Washington City Paper (September 20, 2019)

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NEWS: ID REQUIRED TO HAVE AN OPINION 4 FOOD: HEALTH CRISES FOR RESTAURANT WORKERS 16 ARTS: A CARTOONIST FOR YOUR MENTAL HEALTH 20

FREE VOLUME 39, NO. 38 WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM SEPT. 20-26, 2019

let’s get

CRAFTY arts & makers festival

Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 28 and 29 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Buzzard Point DC Buy tickets at CraftyFestivalDC.com

CITYPAPER WASHINGTON

CRAFTY arts & makers festival

Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 28 and 29 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Buzzard Point DC Tommy McFly and Kelly Collis are professional broadcasters based in Washington, DC. Tommy has spent his entire professional career as a broadcaster and emcee for events including six years as the official emcee of the White House Easter Egg Roll under the Obama Administration, and Kelly is a native Washingtonian who has worked on Capitol Hill and operated a public relations and marketing firm before turning to a life on the airways. A morning staple for eight years on 94.7 Fresh FM, you can now catch the “Tommy Show” live weekday mornings discussing all things DC and playing great music via the show’s app, Alexa, and Google Home. Real. Fun DC! #StayCrafty American Roadtrip Pennant Pillows (left) Using vintage pennants is such a great way to remember a special trip or your favorite team. We loved seeing the collection of different cities and then found this one of our favorite baseball team!

Yurko Stitch Yurko Stitch creates handcrafted leather wallets and accessories baseball gloves. A clutch that is a baseball mitt is ideal for Kelly since a rabid Nationals fan. Tommy already her as a Christmas present.

from used made from she is such got one for

Six Point Pet (left) Tommy and Kelly love spoiling

their dogs and this company uses US made components to finish the products. Even more important, their products are made in collaboration with a vocational training center for adults with disabilities.

Tasha McKelvey Always on the hunt for thoughtful

gifts for new moms, this small-scale handmade ceramics artist Tasha McKelvey creates keepsake pottery both decorative and functional. Our favorite is the adorable nesting bowls, a perfect baby gift.

Painted Palettes Samantha is a talented artist

with great handwriting, glass etching skills, amazing watercolors all with services to personalize. It is all of the things! Also, when you purchase glasses during Crafty, she will personalize them for you.

@CraftyFestivalDC CraftyFestivalDC.com

CITYPAPER WASHINGTON

NEWS: ID REQUIRED TO HAVE AN OPINION 4 FOOD: HEALTH CRISES FOR RESTAURANT WORKERS 16 ARTS: A CARTOONIST FOR YOUR MENTAL HEALTH 20

FREE VOLUME 39, NO. 38 WASHINGTONCITYPAPER.COM SEPT. 20-26, 2019

We the Children The brother and friends of Karon Brown, shot dead at 11, have something to say. P.8 Photographs and essay by Beverly Price

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INSIDE

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COVER STORY: WE THE CHILDREN

8

One photographer captures young people who lost their friend, Karon Brown, to gun violence this summer.

DISTRICT LINE 4 Loose Lips: Changes to the Reunion Square deal have upset Ward 8 residents, as has their councilmember’s request for their addresses.

6 Flood Insurance: At D.C.’s wastewater treatment plant, climate change precautions are underway.

FOOD 16 Inhospitable Conditions: Hospitality industry employees struggle to manage health crises and deal with an insurance system that works against them.

ARTS 20 Luck of the Draw: Local artist Elizabeth Montague crafts cartoons for our bleak world.

22 Suddenly This September: A local theater company prepares to premiere a never-before-seen Tennessee Williams work.

24 Curtain Calls: Jones on What the Constitution Means to Me at the Kennedy Center, Paarlberg on La vida es sueño at GALA Hispanic Theatre, and Klimek on Fairview at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company 26 Speed Reads: Ottenberg on Travelers 27 Short Subjects: Gittell on Ad Astra

CITY LIST 29 Music 32 Theater 33 Film

DIVERSIONS 34 34 35 36

Savage Love Scene and Heard Classifieds Crossword

On the cover: Nay, 17; Rayon Davis Jr., 12; Adrian Brooks, 12; a neighborhood friend; Quentin Brown, 13. Photograph by Beverly Price

DARROW MONTGOMERY 1200 BLOCK OF H STREET NW, SEPT. 16

EDITORIAL

EDITOR: ALEXA MILLS MANAGING EDITOR: CAROLINE JONES ARTS EDITOR: KAYLA RANDALL FOOD EDITOR: LAURA HAYES SPORTS EDITOR: KELYN SOONG LOOSE LIPS REPORTER: MITCH RYALS CITY DESK REPORTER: AMANDA MICHELLE GOMEZ CITY LIGHTS EDITOR: EMMA SARAPPO STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER: DARROW MONTGOMERY MULTIMEDIA AND COPY EDITOR: WILL WARREN CREATIVE DIRECTOR: JULIA TERBROCK SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER: ELIZABETH TUTEN DESIGN NTERN: MADDIE GOLDSTEIN CONTRIBUTING WRITERS: MICHON BOSTON, KRISTON CAPPS, CHAD CLARK, MATT COHEN, RACHEL M. COHEN, RILEY CROGHAN, JEFFRY CUDLIN, EDDIE DEAN, CUNEYT DIL, TIM EBNER, CASEY EMBERT, JONATHAN L. FISCHER, NOAH GITTELL, SRIRAM GOPAL, HAMIL R. HARRIS, LAURA IRENE, LOUIS JACOBSON, JOSHUA KAPLAN, CHRIS KELLY, AMAN KIDWAI, STEVE KIVIAT, CHRIS KLIMEK, PRIYA KONINGS, NEVIN MARTELL, KEITH MATHIAS, BRIAN MCENTEE, CANDACE Y.A. MONTAGUE, BRIAN MURPHY, NENET, TRICIA OLSZEWSKI, EVE OTTENBERG, MIKE PAARLBERG, PAT PADUA, JUSTIN PETERS, REBECCA J. RITZEL, ABID SHAH, TOM SHERWOOD, CHRISTINA STURDIVANT SANI, MATT TERL, IAN THAL, SIDNEY THOMAS, HAYWOOD TURNIPSEED JR., JOE WARMINSKY, ALONA WARTOFSKY, JUSTIN WEBER, MICHAEL J. WEST, DIANA MICHELE YAP, ALAN ZILBERMAN

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DISTRICTLINE LOOSE LIPS Darrow Montgomery/File

Contested Development

Ward 8 residents have questions (and criticisms) about the Reunion Square development. Councilmember Trayon White has asked skeptics to show him their IDs.

By Mitch Ryals New rule: If you have something to say about the long-anticipated Reunion Square development in Historic Anacostia, you must first show Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White your ID. At least that’s what he told some constituents in response to an email campaign opposing the project’s current iteration.

On Sept. 12, Brandon Bass, who says he lives in the 1700 block of W Street SE in Anacostia, sent an email objecting to a bill to approve tax increment financing (TIF) to subsidize the development. The email also says the project does not bring enough economic development to the area and accuses White of not fully engaging with the Advisory Neighborhood Commission. Other concerned citizens sent the same email as part of a campaign opposing the project.

D.C.’s TIF program is a financing method where the District borrows money using bonds, uses that money to subsidize a development project, and then pays back the borrowed funds over time from the increased property and sales taxes generated by the development project.

White, replying from his Council address and cc’ing each councilmember and staffer included on the original email, writes: “Hello Mr. Bass, Please send a copy of your ID card reflecting your Ward 8 ‘Anacostia’ address. Thanks.”

“I think it’s a little insensitive of him,” says Bass. “I’m one of your constituents, and I have to show proof I live in the ward? Kind of like a bully factor.”

At least one other Ward 8 resident, whose partner spoke with LL on the condition of anonymity, received a similar email from White.

“Even if he wants to make sure people who are signing the petition are in the area, he needs to do it in a systematic way, not by asking via email,” the man says. “We felt intimidated and threatened.”

White did not respond to questions about his demands for identification, but the emails, which were shared on a neighborhood listserv,

clearly unsettled his constituents.

Their demands echo those in a change.org petition, which condemns what its supporters say is a lack of engagement from White.

The petition scolds the lawmaker for renegotiating the amenities and terms of the TIF behind closed doors.

The petition specifically objects to the diminished amount of TIF funding from $60.8 million to about $25 million, removal of most market rate housing, and the removal of a planned 180-room hotel.

“We remind Councilmember White that the proposed hotel had job training, as well as the potential to attract retail and other businesses that would create viable, sustainable jobs and much needed amenities for Ward 8 residents,” the petition says.

In response to questions about the petition, White, in a text message, says in part: “The developers suggested a housing unit to support seniors housing for residents, and Ward 8 residents are opposed to that during a housing crisis for a hotel? I must be missing something.”

A document from White’s office with FAQs about the project also notes that hundreds of market rate units are planned for other developments throughout the ward. “Economic growth in Anacostia should encourage choice not displacement, ensuring that development benefits everyone in an inclusive manner, especially those who are at highest risk, and results in positive public impact and equity,” the document says.

As of press time, more than 250 people have signed the petition, though White does have some support.

Ronald Thompson, an Anacostia resident who has attended community meetings about Reunion Square, says the hotel would have been nice, but affordable housing should take priority. He also believes it’s reasonable for White to ask how deeply rooted a person is to the community. “[Some residents] treat people who they don’t want to have access to the neighborhood anymore with a level of disdain that is beyond reproach,” Thompson says. “So if the

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councilmember asked for their IDs, hats off to him.”

The debate over this phase of what will be a massive 1.5-million-square-foot development represents a difficult question for Ward 8 and its elected representative. In an area with only one grocery store (another is expected to open in the fall), and where the median household income is about $32,000, will amenities like hotels catalyze enough economic growth to lift low-income residents to the next rung or push them further out? last November, white maneuvered to pull back the bill that would give about $60 million in TIF bond financing to the Reunion Square project. ANC 8A, where the development is located, had approved the project, and its chairman, Troy Prestwood, had testified before the Council in support.

White told City Paper last year that the project included too few affordable housing units, and not enough guaranteed jobs for Ward 8 residents.

“The whole premise behind a TIF is that the property taxes will go up in value around the property,” White said in November. “If we aren’t helping people with education, economic opportunities, and careers, then people won’t be able to afford to live there when the property values go up. There’s no use to there being a hotel if people can’t afford to stay there.”

(Some residents have since scratched their heads at White’s argument that Ward 8 residents would stay in a hotel located in Ward 8.)

In May, Mayor Muriel Bowser announced new TIF legislation with support from White and Ward 5 Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie, who chairs the business and economic development committee.

Bowser highlighted 143 affordable housing units, with 134 dedicated to seniors, 5,000 square feet of office space for Ward 8 businesses, space for the Anacostia Playhouse, and space for DC Health. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson officially introduced the legislation at the mayor’s behest in June.

Days later, Attorney General Karl Racine

filed a lawsuit against Curtis Investment Group Inc., one of the Reunion Square developers, which owns several Ward 7 and 8 buildings, for illegally advertising that it would not accept housing vouchers. From McDuffie’s perspective, the project cannot move forward until the AG’s suit is resolved.

Anacostia residents who spoke with LL recently say they heard little from White’s office until an Aug. 14 meeting where he and his staff gave updates on the project’s community benefits agreement (CBA). That’s when White and a representative for one of the project’s developers unveiled the new draft CBA, which aligned with the mayor’s announcement. It did not include the hotel, added more affordable housing units, and reduced the number of market rate units.

White’s office says they’ve held five community meetings about Reunion Square since February and that ANC 8A commissioners were present at each one.

The draft CBA shows that the developer also agreed to pour more money into surrounding community organizations: around $1 million, up from about $225,000 in the previous CBA. Ty’on Jones, the ANC for single member district 8A06, which includes Reunion Square, sent White questions after the Aug. 14 meeting on behalf of his residents. They’re asking White to explain why he made the changes he did, whether any official analyses guided his decisions, and how he picked the organizations that the CBA benefits. Jones is withholding his support for the project until White responds.

“I’m hopeful that there’s still an opportunity for the community to weigh in on the changes, or to get questions answered, or to find out more information on the project from the councilmember’s undertaking,” says Jones, who used to work as the constituent services director for White’s predecessor, LaRuby May. “It was my belief that a hotel would provide economic development in that we are increasing the number of people in our community who can spend dollars in our local businesses.” CP

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DISTRICTLINE Flood Insurance

Nats rookie catcher Tres Barrera took a long and emotional journey from South Texas to his MLB debut in D.C. washingtoncitypaper.com/sports

Blue Plains, D.C.’s water treatment plant, makes strides when it comes to preparing for climate change.

Darrow Montgomery/File

Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant

By Diana Michele Yap As the region’s sewage plant, the Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant being at risk for flooding is no joke.

In the words of the November 2016 Climate Ready DC plan, the District is experiencing increasingly severe weather from “record-breaking heat waves and snowstorms” to “flooding caused by rising sea levels and heavy rains.” The plan cites federal government data showing that the Potomac and Anacostia rivers have both risen 11 inches in the past 90 years, causing an increase in riverfront flooding of more than 300 percent. By 2080, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers predicts another 3.4 feet of sea-level rise. Mean-

while, a precipitation event that has a one in 100 chance of happening this year is expected to happen once every 15 years by the 2080s.

“A flood to Blue Plains could temporarily impact our ability to treat wastewater,” says Maureen Holman, a lawyer with an environmental background and the executive vice president of administration at DC Water.

Drinking water would not be affected.

Until wastewater treatment came back online, millions of gallons of overflow would go into the Potomac, Holman says. “There would be serious impacts to the Potomac, downstream neighbors, and the Chesapeake Bay.” The duration would depend on what was impacted. “After Sandy, it took months for [wastewater treatment plants] to recov-

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er,” she adds. “But they were fully inundated.”

As D.C. faces an array of dangers related to climate change, how is Blue Plains responding? Experts say DC Water, which operates Blue Plains, has become a forward-thinking leader in both adaptation and mitigation— adapting its facilities to the new reality and reducing its emissions of greenhouse gases.

The facility, the largest of its kind in the world, sits on 153 acres at the District’s lowest point, along the Potomac in Southwest D.C. Opened in 1937, Blue Plains now averages 384 million treated gallons of wastewater per day, with more than 1 billion gallons per day at peak wet weather capacity. DC Water distributes drinking water to the District and collects and treats wastewater—from using the toilet,

taking a shower, or washing food or dishes— for more than 2 million people in the District, Montgomery and Prince George’s counties in Maryland, and Fairfax and Loudoun counties in Virginia.

As the climate changes, Blue Plains will be most impacted by projected sea-level rise and increased storm surge from hurricanes and nor’easters, even as more frequent rain also will bring more flow into treatment for processing. “Our primary concern is our proximity to the river,” Holman says, “which is why we have prioritized hardening Blue Plains and some of our other facilities, whenever possible.”

Hardening is the process of making physical changes to infrastructure to protect it from climate-related damage.

The challenges faced

by Blue Plains “are even worse than just a 500-year flood coming down the Potomac River,” emphasizes Rachael Jonassen, Ph.D., the director of climate change programs in the Environmental and Energy Management Institute at the George Washington University. “They’ve got to worry about storm surge from more intense hurricanes coming up the Chesapeake [Bay] and affecting areas here.”

A partially constructed sea wall will provide a hard barrier between Blue Plains and flooding from the Potomac, protecting billions of dollars of infrastructure and treatment capabilities. It will be a minimum of 17.2 feet high around Blue Plains, equal to the 14.2 feet reached by a possible Category 3 storm or what used to be known as a 500-year flood, plus 3 extra feet of freeboard. It’s mostly concrete, though the height and materials vary, Holman explains. On a recent visit to Blue Plains, accompanied by DC Water spokesperson Vincent Morris, I saw a thick concrete barrier topped with rusted steel.

“DC Water already had the beginning of our sea wall planned for, based on our own assessments, but the urgency has increased based on recent events,” Holman says. “Superstorm Sandy and the severe impacts to wastewater plants in New Jersey and New York were certainly a stark and shocking reminder of the potential impacts of these storms and the needs to protect our infrastructure from what is com-

DISTRICTLINE ing in the future.”

