Featured Stories
The Trump Administration signed into law Executive Order 14252, covertly titled Making the District of Columbia Safe and Beautiful back in March. The order permits collaboration between the Metro Police Department and local agencies, such as the Department of Transportation, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, and the Department of Homeland Security, among others, to facilitate the operations of the newly established Safe and Beautiful Task Force. For D.C. residents, this means an increased police presence on federal property throughout the city, including its many parks and on public transportation.
When someone mentions “opera,” what words come to mind? For many, old, white, pale, and stale would slip off the tongue. The Washington National Opera’s revival of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, which ran last month, subverts this stereotypical conception. The WNO’s Porgy and Bess is a love story of a drug-addicted woman in an abusive relationship who seeks refuge and romance with a destitute man who is physically disabled, set against the backdrop of Catfish Row, a lower-income Black-majority community in 1950s South Carolina.
Among natural landmarks, the Potomac River doesn’t seem all that remarkable. It doesn’t possess the grandeur or the fame of the Grand Canyon, Mount Rushmore, or even the Mississippi River. But in her new book Potomac Fever: Reflections on the Nation’s River, Charlotte Taylor Fryar treats the river with the reverence and respect of a national treasure by tracing its history, expounding on its ecological diversity, and illustrating the way nature relates to racial division in the capital city and surrounding areas.
These days, questions of race, politics, and identity put many of us immediately on edge. But in Woman on Fire, currently performing at the Creative Cauldron in Falls Church, Virginia, playwright Marisela Treviño Orta tells a haunting story that explores these questions directly. She blends elements of Greek tragedy with a contemporary setting to delve into themes of border politics, cultural identity, and the enduring power of empathy in a small Arizona border town in the aftermath of 9/11.
Victims, enablers, or survivors? Lauren Gunderson’s new play, A Room in the Castle, at the Folger Theatre in Washington, D.C., gives voice to the women of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and offers a powerful message about autonomy, agency, and hope.
Award-winning novelist Bernice McFadden enters the memoir genre, explaining to a Politics and Prose audience that her writing, whether fiction or memoir, draws from her personal and familial experiences.
Karen Zacarías’s stage adaptation of Edith Wharton's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Age of Innocence is a three-hour and 15-minute slow burn that still leaves the audience wanting more. Now playing at Arena Stage, this classic novel preserves much of the original text so that the audience gets the whole experience of Wharton's tongue-in-cheek social commentary and trademark humor.
Everyone carries something: a secret, a shame, a weight tethered to their heart. In The Bedwetter, performed at Arena Stage and directed by Anne Kauffman, that weight is literal for ten-year-old Sarah Silverman—she still wets the bed.
For the Blessings of Jupiter and Venus is a thoughtful and complex debut novel that explores individual identity within the context of culture, traditions, and community.
As 2024 winds down, once again we’ve asked local booksellers their book recommendations with our readers. In a world increasingly marked by uncertainty and division, books offer solace and meaning like never before.
As the saying goes, nothing is certain except death and taxes–and yet, one could assert that metamorphosis is inevitable. Metamorphosis or change is always upon us, whether we like it or not. That’s especially true at the Folger Shakespeare Library this season.