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Roxanne Roberts and Amy Argetsinger
CELEBVOCATE
An occasional look at the show- biz luminaries-with-causes attempting to shed light in Washington. Tuesday’s visitor:
Demi Moore.
Occasion: A briefing on child
sex trafficking in the U.S., by the Rebecca Project and the Demi & Ashton Foundation. Site: A packed meeting room
at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center
What she wants: Tougher
prosecution for johns and pimps, and more leniency and support for youngsters coerced into prostitution. “I think many Americans are more willing to accept that girls are being trafficked in Cambodia and can’t imagine it’s happening right here.”
How she looked: Glam, but
dialed-back-for-D.C. — dark sheath, wide leather belt, loose hair, reading glasses. Strategy: Bypassing the celeb-
glutted White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, Moore drew a solo media spotlight — which she deftly deflected to a panel of young victims sharing compelling stories of beatings, preteen arrests, childhoods lost.
Backup: CNN’s Suzanne
Malveaux as moderator; panel of experts.
Light moment: Moore’s spiel was interrupted by the buzzers signaling a House vote. “Do I need to answer that?” she asked. “I feel like I need to answer that.”
Demi Moore denounced child
prostitution on Tuesday.
Lots of love for Laura from bipartisan hearts
JASON MERRITT/GETTY IMAGES
welcome the former first lady back to Washington in her debut as author of “Spoken From the Heart,” her not-so-revealing memoir. Bush made a lot of friends in her eight years here with a discreet, low-key style, and she settled few scores in the book — which guarantees very little gossip but a huge post-White House fan base. “I’m thrilled to have the first book
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EVAN VUCCI/ ASSOCIATED PRESS
BACKSTAGE
Czech it out: The tale of ‘Bookes’ at Taffety Punk
by Jane Horwitz
Playwright Richard Byrne doesn’t mind admitting he’s rather obsessed with a time, a place and real-life charac- ters who are nearly unknown to most American audiences. But they’re wildly popular in the Czech Republic. Byrne’s new play, “Burn Your Bookes,” running through May 22 at Capitol Hill Arts Workshop (545 Seventh St. SE) in a production by Taffety Punk Theatre Company, is about an alchemist of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, Ed- ward Kelley (played by Daniel Flint). Kel- ley worked for John Dee (Will Cooke), a mathematician, scientist and dabbler in alchemy and the occult arts who was a fa- vorite of Elizabeth I’s. Dee and Kelley went to Bohemia (now the Czech Repub- lic) for a number of years, trying to win favor with Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia Rudolf II, and that’s where the play unfolds. Kelley was, as Byrne portrays him, more gifted than Dee (whom he manip- ulates and undermines) as a medium, or “scrier,” who could “hear” angels’ voices via a crystal ball and interpret their lan- guage. He was also, in Byrne’s vision, a more convincing alchemist, claiming he could turn base metal into gold. The play ends after Kelley’s death, looking at his stepdaughter Elizabeth Jane Weston (Kimberly Gilbert), a gifted poet. Kelley and Dee are major characters in Czech culture, notes Byrne, 44, who taught English in Prague for a year in the early 1990s after the Velvet Revolution. Under communism, he learned, “that whole alchemical tradition of Prague was one of those things Czech scholars could go to England and talk about and not worry about being too political.” Even after communism, adds Byrne, it was “one of those things that all Czechs knew about. Everyone knew the story of Edward Kelley and John Dee.” In Eng- land, too, “the tall tales around Kelley are immense.” The big question for Byrne is whether
Kelley was a sincere practitioner or a con artist. Well, says Byrne, when Kelley looked into the crystal ball (with his boss Dee taking copious notes), “the spirits al- ways seemed to be saying something that Edward Kelley wanted them to say. I think that he had control of the experi- ence.” Taffety Punk’s Marcus Kyd directed
“Burn Your Bookes,” which he considers a workshop production. He says he real- ized that with the obscure material and Byrne’s nonlinear approach to storytell- ing, with its changing points of view, the actors needed always to be very clear, even over-emphatic, about such subtle elements as Kelley’s and Dee’s penchant for wife-swapping, for example. The ac- tors, says Kyd, need to “know precisely what they’re talking about and where they are and what’s going on.” Even though the production mixes period cos- tumes with flashes of punk aesthetic (band posters on jackets, tattoolike makeup designed by the actors), “every- body is still in 17th-century Prague,” says Kyd. The makeup is Taffety Punk’s way of
going over the top on a budget. “I never have more than about a thousand dol- lars. So we’re borrowing all this stuff and it’s cheaper to safety-pin it than stitch it. It’s cheaper to do all sorts of stuff, and I thought, well, let’s throw the punk aspect at it. What would make the Renaissance punk? It works for me that Kelley’s wear- ing a Misfits shirt on the back of his jack- et.”
