Dachs Thoughts

Tonight I attended my last play at the Folger Theatre, Cyrano. This was sort of the first of a bunch of lasts as my time in DC is quickly drawing to a close. The play was well acted with a relatively small cast, several of them who played multiple roles. It was pretty much a basic telling of the Cyrano de Bergerac story, so no major surprises. While the time period of the play was traditional, the language of the play contained lots of American idioms, which I felt kind of took away from it. One mildly interesting aspect was in the opening scene, which takes place in a theater, cast members were spread around the audience, and the audience was lit, so it made it seem like the audience was part of the audience in the play. An entertaining evening of theater, but I wasn’t blown away.

On my walk home, I was able to take some nice night shots of the capitol as I had brought my camera along. Today was the first bad summer-type day of heat an humidity. On my walk home after 10 pm it was still 80° and 60% humidity. Yuck. Still a great scenic walk after an evening of theater.

Tonight I saw another one-man play at Woolly Mammoth. WOW! Mike Daisey performed his play The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. For just under two hours he sat at a silver desk on a black stage with a background of linear computer-like light patterns. I really didn’t know what to expect. It started out as a humorous presentation from a techno-geek’s point of view of his (our) obsession with the latest gadgets (particularly Apple), that threaded some stories of Steve Jobs into it. The story then bounced back and forth between the tech-lover/Steve Jobs story to telling about his going to China to Shenzhen, a largely unknown city of a special economic zone, where most of the electronics in the world is produced today. He also talked about the huge Foxconn plant which employees 400,000 people and makes more than half of our electronic gadgets. It was quite moving to learn most of these things are actually hand made by workers, including some who are very young, who work long hours with very bad conditions and are basically treated like serfs. It was eye opening. I can’t recall being so moved by a piece of theater and being informed while at the same time being entertained. Woolly Mammoth has turned out to be a really great theater experience.

As the days in DC are too quickly rushing to an end, I attended another of my STC plays, Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband. The set design was beautiful, and the acting was as always superb. The main setting was almost like a elegant photograph or painting of a 19th century rich person’s hall, prominently backed by a beautiful sweeping staircase with flowers all around. The play was entertaining and well executed, but it didn’t blow me away — more the content of the play than the execution. I’d seen this once before with CalShakes, but I don’t exactly remember it. I’m going to miiss these when I can’t go to great plays 5 minutes from home.

Wow. Another great night of theater at the Woolly Mammoth where I sawOedipus el Rey. This was a new version of Oedipus Rex, set amidst a Chicano community, in the barrio and prison, that was powerfully affecting. The theater was reconfigured so the stage was like a fashion runway coming out where seats normally are, so I was about five feet from the outside corner of the stage. Like two of the last three plays I’ve seen it started with an actor on the stage as the audience filed in. It was a small cast and all of the action was very present, almost in your face, the stage being so close, as well as the fact that actors came in through the audience as well. When Oedipus and his mother have sex, this was (tastefully) done in full nudity, fully lit, right in front of me. It was very courageous acting. All of the acting was terrific. This is another one of those Woolly plays I’ve seen recently where I had very little knowledge or expectation going in, and have been very pleasantly surprised. I’m so glad I saw this.