139 stories by "Alan Katz"
You would have to be quite the hermit to be missing the current cultural moment of the horrifying and sometimes violent interactions between bodies, sex, and power. With news full of the emp…
In today's information age, where significant cultural moments flutter in and out weekly, topical theater may not age well. But sometimes, art speaks to fundamental fault lines in a culture,…
Memory is a home we can't help but live in. Wandering from room to partitioned room, we reflexively replay the moments that define us in our search of what they mean for who we are. Deb Sivi…
There is still dictatorship in Europe. Protestors are beaten in the streets. Artists and activists are tortured in prison. An iron-fisted strong man rigs elections and crushes all opposition…
In the wake of an historically deadly mass shooting and a historically unpopular president comes a musical comedy of sorts about guns, presidents, and their tragic interplay from Lincoln to …
Imagine the worst dinner party you could attend. Not the worst for company (everyone here is erudite and cosmopolitan), nor the worst for purpose (a celebration of achievement), nor the wors…
This DC theater season, several mid-sized theaters are delving into a trend recently popular among the bigger houses: remounting popular productions of previous years. Usually these shows sp…
In the past few days, as I've let Kathleen Akerley’s play Whipping, or The Football Hamlet (and this review) settle in my mind, I realize that my review perhaps comes off more harshly …
Whipping, or the Football Hamlet has rushed into CUA's Callan Theater with Kathleen Akerley calling this play as writer and director as she does most every humid DC August. As a theatergoer,…
Everyone has an idea of how Shakespeare "should" be performed: from the gorgeous flashiness of Shakespeare Theatre Company to the original practice imitations of American Shakespeare Center …
A man wanders onstage, a mad look above his riotous beard. Another man comes on, petrified with fear, not seeing the disturbing maniac. With lightning speed, the bearded man pounces and …
If you’ve ever picked up a roommate from an online ad, you know that living with strangers can be, well, strange. In a world premiere from outer space-oriented Nu Puppis collective, th…
Alana Wiljanen made a good choice in calling her group's co-created Shakespeare adaptation MacBheatha, instead of the more famous Macbeth, Shakespeare's sordid tale of a Scotsman murdering h…
There are certain topics that one avoids on first dates. Like race, politics, religion, Moby Dick, your ex. Mixed Blessings is the story of how these topics can make a first date go spectacu…
You might be tempted to dismiss Ulysses on Bottles as a niche-appeal "issue play," but this first opening for Mosaic Theater since receiving the Outstanding Emerging Theater Company Aw…
It's rare for traditional, big budget Shakespeare productions to find new angles on the major works of America's most-produced playwright, and even more rare for those angles to work well wi…
If you get too weirded out by the second song in Signature's newest world premiere musical, Midwestern Gothic, where out-of-work mechanic Red takes Polaroids of his stepdaughter Stina in …
The hottest theater ticket in DC right now isn't to a blockbuster musical, a star-studded Shakespearean play, or a big-time production already contracted to hit Broadway. The ticket everyone…
Six Degrees of Separation shares much in common with Catcher in the Rye, the novel at the play's moral center. Both are full of terribly unlikable characters who can turn our loathing into s…
American theater has been mucking about in the sandbox and, meanwhile, the playground, the school, and the entire world have been burning down around us. Those were my first thoughts…
"Will film kill off the the theater?" This question, often asked in existential anxiety by theatermakers at an undersold performance, may be the wrong one. That seems to be the message from …
Everyone remembers their first contact with death. I don’t mean Death, though I assume that first face to "face” meeting in the no-longer flesh is quite memorable. I mean the fir…
There's a certain somber and sober tone you expect from shows about disasters. Representations of recent genocides or terrorist attacks especially take on an almost religious nature, a hushe…
In the storytelling cacophony that is the Capital Fringe Festival, it is easy to forget the pure beauty of bodies in space moving with discipline and grace. Seven Windows provides that eye-i…
"We all live in stories," says David J. Goldberg, actor, YouTube enthusiast, and, quite possibly, victim of a vast collusion of intelligence operatives who are conspiring to drive humanity i…
