Liesel Allen Yeager, Ben Cole and Scott Parkenson in Cock – Photo: Teddy Wolff
“This is a bit of a surprise,” marveled David Muse, artistic director of Studio Theatre, accepting the Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Play during a ceremony held at the Lincoln Theatre Monday, April 6. His company’s 2014 production of Cock, Mike Bartlett’s drama about a gay man contemplating leaving his longtime same-sex partner for a woman, was an upset winner in the crown-jewel category that also included Studio’s most successful production ever, Bad Jews. Cock also defeated Olney Theatre’s Colossal, about the struggles of a gay college football player. Still, Olney’s production took home four awards, including Outstanding Original new play or musical.
Technically, Cock was one of two works crowned Outstanding Play at the 31st annual awards ceremony, presented by Theatre Washington to honor works that opened in 2014. For the first time, the Helen Hayes honored two people or productions in most of its leading categories, nearly doubling the number of awards in a slightly confusing process. Essentially, there are “Hayes” nominees, including Cock, or productions distinguished by a higher ratio of Actors’ Equity members to non-union contractors, and then there are “Helen” nominees, with fewer union members, often associated with smaller or newer companies. Most significant among the smaller “Helen” companies was Theater Alliance, which won seven awards, more than any other company. (Kennedy Center was second best, with five.)
Alliance’s wins included 2014’s other Outstanding Play, The Wonderful World of Dissocia, and Langston Hughes’s Black Nativity, one of three Outstanding Musicals honored. The other two were the result of a tie in the Hayes category: Kennedy Center’s Side Showand Signature Theatre’s Sunday in the Park with George. Side Show also won for its ensemble and costume designer Paul Tazewell, while Sunday won for its director, Matthew Gardiner, and lead actress, Brynn O’Malley.
Other winning highlights at the 31st annual ceremony: Erin Weaver, who won for her supporting work in the musical Ordinary Days at Round House Theatre and Mother Courage and Her Children at Arena Stage; Sam Ludwig as lead Hayes actor in Olney’s How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying; Barbara Walsh for her scarily good portrayal of the deranged fundamentalist mother in Studio Theatre’s 2ndStage Helen show Carrie: The Musical; Nanna Ingvarsson for her astounding performance in the one-woman tour-de-force The Amish Project, a Helen production from Rick Hammerly’s fledgling theater collective Factory 449; and e’marcus Harper-Short, honored for his musical direction of Theater Allance’s Black Nativity.
In the time-honored tradition of sci-fi fantasy about kids being whisked away to fantastical realms, Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time starts with the kid in question feeling pretty miserable here on Earth. Thrilling adventure awaits, and happier days may lie ahead for the book's young heroine, Meg Murry, but she'll have to traverse much darkness to reach the light.
That somber phase of Meg's journey is aptly reflected in Arena Stage's world-premiere adaptation, featuring music and lyrics by Heather Christian and a book by Lauren Yee. Lee Sunday Evans, who recently staged Christian's Oratorio for Living Things Off-Broadway to much acclaim, directs this atmospheric production starring Taylor Iman Jones (Broadway's SIX) as Meg, a bright but indeed downhearted middle schooler.
In a rehearsal room deep inside the Mead Center, Arena Stage's home in Southwest D.C., the cast and company of We Are Gathered are running through the new play by Tarell Alvin McCraney. Tape on the floor marks the dimensions of Arena's in-the-round Fichandler Stage, reimagined for the moment as a late-night gay cruising area in a park, where the play's two lovers, W. Tre and Free, first meet.
Watching intently from one side of the room, McCraney, the Academy Award-winning writer of Moonlight betrays little nerves or discomfort sharing the play-in-process with the small audience that's been invited to absorb and discuss.
Not every couple has a fairy-tale beginning, or meet-cute origin story to share in "Awww"-inducing social media posts. Romance, for some, blossoms under less decorous circumstances. That's the case for W. Tre and Free, the Black queer couple at a crossroads in Tarell Alvin McCraney's brilliantly observed, and deliciously frank and funny love story We Are Gathered.
Tre and Free met at an outdoor cruising spot inside a city park, where men gather in the dark for surreptitious, mostly anonymous sexual hookups. It so happens that, for this couple, lust at first sight led not only to quick sex, but also a genuine connection that then grew into something deeper.
These are challenging times for news organizations. And yet it’s crucial we stay active and provide vital resources and information to both our local readers and the world. So won’t you please take a moment and consider supporting Metro Weekly with a membership? For as little as $5 a month, you can help ensure Metro Weekly magazine and MetroWeekly.com remain free, viable resources as we provide the best, most diverse, culturally-resonant LGBTQ coverage in both the D.C. region and around the world. Memberships come with exclusive perks and discounts, your own personal digital delivery of each week’s magazine (and an archive), access to our Member's Lounge when it launches this fall, and exclusive members-only items like Metro Weekly Membership Mugs and Tote Bags! Check out all our membership levels here and please join us today!
You must be logged in to post a comment.