WEDNESDAY, JULY 28, 2010 BACKSTAGE Tackling the ‘Passing’ resemblance at 2ndStage by Jane Horwitz
The big question for the direc- tors and the cast of Studio 2ndStage’s “Passing Strange” (running through Aug. 8) was how to approach the rock musi- cal with a fresh take, since it’s so closely identified with its creator — lyricist, book writer and co- composer Stew. He played the key role of Narrator in the autobio- graphical piece, a portrait of the artist as a young man named Youth. The Narrator looks back from midlife at his callow 20-ish self and his struggle to find an ar- tistic identity as a middle-class African American from South Central Los Angeles, hanging with avant-garde artists in Am- sterdam and Berlin. Jahi Kearse, who plays the Nar-
rator for Studio, notes that in the script there’s a note from Stew, urging others who do the show to “melt it down as if it were a metal, in its liquid form, and then play with it. So from the jump we were given permission to enjoy the possibilities of what we could find.” “We never wanted to re-create
what they did” on Broadway and in Spike Lee’s 2009 movie of the stage show, says Keith Alan Ba- ker, Studio 2ndStage’s artistic di- rector and co-director of “Passing Strange” with Victoria Joy Mur- ray. The question was “whether it can have a life [without Stew], and I think the answer is yes, be- cause it’s a universal story,” he says. “The writing is just beautiful,”
says Murray, a graduate of How- ard University’s theater program who studied directing with Joy Zinoman at Studio Theatre Act- ing Conservatory. She says the show “invokes the spirit of James Baldwin and Josephine Baker and Jimi Hendrix . . . and all the artists who spent a period of their creative working life abroad.” Aaron Reeder plays Youth. Raised in Bowie and educated at Texas A&M in international busi- ness, but also a serious singer who appeared in Studio’s “Jerry Springer: The Opera,” Reeder identifies closely with the rebel- lious character. “For me, the story is so much my life that I was kind of like, oh! It’s me!” he exclaims. Kearse, whom Washington au- diences have seen at Studio in “In the Red and Brown Water” and
Party,” with a script by Thomas W. Jones II, music by William Knowles and choreography by Maurice Hines, premiered at MetroStage in 2009, and Griffin says there are plans afoot for a Broadway staging. It should be interesting for au- diences to see shows in early and evolving stages, she says, as they will with “Glimpses of the Moon.” “The writers and the composer are revisiting the script and the music and will be making minor changes for this next stage of the development of the musical.” MetroStage’s holiday show will
be “A Broadway Christmas Carol” (Nov. 18-Dec. 19), a spoof by Kathy Feininger, directed by Lar- ry Kaye and choreographed by Nancy Harry. Singer-actress Bernardine
Mitchell will return to Metro- Stage as the legendary performer Ethel Waters in “His Eye Is on the Sparrow” (Jan. 20-March 13) by Larry Parr, directed by Gary Yates. The stars of MetroStage’s 2009
hit “Heroes,” a three-character piece adapted by Tom Stoppard from a French play, will reunite in Stoppard’s farce “The Real In- spector Hound” (April 14-May 29). John Vreeke, who staged “Heroes,” will direct.
Follow spots SCOTT SUCHMAN/STUDIO THEATRE BECOMING HIS OWN MAN: In “Passing Strange,” Jahi Kearse portrays the Narrator, a role closely associated with its creator, Stew.
“Topdog/Underdog” and in “Cool Papa’s Party” at MetroStage, says he, too, has much in common with his character, the Narrator. An Atlanta native who still lives and works in his home town, Kearse began acting and singing at 8 and found the theater pro- gram at NYU redundant. He fled college for Europe and followed his muse.