The flood wall is among the projects and plans under way to harden DC Water facilities against climate change impacts, according to an Aug. 8 summary document that Holman provided. Substantial completion of construction of the flood wall—with an estimated total cost of $4 million, and partially funded by a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) grant with a maximum federal share of $2.4 million—is expected in May 2021. Construction on the final segments of the flood wall is expected to start in 2024.

“FEMA provides 75 percent in a grant that must be matched 25 percent with DC Water rate-payer dollars” in water bills, Holman says.

“I am unsure what the current estimates are, but the goal is to have little or no impact on the rate payers and do the work in conjunction with other Blue Plains construction projects wherever possible.”

Two other projects include flood protection for both the Main Pumping Station on O Street SE, built in the early 1900s on the Anacostia River near what is now Nationals Park, and the 14th Street Bridge Pumping Station, which pumps stormwater from the I-395 underpasses at East Potomac Park. The pump station projects—with anticipated total costs of approximately $1 million and $1.75 million respectively, and 75 percent funded by the FEMA grant—are scheduled to be completed

by October 2019.

Because wastewater facilities generally end up at a region’s lowest point so that sewage or stormwater can rely on gravity to flow downhill, being prone to flooding is “a fairly common problem,” says Barry Liner, a civil and environmental engineering Ph.D. and the chief technical officer at The Water Environment Federation. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency website, Blue Plains decided to build a sea wall to protect it against flooding rather than moving the facility to higher ground. “You don’t just move the world’s largest advanced treatment plant up 500 feet. That’s not happening,” Liner says.

According to Holman, the tripling in the coming decades of days exceeding a 95-degree heat index, as projected in the Climate Ready DC plan, is a general concern across DC Water operations. As temperatures rise, Jonassen explains, trees, plants, and animals that used to thrive in cooler climates die off or are less successful, while other species adapted to warmer climates move in, including diseases. Increased heat also stresses the human body, and people who work outside are at the greatest risk.

In the area of mitigating climate change, DC Water’s efforts are significant, Liner says.

One is renewable energy. Unveiled in 2015, a combined heat-and-power plant at Blue Plains turns the region’s sewage into energy, and it

now generates one-third of Blue Plains’ energy needs. A new solar project continues to reduce Blue Plains’ reliance on fossil fuels, Holman says. Meanwhile, the ongoing Clean Rivers Project, including the proposed Potomac River Tunnel Project, is designed to capture and clean wastewater from combined sewer overflows during rainfalls, before they reach the rivers. Liner also mentions DC Water’s investment in green infrastructure and a specially trained workforce. The ribbon-cutting for its new environmentally friendly administrative building above the O Street Pumping Station took place in May, though staff moved in late last year.

Just 20 years ago, DC Water was “actually very poorly thought of, and now they are one of the most innovative utilities in the world,” Liner says. “They’re trying to do what’s in the best interest of their rate payers and also what’s in the best interest of the environment.”

Jonassen has visited Blue Plains and spoken to staff there about responding to climate change. “They’re a real leader in this,” she says. “They should be very proud of what they’re able to accomplish.”

At the same time, she thinks of all the other places in D.C. along the same waterfront, such as Reagan National Airport, that should be preparing for climate change, but need to get funding—a lot of it coming from the federal government. “And it’s just not been there because of the priorities that are being set,” she says.

On September 23, the United Nations will convene an emergency summit on climate action in New York “to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and to galvanize action that can limit climate change to 2 degrees Celsius and even 1.5 degrees Celsius as science now asks.” The U.N. is calling on the world’s governments to provide plans to enhance their nationally defined contributions by 2020 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45 percent over the next decade and net zero emissions by 2050. On September 20 and 27, global climate strikes are planned, led by Swedish youth climate activist Greta Thunberg, who was just in D.C. for nearly a week after sailing across the Atlantic Ocean.

Numerous news outlets around the world have committed to running climate coverage in the week leading up to the U.N. climate action summit.

“Those who are concerned about this are very much interested in helping governments around the world see the threat that lies ahead of us and try to prepare,” Jonassen says. “If we don’t prepare, our economies globally are going to suffer. Our ability to operate as societies will suffer.”

Liner observes that Miami sometimes has flooding on dry-weather days now because of sea-level rise. “The fact that DC Water’s already doing this is good,” he adds. “They’re not waiting until too late, you know.”

CP

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CITYPAPER WASHINGTON

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CRAFTY arts & makers festival

Buy tickets today!

Purchase online at CraftyFestivalDC.com Saturday & Sunday September 28-29 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Buzzard Point DC washingtoncitypaper.com september 20, 2019 7

We the

Children

D.C. is raising children who have to recover from their childhoods.

Photographs and essay

by Beverly Price

Beverly Price is a native Washingtonian film photographer and teacher. She documents African American culture in D.C. from the perspective of a black Washingtonian. She grew up in Capitol Hill and now lives in Congress Heights.

I heard that Karon Brown died two days before hosting a party. He was 11 years old and got shot and killed in Southeast D.C., just a few blocks away from my house. I felt sick.

During the party, we had a moment of silence for him. I talked about how we all have a responsibility to protect children growing up in this trauma.

I couldn’t sleep that night. The thought of a child being intentionally killed kept me from rest. The suffering that Karon Brown went through, and that his family and friends currently go through, is too common.

I decided to go to his funeral. It was a hot and humid day on July 29, and for a while the church wouldn’t allow anyone inside except for the close family and a few police officers.

People who came to honor Brown’s life milled around outside, including his friends, a group of small black boys no older than 13.

They seemed OK before they went into the church. I saw them all change when they left.

Even I changed after I saw this young boy in the casket.

His story and similar stories of youth getting killed in my community reawakened in me a sense of humanity and a love for my neighbors, including the ones I have not yet met. I called around to see if I could get in touch with Brown’s family, but I didn’t have much luck. A few days later, I decided to pick up my camera and find them in Woodland Terrace myself.

Once I got there, I called a good friend named Von, who has lived in Woodland Terrace his entire life. He walked me to Quentin Brown, the brother of Karon, and his friends.

As we walked the neighborhood, I began to have a nostalgic feeling from seeing clotheslines with clothes hanging and the sound of an ice cream truck. We walked up to an abandoned housing unit with bars and locks on the doors.

The boys were on the steps, and Von told them that I wanted to photograph them. I got the feel-

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ing that they didn’t want a stranger taking their picture, so I looked them in the eye with my camera down and told them that I didn’t want to ask them details about what happened, I just cared about how they felt and wanted to know if they were OK. One of the friends then said that I could photograph them.

Standing in front of the abandoned house with the children, I recalled the trauma of being in high school and losing my best friend to the same type of murder. Her death unraveled me, and I went to prison a year later. I wished I was asked whether I was OK, and had someone to mentor me so I could have avoided jail. So many children have been exposed to violence, drugs, and crimes in their homes, schools, and communities. Going through this trauma can have long lasting effects on even the most resilient spirits. With that in mind, I knew my personal experience called for me to act, to look out for Karon Brown’s brother and friends.

After that day, I spent time with the young boys and their families, and talked with their parents about me using photography to support the children in telling their story.

I spent two weeks photographing the group of friends, and I was impressed with how smart and strong they are. They congregate to listen to music and watch music videos, finding time to play and laugh in a world that violently took their brother and friend from them.

One of the boys, Adrian Brooks, is an honor student at The Children’s Guild Public Charter School. All of them are talented and creative. They told me they are bored in their community—that they want to travel, create music, and have more mentors looking out for them. Talking to them reminded me that early intervention and mental health treatment are key.

We need to raise children who won’t have to recover from their childhoods. Our efforts cannot succeed without community members, parents, government, community leaders, and educators working together in the best interest of our children, now and in the future.

Everyone plays an active role in protecting children exposed to violence. We need to listen to the children speak.

Left to right: Quentin Brown, 13; Quentin Reed, 13; and Adrian Brooks, 12

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Quentin Reed and Quentin Brown

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Adrian Brooks, Quentin Brown, and Quentin Reed

Woodland Terrace in Southeast D.C.

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Scenes from Woodland Terrace in Southeast D.C.

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Quentin Reed, Quentin Brown, a neighborhood friend, and Adrian Brooks

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Merce Cunningham at 100 Featuring: Compagnie Centre National de Danse Contemporaine-Angers Robert Swinston, Artistic Director

Beach Birds BIPED

For a full listing of the Merce Cunningham Centennial events at the Kennedy Center, visit tkc.co/Cunningham These programs are a part of the Merce Cunningham Centennial.

Kennedy-Center.org (202) 467-4600

Beach Birds, photo by Charlotte Audureau

October 3–5 Eisenhower Theater

Groups call (202) 416-8400 For all other ticket-related customer service inquiries, call the Advance Sales Box Office at (202) 416-8540

Additional support for Dance at the Kennedy Center is provided by Suzanne L. Niedland.

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

washingtoncitypaper.com september 20, 2019 15

Courtesy of Pizza Paradiso

DCFEED

Pizzeria Paradiso is serving a D.C. statehood pizza topped with halfsmokes, chili, red onions, and mustard from Sept. 19-26 at all five locations. A percentage of sales will go to DC Vote.

YOUNG & HUNGRY

Inhospitable Conditions Four D.C. hospitality industry employees facing major health crises and daunting hospital bills fight a system stacked against them.

What McPherson didn’t know was that six years later he too would be diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, coupled with a chronic illness, that had the potential to derail or delay his ascent in the D.C. dining scene. The 33-year-old is far from the only local hospitality employee currently confronting a health crisis or stomaching walloping hospital bills.

The service industry has historically and notoriously been an under-insured sector, with restaurateurs largely citing low profit margins as the reason why they can’t offer workers coverage.

Additionally, the Affordable Care Act only mandates that “large employers” with 50 or more full-time or fulltime equivalent employees offer affordable health insurance to their full-time workers. If they don’t, they may face a hefty tax penalty. The IRS defines full-time employees as individuals who work at least 30 hours per week. There’s no such requirement or consequence for businesses with less than 50 employees—a category under which most D.C. restaurants fall.

There are even more compounding factors that make facing medical emergencies and the financial insecurity that often accompanies them particularly onerous: The labor is physically demanding; insurance policies are confusing, particularly to time-strapped workers

Darrow Montgomery

Joseph McPherson

By Laura Hayes When Joseph Mcpherson landed his first kitchen job at BlackSalt at age 19, he drew an early conclusion that his value was based on each acquired skill. “I spent three years learning how to peel a carrot, dice a potato, sauté onion,” he says. “I know those were worth a dollar an hour. You’re never offered benefits, but if you know how to do these tasks, you’ll always have a job.”

After BlackSalt, McPherson cooked under

Chef Frank Ruta at Palena for five years where he worked his way up to the meat station—a position for employees who’ve proven themselves. “But health insurance still didn’t come into play,” he says.

It wasn’t until McPherson left D.C. and landed a job at San Francisco’s famed Zuni Café that he was offered a plan through his employer. “No one ever offered me that,” he recalls. “That’s the first time I realized that jobs offer that, and they should.”

16 september 20, 2019 washingtoncitypaper.com

McPherson revered Zuni Café restaurateur Judy Rodgers for providing him with opportunities for growth and a feeling of self-worth all while she battled cancer. “She would come into work every day,” he says. “She would taste everything that came in. Every grain, every berry, she would even smell every chicken.” Rodgers died in December 2013. “That’s when I thought about dedication,” McPherson says. “The fact that even though she was in pain, she still came to work. I took on that kind of love for my career.”

or those who don’t speak fluent English; restaurants and bars experience high employee turnover, which can leave workers with lapses in coverage; and most employees are hourly wage earners, meaning they don’t receive a paycheck if they’re off the clock while they recover.

McPherson first noticed symptoms when he moved back to the District in 2016 to be closer to family. At first he didn’t have jobs that offered insurance and he struggled to understand how to sign up for a plan on his own through DC Health Link—the local health insurance exchange.

Despite his pain, he didn’t see a doctor until he started working at sister restaurants Timber Pizza Co. and deli Call Your Mother. The casual eateries, owned by Andrew Dana and Daniela Moreira, offer an above-average plan to employees who work 30 or more hours per week after they complete a 90-day trial period.

“My parents didn’t understand the life of not being able to go to the hospital,” McPherson says. “It’ll go away, my brain kept telling me.”

An eventual emergency room trip led to an oncologist appointment, lab work-up, and recommended cancer treatment of at least eight rounds of chemotherapy. McPherson now has a port under his skin just below his collar bone.

“I had just gotten insurance,” he says. “I’m going to need to tell them that I’ll need to use it fully. And if I’m not at work, how am I going to pay?

That built up. I started bawling at the hospital.

I cried for a bit, but then went back to work and finished the shift.”

Dana and Moreira had just given McPherson more responsibility. He executed the supper clubs Call Your Mother hosted on select weeknights. There were only three weeks remaining when McPherson had to face his bosses and ask for time off. “I felt really bad,” he recalls. “Diners already bought tickets. We’re trained that guests come first.”

“My instant reaction was that this is more important than any supper club or bagel,” Dana recalls. He says he offers insurance because “it’s the right thing to do,” adding that he comes from “the corporate world where insurance is a given.”

McPherson’s plan covered 80 percent of his costs, but being on the hook for the rest was overwhelming. “I can handle being yelled at by a chef, but this was tenfold,” he says. “I didn’t see a way out.” He also didn’t feel like himself outside of the kitchen. “I got really depressed. I built my confidence, my self-esteem on being good in the kitchen. If I can’t do that, what am I?” After his third round of chemotherapy in July, McPherson returned to work, taking on simple jobs like running food out to diners. He says his prognosis is good, but his struggle changed his outlook on restaurants: “Now I’m able to tell a cook that your value isn’t just from skills. You also have to value yourself. Don’t be afraid to ask for anything like insurance. You don’t have to work for free just because a chef has a Michelin star.”

Chef John Melfi was working at Michelinstarred Fiola a year and a half ago when he got a diagnosis that changed every aspect of his life.

With stage 4 kidney disease, he can no longer

eat the food he deftly prepares for others, nor sent him to the ER. Imagine developing the menu for a brand can he miss a week of lab work.

After experiencing searing pain, Melfi went new restaurant while on that diet. Such was to the emergency room where a test revealed a the case with Modena, where Melfi is currentblockage in his right kidney. He was born with ly the executive chef. He admits his health cona genetic condition where the major artery that dition stifled his creativity at times. His advice runs down his leg wrapped around his ureter, for others is to not be afraid to ask for help. “I strangling normal function like a kink in a hose. didn’t want to talk about it,” he says. “I didn’t “For 37 years my kidney function was slowly de- want to tell anybody.”

Medical emergencies nearly corner the unteriorating and no one knew,” he says.

“I was going to Fiola every day in tears,” he insured into asking for help. The hospitality incontinues. “It made it hard to work at that level, dustry is quick to support their own through hard to concentrate, hard to have patience, be a crowd-sourced fundraising platforms like Goleader, do everything.” He underwent surgery FundMe. While heartwarming, these fundfour days later, which put him out of work for a raisers are more of a Band-Aid than a permamonth. Then he learned he also has Hinman nent solution given the increasing number of service industry employees staying in jobs well Syndrome, which impacts bladder function.

Melfi has undergone 10 procedures so far, past their 30s. Bartending, serving, and cooking can be long-term cafive or six of which ocreers. curred while he was at Now I’m able to tell a When Hanumanh Fiola. “Besides the big surgery, I was at work cook that your value isn’t front-of-house manager Matt Brown startthe next day,” he says. just from skills. You also ed having seizures, a “When you’re the chef, friend set up a GoFundyou’re relied on.” have to value yourself.

