“I’ve been doing a lot of research on great women in music,” says Roz White. “And what they had to deal with, as far as the industry was concerned, was only one small piece of it. Around them, their world was literally crashing and burning because of people’s hatred. And so, to still be able to sing, and to still be able to make people laugh or evoke happy emotion or hope, is a power I think we possess that we sometimes take for granted.”
White pays tribute to five persevering predecessors in a new cabaret presented as part of Signature Theatre’s annual “Sizzlin’ Summer” series. Resist: A Revolutionary Cabaret highlights Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Alberta Hunter, Abbey Lincoln, Roberta Flack, and Nina Simone. “I basically become each woman as I’m telling their story, and give you a little insight into their thinking during the time of their heyday.”
Over the past decade, White has done just that, often at Alexandria’s MetroStage. In 2008, she co-wrote and starred in that theater’s superb Pearl Bailey…By Request. “All of these women endured great hardships,” she says, “[and] each one was revolutionary in the music industry as well as just in pop culture in general.” Tharpe, for instance, was “basically kicked out of the church because she played the guitar and rock-and-roll,” and Lincoln rejected being a sex symbol by wearing “Afrocentric clothing and covering up more, to make people really listen to her music.”
White’s cabaret will also touch on progress made over the last century. “I want to show how women in the industry had to go from an image being imposed on us to taking control and empowering ourselves and creating our own image,” says White, adding that it’s a general lesson that the newer generation could stand to learn.
“We’ve got to teach younger people how to fight and how to resist. It’s not about throwing things and burning things and destroying things, it’s about building.” It’s also not relying on social media and technology to provide answers.
“Somebody doing a live feed [from] their living room saying, ‘Black Lives Matter’ is a huge difference [from the] effort that went into these women being able to have a voice. We didn’t have the technology. It was a lot more work, a lot more legwork, a lot more resist. We had to push through.” –Doug Rule
Roz White’s Resist: A Revolutionary Cabaret is Saturday, July 8, at 9 p.m., in Signature Theatre’s The Ark, 4200 Campbell Ave., Arlington. Tickets are $35, or $175 for an All-Access Pass to the Series, which starts Wednesday, July 5, and runs to Sunday, July 22. Call 703-820-9771 or visit sigtheatre.org for a full schedule.
Stages are alight this Spring with a deluge of exciting productions -- some starry, as in the case of The Shakespeare Theatre's Uncle Vanya featuring Hugh Bonneville, equally beloved in Downton Abbey and the joyous Paddington films.
The beauty of theater -- and in all these inventive, upcoming works -- is that it serves up various points of view with drama, wit, and intellect often concealed under the guise of boisterous entertainment. At its best, theater quenches our thirst for a deeper connection to our fellow human beings. At its worst, it's Cats. Still, theater sometimes gives you a musical moment that makes your spirits soar.
“I was talking to a couple of homosexuals down in Melbourne, and they were talking to me about listening to Kylie,” John Grant says rather gleefully, clearly relishing this anecdote from his recent tour of Australia. “And I was like, ‘She came and guested at my show at Royal Albert Hall, and came on stage during ‘Glacier.’” The Aussies’ response? “They were just looking at me like I had two heads on my shoulders. They were looking at me like a German Shepherd hearing a weird noise.
“It was really hilarious,” he continues, “because it was just as epic for me as it was for them hearing that.”
Defying the adage that the lady needs no introduction, Bruce David Klein’s captivating documentary Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story extends a four-minute introduction to its larger-than-life subject Liza Minnelli before the film truly enters the breach, touching down on June 22, 1969, the day her mother Judy Garland died.
In the midst of the preamble performance clips -- presenting Liza as a gangly ingenue onstage with her mother, and as a superstar commanding the world’s stages on her own -- Klein runs amusing outtakes of Liza, present-day, sitting for interviews but not at all passively. Dressed in head-to-toe black, her trademark pixie cut topped by a newsboy cap, she commands the room tenaciously, directing the cameraman on how to shoot her.
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