During the poignant finale of
“Passing Strange,” which shows how far Youth has distanced him- self from his mother (played by Deidra LaWan Starnes), Kearse as the Narrator seems moved in a personal way. By his mid-20s, the actor says, “my relationship with my mother, for no real good rea- son . . . there was a void of com- munication.” Kearse says he finds the ending of the show “scary . . . because I find that I’m in a pat- tern that I don’t want to be in. . . . I need to break out of this before I find myself in the same position
COLIN HOVDE/METROSTAGE
OH, LOOK:“Glimpses of the Moon,” opening in September at MetroStage, will feature Gia Mora and Stephen F. Schmidt.
that this character is in, because I love my mom.” Adds Reeder, only half-joking, “I said when I started this that it’s just going to be like a therapy ses- sion every day.”
MetroStage’s new season MetroStage in Alexandria will open its next season with a new musical, “Glimpses of the Moon” (Sept. 8-Oct. 17), based on the novel by Edith Wharton. The
book and lyrics are by Tajlei Levis and the music by John Mercurio. Director-choreographer David Marquez will stage the show with a cast that includes Stephen F. Schmidt and Gia Mora. Producing Artistic Director Carolyn Griffin says the “Jazz Age musical” will be a world pre- miere, because its earlier incar- nation was in cabaret form at Manhattan’s Algonquin Hotel. Griffin hopes “Glimpses of the Moon” will have a life after MetroStage. “There’s every rea- son in the world to think that it might be a viable show for other theaters looking for small musi- cals,” she says. Other MetroStage-nurtured shows that have gone onward and upward include “Rooms, a Rock Romance,” which moved off-Broadway and has been pro- duced at other theaters, and “Pearl Bailey . . . by Request,” starring Roz White. “Cool Papa’s
The Helen Hayes Awards or- ganization is seeking knowledge- able theatergoers to be judges. Their three-year run would start in 2011. The deadline for applica- tions is Aug. 6. Information and applications can be found at
www.helenhayes.org. American Ensemble Theater’s production of “A Walk in the Woods,” which sold out in the just-ended Capital Fringe Festi- val, will be reprised Thursday evening for an invitation-only staging hosted by the Plough- shares Fund. Select members of the Senate have been invited. Lee Blessing’s two-character play, which ran on Broadway in 1988 and was done at Arena Stage in 1989, is a comedy-drama about nuclear arms control negotiators from the Soviet Union and the United States. The Senate may vote this year on a new U.S.- Russian arms treaty.
style@washpost.com Horwitz is a freelance writer.
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Ansel Adams heirs fight yard sale claim by christina hoag
beverly hills, calif. — A trove of old glass negatives bought at a garage sale for $45 has been authenticated as the lost work of Ansel Adams and worth at least $200 million, an attorney for the owner said Tues- day, but the iconic photogra- pher’s representatives dismissed the claim as a fraud and said they’re worthless. Arnold Peter, who represents
Fresno painter and construction worker Rick Norsigian, said a team of experts who studied the 65 negatives over the past six months concluded “beyond a rea- sonable doubt” that the photos were Adams’s early work, be- lieved to have been destroyed in a 1937 fire at his Yosemite National Park studio.
Adams is renowned for his timeless black-and-white photo- graphs of the American West, which were produced with dark- room techniques that heightened shadows and contrasts to create mood-filled landscape portraits. He died in 1984, at age 82. His photographs today are widely reproduced on calendars, on posters and in coffee-table books, while his prints are cov- eted by collectors. His print “Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemi- te National Park” fetched $722,500 at auction last month in New York, a record for 20th- century photography. Norsigian, who works for the
Fresno Unified School District, has set up a Web site to sell prints made from 17 negatives from $45 for a poster to $7,500 for a dark- room print with a certificate of authenticity. A documentary on his quest to have the negatives authenticated is in the works, as well as a touring exhibition that will debut at Fresno State Univer- sity in October. Representatives of Adams,
however, said they’re not buying Norsigian’s claims. “It’s an unfortunate fraud,” said
Bill Turnage, managing director of the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust. “It’s very distress- ing.” Turnage said he’s consulting lawyers about possibly suing Nor- sigian for using a copyrighted name for commercial purposes.