Me page that’s netted Eventually Melfi Don’t be afraid to ask for close to $4,000. Its cresought a reprieve at RW Restaurant Group, anything like insurance. ator, Bryan Koen, suggested giving money where he was slotted You don’t have to work then “throwing some into a less physically deweight behind a presimanding role involving for free just because a dential candidate who oversight of multiple chef has a Michelin star. truly supports fucking Robert Wiedmaier Medicare for All.” concepts. “I started to Brown, now 41, has been in the hospitality get worse and it started to sink in that nothing’s worth your life,” Melfi says. His kidney industry since he was 18. The seizures started function dropped to 19 percent. “Once you go when he suddenly stopped taking three prebelow 20 it’s time to get ready for dialysis and scription medications because he couldn’t afget on a list for a kidney,” Melfi explains, refer- ford them. “One costs $1,200 a month without ring to his Glomerular Filtration Rate (GFR). A insurance,” he says. “This happened in a gap between when I left my last job where I had score of 15 percent means kidney failure.

Melfi was insured for the majority of his med- health insurance and starting up a new one,” he ical care, which included several lengthy hospi- explains. “It takes time to get a system in place.”

The most recent seizure was so severe that tal stays after kidney infections and even sepsis.

But he experienced what it’s like to be unin- doctors kept Brown at the hospital for a full sured when he failed to send a COBRA pay- week. “I shudder to think how much it’s going ment to the correct address. (COBRA allows to cost,” he says, expecting high five figures. His former employees to temporarily keep their doctors believe drinking exacerbates his condiold employer-based health plan as they transi- tion, so he cut out alcohol to see if his health improves. He hasn’t seen the bill yet. tion to a new job.)

Brown was uncomfortable at first when he “I had a lapse in my insurance in January that screwed me—I didn’t know about it until it was learned that someone set up a GoFundMe too late,” Melfi says. He went to the hospital page, noting it hurt his pride. “But then it althree times that month, resulting in a $32,000 most brought me to tears,” he says. “We’re all bill. “I depleted my savings, maxed out four kind of in the same situation. It’s going to happen to all of us.” credit cards, and almost went bankrupt.”

He doesn’t blame restaurant operators for Melfi left Wiedmaier’s group in search of better insurance and took at job with restaurateur failing to provide insurance. “A lot of these Ashok Bajaj, who was about to reopen Bibi- small places are not making a ton of money,” ana as Modena. Around this time, Melfi’s doc- Brown says. Instead, he holds the insurance tors found a solution that could buy him years, companies responsible for “breaking the backs decades even, before he’ll need a kidney trans- of restaurant owners and employees.”

Brown is a salaried employee at Hanumanh. plant. He receives botox injections into his bladder, which stops it from being so spastic. Now That means even if he’s in the hospital or home recovering, he still gets paid. The same isn’t true his GFR holds steady at 29.

But Melfi still has to adhere to the highly re- for hourly workers. When their names are missstrictive renal diet, which limits foods high in ing from the schedule, they don’t earn a living. sodium, phosphorus, and protein. “Every food “If I were bartending, I’d be fucked,” he says. has one of those, so pick your poison,” he says, “For anyone hourly, this would be really damadding that he has to get blood drawn regular- aging.”

That’s what Roy Boys bartender Lou Alialy to monitor his levels. Eating a banana once

ga learned after he was involved in an accident on his way home from Rock & Roll Hotel in July. The 33-year-old says a group of men riding four-wheelers intentionally bumped the Vespa he was riding hard enough that he lost control and flew off the scooter, hitting a parked car at a dangerous angle.

When Aliaga came to and was walking down the street covered in blood, someone called an ambulance that took him to the hospital where doctors stitched and stapled the wound on his scalp closed. He stayed there for two and a half days while doctors ruled out brain damage and a spinal cord injury. Then he got the $11,000 bill. “I don’t have insurance,” he remembers thinking. “I’m gonna have to eat it. I don’t have a choice. I know I’m alive, but wow.”

Friends started two online fundraisers that generated close to $7,000 in donations combined. Most were from fellow industry professionals. He describes the tight-knit group willing to shell out for friends or acquaintances “like one big fraternity that doesn’t go away.”

Aliaga missed a month’s worth of income. “If you miss one or two months, it’s life-changing,” he says. “You can’t work from home. What am I supposed to do? Make drinks and send them to you? You’re spending all the money you have in your pocket to get better but not earning anything from work. It’s like one of those video games where you stack everything up and then it falls.” soMe d.c. restaurateurs find ways to offer health insurance, including Aaron Silverman of Rose’s Luxury, Little Pearl, and Pineapple and Pearls. He offers full coverage, plus dental and vision to anyone who works four or more shifts per week. The benefits package also includes paid vacation, parental leave, and gym memberships.

Silverman baked the cost of health insurance into his fundraising plan leading up to the opening of Rose’s Luxury in 2014. “Before we opened, we knew we wanted to do these things,” he says. “We got the support of our investors. Every person I told this idea to, I said, ‘This is going to cost a lot of money and eat into the profits.’ They were like, ‘This is the right thing to do. Won’t it help you attract good people?’ Investors believed what we believed.”

Aiming to create an enjoyable workplace, Silverman looked at his past jobs, identified their shortcomings, and sought to correct them. “Obviously one of the biggest was that I never had health insurance until Rose’s,” he says. His gut tells him it’s helped with employee retention. “The restaurant industry can do better. I want to prove to other people that you can do the right thing while still being financially successful. It’s possible to do both. It’s really freaking hard, but it’s possible.”

Silverman also puts some of the onus on diners. “It’s up to the public to understand that food should cost a lot more than it does,” he says. “I shouldn’t be able to eat as many meals out as I do. I don’t know how it’s going to happen, but [adjusting to higher menu prices] would really help operators add the benefits that everyone should have.”

CP

washingtoncitypaper.com september 20, 2019 17

Raise the game.

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Our teams have had many monumental achievements over the years. And we will never forget the Capitals’ glorious 2018 Stanley Cup Championship and how it brought our community so much closer together.

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18 september 20, 2019 washingtoncitypaper.com

It’s why we’re helping fans enjoy an enhanced viewing experience with data-rich games on our Monumental Sports Network platform.

And it’s why we’re the first to bring world-class professional basketball to Ward 8, with thrilling, sell-out Mystics games. It’s also why we’ve just invested $30 million in Capital One Arena, with 24,882 square feet of new LED screens, featuring a 7,000 square foot scoreboard, and two more firsts: our SkyRing and four dual vision corner boards.

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Be Monumental.

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washingtoncitypaper.com september 20, 2019 19

Courtesy of Marin Cogan

CPARTS

Luck of the Draw

Darrow Montgomery

How local cartoonist Elizabeth Montague cuts through angst and anxiety to make accessible art.

By Kayla Randall EvEry morning, aftEr waking up at 6:30 a.m., Elizabeth Montague creates a cartoon.

They’re rough pencil drawings which take less than five minutes to complete at her Kalorama apartment work desk—little meditations that help keep her skills sharp and open up her day.

For her day job, digital storyteller and design associate for the Aga Khan Foundation, she visually depicts various global issues, focusing on underrepresented narratives. Recently she visited Tajikistan for work, seeing firsthand how a community adapts to climate change.

But her own work is more personal. Aside from early morning sketches, she creates fully formed cartoons for her “Liz at Large” series, which is available on her Instagram and website.

Those sparkling, colorful ’toons usually take her 30 minutes to an hour to finish. They’re meant to serve as “contemporary cultural reflection through positivity and humor.”

Her cartoons feature women and girls like her: brown skin, curly hair, full of existential dread.

The cartoons soothe, though. They help quell some of that dread.

She wants to be taken seriously as an artist, but her style will always be her style, and black girls will always be the subjects of her art. “I purposely draw in a very accessible style,” she says.

“And I purposely use really bright colors.”

Montague is just 23, a thoughtful representative of her generation. Through a maelstrom of angst and unease her creativity brings joy and a way to cope. She’s crestfallen about the state of the world, but she’s also high-spirited and

20 september 20, 2019 washingtoncitypaper.com

charming, a ponderer of the nature of our universe, and someone with so much to say.

That’s what being a cartoonist is all about— having something to say. “A cartoonist is in a lot of ways an essayist, but using words and pictures at the same time,” says Julian Lytle, a D.C. cartoonist and a friend of Montague. Cartooning allows the artist to express their point of view in the way they want, he says.

Having something to say is what took Montague to the pages of The New Yorker, which believes her to be the first black woman cartoonist to be published there.

“Liz wrote a letter to the magazine, expressing frustration with the limited diversity among the cartoonists, which was forwarded to me,” says Emma Allen, The New Yorker’s cartoon editor, via email.

Pop-Up Magazine producer Marin Cogan talks life in D.C. washingtoncitypaper.com/arts “I responded directly that she’d wonderfully articulated frustrations I had as well, and explained that I viewed it as an imperative, and a big part of my role, to try to fix existing inequities, as I felt there was no dearth of diverse talent making graphic and comic art.”

Allen has been at the magazine since 2012 as an editor and writer, and she assumed the role of cartoon editor around two years ago, taking over for longtimer Bob Mankoff. She’s the fourth cartoon editor in the magazine’s 94-year history, and the first female cartoon editor.

“In the cartoon world, the white male perspective is the universal perspective, and everyone else is niche,” Montague says.

The two cartoonists continued to correspond, and Allen says she asked Montague “if she had any suggestions of artists who I should be paying attention to and, in short, she said, ‘me.’ I invited her to start submitting and was blown away by the work.”

In her work, Montague is able to clearly convey universal feelings. She prides herself on relatability and accessibility, both in her art style and her subject matter. That’s evident in the first New Yorker cartoon she published this spring: Two black women stand on a rooftop with the words “PER MY LAST E-MAIL” emblazoned across the night sky like Batman’s famous Bat-Signal.

The cartoon caption is: “We’ve done all we can.

It’s out of our hands now.”

The cartoon has become a hit, an achievement in understanding for everyone who has ever had a previous email ignored. Allen says the gag was so effective because “it’s concise and to-the-point, and the visuals all add to the joke, down to the trench coats her young women are wearing (a sly mashup of noir detectives and contemporary womenswear). You think you know what you’re getting when you first see the image, and then Liz’s personal twist catches you so off guard you can’t help but laugh.”

Though she doesn’t know the racial identities of all the cartoonists who submit, Allen believes Montague is indeed the first black woman cartoonist published in The New Yorker. Allen says she has published a number of black women artists online, and hopes to publish more black women in print.

She didn’t immediately realize Montague was the first. Montague asked her if it was true.

“I asked other people here with more of a completist knowledge of the institution’s history, and in the end, it seemed likely,” Allen says.

Montague had suspected that she was the first, but after getting confirmation, she’s struggled with how exactly to handle it. “Do I talk about this?” she’d ask herself. It’s an issue of so much emotional labor, and it matters. Ultimately, she’s chosen to claim it, and to promote other black women artists.

CPARTS In the wider world of comics and cartooning, Allen says, there’s still a disheartening preponderance of white men at the top. But she says, especially during her tenure, that’s changing at her publication.

Montague’s history-making began with her willingness to say something. “Liz’s trajectory goes to show—sometimes you have to be bold and take the leap and it pays off,” Allen says.

Next Thursday, on Sept. 26, Montague will be leading a Lemon Collective creative wellness workshop, guiding an audience potentially full of nonbelievers into believing that they can create. She will have the class speak to younger and older versions of themselves. “All of our versions of ourselves are inside of us,” she says. “Right now, there’s not a lot of space to reflect, and it’s really hard to make time in this capitalist world that we live in where pushing yourself to the brink is really rewarded— especially here in D.C.” Born and raised in New Jersey, Montague attended the University of Richmond on an athletic scholarship for running track. There, she began cartooning.

“I started making these little cartoons in college, and then it turned into this whole career for me,” she says. “Maybe this is something I can teach other people how to do. Creativity is wellness.”

“Ch-ch-changeeesss” by Elizabeth Montague, 2019 The world seems bleak at the moment, she says, and early 20s burnout is real for her and so many other young adults she knows. “I’m 23.

Why do I feel this tired?”

So, Montague’s workshop will focus on using cartoons as the gateway to self-discovery, including future selves. “What would your

“

80-year-old self tell you right now?” she’ll ask the class. “Draw it out.”

She rethinks the “super dystopian, hyper technology future” that is frequently imagined for humanity in pop culture media, she says. Yes, she acknowledges, Earth’s environmental and social struggles are problems that we must ad-

dress and work to resolve. But still, her question remains: “Why can’t we have a future where we’re smiling?”

Montague’s former boss and mentor at the Aga Khan Foundation, Dilafruz Khonikboyeva, says empathy is what she does best. “She’s able to force people to really think about something quite mundane in a different way, and that builds empathy,” she says. “Whether it’s cartoons or animation, visual art is a really good way to tell complex stories and to show emotions and feelings of our common humanity.”

Montague makes everything seem effortless, but her published cartoons take tremendous dedication. “Anything requiring back and forth with an editor takes hours and hours, probably at least one or two for a single ’toon,” she says. “And usually I’m doing a minimum of five, then there’s rounds of edits and redraws and all of that fun stuff.”

“People think of artists as passionate people who chop their ears off,” Khonikboyeva says.

“She’s very passionate, but what people don’t realize is the amount of planning and thought that goes into every one of those cartoons. There’s an incredible amount of work there.”

In one of her bright cartoons, a young black girl stands before her little white dog, exclaiming, “I keep waiting for one big thing to change it all.” Her dog replies, “You’re one big thing.”CP

aims to make you uncomfortable.

And that’s a good thing.”

Washington Post

“Explosive, riveting, and totally unique” DC Metro Theater Arts

“Woolly stuns again with this nervy production” MD Theatre Guide

“Outstanding, frustrating, hilarious, and sui generis” The New Yorker

WINNER OF THE 2019 PULITZER PRIZE FOR DRAMA NEW YORK TIMES BEST THEATER OF 2018

BY JACKIE SIBBLIES DRURY

NOW PLAYING THRU OCT 6 AT WMTC_CityPaper_9.19.indd 1

// DIRECTED BY STEVIE WALKER-WEBB WOOLLY MAMMOTH THEATRE COMPANY WOOLLYMAMMOTH.NET // 202-393-3939 @WOOLLYMAMMOTHTC

washingtoncitypaper.com september 20, 2019 21 9/17/19 6:26 PM

THEATER

Suddenly This September Natsu Onoda Power and Spooky Action Theater explore the Japanese roots of a never-before-produced Tennessee Williams play.

In a church basement on 16th Street NW, an experimental theater company is rehearsing a world premiere. That an experimental troupe like Spooky Action Theater might be working on a never-before-seen play may seem par for the course, but the playwright in this case is a legend of American theater: Tennessee Williams. The play, The Lady from the Village of Falling Flowers, is just one of the vast number of works left unpublished when the prolific writer died in 1983.

Nearly every season since its founding in 2006, the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival, based in the Cape Cod town where Williams wrote some of his early hits, has premiered a previously unknown Williams play. Festival curator and co-founder David Kaplan had been planning to use this year’s festival, which runs September 26 to 29, to explore Williams’ friendship with the Japanese playwright, novelist, and leader of a failed 1970 coup d’etat Yukio Mishima, and the multicultural aspects of both writers’ works.

Typically these posthumous premieres have been experimental works written late in Williams’ career, when the commercial success that marked his earlier fame had come to elude him. However, The Lady from the Village of Falling Flowers, subtitled, “a Japanese Fantasy in One-Act”, was written around 1930, while Williams was studying journalism at the University of Missouri. The play draws inspiration from a character from The Tale of Genji, a novel––some argue the world’s first novel–– written in the early 11th century by Murasaki Shikibu, a poet and lady-in-waiting of the Imperial court. It is uncertain whether Williams read Genji on his own or for course work but it would have been available to him through Arthur Waley’s 1927 English translation.

After examining the manuscript at the Williams archive at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, and seeing that Williams had typed up a title page and cast list, Kaplan determined that Williams had considered it a finished work. Yet there was no evidence that it had either been performed or handed in as a class assignment.

