Friday and Saturday: WIT’s Not a Pyramid Scheme at Studio Theatre

Get it, girl! Washington Improv Theater’s current show, Not a Pyramid Scheme, which closes on June 10, satirizes one of the most pervasive and insidious aspects of contemporary scamming culture: multi-level marketing (MLM). From (in)essential oils to clownish makeup and god-awful leggings, many of us have been subjected to a friend’s attempts to sell us some products or—even worse—join them in a MLM scheme. Using #GirlBoss and #BossBabe rhetoric to peddle ideals of women’s self-empowerment, these companies promise a community of like-minded individuals. “There’s something so personal about MLMs because they rely on interpersonal relationships,” says Not a Pyramid Scheme’s co-director Clare Mulligan. “A lot of people recruit their family or their friends, and they claim to be creating a community. But if you question the company or if you leave, you immediately lose that community.” Mulligan and her co-director, Kaelan Sullivan Fleury, have been in the same WIT improv group, Hellcat, for seven years, and find this zeitgeist moment of hucksters and charlatans—including the recently imprisoned Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and the recently released false heiress Anna Delvey—utterly fascinating fodder for an improv show. “Kaelan and I both think that there’s a lot of humor involved in the dramatic irony where the audience and the performers know different things,” Mulligan explains. “A founder of an MLM presents themselves in a carefully crafted way. Think of the cult of personality and the false backgrounds for Holmes and Delvey. We might begin there and then immediately cut to a new scene showing that everything they just said was a complete lie. We really love to build up these big, bombastic, flamboyant characters, and then deflate them with the truth.” Beyond a scripted opening spiel that sets the scene for the evening, the rest of the program is completely improvised, with a cast of 13 comics becoming motivational speakers, successful entrepreneurs, and others who #SlayEveryday. Don’t miss this amazing opportunity to embrace this humorous takedown of postfeminist capitalist exploitation! Washington Improv Theater’s Not a Pyramid Scheme runs at 7:30 p.m. on June 9 and 7 p.m. on June 10 at Studio Theatre, 1501 14th St. NW. witdc.org. $15. —Colleen Kennedy

Saturday: Seventh Stanine Festival at Rhizome 

D.C. art-pop group the Caribbean founded the Seventh Stanine Festival in 2017. The band’s Matthew Byars tells City Paper via email that they chose the performers on this year’s bill because they are “interesting, thoughtful, cool people who are making art against all obstacles.” Sound-wise, that means the 2023 lengthy lineup in the yard of the Rhizome house will include experimental, post-punk, and hip-hop performers, plus DJs playing avant-garde and jazz sounds.  As for the name of the festival, Byars, who is also a co-host of the NPR-distributed music podcast Essential Tremors, says “it popped into my head randomly and the two words sound good together … I’m in education and a stanine is a unit of measurements often used on standardized tests.” Musicians like Philadelphia-based guitarist Bill Nace and the locally rooted Bushmeat Sound will be offering some cacophonous sonics while author and former City Paper contributor Marcus Moore will be DJing. Longtime D.C. word-slingers the Poem-Cees will be orating clever phrases over beats that hearken back to the late-’80s approach of De La Soul and the Jungle Brothers. D.C.’s Boat Burning will deliver their all guitar avant-classical wall of sound, the Caribbean will present literary lyrics with tuneful yet artsy music blending UK, Brazil, and U.S. rhythmic rock influences. Columbus, Ohio’s Brian Harnetty will present aural collages that incorporate spoken and musical sounds from archives he’s been given access to. The closing band on the bill, Brooklyn’s Zwei Null Zwei, includes former D.C. punk scene musicians Eli Janney (Girls Against Boys), James Canty (Nation of Ulysses), Sohrab Habibion, and Geoff Sanoff (Edsel). They’ll be finishing the festival with some propulsive Krautrock-inspired tuneage with that genre’s distinctive motoric beats. Seventh Stanine Festival runs noon to 8:30 p.m. on June 10 at Rhizome, 6950 Maple St. NW. rhizomedc.org. $25. —Steve Kiviat 

