAnne G. Coates, and bathroom. Blocks paper.com/ Notice of Appointment, outside of NE DC, easy Notice to Creditors and access to West HyattsNotice to Unknown ville metro (green line), Heirs, Lolita A. Glover, bus to Rhode Island whose address is 8443 metro (red line), and Greenbelt Road, #101, University of Maryland.

Greenbelt, MD 20770 Utilities included for was appointed Personal $750/month. Email Representative of the Linda lindajeune10@ estate of JoAnne G. gmail.com Coates who died on 3/19/18, with a Will Furnished room in and will serve without shared single family Court Supervision. All home for rent. Seeking unknown heirs and heirs mature professional or whose wherabouts are Graduate student. LGBT unknown shall enter comfortable. WIFI, their appearance in this Basic Cable ready.Utiliproceeding. Objections ties included. Bedroom to such appointment is furnished. $650 per shall be filed with the month one month seRegister of Wills, D.C., curity deposit required.

515 5th Street, N.W., holbrook1227@gmail.

Building A, 3rd Floor, com Washington, D.C. 20001, on or before 11/17/2018. Claims against the decedent Local library seeks shall be presented to temporary staff to serve the undersigned with a as book shelvers for copy to the Register of up coming week long Wills or to the Register membership convenof Wills with a copy to tion. June 18- June 24, the undersigned, on hourly rate $12.50 per or before 11/17/2018, hour. For more inforor be forever barred. mation www.dar.org/ Persons believed to be job-openings heirs or legatees of the decedent who do not Deliver Food. Make receive a copy of this Money. Zifty. notice by mail within No passengers. No 25 days of its publicabosses. No schedules. tion shall so inform the Just you delivering food Register of Wills, includaround your city. ing name, address and Apply now at relationship. drive.zifty.com Date of first publication: 5/17/2018 Local nonprofit seeks Name of Newspaper temporary events secuand/or periodical: Washrity staff for up coming ington City Paper/Washweek long convention, ington Law Reporter June 18- June 24, hourName of Person Reply rate $12.50 per hour. resentative: Lolita A. Day and evening shifts Glover available. For more TRUE TEST copy information go to www.

Anne Meister dar.org/job-openings Register of Wills Pub Dates: May 17, 24, 31.

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Don’t miss neighborhood yard sales throughout Shepherd Park, Colonial Village and North Portal Estates in upper NW DC. The yard sales are Saturday & Sunday, June 2 & 3, 9 am - 3 pm (if it rains on June 2, sales will be on June 3 only).

Neighbors sell at their own homes or at the central location in front of Shepherd Elementary School at the corner of 14th Street and Kalmia Road, NW.

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Go to www.shepherdpark.org on June 1 for a list and map of the sales.

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sentatives: Monica D. Thomas and Suetta J. Freeman TRUE TEST copy Anne Meister Register of Wills Pub Dates: May 17, 24, 31.

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THE EMBASSY OF TUNISIA IS SELLING USED FURNITURE FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CALL US AT 202-862-1850 EXT 227 OR IN PERSON AT OUR LOCATION 1515 MASS AVE N.W

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washingtoncitypaper.com may 25, 2018 31

M

F H

T

SUMMER

SUMMER FUN STARTS NOW!

THE WASHINGTON BALLET GISELLE

LIVE FROM HERE

WOLF TRAP ORCHESTRA

WITH CHRIS THILE SPECIAL GUEST KACEY MUSGRAVES

MAY 25

MAY 26

CLASSIC ALBUMS LIVE PRESENTS:

JAKE OWEN

THE BEATLES WHITE ALBUM JUN 2

WITH CHRIS JANSON JORDAN DAVIS

JUN 3

FITZ AND THE TANTRUMS X AMBASSADORS MIKKY EKKO

JUN 7

BARRY MANILOW MICHAEL LINGTON JUN 8 + 9

ROGER DALTREY PERFORMS THE WHO’S TOMMY

JOHN FOGERTY | ZZ TOP: BLUES AND BAYOUS TOUR

JOHN PRINE MARGO PRICE

RYAN KINDER

THE TREE OF FORGIVENESS TOUR

MAY 29 + 30

JUN 1

NILE RODGERS & CHIC CHAKA KHAN

ALISON KRAUSS

JUN 5

LES BALLETS TROCKADERO DE MONTE CARLO JUN 19

STEVEN TYLER AND THE LOVING MARY BAND THE SISTERHOOD BAND JUN 21

DR. DOG MANCHESTER ORCHESTRA

WITH

DAVID CROSBY AND FRIENDS

JUN 6

MOTOWN THE MUSICAL JUN 26–28

BRUCE HORNSBY & THE NOISEMAKERS THE WOOD BROTHERS JUN 29

REBA McENTIRE JUL 1

CRITICAL EQUATION TOUR

BARENAKED LADIES

JUN 22

BETTER THAN EZRA

HARRY CONNICK JR.

TONY BENNETT

JUL 2

JUN 14

CHARLIE WILSON

SING-A-LONG

JUN 24

WITH MEMBERS OF THE WHO BAND AND WOLF TRAP ORCHESTRA JUN 10 + 12

A NEW ORLEANS TRICENTENNIAL CELEBRATION

SOUND OF MUSIC JUN 16

(SANDY) ALEX G

JUN 23

SHEILA E.

LAST SUMMER ON EARTH TOUR KT TUNSTALL