In the play, the unmarried Emperor Nijo (an anachronism on Williams’ part: The historical Nijo ruled over a century after Murasaki’s death) is frustrated that his prime minister, Mako, is unable to write a poem in tribute

Courtesy of Spooky Action Theater

By Ian Thal

Natsu Onoda Power with the kamishibai theater she built for the show to the orange trees while the blossoms are in full bloom. Mako in turn expresses the court’s frustration with the emperor’s bachelor status.

A deal is struck: The Emperor, an aesthete, will marry a woman who can compose a poem that captures the beauty of the orange blossoms before the sun rises “so that they will smell as delicious a thousand years from now as they now smell on this evening’s wind!”

Once permissions were acquired from the Tennessee Williams Center at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, which holds the copyright, and Williams’ publisher, New Directions, Kaplan had to find an artist to breathe life into a long-forgotten text.

When Kaplan first read the play, he immediately saw why Williams found inspiration in the courtly world of The Tale of Genji.

There were themes that would persist from his famous plays like A Streetcar Named Desire to later experimental works like The Pronoun “I.” Williams’ concern with “the difference between one’s public face and private feelings,” as Kaplan describes it, as well as the manner in which “storytelling, including lying, creates a reality of its own” were already in evidence.

Meanwhile, in preparation for this year’s overall theme of the links between Williams and Mishima, Kaplan had been researching Japanese popular arts in the 20th century and discovered the theater form of kamishibai, finding it a perfect fit for The Lady from the Village of Falling Flowers. Festival publicist Hunt-

22 september 20, 2019 washingtoncitypaper.com

er Styles, who had previously worked at several D.C. theaters, then told Kaplan he knew the person for the job.

That person was D.C.-based director and playwright Natsu Onoda Power, who teaches at Georgetown University and is well remembered for her play Astroboy and the God of Comics, which chronicles the Japanese superhero and his creator, the manga and anime pioneer Osamu Tezuka.

“The name kamishibai,” Onoda Power explains, “comes from ‘kami’ for ‘paper’ and ‘shibai’ for ‘play’ or ‘theater’. It’s a visual storytelling form from the pre-cinematic era.” The theater is a frame that holds a stack of placards, each of which has an image on the front, and text on the back for the storyteller to read. Kamishibai theaters were often mounted on the back of bicycles so the storyteller could take the show from neighborhood to neighborhood.

Onoda Power notes that while it was “spontaneous, primarily for children,” that “during World War II, the kamishibai cards were mass produced for official news and propaganda.”

When Onoda Power was growing up in Japan, stacks of kamishibai cards were available for sale at children’s bookstores. The stories were not just traditional Japanese tales either: As a child, her favorite cards were from an adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen.”

“I don’t define what I do as kamishibai,” says Onoda Power, “It mimics the form but purists might be scandalized.” So while she de-

signed a kamishibai theater for the first part of the play, the placards are joined by equally flat puppets. In each succeeding scene, increasingly sophisticated puppets are introduced that evoke without pretense of authenticity other Japanese theater forms, ranging from what she calls “casual bunraku,” for the classical theater in which puppeteers manipulate dolls in full view of the audience, to large puppet heads sculpted to resemble Noh masks.

Onoda Power had previously worked with Spooky Action Theater on her stage adaptation of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven. They were eager to collaborate again, so she proposed the project, but she also needed to find her cast. “Some actors have puppetry DNA,” she quips. The trio of Melissa Carter, Dylan Arredondo, and Jared Graham, who had previously worked with her on a multimedia adaptation of Alice in Wonderland that she developed for the National Players, the longest running classical touring company in the U.S., currently based at Olney Theatre Center, had the skills she was looking for.

Onoda Power began rehearsals with simple mockups of the puppets, observing how the actors worked with them before eventually replacing them with more elaborate stage-ready designs. While the show makes its world-premiere at the festival in Provincetown, Massachusetts, Spooky Action will host two invited dress rehearsals and a benefit preview on September 21 at their space at 1810 16th Street NW. The show has been sufficiently designed, so Onoda Power has confidence that Carter, Arredondo, and Graham can revive the show without her direct involvement if the opportunity arises.

In this cultural moment, artists and audiences alike are re-evaluating practices of cultural appropriation and representation. For Kaplan, speaking of Williams and Mishima, both of whom read and borrowed from well beyond their home cultures, “these artists were inspired by material that spoke to them. They did not want to limit themselves or their audiences. They wanted to share their vision widely.

This was expected of writers of their stature: to write about the world and this meant knowing the world.” Ultimately for Kaplan, “the way we form our thoughts is multicultural.”

In Onoda Power’s view, Falling Flowers “is a product of cultural appropriation by modern convention, [but Williams] does it with respect and reverence.”

She also observes that in light of numerous adaptations in a range of media, “The Tale of Genji is not an underrepresented thing,” underlining that for a Japanese student, “You can’t escape reading some part of it. I suffered through it.”

Most fundamentally Onoda Power believes the staging “gives the audience permission to have fun with the combination of Tennessee Williams and The Tale of Genji.”

Williams’ cultural borrowing allows Onoda Power some playfulness with representation, “Do they have to be Japanese? If everyone in the story is Japanese then nobody is Japanese.”

In her version, one character is represented by four different puppets. “We can look different depending on who sees us,” she says. “All these versions are true.”

CP

NOW PLAYING

The Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning masterpiece about faith, ambiguity, and the price of moral conviction.

202.332.3300 | STUDIOTHEATRE.ORG

GREAT PERFORMANCES AT MASON 2019–2020 SEASON AN EVENING WITH AUDRA McDONALD Songs from the American Music Theater Saturday, Sept. 28 at 8:30 p.m.

GET TICKETS 703-993-2787 or CFA.GMU.EDU

Mason Artist-in-Residence

LADAMA Friday, Oct. 4 at 8 p.m.

This performance is part of the ARTS by George! Benefit.

Tony, Grammy®, and Emmy® Award winner

THE FOUR ITALIAN TENORS

Viva Italia!

Saturday, Oct. 5 at 8 p.m.

Familiar classics and arias

A female Latin powerhouse quartet

Virginia Opera TOSCA Saturday, Oct. 12 at 8 p.m.

Sunday, Oct. 13 at 2 p.m.

Puccini’s timeless masterpiece

Located on the Fairfax campus of George Mason University, six miles west of Beltway exit 54 at the intersection of Braddock Road and Rt. 123.

washingtoncitypaper.com september 20, 2019 23

THEATERCURTAIN CALLS

it in Rosdely Ciprian, a New York high school student who shares her passion for debating the Constitution. Hearing a young person verbalize the importance of this imperfect document reminds the audience that there’s still a reason to believe in this greatly flawed nation.

It’s not yet time to tear everything down and start over, but it is worthwhile to spend some quality time engaging with the Constitution, whether you’re listening to Schreck onstage or reading the actual words of the document.

Thankfully, each performance comes with a parting gift: a pocket Constitution that allows audience members to engage with the show’s central beliefs after the curtain falls.

—Caroline Jones 2700 F St. NW. $49–$169. (202) 467-4600. kennedy-center.org.

PRINCE OF SWORDS LAWS OF THE LAND What the Constitution Means to Me

By Heidi Schreck Directed by Oliver Butler At the Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater to Sept. 22 The 14Th AmendmenT of the Constitution of the United States of America, ratified on July 9, 1868, establishes that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the State wherein they reside.” More than a century and a half after it was ratified, it remains a frequent topic of conversation as a monomaniacal president attempts to circumvent it on a near-weekly basis.

It’s also the centerpiece of Heidi Schreck’s singular play What the Constitution Means to Me, which makes its D.C. debut at the Kennedy Center after taking New York by storm last season. (A scheduled April run at Woolly Mammoth was canceled after the play transferred to Broadway.) While a play about the Constitution seems tailor-made for Washington audiences, what Schreck has created transcends the political machinations that consume “this town” and instead shows us how our governing document works on a viscerally personal level.

The play speaks specifically to this time in American history, but as Schreck soon shows audiences, the Constitution has consumed and confused scholars and ordinary citizens for as long as it has existed. Its framing device comes

La vida es sueño (Life Is a Dream) from Schreck’s past as a champion student speaker who spent her high school years touring American Legion halls and discussing what the Constitution meant to her in exchange for college scholarship money. She begins by retelling stories from those days, supplementing them with historical details and lessons she’s learned later in life. Her initial take, that the Constitution is like a bubbling crucible that blends disparate ingredients into a powerful potion, eventually gives way to a clearer thought, that, like most humans, the Constitution contains multitudes.

It’s the human elements that make Schreck’s play so memorable. As she wends through the amendments, she explains how they touched her life and proceeds to list the ways the Constitution has and continues to exclude everyone who is not a white, land-owning man. At times, she supplements it with excerpts from Supreme Court arguments, including an Antonin Scalia grumble about the meaning of the word “shall.”

(In an expectedly D.C. moment, audience members whooped and cheered when Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s voice came over the speakers.)

At times, these insights into Schreck’s life take the play in a darker direction than one would expect. The women in Schreck’s family have not had easy lives and hearing her recount their traumas and the ways in which the laws of America abetted those traumas is difficult. There is humor to be found, though, first in the reactions of Mike Iveson, who plays the grumpy American Legion leader who oversees the contest. In lighter, improvised moments, Schreck also adds in humor, whether she’s discussing the woes of perimenopause or connecting with an audience member who hails from her small Washington hometown.

In order for anyone to keep believing in this complicated governing document, there needs to be an element of hope. Schreck finds

24 september 20, 2019 washingtoncitypaper.com

By Pedro Calderón de la Barca Adapted by Nando López Directed by Hugo Medrano At GALA Hispanic Theatre to Oct. 13 SevenTeenTh cenTury SpAin under the Habsburg dynasty saw a flourishing of the arts, and of incest. As the dominant military power in Europe, Spain enjoyed its Golden Age, which gave the world the literature of Cervantes and Lope de Vega and the paintings of Velázquez and El Greco, all under the patronage of a royal family that was busy inbreeding itself to death.

By the end of the century, 80 percent of all marriages among the Spanish Habsburgs were between close blood relatives, which produced the famous “Habsburg jaw” as well as extremely high rates of mental illness and infant mortality. It ended with King Charles II (“The Cursed”), charitably described by a French diplomat as “so ugly as to cause fear.” He died at 39, beset by the mind of a child and a tongue so deformed it was difficult for him to talk or chew his food.

Given this history, it was remarkably ballsy of Pedro Calderón de la Barca, the last great author of Spain’s Golden Age, to write a play about an insane prince. But La vida es sueño (Life Is a Dream) is not intended as an anti-monarchical screed. Calderón was a committed royalist, loyal to the king and Church as both a former soldier and later a Franciscan priest.

Yet the play doesn’t portray its royal protagonists in an especially favorable light, from the king (cruel and weak) and prince (crazy and murderous), to the duke and duchess (scheming cousins planning to marry each other). It helps that the play is set, for no other apparent reason, in Poland.

Calderón saw his play as a redemption story, one in which the characters, however troubled and clearly unfit to rule they appear, grow into something like maturity, if not mo-

rality. The aforementioned prince is based on the medieval legend of Josaphat, which itself was loosely inspired by the life of Buddha. Josaphat, a prince prophesied to betray the king, is imprisoned, and goes mad before eventually achieving enlightenment. In Calderón’s play, the king, believing his son is destined to murder him, jails his son from birth, then drugs him and lets him out as an adult, only to see him kill a servant and attempt to rape a visiting noble. That visitor is seeking vengeance for a vague dishonor implied to be another rape, but quickly gets sidetracked and sucked into the machinations of the royal court.

Is this a good play, by modern standards?

The way these acts of violence, sexual and otherwise, are resolved is likely jarring to those who see things like rape and murder as big deals. Instead, they are quickly dismissed before serving to facilitate happy endings for everyone. Calderón wasn’t that interested in justice, much less just rule, but rather people learning their place. In the original, the redeemed prince jails one of his rescuers for breaking the rules by freeing him. It’s not presented as ungrateful or sadistic, but rather in line with the duties of a proper monarch.

Spanish playwright Nando López cuts out some of the confusion in this new adaptation by eliminating scenes like that one. With director and GALA co-founder Hugo Medrano (they collaborated on another adaptation, of Lorca’s Yerma), they emphasize the play’s poetic aspects, its meditations on the ambiguous dichotomies of illusion and reality, free will and destiny, and gender, while downplaying the morals that will leave audiences confused, if not appalled.

The acting of the largely Spanish cast is top quality, anchored by actor Daniel Alonso de Santos as Prince Segismundo, who gives a frenzied performance and gut-wrenching speech in the second act. Mel Rocher, another classical Spanish actor, is excellent as Segismundo’s jailer, Clotaldo, conveying a carefully concealed menace beneath his obsequiousness. Soraya Padrao is confident as the revenge-seeking Rosaura despite the disposable nature of the subplot. And GALA regular Delbis Cardona provides some much needed comic relief as Rosaura’s sidekick.

La vida es sueño is a risky bet for GALA Hispanic Theatre to open its new season. Putting on a baroque-era play is challenging for both a theater company and its audience. For actors, memorizing lines of archaic prose in rhyming couplets is a big investment with uncertain payoff, especially for a play that isn’t staged as often as, say, Hamlet. For audiences, the excessive wordiness requires your eyes be glued to the supertitles – and given the rococo dialogue, they’ll be necessary for Spanish speakers as well. You’ll miss much of the stage action, not that it’s abundant. For a play with lots of threats declared with pointy objects, we get a lot of questionable lessons on personal improvement, but not one decent swordfight.

—Mike Paarlberg 3333 14th St. NW. $30–$48. (202) 234-7174. galatheatre.org.

– THE WASHINGTON POST

TO MISS THIS – MD THEATRE GUIDE

ENTERTAINING

AUDACIOUS

– THE WASHINGTON POST

“IT MUST BE SEEN

“

TO BE BELIEVED – BROADWAY WORLD

“PERVERSELY

“

“YOU WON’T WANT

“

AND URGENT

– DC METRO THEATER ARTS Photo of Assassins cast by Christopher Mueller

The TiTle of Jackie Sibblies Drury’s latest play, with its vague suggestion of some placid, nondescript suburb, is a bit of a misdirect.

Fairview is another interrogation of white supremacy from Drury, a Brown University-educated woman of color whose parents emigrated to the U.S. from Jamaica. More specifically, the play considers The White Gaze. It’d be a tough subject in any medium, but nowhere more than in the theater, where Drury does not merely understand but relies on the fact her audiences are predominantly white. “This play couldn’t happen for an audience that was entirely people of color,” the playwright told Vogue three months ago, after Fairview was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. “It needs to have white people to function. So even this play, that is trying to decenter whiteness, actually centers whiteness in and of itself.”

Fairview is an escalating series of challenges to centuries of theatrical and racial orthodoxy in America that days later are still echoing through my mind loudly enough that it almost doesn’t matter if they all cohere, or that I’m still confounded by one element of the show’s otherwise clear and powerful use of double-casting.

(The casting is prescribed in Drury’s published script; it’s not new to this production.)

The play is formally inventive enough that it would be largely review-proof even if the author of this particular review did not happen to be a cisgender straight white male, the beneficiary of societal advantages both seen and unseen. I think about this perceived power imbalance every time I write about a piece of art created by a woman of color; the rumination gets especially thorny when that imbalance is the very subject of the art. Still worse, I’m a privileged white clown who detested Drury’s previous play at Woolly Mammoth, 2014’s We Are Proud to Present …, finding it dishonest, pompous, and self-aggrandizing as perhaps

THEATRE’S PRODUCTION IS KILLER “

By Jackie Sibblies Drury Directed by Stevie Walker-Webb At Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company to Oct. 6

“ SIGNATURE

“

Fairview

ASSASSINS “

TAKE SOME TIME TO ENJOY THE VIEW

only the product of an Ivy League MFA program could be.

I don’t mean it as faint praise when I say that Fairview is an infinitely shrewder, more troubling, more genuinely provocative, and more rewarding experience. Which is not to say it’s fun.

