ABCDE

Arts&Style

sunday, may 30, 2010

PHILIP

KENNICOTT

Modernist

masterpiece?

A fresh look at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library. E9

BLOGS AND CHATS washingtonpost.com/style

Interview“Treme’s” Melissa Leo looks for a leading man. E2 Robin Givhan Oh, the drama: Mothers, daughters and bluejeans. E6

Celebrations, 9 Cul de Sac, 10 Movie Guide, 7 Horoscope, 10 Lively Arts Guide, 4

ONLOVE

In health and

in sickness

Through decades and illness, they’re now bonded for life. E8

E

AX FN FS LF PW DC BD PG AA FD HO MN MS SM

TRACY A. WOODWARD/THE WASHINGTON POST

‘HE WAS FEROCIOUS’:The heroism of Maj.

Kurt Chew-Een Lee, 84, is the subject of a documentary that debuts on Memorial Day.

The Marine who fought

his own people

‘Uncommon Courage’ in Korea: Documentary recalls bravery amid the horrors of battle at Chosin

by Neely Tucker

The old Marine is sitting in the lobby of his elegant

apartment building in Northwest Washington. Dark pinstriped suit. Checked shirt. Red-and-blue striped tie held in place with a gold pin. Chest full of medals. Black shoes shined to merciless perfection. He is 84 years old. He is trying to hold his compo-

sure. “I get sentimental thinking about this,” Maj. Kurt

Chew-Een Lee says in his gravelly voice, his brown eyes dropping. “Just thinking and talking about it.” Lee is the subject of “Uncommon Courage: Breakout

JAHI CHIKWENDIU/THE WASHINGTON POST

TIME TRAVEL: Danielle Drakes leads D.C. walking tours dressed as Mary Todd Lincoln’s seamstress, Elizabeth Keckly.

HISTORY CHANNELED

All the city’s their stage as actors bring historical figures to life

by Peter Marks

W

PHOTOGRAPHY

hen you go looking for theater in Washington’s rich historical landscape, it pays to wear com- fortable shoes. I’m learning this valuable les-

son on a sunny spring morning as I trudge up 12th Street NW behind an exuberant young woman in a crisp hoop skirt, lace gloves and cotton blouse. With the help of an amplifier attached to her waist, she re- gales me and 30 other intrepid sorts with stories of the life she led here before the roads were paved and war raged just beyond the city limits. “Picture the streets as they were, when I first came,” she tells us at one point, as tour buses and taxis rum- ble by. In front of an old building a few blocks west of the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, she stops to talk about her first residence in the District as a free woman, a discourse prompting her listeners to train shiny objects on her that produce little flashes. “Keep them coming,” she says, beaming. “I’m not

camera-shy.” Somehow, amid the din of the modern metropolis — and the amused stares of strollers walking toward us — the actress Danielle Drakes is able to securely sus- tain the illusion that she is Elizabeth Keckly: dress- maker to Mary Todd Lincoln and a woman born into slavery who had the mettle to purchase freedom for herself and her son. The occasion for this excursion is

a 11

⁄2

-mile walking tour, designed and operated by

Ford’s Theatre, called “A Free Black Woman: Elizabeth Keckly.” And though her stage is the sidewalk and her audience more likely to sport sightseeing maps than playbills, tourists from here, there or anywhere should make no mistake: This was a real person, and this is a real performance. In a city where history and the stage have collided so tumultuously — by virtue of that convergence, isn’t Ford’s the most notorious playhouse in the world? — it’s fitting that Washington is the repository not only

Retraining her lens on the tracks of a more personal muse

by Blake Gopnik

Casper and Justine Kurland have become the closest

SARAH L. VOISIN/THE WASHINGTON POST

FIRST FAMILY REUNION:Mary Wiseman, Mount Vernon’s

Martha Washington, with Natalie Fairchild, who plays Washington’s granddaughter Nelly Custis.

of some important theater history, but also of some esti- mable contemporary examples of History Theater. At fa- mous landmarks and even museums, the effort to invig- orate the understanding of the past has led to imagina- tive injections of performance into otherwise static exhibitions and fact-spewing guided tours. This approach has been applied in other cradles of his-

tory — notably, in the restored surroundings of Colonial Williamsburg. But weaving evocations of the American past into the bustle of a working city is another sort of challenge. To get a sense of how successfully it is achieved, I set out to sample a cross-section of the re- gion’s textbooks-in-motion.

MY FINDINGS ARE ON PAGE E3.

of artistic collaborators. He comes up with the ideas and she takes the photos. Those have often included pictures of him, nude and gorgeous with his blond hair blowing in the wind. The pair are now months into their latest photographic road trip across the Amer- ican West, and Casper’s current concept is ambitious, if a bit vague: “Why don’t we photograph everything that’s interesting?” Justine is almost willing to try it. After all, Casper’s last concept took her photos in a new direction that paid off. He got her to shoot freight trains, as well as the hobos, street kids and alternative types who build their lives around them, and the pictures scored a big success last fall when they were shown in New York. Kurland’s exhibition was such a hit that its catalogue will be available on Amazon.com in hardback in the next few days. Some of those train pictures are also due in Washington, in the Kurland show that the National Museum of Women in the Arts hopes to mount around the time of its 25th birthday, in 2012. Justine Kurland is 40, model-thin and rawboned, with thick black hair worn tomboy straight and scruffy clothes that look like a poor girl’s Comme des Garcons. Casper Kurland still has a touch of baby fat. He fa-

kurland continued on E5

at Chosin,” an hour-long documentary making a Me- morial Day debut on the Smithsonian Channel. It’s about one of the Marine Corps’ greatest moments, when a few thousand Marines, surrounded and great- ly outnumbered by Chinese and North Korean forces, led United Nations troops in bursting out of their death trap near the Chosin Reservoir during the Ko- rean War, making their way to the coast and safety. A short and skinny young lieutenant, Lee made a one-man raid on a Chinese gun position during that battle in the winter of 1950. He then led 500 men on a five-mile nighttime hike across mountainous terrain through a blizzard, in 30 degrees below 0, to re-enforce and rescue another position, all with a broken arm. Then he was shot and had to be evacuated. The fight- ing was so intense that roughly 90 percent of his rifle company was killed or wounded. He was awarded the Navy Cross. “He was ferocious,” says Lt. Joseph R. Owen, an- other survivor of that campaign, who served alongside Lee. The documentary focuses on Lee’s role as the first

U.S. Marine-commissioned officer of Chinese descent during a time of great prejudice toward Asian Amer- icans. His contemporaries recall hearing racial slights

courage continued on E4 Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132  |  Page 133  |  Page 134  |  Page 135  |  Page 136  |  Page 137  |  Page 138  |  Page 139  |  Page 140  |  Page 141  |  Page 142  |  Page 143  |  Page 144  |  Page 145  |  Page 146  |  Page 147  |  Page 148  |  Page 149  |  Page 150  |  Page 151  |  Page 152  |  Page 153  |  Page 154  |  Page 155  |  Page 156  |  Page 157  |  Page 158