‘Red Emma and the Mad Monk’ at The Tank

Red Emma & The Mad Monk featuring Drita Kabashi as Rasputin, Photo by JJ Darling

Pre-teen Addison (Maybe Burke) likes history.  Specifically, the last Romanovs and their spiritual adviser Gregory "The Mad Monk" Rasputin (Drita Kabashi).  Out of loneliness and passion for a subject most of her peers will most likely never share even if they register Republican, Rasputin is a constant, real, and very funny friend.   Their fantastical relationship with each other and Russian-American activist Emma Goldman (Imani Pearl Williams) is the basis for Alexis Roblan's Red Emma and The Mad Monk.  The entertaining historical musical comedy-fantasy is now at The Tank following its 2017 world premiere at Ars Nova's ANT Fest. Red Emma and The Mad

“Old Names for Wildflowers” at The Tank

It’s a monumental work. A colossal saga that astutely comments on 21st Century patriarchy through the lens of post Civil war societal fall out in 1865. It’s a vivisection of a family gone “nuclear” as a result of unspoken desires. It has a filmic quality to it that comes to us in episodes that fade in and out of our current reality –almost like a memory from a past life. Like the smell of jasmine through an open window that transports you to a long forgotten moment. Like a family tree lineage search that yields a discrepancy, a secret, an

Theatre: Theatre of War presents “(Flying) Dutchman” at The Tank

He said nothing.  She said nothing nice.  He tried.  She still made no effort.  He got angry.  She got violent.  That is the double one-sided conversation at The Tank in Theatre of War’s reimagining of Amiri Baraka’s “(Flying) Dutchman”, which is as confrontational and relevant as it was in 1964. Rather than setting the interaction between middle-class African-American Clay (Malcolm B. Hines) and White poetess Lula (Jonathan Schenk) in a subway like Baraka did, director Christopher Stevenson has the two “talk” across a long table.  Microphones provide the public performance Lula craves and testimony Clay provides her with regarding his life. 

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