Honoring the formal innovation Drury has come up with means allowing you to discover it for yourself, so I’m going to be a bit coy: The first act follows a harried but pleasant afternoon in the household of the Fraziers, a loving and seemingly prosperous black family. Beverly (Nikki Crawford) and her husband, Dayton (Samuel Ray Gates), flirt while preparing a birthday dinner for Beverly’s mother. Beverly’s unmarried sister Jasmine (Shannon Dorsey) arrives and does her best to prod her big sis into an argument. Beverly’s daughter, high-achieving high schooler Keisha (Chinna Palmer) arrives, sweaty from sports practice, complaining about the extra laps her team had to run. Eventually, the entire family is moved to dance.

And then we see all of this play out again, minus the Frazier family’s dialogue. Instead we hear four voices—we can’t see who is speaking, but this goes on long enough for us to form a picture of each character— maunder over which race they would choose to be if they were not white.

Ohhhhh, the (mostly white) audience gasps at regular intervals. The third act gives us the taboo spectacle of white actors emulating the speech patterns and body language of black people, while the Fraziers’ idyllic life is rocked by an absurdist sequence of tragedies that seem utterly incongruent with everything we’ve learned about them. All of which is but prologue to a irreducible climactic gambit that I’m not going to touch.

Drury’s grand design is so schematic that the actors are something like chess pieces. That makes citing individual performances more difficult than it would be in a more conventional play, but there are no weak links in the cast.

Woolly company members Kimberly Gilbert and Cody Nickell are in the fraught position of being white artists called upon to perform “blackness” in a way that can’t not read as caricatured and reductive—it’s okay if a highly decorated black playwright tells you to do it, I guess—so points for courage. But the most arresting work comes from recent Howard University graduate Palmer as Keisha, who may spend the rest of what I hope is a long and rewarding career seeking another piece of material that allows her to appeal to a large roomful of strangers as indelibly as she does in Fairview’s final moments.

—Chris Klimek

Must close September 29

641 D St. NW. $20–$97. (202) 393-3939. woollymammoth.net. washingtoncitypaper.com september 20, 2019 25

“stunning“

BOOKSSPEED READS

Absolutely

SEEKING REFUGE

– BROADWAYWORLD

Travelers

By Helon Habila W.W. Norton, 295 pages

SHAKESPEARE’S

1

henry IV NOW ON STAGE THRU OCT 13

Photo by C. Stanley Photography

FOLGER.EDU/THEATRE | 202.544.7077

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,inc.

BONDED INSURED

The deaTh and despair of African refugees in Europe may be unlikely material for a lyrical novel about life and hope, but that’s what Helon Habila has done in his new book, Travelers. Almost all the characters are refugees, and the one who is most focused on, an unnamed Nigerian man, starts out safely in the U.S., but after a series of accidents lands in an Italian detention camp.

Each person is emotionally scarred by what they’ve endured, perhaps worst of all Juma: “I was in Niger for over six months.

We were kept in an open field, over ten thousand of us … living in a place the size of a secondary school … The mosquitoes were everywhere because it was the rainy season … And every day people died like flies.” Juma hides out in London, having escaped migrant detention. But the police search for him relentlessly, and so do anti-immigrant fanatics.

Much of Travelers takes place in Berlin, where the characters’ lives intersect. The most poignant portrait is Manu, a Libyan former surgeon who’s now a nightclub bouncer, as he supports his young daughter. They live at a refugee house and every Sunday visit Checkpoint Charlie, their designated meeting place with Manu’s wife, arranged when they fled Libya. Another refugee tells Manu to face reality: His wife and young son drowned in the Mediterranean.

But the reader can’t help hoping he won’t.

“If they keep their memories alive,” Manu thinks, “then nothing has to die.”

Manu stands out in the novel’s refugee group. The lines of his face testify “to what he had left behind, to the borders and rivers and deserts he had crossed to get to Berlin.”

His weekly pilgrimages to Checkpoint Charlie are heartbreaking, another reminder of all he has lost—his town, his neighbors, his pa-

tients, his wife, his son, his medical career.

And yet he does not despair. He goes faithfully every Sunday to the meeting place, he cares for his daughter, and he holds down his job as a bouncer. He moves forward unhealing in the cold world that has robbed him of so much.

Everyone in this novel endures “the bone-chilling winter of exile,” and several of them—Manu and Karim, who fled Somalia with his wife and five children to Yemen, Syria, Turkey, Bulgaria, and finally Germany—owe their suffering to U.S. wars. Manu’s Libya devolved from a very prosperous African nation to a failed state with open-air enslaving markets, thanks to Western bombs.

Karim encounters lethal violence and religious fanaticism in Somalia and Syria, a country riven by civil war and Western intervention. Though Travelers never shows this explicit link, it details horrors that trace directly back to U.S. foreign policy.

These desperate refugees also face bigotry in Europe, and thus they cling to each other. Many locals “felt threatened, their daughters and sons were not safe on the streets where refugees sold drugs, go t d r u n k a n d fought; the aliens had turned the entire street into a dumpster, trash everywhere.” Particu larly aw fu l and dangerous is “the Jungle,” the infamous refugee camp in Calais.

But Travelers does not deal in stereotypes. Everyone in this novel is unique and complicated.

The book begins focused on young rebellious refugees in Berlin, and their protests and clashes with police: “How long before they saw the world as it is, vile and cruel and indifferent, how long before they … joined the rest of humanity swimming in what Flaubert described as a river of shit …” The young rebels are exceptions among the refugees. In six months or a year they can return to their studies or their families. For Manu, Juma, and Karim, there is no going back. Their homes have been destroyed. And they know from their experiences with human traffickers how vile and cruel and indifferent the world can be. Behind them are ruins, and ahead of them is an unwelcoming Europe, and nothing but hope to keep them going.

—Eve Ottenberg

FILMSHORT SUBJECTS

Tue, Sept 24

Fri, Oct 11

STARSTRUCK Ad Astra

Directed by James Gray Ad AstrA means “to the stars,” but the film opens halfway there. In the first scene, we see Brad Pitt, perched high above the clouds, hanging onto something called the International Space Antenna, which stretches to the ground. He’s doing routine maintenance work, but something goes wrong, and he ends up falling to the Earth. He opens a parachute, but it rips, leaving him hurtling to the ground at breakneck speed. Of course, he survives.

The film doesn’t.

Eventually, director James Gray’s Ad Astra will take viewers to the moon, Mars, and beyond, but the film itself never reaches such heights. Its biggest problem is right there in the poster: protagonist Roy McBride (Pitt), a depressed astronaut dealing with a bad case of daddy issues and no other recognizable traits. Thirty years earlier, his overbearing astronaut father (Tommy Lee Jones) never returned from a mission in which he was seeking proof of intelligent life in the universe. In the present, NASA officials think the unexplained power surges that are causing communication breakdowns and spiraling death counts might be coming from his last known whereabouts, somewhere on Neptune. They send Roy to Mars, with a quick stop at the moon, to send a message to his dad in the hopes of convincing him not to destroy the planet.

The father-son bond can be fertile ground for personal filmmaking, but Ad Astra never feels personal. We learn that Roy’s father was abusive toward him as a child. As a result, Roy

now finds himself emotionally detached and unable to connect with others. Aside from a token ex-wife (Liv Tyler), who appears only in the background of several scenes, he seems to have never had a meaningful relationship. He lives only for his work with NASA, where he is admired for his legendary ability to remain calm in stressful situations. Presumably, it’s all because his father didn’t love him. He’s less a character and more a galaxy of clichés. And Pitt, for all his talents, doesn’t show us what’s happening behind those steely blue eyes.

Gray, best known for character-driven dramas such as We Own the Night and Two Lovers, knows this is a problem, so he contrives a device in which Roy submits to periodic psychiatric evaluations, where he describes his state of mind as literally as possible to a recording device. It violates the show, don’t tell rule of filmmaking, but Gray, who created a character with no agency, left himself few options.

This black hole at the film’s center leaves the viewer admiring Ad Astra’s aesthetic accomplishments but unable to really immerse in the characters. There are thrilling set pieces, including a dune buggy chase on the lunar surface and a bloody skirmish with a surprise inhabitant of an abandoned ship. Gray constructs these pop sequences with verve, but without strong character work or a complex story to back them up, they amount to sporadic pleasures with little impact.

That’s clearly not what Gray had in mind.

With its stabs at profundity, Ad Astra seeks to merge the visionary grandeur of 2001: A Space Odyssey with the domestic drama of The Tree of Life. In the end, it doesn’t get close to either.

If you’re seeking intelligent life, best to look elsewhere.

—Noah Gittell Ad Astra opens Friday in theaters everywhere.

WITH SPECIAL GUEST KACY & CLAYTON

Tue, Oct 15

STRATHMORE.ORG | 301.581.5100

5301 Tuckerman Lane, North Bethesda, MD 20852

Chained dogs suffer day in and day out.

They endure sweltering temperatures, hunger, and thirst and are vulnerable and lonely. Keep them inside, where it’s safe and comfortable.

Photo: Don Flood (donfloodphoto.com) • Makeup: Mylah Morales, for Celestine Agency Hair: Marcia Hamilton, for Margaret Maldonado Agency • Styling: Natalie and Giolliosa Fuller (sisterstyling.com)

washingtoncitypaper.com september 20, 2019 27

Merriweather Post Pavilion • Columbia, MD WPOC SUNDAY IN THE COUNTRY FEATURING

Old Dominion • Michael Ray • Jordan Davis • Lauren Alaina • Dylan Scott • Jimmie Allen • Brandon Lay • Filmore .....................SEPT 29

Ticketmaster • For full lineup & more info, visit merriweathermusic.com • impconcerts.com

THIS WEEK’S SHOWS

Band of Skulls w/ Demob Happy ........................................................ Th SEPT 19 grandson w/ nothing,nowhere. Early Show! 6pm Doors. ..................................... Sa 21 U STREET MUSIC HALL PRESENTS

The Joe Kay Experience - A Special 4 Hour Set Late Show! 10pm Doors . Sa 21 Ride w/ The Spirit Of The Beehive ....................................................................... Su 22 Whitney w/ Hand Habits .................................................................................... M 23

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

THE BENTZEN BALL COMEDY FESTIVAL

CALL

YOUR GIRLFRIEND LIVE!

Late Show! 8pm Doors ...............................................................................SAT OCTOBER 26 On Sale Friday, September 20 at 10am THIS SUNDAY!

X Ambassadors The Waterboys ..................... SEP 22 w/ Bear Hands & LPX ....................... OCT 29 Puddles Pity Party THIS MONDAY! w/ Dina Martina Adam Ant: Friend or Foe w/ Glam Skanks ................................. SEP 23 Halloween Costume Contest!

AN EVENING WITH

SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER (cont.)

BLISSPOP & U ST MUSIC HALL PRESENT

SHAED w/ Absofacto ................Th 10

BLISSPOP DISCO FEST feat.

The Black Madonna, Josey Rebelle, Wayne Davis & Lisa Moody (Deep Sugar), Amy Douglas, and more! Late Show! 10pm Doors ...F 27 Chromeo (DJ Set), DāM-FunK (DJ

Set), RAC (Live Remix Set), and more!

Late Show! 10pm Doors ................Sa 28

Jade Bird w/ Flyte

Early Show! 6pm Doors. ....................Sa 28

K.Flay w/ Houses & Your Smith ..Su 29 Dean Lewis w/ Scott Helman ...M 30 OCTOBER

Joseph w/ Deep Sea Diver ...........W 2 Caravan Palace Early Show! 6pm Doors. .....................Th 3 Luna performing Penthouse w/ Olden Yolk Early Show! 6pm Doors. ....................Sa 5 Bombay Bicycle Club w/ The Greeting Committee

Late Show! 10pm Doors .....................Sa 5

Steve Lacy .................................Su 6 Noah Kahan w/ JP Saxe ............M 7 Kero Kero Bonito w/ Negative Gemini ......................Tu 8 Shovels & Rope w/ Cedric Burnside .........................W 9

ALL GOOD PRESENTS

Perpetual Groove w/ Kendall Street Company ........F 11 Mashrou’ Leila ......................Sa 12 Small Town Murder This is a seated show. ......................Su 13

Moonchild w/ Braxton Cook

& Devin Morrison .........................W 16

Bishop Briggs w/ Miya Folick & Jax Anderson ..Sa 19 Anthony Brown & group therAPy .......................M 21 SOFI TUKKER w/ Haiku Hands & LP Giobbi ........W 23 Josh Abbott Band w/ Ray Fulcher ...........................Th 24 Cigarettes After Sex Early Show! 6pm Doors. ......................F 25

Lost Frequencies (Live) w/ Throttle Late Show! 10:30pm Doors .F 25 HellBENT .................................Sa 26 bea miller w/ Kah-Lo & Kennedi ..................M 28 Big Freedia w/ Low Cut Connie ......................Tu 29 Jukebox The Ghost presents HalloQueen (performing as

Cat Power w/ Arsun ................... SEP 25 D NIGHT ADDED!

FIRST NIGHT SOLD OUT! SECON

POLITICS AND PROSE PRESENTS

Ta-Nehisi Coates The Water Dancer Book Tour ....SEP 27 (Moderated by Ibram X. Kendi)

Angel Olsen w/ Vagabon ............NOV 1 U Up? Live ....................................NOV 4 THE BYT BENTZEN BALL AN EVENING WITH

MARIA BAMFORD

Early Show! 6pm Doors ................... OCT 24

ALL GOOD PRESENTS

Nahko and Medicine LOS ESPOOKYS LIVE for The People w/ Ayla Nereo . SEP 29 Late Show! 9:30pm Doors ................ OCT 24

PETE HOLMES w/ Jamie Lee - LIVE! Zaz ................................................... OCT 4 Early Show! 5:30pm Doors ............... OCT 25 Natasha Bedingfield ........... OCT 14 THE NEW NEGROES FEAT. METROPOLITAN ENTERTAINMENT PRESENTS

AEG PRESENTS

Bianca Del Rio -

It’s Jester Joke ........................ OCT 18

BARON VAUGHN • OPEN MIKE EAGLE • DULCE SLOAN • JABOUKIE YOUNG-WHITE • HAYWOOD TURNIPSEED JR. • VIOLET GRAY

Late Show! 9pm Doors ................... OCT 25 Ingrid Michaelson All 9/24 9:30 Club tickets will be honored. ROXANE GAY: w/ Maddie Poppe ............................. OCT 23 A S mArt , F unny , r eAl A Fternoon Matinee Show! 1pm Doors ............... OCT 26

AEG PRESENTS

Jónsi & Alex Somers -

Riceboy Sleeps with Wordless Orchestra .......... OCT 28

TIG NOTARO: B ut e nough A Bout y ou

Early Show! 5pm Doors .................... OCT 26

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

Queen after regular JTG set!)

w/ Zach Jones & The Tricky Bits

as Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers .Th 31

MANY MORE SHOWS ON SALE!

9:30 CUPCAKES

Come dressed in your best! ............. OCT 31

THIS WEDNESDAY!

930.com

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

Louis Cole w/ Thumpasaurus .Th SEP 19 BANNERS w/ The Man Who .............F 20 Raveena w/ Dianna Lopez .............Su 22 SCARLXRD ...............................W 25 Phum Viphurit w/ ESTEF ............. M 30

The Regrettes w/ Greer ....... Th OCT 1 Surf Curse ................................Sa 5 clipping. ..................................Th 10 Half Moon Run w/ Tim Baker .........F 11 Pissed Jeans w/ Knife Wife ..........Sa 12

• 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! 28 september 20, 2019 washingtoncitypaper.com

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

CITYLIST

CHATHAM COUNTY

Music 29 Theater 32 Film 33

LINE W/ THE DIRTY GRASS PLAYERS

Music

CITY LIGHTS: FRIDAY

FRIDAY SEPT

AN EVENING WITH

ANN

FRIDAY

HAMPTON

CLASSICAL

CALLAWAY

CHURCH OF THE EPIPHANY 1317 G St. NW. (202) 3472635. An Evening of Chopin with Soheil Nasseri. 7 p.m. $35–$75. epiphanydc.org.