Through Saturday: Garden Variety and Jujyfruits at Art Enables

Sweaters and coats have been packed away, spring has officially sprung, and Art Enables has three joyful, airy shows to celebrate the season. Art Enables is an art gallery and education program that assists artists with disabilities with showing, marketing, and selling their work, as well as giving showcases to other working artists. Garden Variety is mounted in the main work area of Art Enables’ space and features botanical paintings and works on paper, along with a floral installation by the design team at Sweet Root Village. In one lower level gallery, an exhibition titled Jujyfruits features Art Enables artists alongside visiting artists from across the U.S. As the title suggests, these works look positively mouthwatering, coming in an array of candy-coated hues and abstract shapes. Some take on gelatinous, blobby, huggable forms, like nebulous sculptures by artists A.T. and Amelia Briggs, and others are sharp like rock candy crystals, but they all complement each other. Down the Street: Rhode Island Avenue is an immersive installation by Art Enables artists and visiting artist Amanda Burnham. It’s a love letter to the neighborhood and feels like a pop-up book come to life, featuring giant drawings and paintings of Rhode Island Avenue NE landmarks and businesses like the Woodridge Neighborhood Library, Zeke’s Coffee, and the “Welcome to Brookland” sign. Unfortunately, you can’t take Rhode Island Avenue home with you, but the works in the other two shows are available for purchase. Art Enables’ Garden Variety and Jujyfruits run through June 10. Down the Street: Rhode Island Avenue runs to Aug. 19 at Art Enables, 2204 Rhode Island Ave. NE. art-enables.org. Free. —Stephanie Rudig

Wednesday: Elliot Page for Pageboy, virtually at Sixth and I

Elliot Page joins Loyalty Bookstore at Sixth & I for the release of his memoir, Pageboy. In 2007, on the heels of an Oscar nomination for his critically acclaimed performance in Juno, Page glowed in the spotlight as Hollywood’s newest darling actor. But as Page outwardly shined bright, his inner self dimmed. Just prior to the release of Juno, Page saw his true self—a trans person. As in movies, Page began to play a part in his reality. To be a Hollywood star, the actor hid himself, subduing his newly discovered queerness under a watchful Hollywood and societal gaze. While navigating the power dynamics of an immutable establishment, expectations to live up to his star, and—in an era even more limited to binary expression than today’s—Page retreated into silence and shadows. Performances became habitual, no longer limited to the movie set. The pressure to be someone else, someone that fit the image of a celebrated actor, proved to be a stifling nightmare. Pageboy is Page’s story of emergence—his truth as a trans person and voyage to shine as his authentic self. In Pageboy, Page tells stories about dark moments from his professional journey, romantic relationships, and experiencing transphobia. Page is an author, director, producer, and actor currently starring in the series The Umbrella Academy. Elliot Page talks about Pageboy at 7 p.m. on June 14, virtually with Sixth & I, 600 I St. NW loyaltybookstores.com. $12; $35 with signed book. —Anupma Sahay

Ongoing: Photographs by J.S. Herbert, Jo Levine, and Gary Anthes at the Stimson Center

The Stimson Center is an international relations think tank, but it’s currently collaborating with a local Studio Gallery to mount a photography exhibition that focuses on “how our environments shape us, and how technology, or the lack thereof, impacts our cultures and wellbeing.” The Bridging the Disconnect purview is broad—broader than the small collection of images by J.S. Herbert, Jo Levine, and Gary Anthes can fully encapsulate. Still, the individual images are greater than the sum of their parts. Most of the photographs document either people or architecture. In the former category, Anthes offers an enigmatic image of a toddler in Guanajuato, Mexico, sleeping next to industrial-strength kitchen blenders and stools painted with yin-yang symbols; another Anthes image features a cheerful-looking youngster poking his hand out of a wood-and-canvas dwelling in Cambodia; and a third by Anthes depicts a worker in Cuba whose bucket, clothing, and backdrop are varying shades of green. Some of the architectural images are blandly corporate, but others offer visual appeal. One image by Levine depicts a curved latticework ceiling with spatial distortions that make it hard to tell what is up and what is down. Another by Herbert captures light reflecting energetically off ripples in water behind the cross-hatching of a fence. And one glass building facade photographed by Levine features a pleasing mix of pastel hues arranged vertically, unexpectedly echoing a 1950s abstract stripe painting. Bridging the Disconnect runs through July 6 at the Stimson Center, 1211 Connecticut Ave. NW. Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. studiogallerydc.com. Free. —Louis Jacobson