A Theatre-Goer's Thoughts

  Kelly McAndrew, Megan Hill, Sarah-Anne Martinez, Natalya Lynette Rathnam, Felicia Curry, Yesenia Iglesias, and Naomi Jacobson in  POTUS  at Arena Stage. Photo by Kian McKellar. The program for POTUS: or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive by Selina Fillinger, currently on-stage at Arena Stage’s Fichandler Theatre (through November 12), describes the play’s setting as: The White House. Perhaps not the current administration, exactly – but broad strokes of past presidents, combined with stress diagrams of future ones. And if we’re being honest, an amalgamation of them all… How does someone satirize contemporary politics when reality often stretches the imagination? How can a playwright create a situation that is even more absurd and bizarre than those we’ve lived through in the past 25 years or so and/or are currently experiencing? In retrospect, some of the plot twists that seemed unthinkable on recent series such as “Veep” and “House of Cards

  Chelsea Lee Williams, Stacey Sargeant, Ximone Rose, and Whitney White in Macbeth in Stride . Photo credit: Teresa Wood. Macbeth in Stride , the current offering at the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Klein Theatre, defies easy classification. Not exactly a play, not exactly a musical, it is a mix of numerous musical genres, part concert, part musing upon one of the most famous female characters in Shakespeare’s canon, part feminist screed, part reenactment of scenes from the play, it is a contemporary critique of sexual politics in general and sexual politics of the African American woman in specific. Those who experience it – and I use that word purposefully, because the audience members are not mere spectators – will find their attention rapt in its ideas and will challenge the more traditional interpretations of the character. One woman is at the heart of it – the heart and soul (in every possible meaning of the word) is Whitney White. “Created and performed by Whitney White” is he

  Shubhangi Kuchibhotla (Citizen 8), Derek Garza  (Citizen 9), Kim Be y (Citizen 1), Shaquille Stewart  (Citizen 4), and Constance Swain (Citizen 2) in the  2023  Ford ’ s Theatre world premiere production of  Something Moving: A Meditation on Maynard  by Pearl Cleage , directed by Seema Sueko .  The production continues through  Oct.  15, 2023,  and  features s cenic d esign by  Milagros Ponce de León , costume design  by  Ivania Stack , lighting design by  Jeanette Oi - Suk  Yew , sound design by  André  J. Pluess , p rojection  d esign by  Shawn Duan, h air and makeup design by  Danna Rosedahl, dramaturgy  by Faedra Chatard  Carpenter, and dialects and voice direction by  Lisa Nathans. Photo by Scott Suchman. A cast list that includes one named character (“The Witness”) and nine others named Citizen 1, Citizen 2, etc. indicates right away that  Something Moving: A Meditation on Maynard  is not a traditional, representational play. Indeed, as playwright Pearl Cleage explains in the p