JAZZ GOES TO THE MOVIES

SUNDAY

ELECTRONIC

SEPT 22

U STREET MUSIC HALL 1115 U St. NW. (202) 588-1889.

Octave One. 11 p.m. $10–$20. ustreetmusichall.com.

FRI, SEPT 27

FOLK

UNION STAGE 740 Water St. SW. (877) 987-6487.

Penny & Sparrow. 7 p.m. $20–$60. unionstage.com.

DAVE STRYKER EIGHT TRACK BAND

JAZZ

SAT, SEPT 28

AN EVENING WITH

KAT WRIGHT W/ THE RAD TRADS

KENNEDY CENTER CONCERT HALL 2700 F St. NW. (202) 467-4600. NSO Pops: Maxwell: A Night at the Symphony. 8 p.m. $39–$399. kennedy-center.org.

TUE, OCT 1

POP

ALL GOOD PRESENTS

JIMMY HERRING AND THE 5 OF 7

U STREET MUSIC HALL 1115 U St. NW. (202) 588-1889.

BANNERS. 7 p.m. $!5. ustreetmusichall.com.

W/ THE VEGABONDS

ROCK

THE ANTHEM 901 Wharf St. SW. (202) 888-0020. Mac DeMarco. 8 p.m. $44–$79. theanthemdc.com.

BIRCHMERE 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria.

(703) 549-7500. Billy Bragg. 7:30 p.m. $55. birchmere.com.

CITY WINERY 1350 Okie St. NE. (202) 250-2531. Shonen Knife. 8:30 p.m. $18–$20. citywinery.com.

DC9 1940 9th St. NW. (202) 483-5000. Dave Hause & The Mermaid. 7 p.m. $15. dcnine.com.

LINCOLN THEATRE 1215 U St. NW. (202) 888-0050.

Conversations with Nick Cave. 8 p.m. $49.50–$89.50. thelincolndc.com.

SONGBYRD MUSIC HOUSE AND RECORD CAFE 2477 18th St. NW. (202) 450-2917. Laura Carbone. 9 p.m.

Free. songbyrddc.com.

WORLD

BOSSA BISTRO 2463 18th St NW. 202-667-0088. La Inedita. 7 p.m. $10. bossadc.com.

CAPITAL ONE ARENA 601 F St. NW. (202) 628-3200.

Banda MS. 8 p.m. $39–$425. capitalonearena.viewlift.com.

SATURDAY COUNTRY

UNION STAGE 740 Water St. SW. (877) 987-6487.

Orville Peck. 10 p.m. $16–$35. unionstage.com.

DJ NIGHTS

9:30 CLUB 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. The Joe Kay Experience. 10 p.m. $30. 930.com.

ELECTRONIC

ECHOSTAGE 2135 Queens Chapel Road NE. (202) 503-2330. Kaskade Redux 003. 9 p.m. $40–$50. echostage.com.

HIP-HOP

FILLMORE SILVER SPRING 8656 Colesville Road, Silver Spring. (301) 960-9999. Hoodie Allen. 8 p.m. $29.50. fillmoresilverspring.com.

MERRIWEATHER POST PAVILION 10475 Little Patuxent Parkway, Columbia. (410) 715-5550. Tyler, the Creator. 5:30 p.m. $29.50–$69.50. merriweathermusic.com.

20

FRI, OCT 4

THE STEEL WHEELS W/ JUSTIN JONES

SHONEN KNIFE

Founded by bored Osaka office workers in their early 20s, Shonen Knife entered the American consciousness in an explosion of primary colors and three-chord songs at the height of the grunge movement, even though they were already nearly a decade into their career as a band when they opened for Nirvana on tour for Nevermind. Early classics like “Twist Barbie” and “Black Bass” set the tone for the band’s output through the decades, a signature blend of rock, surf, and bubblegum punk. Since then, they have released dozens of records, including a tribute to one of their most elemental influences: The Ramones. In spite of an evolving lineup, Shonen Knife still bring a formidable energy and sense of humor to their shows in 2019. Sweet Candy Power, their latest album, swaps out their usual Ramones-by-way-of-Beach-Boys approach for a heavier, more distorted sound in the vein of Blue Öyster Cult and Thin Lizzy, and their live cover of Nick Lowe’s “Cruel to be Kind” is a transcendent treat. Shonen Knife perform at 8:30 p.m. at City Winery, 1350 Okie St. NE. $18. (202) 250-2531. citywinery.com.

—Will Lennon

JAZZ

KENNEDY CENTER CONCERT HALL 2700 F St. NW. (202) 467-4600. NSO Pops: Maxwell: A Night at the Symphony. 5 p.m. $39–$399. kennedy-center.org.

POP

THE ANTHEM 901 Wharf St. SW. (202) 888-0020.

Bastille. 9 p.m. $45–$75. theanthemdc.com.

BLACK CAT 1811 14th St. NW. (202) 667-4490. Washington Social Club. 8 p.m. $15. blackcatdc.com.

SONGBYRD MUSIC HOUSE AND RECORD CAFE 2477 18th St. NW. (202) 450-2917. Free Throw. 8 p.m. $16– $18. songbyrddc.com.

U STREET MUSIC HALL 1115 U St. NW. (202) 588-1889.

Flor. 7 p.m. $18. ustreetmusichall.com.

ROCK

9:30 CLUB 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. grandson. 6 p.m. $25. 930.com.

HILL COUNTRY BARBECUE 410 7th St. NW. (202) 556-2050. Tragedy. 9:30 p.m. $12. hillcountry.com.

PIE SHOP DC 1339 H St. NE. (202) 398-7437. Rose of the West. 5 p.m. pieshopdc.com.

SONGBYRD MUSIC HOUSE AND RECORD CAFE 2477 18th St. NW. (202) 450-2917. Jordan Krimston. 9 p.m.

Free. songbyrddc.com.

WORLD

BOSSA BISTRO 2463 18th St NW. 202-667-0088.

DeSanguashington. 7 p.m. $10. bossadc.com.

HOWARD THEATRE 620 T St. NW. (202) 803-2899.

Morgan Heritage. 8 p.m. $25–$30. thehowardtheatre.com.

SUNDAY

SAT, OCT 5

BENEFITING ST. ANN’S CENTER FOR CHILDREN, YOUTH & FAMILIES

TRACY HAMLIN & CAROLYN MALACHI MON, OCT 7

CAPITAL PRIDE’S MUSIC IN THE NIGHT TUE, OCT 8

KARL DENSON’S TINY UNIVERSE

THICK AS THIEVES FALL TOUR WED, OCT 9

AN EVENING WITH WE

BANJO 3

THU, OCT 10

CON BRIO AND LYRICS BORN W/ VINTAGE PISTOL

FRI, OCT 11

ALL GOOD PRESENTS

THE CLEVERLYS SUN, OCT 13

ALL GOOD PRESENTS

FOLK

LINCOLN THEATRE 1215 U St. NW. (202) 888-0050.

The Waterboys. 8 p.m. $45. thelincolndc.com.

FUNK & R&B

PINK TALKING FISH

‘DARK SIDE OF THE MOON’ CONCEPT SHOW

CAPITAL ONE ARENA 601 F St. NW. (202) 628-3200.

Chris Brown. 6:30 p.m. $43–$750. capitalonearena.viewlift.com.

CITY WINERY 1350 Okie St. NE. (202) 250-2531. Shirley Murdock. 7:30 p.m. $35–$45. citywinery.com.

THEHAMILTONDC.COM

washingtoncitypaper.com september 20, 2019 29

@CraftyFestivalDC CraftyFestivalDC.com

Support artists.

Shop handmade.

Volunteer at

CRAFTY arts & makers festival

Saturday & Sunday September 28-29 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Buzzard Point DC

CITYPAPER WASHINGTON

30 september 20, 2019 washingtoncitypaper.com

POP

CITY LIGHTS: SATURDAY

MÉRIDA

Gordana Geršković’s works in Mérida are all about surface, so it’s easy to see how she was able to flit back and forth so easily between photography and other media. The backbone of the exhibit is her abstract photography of pastel-hued wall surfaces in the titular Mexican city, where she lived for a year. Aaron Siskind and Minor White have made similar efforts in black and white, but Geršković’s modestly sized images show an impressively wide range of textures: delicately peeling paint, Pollockian speckles, tree-bark patterns, scattered pockmarks, and what could pass for a cracked desert floor stained an unnatural shade of magenta.

When Geršković—born in Croatia and now residing in the D.C. area—turns to mixed media canvases, her finished works look eerily like a rectangular chunk of wall has been removed and replaced on the gallery wall. The exhibition runs to Sept. 29 at Foundry Gallery, 2118 8th St. NW. Free. (202) 232-0203. foundrygallery.org. —Louis Jacobson

CITY LIGHTS: SUNDAY

IMANI PERRY

In the tradition of James Baldwin’s letter to his nephew in The Fire Next Time and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, Imani Perry writes to her black sons—and to all of us—in her newest book, Breathe: A Letter to My Sons. The HughesRogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and the author of a biography of Lorraine Hansberry, Perry reflects on the black struggle for justice, her own experience living within a white supremacist society, and the potential for a future that recognizes the humanity of all children, including that of her sons. By denouncing the violent oppression that would deny black children their freedom, Perry uplifts a legacy of love and possibility. Imani Perry speaks at 5 p.m. at Politics and Prose at Union Market, 270 5th St. NE. Free. (202) 544-4452. politics-prose.com.

—Amy Guay

THE ANTHEM 901 Wharf St. SW. (202) 888-0020.

Bastille. midnight $45–$75. theanthemdc.com.

SONGBYRD MUSIC HOUSE AND RECORD CAFE 2477 18th St. NW. (202) 450-2917. Tasha. 8 p.m. $12–$14. songbyrddc.com.

U STREET MUSIC HALL 1115 U St. NW. (202) 588-1889.

Raveena. 7 p.m. $22. ustreetmusichall.com.

9:30 CLUB 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. Ride. 7 p.m. $35. 930.com.

BIRCHMERE 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria.

(703) 549-7500. A Tribute to Roy Buchanan. 7:30 p.m. $25. birchmere.com.

CITY WINERY 1350 Okie St. NE. (202) 250-2531. HERA Women’s Music Festival. Noon. Free–$40. citywinery.com.

LINCOLN THEATRE 1215 U St. NW. (202) 888-0050.

The Waterboys. 6:30 p.m. $45. thelincolndc.com.

MONDAY CLASSICAL

KENNEDY CENTER MILLENNIUM STAGE 2700 F St. NW. (202) 467-4600. The U.S. Army Band “Pershing’s Own” Saxophone Quartet. 6 p.m. Free. kennedy-center.org.

COUNTRY

CITY WINERY 1350 Okie St. NE. (202) 250-2531. Jason Eady & Courtney Patton. 8 p.m. $17–$20. citywinery.com.

FUNK & R&B

CITY WINERY 1350 Okie St. NE. (202) 250-2531.

Secret Society. 7:30 p.m. $22–$25. citywinery.com.

POP

BLACK CAT 1811 14th St. NW. (202) 667-4490. Pond.

7:30 p.m. $20. blackcatdc.com.

LINCOLN THEATRE 1215 U St. NW. (202) 888-0050.

Adam Ant. 8 p.m. $45. thelincolndc.com.

U STREET MUSIC HALL 1115 U St. NW. (202) 588-1889.

James Arthur. 7 p.m. $25. ustreetmusichall.com.

ROCK

9:30 CLUB 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. Whitney. 7 p.m. $30. 930.com.

LINCOLN THEATRE 1215 U St. NW. (202) 888-0050.

Adam Ant. 6:30 p.m. $45. thelincolndc.com.

SONGBYRD MUSIC HOUSE AND RECORD CAFE 2477 18th St. NW. (202) 450-2917. Cosmo Sheldrake. 8 p.m. $15–$17. songbyrddc.com.

TUESDAY

The tracks on Adam Ant’s highest-charting solo album, Friend or Foe, begin like this: either with high-tempo brass squeals, pounding drums, wild vocalizations, or some combination of the three. That’s how the title track starts—brass, then the feverish drums that form the spine of the track, then Ant nearly yodeling the “wah-wahHEY” riff that makes the song so catchy. It’s also the formula for the beginning of his most successful single, “Goody Two Shoes,” which casual listeners may recognize as the theme that introduces Simon Pegg’s humorless cop Nicholas Angel in Hot Fuzz. You won’t find many synthesizers in Ant’s music, but it fits in perfectly with the new wave that he and his British compatriots were pumping out in the ’80s. His songs are cheeky and tongue-in-cheek, full of thumping bass lines and vocal acrobatics, just as they were when he worked with his band Adam & the Ants on hits like “Stand and Deliver” and “Antmusic.” In the last decade, he’s staged a comeback, releasing new music and embarking on world tours playing the old hits, like Adam & the Ants’ album Kings of the Wild Frontier in its entirety. At this show, attendees will hear Friend or Foe played from beginning to end—“plus fan favorites,” the description promises. Adam Ant performs at 8 p.m. at the Lincoln Theatre, 1215 U St. NW. $45. (202) 888-0050. thelincolndc.com.

—Emma Sarappo

FEATURING SPECIAL GUEST KATHARINE McFEE

MUSIC CENTER AT STRATHMORE • 29 APRIL

TICKETS AT STRATHMORE.ORG OR CALL 301-581-5100.

Sept 22

A BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE TO ROY BUCHANAN

with Billy Price, Mike Zito, Jack Bond, Dave Chappell, Pete Kennedy, Tommy Lepson, Tom Principato, & more!

25

/Fath RICK WAKEMAN Kaula

"Grumpy Old Rock Star Tour"

THE ROBERT CRAY BAND MUSIC CENTER AT STRATHMORE • 29 APRIL 27 THE SELDOM SCENE & JONATHAN EDWARDS Billy 30 LOS LONELY BOYS Coulter Oct 1 JOHN MORELAND 26

TICKETS AT STRATHMORE.ORG OR CALL 301-581-5100.

with DARRIN BRADBURY

2

JUSTIN TOWNES EARLE with special guest JESSE MALIN

TALL THE PAPER KITES HEIGHTS 4&5 KINDRED THE FAMILY SOUL 6 GARY PUCKETT AND THE UNION GAP 7 KEIKO MATSUI 9 OTTMAR LIEBERT & LUNA NEGRA 10 PHIL VASSAR

3

"Hitsteria Tour!"

THE ANTHEM 901 Wharf St. SW. (202) 888-0020.

Massive Attack. 8 p.m. $55–$95. theanthemdc.com.

ADAM ANT

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

Tix @ Ticketmaster.com

ROCK

ELECTRONIC

CITY LIGHTS: MONDAY

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

FUNK & R&B

CITY WINERY 1350 Okie St. NE. (202) 250-2531. SUCH. 8 p.m. $20–$28. citywinery.com.

ECHOSTAGE 2135 Queens Chapel Road NE. (202) 503-2330. Daniel Caesar. 7 p.m. $42.50. echostage.com.

HIP-HOP

HOWARD THEATRE 620 T St. NW. (202) 803-2899.

Benny The Butcher. 9 p.m. $20–$50. thehowardtheatre.com.

POP

LINCOLN THEATRE 1215 U St. NW. (202) 888-0050.

Ingrid Michaelson. 7 p.m. $60. thelincolndc.com.

UNION STAGE 740 Water St. SW. (877) 987-6487. The Rocket Summer. 7:30 p.m. $18–$35. unionstage.com.

ROCK

DC9 1940 9th St. NW. (202) 483-5000. Drahla. 8 p.m. $12. dcnine.com.

TOM PAXTON & THE DONJUANS 12&13 THE WHISPERS Mr. Buddy 14 ANDREA GIBSON Wakefield

11

16

Sons of the Sahara Tour

VIEUX FARKA TOURÉ & BOMBINO All Standing In the

!

GOAPELE 18 LEE ANN WOMACK 19 HIROSHIMA 40th Anniversary Tour!

17

20

DAR WILLIAMS SUSAN WERNER

WARNER THEATRE 513 13th St. NW. (202) 783-4000.

REO Speedwagon. 8 p.m. $53–$193. warnertheatredc.com.

