Don’t Be Fooled by the Robes and Fancy Hats: Conclave Is a Secular Political Thriller.
The implications of the papal conclave are fascinating and bizarre. After the death of a pope, cardinals sequester in the Sistine Chapel where they vote on his replacement. Since Catholic dogma says the pope is essentially a conduit for God, there is a spiritual component to a fundamentally political process. What does this mean for…
Swing Beat: Trumpeter Muneer Nasser Has Two Stories to Tell
The best jazz soloist, they say, is one whose solos “tell a story.” Muneer Nasser has more than one story to tell—but they’re not all his own. Chances are you’ve heard Nasser on trumpet somewhere around town. In just the past two months, he played the D.C. Jazz Festival, Blues Alley, and Westminster Presbyterian Church,…
Sweet Treats and Diwali Rock Show: City Lights for Oct. 24–30
Friday: Diwali Rock Show at Atlas Brew Works Diwali is approaching next week and events celebrating the Hindu Festival of Lights are popping up across the city. One unmissable event is the third annual Diwali Rock Show at Atlas Brew Works, featuring local bands led by Indian American artists including Laal Taal (a member of…
Greek-ish Drama The Pliant Girls Breaks With the Past to Give Women Characters the Spotlight
People can be like empty bottles, holding whatever messages they receive. Repeated enough, those messages—you’re pretty, you’re easy, you’re disposable—fill up the inside, leaving no room for anything new. That is, until you break the bottle. This metaphor is at the center of The Pliant Girls, a Greek-ish drama receiving a nimble and provocative production…
Sleeping Giant’s Cosmic Horror Is Just Outside the Door
Every Halloween season, many theater companies embrace horror. But unlike last year, Rorschach Theatre isn’t offering the traditional vampires, ghouls, and zombies. With its staging of Steve Yockey’s Sleeping Giant, it evokes cosmic horror, a genre most closely associated with H.P. Lovecraft and defined by a nihilistic cosmos inhabited by ancient, eldritch intelligences of great…
Emergency & I Is Turning 25, But the Album’s Fans Are Only Getting Younger
Twenty-five years later, wintery young-adult alienation still creeps over “Spider in the Snow” like frost. The fourth song on the Dismemberment Plan’s Emergency & I starts with synthesized strings wafting like steam through a sidewalk grate. Air hangs cold and still around the bass and drums as Travis Morrison looks back on a group of…
Keegan Celebrates Halloween with Spooky (Not Scary) Woman in Black
There’s something a little spooky (but not scary) about the 1700 stretch of Church Street NW. Maybe it’s the closed-in nature of the block, bounded by 18th Street on one side and Stead Park on the other. Or its narrowness exacerbated by the old trees that loom overhead. Or the last stone vestige of the…
Eddie Palmieri and Four Must-See Art Exhibits: City Lights for Oct. 17–23
Friday: Eddie Palmieri at the Library of Congress South Bronx-raised pianist Eddie Palmieri established his musical reputation decades ago by innovatively combining the Afro Caribbean dance music he heard growing up in the 1950s with African American jazz. Now 87, Palmieri continues to love performing live where he often enthusiastically shakes his head and smiles…
Unarmed: An American Educator’s Memoir Unravels America’s Gun Obsession
Megan Doney, a literature and creative writing professor at Virginia’s New River Community College, is the winner of the 2024 Washington Writers’ Publishing House Nonfiction Prize. Some might think this is her time to celebrate, but the mere mention of celebrating might cause Doney disquiet. Here’s why: Unarmed: An American Educator’s Memoir is based on…
Retro Review: Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining Once Defined Horror, Today It’s Stating the Obvious
Even if you’ve never seen it, it’s hard to separate the legend of The Shining from the film itself. Its key moments have become part of our cultural lexicon. “Heeeere’s Johnny!” “Redrum” “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” It has been parodied by The Simpsons and Key & Peele. It inspired…
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