Folger’s 2010-11 season
Henry VIII, in all his contradictory
glory, will go under a magnifying glass at Folger Theatre next season, onstage and in an exhibit. The company’s 2010-11 season will open with Shakespeare’s “Henry VIII” (Oct. 12-Nov. 21), with Ian Merrill Peakes in the title role, Naomi Jacobson as Hen- ry’s queen, Katherine of Aragon, and Ka- ren Peakes as his new love, Anne Boleyn. British director Robert Richmond will direct. Multiple Tony winner William Ivey Long will design the costumes. The subtitle of “Henry VIII” is “All Is
True,” notes Janet Alexander Griffin, ar- tistic producer of Folger Theatre. “You can wonder how much we think of ‘Hen- ry VIII’ is actually fact, and the exhibit, of course, will go into that more and have some of his own books,” she says. One of the books, Henry’s schoolboy text of Cic- ero’s writings, has an inscription by the young royal — “Thys boke is myne Prince Henry.”
Aaron Posner, a favorite director at
Folger Theatre (“Orestes, a Tragic Romp,” the “Macbeth” staged with the magician Teller, “Arcadia,” “Measure for Measure,” “Twelfth Night”) will return next season to direct the second and third plays of
party on the day of publication at this beautiful home,” she told the crowd.
uesday’s book party for Laura Bush at the Kuwaiti Embassy was an exclusive, intimate affair — for 500 of her closest friends in D.C. Everyone wanted to
The party was a bipartisan, VIP love
fest. The co-hosts — Salem and Rima
Al-Sabah, Lea and Wayne Berman, Buffy and Bill Cafritz, Esther Coopersmith, Barbara Harrison and John Pyles, and Ann and Vernon
Jordan — emptied the Rolodex to harness their Democratic and
Republican pals: Condi Rice, Debbie Dingell, Lucky Roosevelt, Ann Stock, Doro Bush, Andy Card, Trent Lott, Catherine Reynolds, Bob Barnett ...
and that was just one corner. Politics weren’t on the table, said Coopersmith, a Democratic fundraiser. “Lord, no. It’s all about her great work for literacy and children. She’s incredible.”
Bush, slimmer than ever in a gold
pantsuit, was accompanied by
daughter Jenna Bush Hager —
looking va-va-voomy in a black top, gold sequined Oscar de la Renta miniskirt and high heels. The first group they greeted at the party were members of the White House residence staff — butlers, ushers, curators and others who work for the first family every day. Most of the party was devoted to a
huge line of people who waited for a hug or mini-chat with the guest of honor. As a surprise, Marvin Hamlisch composed a song using the title of the book. “It’s a sweet, nice ballad to say thank
you,” he told us. Of course it was. You expected anything else?
On Tuesday, Laura Bush was surrounded by friends, including, from left, Esther Coopersmith, Rima Al-Sabah and Lea Berman.
VICKY POMBO
Bret Michaels is recuperating after a brain hemorrhage.
THIS JUST IN
The producer who tried to
extort $2 million from David Letterman over his office affairs began six months behind bars
Tuesday. Robert “Joe”
Halderman, who pleaded guilty inMarch, left a Manhattan courtroom in handcuffs after being sentenced to jail and 1,000 hours of community service. Bret Michaels has been released from a Phoenix hospital, his neurosurgeon told reporters Tuesday. The doctor declined to provide details but said the singer, who suffered a brain hemorrhage, is expected to make a full recovery after six weeks of rest.
GOT A TIP ? E-MAIL U S A T RELIABLESOURCE@WASHP OST . COM. FOR THE LA TEST SCOOPS, VISIT WASHINGTONP OST . COM/RELIABLESOUR CE
LARRY BUSACCA/GETTY IMAGES
On Monday, the couple was out and about in NYC.
LOVE, ETC.
Reunited: Jude Law and
Sienna Miller, dating again after five years apart. The British actor, 37, and actress, 28, broke off their engagement in 2005 after he slept with the nanny but looked very much together on the red carpet at Monday’s Costume Institute Gala in New York.
WEDNESDAY,MAY 5, 2010
TERESA CASTRACANE
HAVING A BALL:Daniel Flint as alchemist Edward Kelley in “Burn Your Bookes,” set in what’s now the Czech Republic.
the season. First, Posner will stage Shakespeare’s
“The Comedy of Errors” (Jan. 25-March 6, 2011), a farce about two sets of iden- tical twins separated at birth, colliding as adults and causing much comic confu- sion. Griffin says Posner has ideas for do- ing the play “in a way that he says makes the ridiculous utterly ridiculous.” The season will finish with “Cyrano” (April 26-June 5, 2011) an adaptation of Edmond Rostand’s “Cyrano de Bergerac” by Michael Hollinger (“Opus,” “Incor-
ruptible,” “An Empty Plate in the Cafe du Grand Boeuf”) and Posner. Eric Hissom will star. He recently received a Helen Hayes Award for his performance as Ber- nard Nightingale in Folger Theatre’s much-nominated “Arcadia,” which Posn- er directed.
Follow spot
Baltimore’s Center Stage has an- nounced that Artistic Director Irene Lewis will leave in June 2011 after lead- ing that prominent regional theater for
two decades. Lewis’s first production at Center Stage was Lillian Hellman’s “Watch on the Rhine” in 1980. She be- came an associate artist and then suc- ceeded Artistic Director Stan Wojewod- ski Jr. in 1991. During her tenure, Lewis has nurtured many new works and staged plays from every era and tradi- tion. She will become artistic director emeritus.
style@washpost.com
Horwitz is a freelance writer.
DOONESBURY by Garry Trudeau
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