WORLD

KENNEDY CENTER MILLENNIUM STAGE 2700 F St. NW. (202) 467-4600. Yiddish Tango from Warsaw. 6 p.m. Free. kennedy-center.org.

washingtoncitypaper.com september 20, 2019 31

WEDNESDAY ELECTRONIC

U STREET MUSIC HALL 1115 U St. NW. (202) 588-1889.

Julian Gray. 10:30 p.m. $10–$15. ustreetmusichall.com.

FOLK

BLACK CAT 1811 14th St. NW. (202) 667-4490. Daniel Norgren. 7:30 p.m. $15. blackcatdc.com.

THE MESSER CHUPS

FUNK & R&B

CITY WINERY 1350 Okie St. NE. (202) 250-2531. The Midnight Hour. 7:30 p.m. $22. citywinery.com.

HIP-HOP

U STREET MUSIC HALL 1115 U St. NW. (202) 588-1889.

Scarlxrd. 7 p.m. $18. ustreetmusichall.com.

POP

9:30 CLUB 815 V St. NW. (202) 265-0930. Stereolab. 7 p.m. $30. 930.com.

THE ANTHEM 901 Wharf St. SW. (202) 888-0020.

Lizzo. 8 p.m. $45–$75. theanthemdc.com.

SATURDAY, OCT. 19 || $15ADV/$20DOS

H

9/19 THU 9/20 FRI 9/20 FRI 9/21 SAT 9/26 THU 9/27 FRI 9/28 SAT 9/29 SUN 10/3 THU 10/5 SAT 10/9 WED 10/10 THU 10/11 FRI 10/12 SAT 10/14 MON 10/17 THU 10/18 FRI

H

MATTHEW MAYFIELD BAND $12/$15 EARLY SHOW WITH HUDSON MOORE BAND 8PM $12/$15 LATE SHOW WITH THE DETROIT COBRAS 10PM $15/$20 TRAGEDY: ALL METAL TRIBUTE TO THE BEE GEES & BEYOND $12/$15 PIERCE EDENS AND ROB BAIRD $12/$15 WILD ADRIATIC + BELLA’S BARTOK $12/$15 MO LOWDA & THE HUMBLE & PATRICK SWEANY BAND $15/$18 ROANOKE W/ KENTUCKY AVENUE $10/$12 CHUCK HAWTHORNE + GREYHOUNDS $15 AFTER FUNK & OF TOMORROW $10/$12 ANDREA VON KAMPEN & IRA WOLF $12/$15 LITTLE BIRD $10/$12 TALKING DREADS (TALKING HEADS TRIBUTE) $15 SUNNY LEDFORD W/ PONYTAILS & COCKTAILS $15/$20 SLAID CLEAVES $22/$28 JOEY HARKUM BAND $10/$12 THE MAMMOTHS + THE ORANGE CONSTANT $10/$12

HILL COUNTRY BARBECUE MARKET 410 Seventh St, NW • 202.556.2050 HillCountry.com/DC • Twitter @hillcountrylive

Near Archives/Navy Memorial [G, Y] and Gallery PI/Chinatown [R] Metro

LINCOLN THEATRE 1215 U St. NW. (202) 888-0050.

Cat Power. 8 p.m. $35–$45. thelincolndc.com.

UNION STAGE 740 Water St. SW. (877) 987-6487. Lily & Madeleine. 7:30 p.m. $18. unionstage.com.

CITY LIGHTS: TUESDAY

MASSIVE ATTACK

Massive Attack’s Robert “3D” Del Naja and Grantley “Daddy G” Marshall, both of Bristol, England, helped pioneer the trip-hop movement in the 1990s. With a downtempo take on the electronic breakbeats that were ubiquitous during that time in the European club scene, Massive Attack’s sound adds a psychedelic spin to a blend of soul, dub, and R&B. Their D.C. performance is part of a tour to celebrate the group’s seminal 1998 album, Mezzanine.

Guest artists include vocalist Horace Andy, one of Massive Attack’s regular collaborators, and Cocteau Twins singer Elizabeth Fraser, whose ethereal vocals can be heard on the song “Teardrop,” the instrumental of which later became the theme song of the hit television series House. Not on the lineup is former bandmate Andrew “Mushroom” Vowles, who split soon after Mezzanine came out. Massive Attack perform at 8 p.m. at The Anthem, 901 Wharf St. SW. $55–$95.

—Sriram Gopal

ROCK

JAMMIN JAVA 227 Maple Ave. East, Vienna. (703) 2551566. The Way Down Wanderers. 7:30 p.m. $15–$25. jamminjava.com.

WARNER THEATRE 513 13th St. NW. (202) 783-4000.

Mary Bridget Davies: A Night with Janis Joplin. 8 p.m. $37–$149. warnertheatredc.com.

WORLD

KENNEDY CENTER MILLENNIUM STAGE 2700 F St. NW. (202) 467-4600. Toko Telo. 6 p.m. Free. kennedy-center.org.

THURSDAY FOLK

KENNEDY CENTER TERRACE THEATER 2700 F St. NW. (202) 467-4600. Rhiannon Giddens with Francesco Turrisi. 7:30 p.m. $39–$59. kennedy-center.org.

SONGBYRD MUSIC HOUSE AND RECORD CAFE 2477 18th St. NW. (202) 450-2917. Leslie Stevens. 8 p.m. $10–$12. songbyrddc.com.

HIP-HOP

FILLMORE SILVER SPRING 8656 Colesville Road, Silver Spring. (301) 960-9999. Yung Gravy. 9 p.m. $25– $99. fillmoresilverspring.com.

KENNEDY CENTER REACH 2700 F St. NW. (202) 4674600. Robert Glasper’s Black Radio with special guest Yasiin Bey. 7:30 p.m.; 9:30 p.m. $39–$99. kennedy-center.org.

CITY LIGHTS: WEDNESDAY

DANIEL NORGREN

Daniel Norgren is from western Sweden, but you wouldn’t guess it from his music. Although Norgren’s most recent album will be his first to come out in the States, his previous efforts sound more like music you’d find surfing radio stations in rural Oklahoma than third place at Eurovision. Listen for shades of country, folk, and even gospel (see especially “Let Me Go” from his 2008 album Outskirt).

Norgren combines field recordings with sounds captured in a more traditional studio setting, crafting them into an affectionate, unselfconscious outsider’s perspective on “American music.”

The product is not quite polished enough to be classified as stomp-and-holler, but it points to the same the hipster-rustic aesthetic. On the other hand, it’s not quite cold and scuzzy enough for a Tom Waits comparison. Instead, it has a well worn warmth, an ur-folksiness that transcends the U.S.—something you can sense anywhere in the world where there is chipped paint, overgrown vines, stand-up bass and guitars. Daniel Norgren performs at 7:30 p.m. at Black Cat, 1811 14th St. NW. $15. (202) 667-4490. blackcatdc.com.

—Will Lennon

POP

THE ANTHEM 901 Wharf St. SW. (202) 888-0020.

Lizzo. 8 p.m. $45–$75. theanthemdc.com.

UNION STAGE 740 Water St. SW. (877) 987-6487.

White Ford Bronco: Concert to End Cancer. 7 p.m. $50–$80. unionstage.com.

ROCK

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

BLACK CAT 1811 14th St. NW. (202) 667-4490. The HU. 7:30 p.m. $20–$25. blackcatdc.com.

CITY WINERY 1350 Okie St. NE. (202) 250-2531. Bob Mould. 6 p.m. $35–$45. citywinery.com.

WORLD

KENNEDY CENTER MILLENNIUM STAGE 2700 F St. NW. (202) 467-4600. La Mojarra Electrica. 6 p.m. Free. kennedy-center.org.

Theater

1 HENRY IV Folger puts on 1 Henry IV, the story of a king and his ill-suited heir, Prince Hal, in court and on the battlefield. Folger Elizabethan Theatre. 201 E. Capitol St. SE. To Oct. 12. $27–$85. (202) 544-7077. folger.edu.

ASSASSINS Assassins is a musical based on John Weidman’s book with music by Stephen Sondheim. It

32 september 20, 2019 washingtoncitypaper.com

CITY LIGHTS: THURSDAY

J BALVIN

Medellín, Colombia’s J Balvin grew up loving the aggressive songs of Nirvana and reggaeton pioneer Daddy Yankee, but he’s established his name with reggaeton and hybrid genre tunes that feature his more relaxed flow. On his recent collaborative album, Oasis, made with Puerto Rico’s Bad Bunny, Balvin’s yearning pop vocal on “La Canción” helps convey the message that hearing a certain song reminds him instantly of an ex that he thought he had forgotten. On “Como Un Bebé,” the star urges his girlfriend to dance rather than argue. Balvin is also willing to utilize rhythms other than the insistent dembow beat of reggaeton. On his 2017 hit “Mi Gente,” Balvin worked with French producer Willy William, who melded moombahton and European club dance rhythms with a repeating squeaky horn sound effect. On Cardi B’s hit “I Like It,” Balvin and Bad Bunny add Spanish lyrics over the music’s bouncy, hip-hop-meets-oldschool-boogaloo programming. While Balvin’s musical collaborators provide him instrumental cadences that are euphoric and danceable, it’s his own urbane vocal delivery that puts him at the top of his craft. J Balvin performs at 8 p.m. at EagleBank Arena, 4500 Patriot Circle, Fairfax. $29.95–$199.95.

(703) 993-3000. eaglebankarena.com.

—Steve Kiviat

is the dark comedy story of nine attempted and successful presidential assassinations and their assailants. Signature Theatre. 4200 Campbell Ave., Arlington. To Sept. 29. $55–$93. (703) 820-9771. sigtheatre.org.

BUTTERFLY The Puccini classic Madame Butterfly is given new life in a version stripped of the artifice and exoticism of the original. Performances will be in English and in Italian, so audiences can choose how to experience the dynamic opera. Source Theatre. 1835 14th St. NW. To Sept. 22. $21–$46. (202) 204-7800. sourcedc.org.

CABARET A club in 1929 Berlin is full of decadence and dreamers—but war is on the horizon and Berlin is permeated with a sense of dread. Olney Theatre Center. 2001 Olney-Sandy Spring Road, Olney. To Oct. 6. $42–$99. (301) 924-3400. olneytheatre.org.

CANDIDA In the George Bernard Shaw play, a poet and a preacher both love the same woman—and both are baffled by her ultimate choice. Washington Stage Guild at Undercroft Theatre. 900 Massachusetts Ave. NW. To Oct. 20. $25–$50. (240) 582-0050. stageguild.org.

CATS A group of alley cats are given a chance at an extra life in this classic Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.

Kennedy Center Opera House. 2700 F St. NW. To Oct. 6. $49–$149. (202) 467-4600. kennedy-center.org.

DOUBT: A PARABLE Studio Theatre stages John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer-winning play Doubt: A Parable, where an allegation of abuse tears apart a 1960s Catholic school. Studio Theatre. 1501 14th St. NW. To Oct. 6. $20–$80. (202) 332-3300. studiotheatre.org.

ESCAPED ALONE D.C. actress Holly Twyford directs Escaped Alone, a short play about the sometimes mundane, sometimes catastrophic fears that we all face in the modern 21st century. Signature Theatre.

4200 Campbell Ave., Arlington. To Nov. 3. $55–$93.

(703) 820-9771. sigtheatre.org.

FAIRVIEW This play, which won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for drama, follows a dysfunctional family uniting for their grandmother’s birthday—and a group of voyeurs watching them from outside, and eventually, inside. Woolly Mammoth Theatre. 641 D St. NW. To Oct. 6. $15–$68. (202) 393-3939. woollymammoth.net.

JITNEY A Pittsburgh jitney station—a symbol of community stability—is threatened on all sides by a stagnant neighborhood with no jobs and encroaching gentrification. Arena Stage. 1101 6th St. SW. To Oct. 20. $76–$95. (202) 488-3300. arenastage.org.

LA VIDA ES SUEÑO La Vida es Sueño by Pedro Calderón de la Barca and directed by Hugo Medrano with adaptations by Nando J. López is about free will, destiny, and tyranny. It will be presented in Spanish with English subtitles. GALA Hispanic Theatre. 3333 14th St. NW. To Oct. 13. $30–$48. (202) 234-7174. galatheatre.org.

THE LADY FROM THE VILLAGE OF FALLING FLOWERS This unpublished, unproduced Tennessee Williams one-act play mixes Japanese theater with performers who tell the story with live-action drawings.

Spooky Action Theater. 1810 16th St. NW. To Sept. 21. $20–$40. (202) 248-0301. spookyaction.org.

LOVE SICK Based on The Song of Songs, Love Sick tells the story a young wife in a lifeless marriage who discovers she has a secret admirer and begins a mysterious, dizzying journey of sexual and personal empowerment. Theater J. 1529 16th St. NW. To Sept.

29. $34–$64. (202) 777-3210. theaterj.org.

MIKE BIRBIGLIA’S THE NEW ONE Birbiglia, known for his work in Sleepwalk with Me, My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend, and roles in Orange is the New Black and Broad City, comes direct from Broadway to tell a new story—aptly titled “The New One.” National Theatre.

1321 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. To Sept. 29. $39–$114.

(202) 628-6161. nationaltheatre.org.

A NITE AT THE DEW DROP INN This cabaret-style show features songs made famous by Etta James, Fats Waller, and Big Mama Thorton on a highlights tour about love found, lost, and renewed. Anacostia Playhouse. 2020 Shannon Place SE. To Sept. 21. $30– $40. (202) 290-2328. anacostiaplayhouse.com.

THE ROYALE The Royale, inspired by the story of boxer Jack Johnson, follows an African American man who dreams of breaking the color line in boxing, despite his knockouts and doubt from his manager. Olney Theatre Center. 2001 Olney-Sandy Spring Road, Olney. To Oct. 27. $49–$54. (301) 924-3400. olneytheatre.org.

SCHOOL GIRLS; OR, THE AFRICAN MEAN GIRLS PLAY Paulina, the queen bee of the Aburi Girls Boarding School, is desperate to be Miss Ghana—but she’s

got some competition from within her school, namely from Ericka, who’s just arrived from America with a decidedly Western attitude. Round House Theatre Bethesda. 4545 East-West Highway, Bethesda. To Oct. 13. $32–$73. (240) 644-1100. roundhousetheatre.org.

SHEAR MADNESS Shear Madness is an audienceinteractive crime comedy set in Georgetown about the murder of a pianist who lives in a hair salon. Each show delivers a unique performance based on the audience’s sleuthing. Kennedy Center Theater Lab. 2700 F St. NW. To Sept. 28. $56. 202-467-4600. kennedy-center.org.

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THE SMUGGLER This comedy—9,000 words in rhyme—follows an Irish immigrant who meant to make it in America but ended up on the island of Amity and meets a stranger who teaches him the price of being an American. Eaton DC. 1201 K St. NW. To Oct. 6. $40. (202) 900-8414. eatonworkshop.com.

SOUVENIR Florence Foster Jenkins became a famous singer, but she couldn’t even string together two in-tune notes, though she believed herself to be a world-class soprano. Souvenir is the story of Jenkins, told through the perspective of her accompanist who is at first bemused by her but later grows to feel fondness for her. Horowitz Center at Howard Community College. 10901 Little Patuxent Parkway, Columbia. To Sept. 22. $15–$40. (443) 518-1500. repstage.org.

THE TEMPEST Synetic Theater is remounting Shakespeare’s The Tempest—complete with a 30-foot deep pool and “splash zone” seating. Synetic Theater at Crystal City. 1800 South Bell St. , Arlington. To Oct. 20. $20–$60. (866) 811-4111. synetictheater.org.

TRYING Trying follows the true story of the author’s time working for Judge Francis Biddle, former attorney general of the United States under FDR—and a notorious taskmaster who is trying to cement his legacy. 1st Stage. 1524 Spring Hill Road, McLean. To Oct. 20. $15–$42. (703) 854-1856. 1ststagetysons.org.

