Barbara Trainin Blank

Flow, which saw its second production, in 2004, at Studio Theatre, is back! Part of Studio Theatre’s first digital season and more specifically featuring a trio of eclectic solo performances, Flow might be called a mixed metaphor. It blends the old West African tradition of griot — an oral tradition combining a historian, storyteller, praise singer, poet, and musician — with seven storytellers of an urban community presumably in the States.

The title and content of this filmed opera reminded me of a friend with a young biracial relative. Whenever he ventures out, whether by foot or car, his mother provides him with a letter explaining who he is and asserting that his purpose is benevolent in case the police may approach him.

DC’s Studio Theatre is known as a leading contemporary theater, and the subject matter of its current production can scarcely be more so. Inspired by the police killing of young Michael Brown in 2014 in Ferguson, Mo., and based on dozens of interviews conducted in its aftermath across the city’s communities by playwright Dael Orlandersmith, Under the Flood goes beyond any specific such shooting to explore African American-White relations on a much-broader and emotionally charged scale. The anger and mistrust, the occasional ties of friendship. Personal success and failure amidst social upheaval.

Like many of the fairy tales by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen, his popular novel The Snow Queen has a dark undertone — representing the struggle between good and evil that two friends Gerda and Kai experience. In the adaptation by Mike Kenny, written for Imagination Stage and directed by Janet Stanford, founding artistic director of the Bethesda -based children’s theater, The Snow Queen is more imperious than truly evil. She imprisons souls more than bodies.

Wit, wisdom, and sometimes overpowering verbosity fill George Bernard Shaws’ Don Juan In Hell, the dream sequence contained within the third act of the Irish playwright’s Man and Superman and sometime performed independently.

Is it possible to change a relationship retrospectively, especially one that has been intermittent all along and ended with the death of the other person? That is the question posed by Psalmayene 24, who didn't see his father until he was 12 and even then was introduced by the older man as someone else's son. Meetings between the two were scarce and sporadic after that, and, in fact, Psalmayene 24 found out about his father's death on three years after it happened.

Roost. It's a short opera about an expectant couple (for the first time) in lockdown who would be happy, and sexually active, if not for the fact that the air conditioning isn't working and it's a long, hot summer. Also hovering via FaceTime is Kat's overbearing mother.

The word legendary can be used loosely, but as Brian Ganz demonstrates in a tribute concert to his long-time teacher and world-famous pianist Leon Fleisher, in this case not only is the description deserving but can be applied in many different spheres.

Contemporary Dance is a collaborative style, including modern and ballet elements, as well as sometimes jazz and hip hop. This fusion is the trademark of Chamber Dance Project, the D.C.—based company, with founding artistic director Diane Coburn Bruning at its helm.

There is much to admire in this streamed production of one of Shakespeare's lesser-performed but highly dramatic play. It isn't a work with many famous lines — though it has some — but Antony & Cleopatra makes up for it with action.

It was a misty, later rainy night, but that didn't dampen the enthusiasm of the audience at Kennedy Center's Eisenhower Theater watching DEMO: Now 2020. They greeted the musicians and dancers, directed and curated by Damian Woetzel, with standing ovations and loud, prolonged applause.

A recent article in The New York Times declared that Ezra Jack Keats's The Snowy Day and Other Stories is the most widely borrowed book in the Big Apple's public library collection. It's popular not only for the way it evokes the wonder and innocence of childhood but for breaking the color barrier in children's literature. 

An emphasis on immigrants and how well they integrate (or not) in this country is nothing new. If anything, the issue has become more heated in the past few years.

A great deal is packed into The Magical Piñata. There's a brief explanation of where Mexico's population comes from; a smattering of spoken Spanish and songs in both Spanish and English; pratfalls; a morality tale; and lots of laugher.

There's a lot of energy and creativity onstage during 4615 Theatre Company's world premiere of The Infinite Tales -- and they come not only from the actors. The performers are accompanied by live and recorded music, props that take up a good part of the stage (mostly suitcases and trunks, suggesting the long-distance travel the main characters must undergo), shadow puppets and screens, and paper cut-outs, among others.