Articles Tagged With: Melvin Smith

Sweat at Greenbelt Arts Center

Powerful Acting Carries Sweat at Greenbelt Arts Center

author: Rick Bergmann

We often imagine theater audiences as “predominantly white, affluent, middle-aged or older, and highly educated,” and the stories on stage as far removed from everyday struggle. Lynn Nottage’s Sweat, now playing at the Greenbelt Arts Center, dismantles that assumption. Centered on flawed, hard-working individuals clinging to the promise of the American Dream, the play lays bare how quickly that promise can unravel—and how easily anyone can break.

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Romeo & Juliet a Comedy at The Rude Mechanicals

“Fear is like a rhubarb enema!” might just be the wildest thing I’ve ever heard come out of the mouth of a player at a Rude Mechanical’s show. And I’ve seen their King John! My one regret (aside from seeing their King John) is that I couldn’t hear the rest of the line— delivered in utter brilliance by Marin (Linda “Spencer” Dye) the fraidy-cat servant to Roselo because both myself and the rest of the audience were laughing so hard it drowned out whatever insanity came next.

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Fires in the Mirror at Laurel Mill Playhouse

author: Chris Pence

The More Things Change: “Fires in the Mirror” at Laurel Mill Playhouse

What defines us, and what defines our views of the world? Is it our race? Gender? Religion? Culture? The community in which we live, or to which we belong? Laurel Mill Playhouse gives us a moment to reflect on these and many more questions in presenting Anna Deavere Smith’s Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights,

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