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SAVAGELOVE My son has always liked handcuffs and tying people up as a form of play. He is 12 now, and the delight he finds in cuffing has not faded along with his love of Legos. He lobbied hard to be allowed to buy a hefty pair of handcuffs. We cautioned him strongly about consent—he has a younger brother—and he has been good about it. In the last year, though, I found out that he is cuffing himself while alone in the house—and when discovered, he becomes embarrassed and insists it’s a joke. I found him asleep one night with his wrists cuffed. I removed the cuffs and spoke to him the next morning about safety. Then recently, when returning home late, I saw him (through his window, from the back of the house) naked and cuffed with a leather belt around his waist, which seemed attached to the cuffs. This escalation was scarier. I haven’t spoken to him about it. My concern about the bondage stuff is that there are some risks (like escaping a fire), particularly if he gets more adventurous (restricting breathing, etc.). This is something he is doing secretly and alone. He is a smart kid, an athlete, and a fairly conscientious scholar. He has friends but sometimes feels lonely. He is going through puberty with its attendant madness—defiance, surliness, etc.— but he is also very loving and kind. He is also quite boastful, which I interpret as insecurity.

I can’t help feeling that this bondage stuff is related to these issues, and I worry about self-esteem and self-loathing. We are considering getting him some help. Any advice for us?

—Completely Understandable Fears For Son When a concerned parent reaches out to an advice columnist with a question like yours, CUFFS, the columnist is supposed to call in the child psychologists. But I thought it might be more interesting—I actually thought it might be more helpful—if I shared your letter with a different class of experts: adult men who were tying themselves up when they were 12 years old.

“This boy sounds a lot like how I was at his age,” said James “Jimmy” Woelfel, a bondage porn star with a huge online following.

“I want to reassure CUFFS that the discovery of things like this, even at a young age, is extremely common. We may not know why we like this stuff at the time, we just know we do.”

Jimmy is correct: Many adults who are into bondage, heavy or otherwise, became aware of their bondage kinks at a very early age.

“The vast majority of BDSM practitioners report that their sexual interests developed relatively early in life, specifically before the age of 25,” Dr. Justin Lehmiller wrote in a recent post on his invaluable Sex and Psychology blog. “Further, a minority of these folks (7 to 12 percent across studies) report that their interests actually developed around the time

of puberty (ages 10 to 12), which is when other traditional aspects of sexual orientation develop (e.g., attraction based on sex/gender).”

While an obsession with handcuffs at age 6 isn’t proof a kid is going to grow up with an erotic interest in bondage—lots of kids like to play cops and robbers—a boy who’s cuffing himself in the throes of puberty and doing so in the nude and in secret … yeah, that boy is almost certainly going to be into bondage when he grows up. And that boy is also going to be embarrassed when his parents discover him in handcuffs for the exact same reason a boy is going to be embarrassed when his parents walk in on him masturbating—because he’s having a private sexual experience that he really doesn’t want to discuss with his parents.

As for your son’s insecurities and loneliness, CUFFS, they may not be related to his interest in bondage at all. They’re more likely a reaction to the shame he feels about his kinks than to the kinks themselves. (And aren’t most 12-year-olds, handcuff obsession or no, insecure?)

“People do bondage for various reasons,” said Trikoot, a self-described “bondage fanatic” and occasional kink educator from Helsinki, Finland. “It’s not always sexual, and it’s almost never a symptom of self-loathing—and a counselor will not ‘erase’ a taste for bondage. Too many kinksters had young lives full of shame and hiding, only to accept themselves years later and then discover what they’ve missed out on.”

In other words, CUFFS, parents and counselors can’t talk a child out of his kinks any more than they can talk a child out of his sexual orientation. This stuff is hardwired.

And once someone accepts his kinks, whatever anxiety he feels about them eventually evaporates.

All that said, however awkward it was for you and mortifying for him when you found him asleep in his handcuffs, Jimmy thinks there may be an upside.

“I was extremely embarrassed when my mom caught me,” said Jimmy. “She didn’t know how to respond and neither did I at the time. We merely went on as if it never happened. But it was somewhat comforting to know there wasn’t going to be a major backlash. It was better than living in fear.”

Now that you know what you know about your son, CUFFS, what do you do? Well, with the burden of knowing comes the responsibility—not just to educate and warn, but to offer your son a little hope for his future.

“Consent and safety are two of the most important universal issues in bondage, and CUFFS has wisely addressed both of them,” said Trikoot. And you should stress both in a follow-up conversation. “There are boundar-

34 september 20, 2019 washingtoncitypaper.com

ies that should never be crossed, such as solo breath play, which regularly kills even experienced adults. But dabbling with wrist and ankle restraints while being within shouting distance of the rest of the family is not a serious safety issue.” (Sleeping in handcuffs, however, is a serious safety issue—they can twist, compress nerves, and damage the delicate bones of the wrist. He should not be sleeping in them.)

Now for the tricky and super awkward and what will definitely feel somewhat age-inappropriate part: At some point—maybe in a year or two—you need to let your son know that he has a community out there.

“When done safely, bondage/kink can be an extremely rewarding experience as he grows into adulthood,” said Jimmy. “Some of the most important people in my life are those whom I’ve shared this love with. It is nothing to be ashamed of—though at his age, it is unfortunately inevitable. How you react can help mitigate such a reaction.”

Oh, and stop peeping in your son’s bedroom window at night. That’s creepy.

Follow Jimmy Woelfel on Twitter @for_ heavy and on Instagram @heavybondageforlife. Follow Trikoot on Twitter @trikoot.

—Dan Savage My 12-year-old son wants us to buy him a vibrator. Apparently he had a good experience with a hot tub jet and is looking to replicate that “good” feeling. He has tried replicating it, but is feeling very frustrated. (I always wanted an open and honest relationship with my kids so, um, yay for us?) Additional information: My son is on an SSRI. My husband feels uncomfortable buying my son a sex toy, but I find myself sympathizing with my son’s frustration. But I would be more comfortable if he were 15. We are hoping to figure it out without devices. Are we being reasonable or squeamish?

—Entirely Mortified Mom When this issue has come up in the past— usually it’s about a daughter who wants a vibrator—my readers have endorsed getting the kid an Amazon gift card and getting out of the way, i.e., letting them get online and buy themselves something and not scrutinizing the purchase once it arrives. You could go that route, EMM. Or you could make an end run around this whole issue by installing a pulsating shower head in your bathroom or getting your son an electric toothbrush. (Also, antidepressants—SSRIs—can make it more difficult for a person to climax, so you may not be able to “figure it out without devices.”)

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

Scene and

Heard Marching September, 2019 They’re noT sure if they’re where they need to be. A man and woman have arrived at the north side of the White House, where many protests are held, but the hordes of schoolchildren and their allies, united in their fight against climate change, are absent. The pair ask around until a helpful woman with a red sticker on her shirt tells them they need to get to the Ellipse.

A chant fills the oblong field: “Hey, hey, ho, ho! Climate change has got to go!” The protesters hold signs with clever lines, orange flames, and declarations of support for Greta high in the sky. Cameras belonging to news stations mirror the signs, hoisted high above the crowd, too.

Onlookers and more journalists stand at the edges. A cameraman thinks aloud that Reuters and the AP are already here as he sets up. Two men exchange flyers for upcoming events and a woman stumbles over an awkward script, trying to get the words just right.

They can scarcely see the kids through older protestors and camera crews, but a woman’s sign says why they’re all here: to “listen to the youth, who listen to science.”

It’s time to march, and an irritated woman gives directions to media and onlookers to move. “We need the youth on the sidewalk so this march can happen!” she says. They’re ready to march; they just need the grown-ups to get out of the way.

—Will Warren Will Warren writes Scene and Heard.

If you know of a location worthy of being seen or heard, email him at wwarren@washingtoncitypaper.com.

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Pursuant to the School Reform D.C. 38-GIVEN NOTICE Act, IS HEREBY 1802 THAT: (SRA) and the D.C. Public Charter INC. TRAVISA OUTSOURCING, (DISTRICT procurement OF COLUMBIA DESchools PARTMENT OF CONSUMER policy, Washington Latin AND REGULATORY AFFAIRS PCS hereby submits FILE Notice NUMBERof 271941) HAS this Intent to DISSOLVED EFFECTIVE NOVEMaward the following BER 27, 2017 AND HAS FILED Sole Source Contract: OF ARTICLES OF DISSOLUTION Vendor: Hill OutDOMESTIC Echo FOR-PROFIT CORdoor School.

PORATION WITH THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CORPORATIONS DIVISION Description of Service Procured: Echo Hill AOutdoor CLAIM School AGAINSThosts TRAVISA OUTSOURCING, INC. MUST an academic learning INCLUDE THE NAME OF THE environment on the DISSOLVED CORPORATION, Chesapeake Bay estuary INCLUDE THE NAME OF THE with immediate CLAIMANT, INCLUDEaccess A SUMMAto farmland, RY OF THE FACTSwetlands, SUPPORTING marshlands a mile TO THE CLAIM, ANDand BE MAILED 1600 INTERNATIONAL of coast line on the DRIVE, SUITE 600, MCLEAN, 22102 Chesapeake Bay.VAThe staff provides academic, ALL CLAIMS WILL BE BARRED hands on classes in UNLESS PROCEEDING TO ecology Aand history and ENFORCE THE CLAIM IS COMhuman MENCED interactions WITH IN 3 YEARS OF with the environment PUBLICATION OF THIS NOTICE through the lens the IN ACCORDANCE WITHof SECTION Chesapeake Bay. EHOSOF 29-312.07 OF THE DISTRICT also conducts team/ COLUMBIA ORGANIZATIONS ACT. community building exercises as a of Two Rivers PCS part is soliciting their program. proposals to provide They project manalso provide agement servicesconstant for a small concare and supervision struction project.

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Saturday, December 2, 20172 yrs BS in Accountancy, Veteran’s Plaza Exp. 40 hrs/wk.

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General Resume to Goldin & Stafford, Inc., 2851 V Looking to Rent yard space for Street, NE, Washington hunting dogs. Alexandria/ArlingDC 20018. ton, VA area only. Medium sized dogs will be well-maintained in temperature controled dog housWholistic Services, es. I have advanced animal care Inc. is looking experience and dogsfor will be rid dedicated to free of feces, flindividuals ies, urine and oder.

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washingtoncitypaper.com september 20, 2019 35

M Hel

* High School Diploma/ GED Please contact Human Resources @ 301-3922500 to schedule an appointment.

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22 side by side burial plots for sale in the Prestige Crestlawn Cemetary located in Christian E section, up front with beautiful view of the valley. Brand new currently selling for $8000 each, offering each for $4500 or $9000 for the two, includes bench you can sit on.

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Contact: Stevenstvn9@ aol.com Karaoke Wednesdays, Live Bands Saturdays!

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The Alley Cat Restaurant, #2 South Whiting Street, Alexandria, VA 703-461-0450

Pick up a copy today from vendors throughout downtown D.C. or visit www.streetsense.org for more information.

36 september 20, 2019 washingtoncitypaper.com

Best of all, it is completely FREE! We have rebranded the open house to be a sleeker version of what we had before, and we are expecting record crowds this year. Residents, community leaders, church members, parents, students, business owners, and service providers will all be in attendance.

We have so many fun activities and educational demos planned, and we would like you to be a part of it!

The information for the event: Date: Sunday, October 20, 2019 Time:12:00pm-4:00pm Place: 4911 Prince Georges Ave, Beltsville, MD 20705 Hattie Holmes Senior Wellness Center’s Quilting Club Presents a Quilt Exhibition and Workshop Wednesday, October 23, 2019 10:00AM – 3:00PM Hattie Holmes Senior Wellness Center 324 Kennedy St. NW Washington, DC 20011 Featuring: Quilting Demonstrations, Projects on Display, Giveaways, Fabric Sale, Make/Take Patches, Raffle.

Greenbelt Jazzfest Saturday, October 5, 2019 12:00 - 11:30 PM Roosevelt Center 113 Centerway, Greenbelt MD FREE Featuring Outdoor Stage Susan Jones Noon - 1:00 Thrē 1:30 - 2:30 Big Band Tradition 3 - 4 Greg Meyer 4:30 - 5:30 New Deal Cafe Stage Shari Wright 5:00 - 6:00 Spice 6:00 - 7:00 Club Malbec 7:30 - 8:30 Lionel Lyles Quintet 9 - 11:30 Sponsors: Beltway Plaza, Town Center Realty and Associates, Roosevelt Center Merchants Association, Greenbelt CO-OP Supermarket & Pharmacy, Old Greenbelt Theatre, Greenbelt Federal Credit Union, New Deal Cafe, Friends of New Deal Cafe Arts (FONDCA), and the City of Greenbelt CHAMBER MAGIC Magical date night: Sept. 26th www.washingtonmagic. com 1-888-882-8499

PUZZLE CANCEL CULTURE

By Brendan Emmett Quigley

1 Doorknob metal 6 Nocturnal mammal with a flexible snout 11 "nice 1!"

14 Ephesian land 15 Atlanta campus 16 One: Prefix 17 Record producer born Brian Burton 19 Bring home 20 Minor hiccup 21 Mountain lake 22 His last word was "Rosebud" 23 Product lines?

25 Wuss 28 Pigs 31 Senior article 33 Get the cup 34 With 13-Down, "Groove Is in the Heart" band 36 Tops 40 Class for people who are hot all the time 43 Shovel dirt?

44 Signaled to start 45 Day when people talk about dieting tomorrow, briefly 46 Half of a Wimbledon win for Serena, e.g.

48 WWII stalker

50 Baby carrier brand with an apt-sounding name 52 "Didn't mean that" 54 Superfluity 55 Female red deer 57 MMA star Holly 61 Serious stretch 62 Sudden surge of companies joining forces 65 Tpke.

66 Sketchy dude 67 Jazz drummer Gene 68 Freq. unit 69 "There ___ coincidences" 70 British racetrack locale

1 Tophatter actions 2 Brown shade 3 2019 Luc Besson thriller 4 Western shooter 5 Kamasi Washington's instrument 6 Oil 7 Love of Spain 8 Attack, like a cat 9 Agcy. with a Taxpayer Advocate Service

10 Healthy bread choice 11 Relating to the moon 12 Topsy-turvy 13 See 34-Across 18 "Making Plans For Nigel" band 22 Old "American Top 40" DJ 24 Yellow sign with a silhouette 26 Kind of orange 27 Used a paper towel, say 28 Spoils 29 Brown bagger on the streets

30 "Listen Like Thieves" band 32 Starting now 35 Kick out 37 Foreign: Prefix 38 Ireland's secondbest-selling musical artist (behind U2) 39 Leave in command 41 Cancels, as this puzzle's theme answers 42 Model show?

47 "Yes ___!"

49 C, another way 50 Epitome of laziness 51 Oscar of The Office 53 The last version of it was El Capitan 54 Culture that has been canceled in the long theme answers 56 Cart-pulling beasts 58 Major burden 59 Elective surgery that sucks, briefly 60 "Milady" 62 ___ Nashville (country record label) 63 Go wrong 64 Jaguar of the '60-'70s

LAST WEEK: MEALS ON WHEELS 7 8 % $ $ + $ % - 8 - 8 + $ 6 ) ( 3 2 5 6 + 5 ( , 7 6 $ 6 + ( 2 ' 2 : 1 , 3 $ ' ( 6 2 8 1 + 2 3 6 < 2

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CRAFTY arts & makers festival

Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 28 and 29 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Buzzard Point DC Buy tickets at CraftyFestivalDC.com

By Metro: Take the GREEN line to Navy Yard-Ballpark or Waterfront stations.

Walking Directions from Metro: From Navy Yard - Ballpark Metrorail Station: Approx. 20 min walk • Head west on M Street SE toward First Street SE • Turn left onto First Street SE • Slight right onto Potomac Avenue SE • Turn left onto 1st Street SW (Destination on the right)

From Waterfront Metrorail Station: Approx. 20 min walk • Head south on 4th Street SW toward M Street SW • Turn left onto P Street SW • Turn right onto 2nd Street SW (Destination on the left)

For more on driving directions and parking, visit CraftyFestivalDC.com