DC Arts Center Announces Upcoming Events

Upcoming Events at DC Arts Center
DC Arts Center's full and varied season of arts, artists, actors and shows continues through November. We host Black Artists of DC in our gallery and feature a series of personalities in our intimate theatre space. For the juried show Black artists were asked to make an introspective re-evaluation of the color and concept of blackness. Viewers will find multiple perceptions, understandings and translations in the resulting exhibition. Meanwhile theatre-goers face the relationship between faith and love during the clash of religion and science in Agnes of God. Seeking a more lighthearted venture? Cult of the Stage Monkey returns to DCAC with microCosm, featuring new and established long-form improv troupes collaborating to produce improv's long form darling, The Harold. November closes with a musical history lesson of sorts in Tayo Aluko's Call Mr. Robeson - A Life with Songs. Aluko breathes new life into the once celebrated, now forgotten actor, singer and civil rights campaigner Paul Robeson. An emotional journey ensures through the life of a man hovering between the brink of genius and madness. With this November line up, DC Arts Center's Director B. Stanley asks visitors to the gallery and theatre alike to "make good on your duty as a viewer: to engage and question."

Black Artists of DC and the DC Arts Center Present
BLACK
Friday, November 20 - Sunday, January 10,
Opening Reception: Friday, November 20, 7:00 pm-9:00 pm
Artists Talks/Closing Reception: Sunday, January 10, 5:00 pm-7:00 pm
Jurors: Renee Stout, Blake Kimbrough, and Marvin Bowser
Curator: Amber Robles-Gordon
Co-Curator: Daniel T. Brooking
Judges: Teresia Bush and Eugene R. Vango

We want to reveal Black, as it has never been seen before.

Black asks artists to think introspectively about the emotional and theoretical, the spiritual and cultural, the intellectual and physical aspects of their personal percpetions of blackness. Each artist's objective was to move beyond black as an absence of color and into the predominance of black as a physical and conceptual part of their creations. Artists were able to claim, adorn, redefine and enfold the black experience in and throughout their work. Audiences will be able to relish in black: it's elegance, depth, and sensation of infinity.

The show's artists have captured the emotional impact of the joy, passion and spiritual response audiences experience to the blues, gospel, jazz and hip-hop. The energy, elegance, and spiritual nature of the black preacher, politician, academic, actor, and activist is communicated in each individuals interpretion of the color and the concept of Black.

Featuring work by John Earl Cooper, Arcmanoro Niles, Cedric Baker, Jacqueline Lee, Valentina Andaya, Akili Ron Anderson, Viola Leak, Bruce McNeil, Gloria C. Kirk, Stanley Squirewell, Claudia Gibson-Hunter, Michael Platt, Sonya Clark, Ann Marie Williams, Alec Simpson, Daniel T. Brooking, Amber Robles-Gordon, Prelli Williams, Kristen Hayes, Serinity Knight, Anne Bouie, James Brown, Jr., T. H. Gomillion, Adjoa J. Burrowes, Deidra Bell, Willard Taylor, Carlton Wilkinson, Constance Porter Uzelac, Juilett Madison

Rhodora Theatre Company presents
Agnes of God
November 6, 7, 13 and 14 at 7:30
$10/ $8 DCAC Members
For reservations call DCAC at 202-462-7833

Summoned to a convent, Dr. Martha Livingstone, a court appointed psychiatrist, is asked to determine the sanity of a young novitiate accused of murdering her newborn. Miriam Ruth, the Mother Superior, determinedly keeps young Agnes from the doctor, arousing Livingstone's suspicions further. Who killed the infant and who fathered this tiny victim? Livingstone's questions force all three women to re-examine the meaning of faith and the power of love, leading to a dramatic, compelling, climax. A hit on Broadway and later on film.

Cult of the Stage Monkey DC presents
microCosm
November 6, 7, 13 and 14 at 10pm
$10/ $8 DCAC Members
For reservations call DCAC at 202-462-7833

Four nights of on-the-spot comedy with new and established long-form improv troupes from across the District. Different troupes will perform each night with microCosm performing improv's long-form darling, The Harold, a 3-act play devised on the fly from a single audience suggestion.

Call Mr. Robeson - A Life With Songs

November 19 - November 29, Thursdays - Sundays at 7:30
$20/ $15 DCAC Members
For tickets: www.brownpapertickets.com

Paul Robeson is a great and famous actor, singer and civil rights campaigner. When over the years he gets progressively too radical and outspoken for the establishment's liking, he is branded a traitor to his country, harassed and denied opportunities to perform or travel.
Just as physical, emotional and mental stress threaten to push him over the fine line between genius and madness, he is summoned to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee, to give the most difficult and important performance of his career.
The play is a roller coaster journey through Robeson's remarkable and eventful life, and highlights how his radical activism caused him to be disowned and disremembered, even by the leaders and descendants of the civil rights movement. It features some of his famous songs and speeches, including a dramatic rendition of Ol' Man River.

In Your Ear: Avant Garde Poetry
November 22nd 3:00
$5/ DCAC Members Free

The best in alternative, avant garde, experimental, innovative and/or non-mainstream poetry from DC and around the country. Featuring poets Kate Greenstreet and Karen Anderson. For more information about In Your Ear visit www.dcpoetry.com.

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