Category Archives: Play

HotHouse at Clarice Smith, Feb 22-23

HotHouse at Clarice Smith, Feb 22-23

Baye & Asa: HotHouse

February 22 & 23, 2023 . 8PM
Wed, Feb 22, 2023 . 8:00PM
Thu, Feb 23, 2023 . 8:00PM

Venue: Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center.

Directed by Amadi ‘Baye’ Washington and Sam ‘Asa’ Pratt, Baye & Asa is a company creating movement art projects. The duo met when they were six years old––their long friendship giving them the freedom and safety to constantly disagree and expand each other’s artistic capacity. Their brotherhood nourishes the evolution of their work and the physical aggression in their choreography is a representation of their political rage and a yearning to personally implicate themselves. Hip-hop and African dance languages are the foundation of their technique. With it, they build theatrical metaphors, interrogate systemic inequities and contemporize ancient allegories.

Coming to The Clarice in 2022-23 is the duo’s new work HotHouse. ​​HotHouse is a commentary on confinement, a dance/theater performance, a durational installation and an exploration of how our failed response to COVID-19 has unmasked the greater systemic failures of America. It interrogates how and why inequities that predated the pandemic–in healthcare, housing, education, incarceration–erupted at the center of our political discourse.

Pay what you wish. Click here.

Join us in person at The Clarice! Please note that this performance will not be livestreamed.

Laurel’s Got Talent at Laurel Mill Playhouse, Feb 17-Mar 12

Laurel’s Got Talent at Laurel Mill Playhouse, Feb 17-Mar 12

Laurel’s got Talent!
Directed by Patrick Pase
Pianist – Mimi McGinniss
Produced by Maureen Rogers

February 17 – March 12, 2023
Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays

Location: Laurel Mill Playhouse

Sing a song? Have a 10 or 15-minute skit? Play an instrument? Dance? Tell some jokes?

Ticket prices: To be announced.

LMP strongly urges that all patrons that come to LMP be vaccinated and wear masks. At this time, we will not require vaccination cards and masks in LMP but reserve the right to change the guidelines should the positivity rate rise significantly.

Buy tickets here.

For further information, please call 301-617-9906, or contact Maureen Rogers at maureencrogers@gmail.com or 301-452-2557.

Maryland Opera Studio presents Proving Up at Clarice Smith, Feb 18

Maryland Opera Studio presents Proving Up at Clarice Smith, Feb 18

Maryland Opera Studio presents
Proving Up
Craig Kier, music director
Missy Mazzoli, composer
Royce Vavrek, librettist

Saturday, February 18, 2023 . 8:00PM

Venue: Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center.

Based on a 2013 short story by Karen Russell, Proving Up, is a surreal and haunting commentary on the American dream as experienced by the Zegners, a fictional family of 1860s homesteaders. This narrative feels newly relevant at this fraught moment in the nation’s history, when people are examining and reevaluating the achievability of the American Dream. The Zegners are a family that does everything “right” and are still undermined by forces beyond their control. These characters have parallels in our contemporary world: a mother who tries to maintain control through domestic order, a father who turns to the bottle under the pressures of supporting a family, children forced to take on responsibilities beyond their years and a lone, deranged man who resorts to violence and destruction. Pushed to the edge by poverty and ultimately undermined by fate, the Zegners’ fixation on “proving up” never wanes.
 
About the Maryland Opera Studio:
 
Under the direction of Craig Kier, the Maryland Opera Studio is dedicated to the future of opera. Preparing the next generation of great singers and offering performances ranging from classic repertoire to provocative new works, it is building contemporary audiences for opera and advancing the art form to sustain those audiences.
 
Tickets: Free, no tickets required. Click here.

Voices of Woodlawn at Joe’s Movement Emporium, Feb 18

Voices of Woodlawn at Joe’s Movement Emporium, Feb 18

Voices of Woodlawn
Saturday, February 18, 2023 at 7:00 PM

Location: Joe’s Movement Emporium.

In a unique collaboration, three Black poets and a white poet from the D.C. area will share their moving poetry about the troubled history of the Woodlawn Plantation in Alexandria, Va. Featuring Patrick Washington, Ladi Di Beverly, Diane Wilbon Parks, Dr. Hiram Larew and Cliff Bernier on harmonica.

Tickets: Pay-what-you-wish. Click here.

Upstage Artists presents Arsenic and Old Lace, Feb 17-26

Upstage Artists presents Arsenic and Old Lace, Feb 17-26

Upstage Artists presents:
Arsenic and Old Lace
by Joseph Kesselring
Directed by Rick Bergemann

February 17 – 26, 2023

Location: Upstage Artists, performing at the Emmanuel United Methodist Church, 11416 Cedar Lane, Beltsville MD, 20705

Drama critic Mortimer Brewster’s engagement announcement is upended when he discovers a corpse in his elderly aunts’ window seat. Mortimer rushes to tell Abby and Martha before they stumble upon the body themselves, only to learn that the two old women aren’t just aware of the dead man in their parlor, they killed him! Between his aunts’ penchant for poisoning wine, a brother who thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt, and another brother using plastic surgery to hide from the police—not to mention Mortimer’s own hesitancy about marriage—it’ll be a miracle if Mortimer makes it to his wedding. Arsenic and Old Lace is a classic black comedy about the only thing more deadly than poison: family.

Tickets: $11.50. For more information click here.