In The Shadow Of The Cultural Monuments: In Nation's Capital, New Creativity Struggles For Moonlight In First Months Of Obama Silver Age

"Henry's a hungry librettist with a great idea and the moxie to pull it off. But complications ensue as he betrays his loved ones securing the rights to Woody Allen's famous film. The closer he gets to his dreams, the more havoc he wreaks. A hilarious tale about skyscraper ambitions in a celebrity-driven town.

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Queen Elizabeth I was forced to condemn to death a man believed to be her former lover. On the night before the execution, she demanded that William Shakespeare's acting troupe perform a play to distract her from the heartbreak. Playwright Timothy Findley takes these historical facts, blends in a few "what ifs?" and creates a play about men, women, fantasy, death and, ultimately, love.

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In 1939, Gone with the Wind premiered in Atlanta, a city still struggling with the aftershocks of slavery. Meanwhile in Europe, Hitler's death camps flourished and Great Britain and France declared war on Germany. The romance of Hollywood movies and Berlin cabarets collides with history's harshest cruelties as a forbidden love transcends the bounds of time, race and religion.

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Based on the classic novel Call of the Wild and other works by Jack London, this world premiere musical filled with original songs is set in the frigid Yukon wilderness during the Klondike Gold Rush. In such a ruthless, unforgiving environment, dogs and their masters must battle the conditions, loneliness and each other to survive.

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Libby lives in a world where the sun doesn't shine, a terrible angel encircles the earth, birds fall from the sky and the maternal instinct has all but gone extinct. Victor Lodato's haunting drama captures the desperation of characters caught in dysfunctional and hysterical relationships during a global ecological breakdown.

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Inspired by the African-American tradition of oral history, Tanya Barfield's drama Blue Door explores what it means to be black in America. The play incorporates humor and original songs into the story of Lewis, a mathematics professor undergoing a personal and professional crisis. During a night of insomnia, Lewis is visited by the ghosts of his ancestors.

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Two filmmakers — a young second-generation Latino and his gringo friend — travel to Mexico to document how American pop culture has invaded the Mexican way of life in this politically-charged comedy from GALA Hispanic Theatre. Hilarious historical reenactments are blended with present-day scenes as the actors take on multiple roles, from conquistadors to presidents to an entire village.

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Synetic Theater blends movement, dance, text, and music into a compelling original production of Aristophanes' timeless political satire. Originating in 500 B.C., the always-popular Lysistrata is set during a long-running war between Athens and Sparta, when the title character unites the women of Athens in a sex strike to force the men to come to their senses.

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Obsessive love and morality are at the heart of this exploration of what it means to love an artist. Making its world premiere at the Mead Theatre Lab, Deep Belly Beautiful plays out like a sinister but poetic fairy tale, as eight deeply flawed characters are caught in a web of betrayal, revenge, addiction, and even cannibalism."

Captions © 2008 Goldstar Events, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Header photo credit: (c) Susan Biddle and Washington Post. 2009. All rights reserved.