NICK UT/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Rick Norsigian avows this photo was made from an Adams negative. He described Norsigian as on
an “obsessive quest.” “We’ve been dealing with him for a decade,” he said. “I can’t tell you how many times he’s called me.” Adams’s grandson, Matthew Adams, who heads the Ansel Ad- ams Gallery in San Francisco, said he reviewed Norsigian’s au- thentications last fall and thinks they’re stretches. Many photogra- phers took pictures of the same places Adams did in that era, he said. Norsigian bought the negatives from a man who said he had pur- chased the box from a Los Ange- les salvage warehouse in the 1940s, bargaining the price down from $70 to $45. He saw they were views of Yosemite but never suspected they might be Adams’s works until someone mentioned they resembled the famed pho- tographer’s shots. “We got a laugh out of that,” Norsigian said. But the idea stuck with Norsi- gian, and he started researching the photographer, eventually concluding that they were Ad- ams’s work. The shots are of places Adams frequented and photographed. Several shots contain people identified as Adams associates. Adams taught at the Pasadena Art Center in the early 1940s, which would account for the neg- atives being in Los Angeles. The negatives are the size Adams used in the 1920s and ’30s and several have charred edges, pos- sibly indicating the 1937 fire. “You keep adding bits and pieces,” Norsigian said.
For years, he tried to get them
officially verified, taking them to experts at the Smithsonian Insti- tution, the Getty Center and oth- ers, but no one would venture to authenticate them. Three years ago, he met Peter, who assembled experts to review the negatives. The key evidence came from two handwriting ex- perts, who identified the writing on the negative sleeves as that of Adams’s wife, Virginia. But Matthew Adams said there were inconsistencies in the hand- writing and a lot of misspelled Yosemite place names. “She grew up in Yosemite. She was an in- telligent, well-read woman. I find it hard to believe she would mis- pell those names,” he said. — Associated Press
Pepco networker braves Internet storm francis from C1
“You talk to Andre and you know you’re talking to a real person,” says Norma Davis, Francis’s supervisor. It is as if he is engaged in active listen- ing with the entire Washing- ton region.
“I understand your frustra- tion,” he writes.
“I understand your con- cern.”
“I appreciate your humor.” “Trust me, I understand. . . .
I totally appreciate your pa- tience during this frustrating time.” Francis’s position was first conceptualized in the winter of 2009, during a cold snap that left many Pepco custom- ers complaining on Twitter about their electric bills. When a local news station ag- gregated several of the com- plaints, Pepco tried to respond through traditional means, such as news releases, before deciding they needed to meet the disgruntled where they could be met — online. Fran- cis, a Howard University grad who had recently joined the corporate communications of- fice, started a customer-ori- ented Twitter account as part of his other, more traditional PR duties. Recently, Pepco decided to
make Francis’s social net- working duties into a full-time
MONICA HESSE/THE WASHINGTON POST
ANSWER MAN: Andre Francis fields Pepco customer rants on social networking sites.
position. His first official day in that job was to have been Mon- day. Then, on Sunday, came the storm. In the past 72 hours, Francis
has rarely left his desk, spending most waking hours combing through the abyss of Twitter, re- sponding as professionally and reasonably as one can to people
whose usernames include “Bar- kingMoose” and “ThyroidMary.” “Hey @pepcoconnect,” writes someone going by KirillMorozov, “third world countries have more reliable power infrastructure than you.” “I’m from Trinidad,” Francis writes back, “and would respect- fully disagree.” Shortly after, another user jumps into the thread: “Since when is Trinidad a third world country?” demands SurreyElle, who also requests “a list of the idiots making the decisions over there so we know who needs to be fired.” “I’ve learned not to take it per-
sonally,” Francis says. “There is a point at which I realize that noth- ing I can say will make people happy.” He will continue to work his
way through complaints and #pepcosucks hashtags, until the electrical issues are resolved, un- til the customers are pacified. Then he will go home to Hyatts- ville, to the house he shares with his sister. His power? It’s out, too.
hessem@washpost.com
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