Thursday through Sunday: Letters to Kamala and Dandelion Peace at Universal National Memorial Church

Voices Festival Productions presents the world premiere production of two plays by Wisconsin-based playwright Rachel Lynett, Letters to Kamala and Dandelion Peace. Directed by A. Lorraine Robinson, the show is staged in the basement theater of the Universal National Memorial Church on 16th Street NW. Letters to Kamala is set in the midst of the 2020 presidential race, sometime between Kamala Harris’ acceptance of the vice presidential nomination and Election Day. Originally presented as an online reading that November, this marks its first staging. Three figurative ancestors come to address the future VP: Charlotta Spears Bass (Kendra Holloway), owner, editor, and publisher of the The California Eagle, and the first Black woman to run for national office as the 1952 vice presidential candidate of the short-lived Progressive Party; Charlene Mitchell (Fatima Quander), presidential nominee for the Communist Party USA in 1968; and Patsy Matsu Takemoto Mink (Mariele Atienza), the first woman of color and first Asian American woman to serve in the House of Representatives in 1965 and in 1972. In addressing the future vice president, the three women offer congratulations and criticisms. What did she compromise to advance from California Attorney General to Senator to running mate? What was necessary for her career advancement, and what was necessary to advance the greater good? At what point does admiration and symbolism trump ideological differences? Will other audiences see it before this November? Dandelion Peace, commissioned by VFP as a companion to Letters, is a political satire writ small, showing the most cynical of tactics and electioneering deployed in the seemingly idyllic setting of an urban community garden. Artist Anita (Holloway) has planted dandelions in her plot so that she can make dandelion wine. But Zuri, a history teacher who wants to transform the ethos of the garden, has labeled the dandelions as an “invasive species” to be uprooted. Moira (Atienza), president of the garden’s steering committee, is trying to forge a compromise, and be reelected. In a hilarious dance of comic villainy choreographed by Chitra Subramanian, Zuri continues to escalate matters. Can a compromise be found? Rachel Lynett’s Letters to Kamala and Dandelion Peace run Thursday through Sunday to June 30 at Universalist National Memorial Church, 1810 16th St. NW. voicesfestivalproductions.com. $20-$45. —Ian Thal

Sunday: The Crossword Show at Planet Word

D.C. is a city of nerds, which isn’t a derogatory term in 2024. It seems like every person who moves here was at top of their class and flexes those intellectual muscles at thriving and daily trivia nights. We’re a city that loves smart so much there’s a long-running, quite successful pun-based competition show in town, Pun DMV. Sometimes it’s at DC Improv, sometimes it’s at Planet Word, which leads us to this pick. Of course there’s a museum devoted to words and language located in D.C.! We love this stuff! The Crossword Show returns to Planet Word after a successful October 2023 performance. This edition is hosted by Zach Sherwin (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, YouTube’s Epic Rap Battles of History), who will be joined by local funny folks Reese Waters and Kasha Patel, deputy weather editor for the Capital Weather Gang and a very good stand-up. If you’re looking for a funny show that isn’t your typical stand-up or improv and really want to use your noggin, this show is tailor-made for your nerdtastic taste. The Crossword Show begins at 7 p.m. on June 23 at Planet Word, 925 13th St. NW. planetwordmuseum.org $20–$25. —Brandon Wetherbee

Sunday and Monday: Mulatu Astatke at Howard Theatre

Mulatu Astatke is known as the father of Ethio-jazz, arranging songs that seamlessly meld the Middle Eastern-tinged, pentatonic scales of Ethiopia with John Coltrane-rooted hornwork, Jimmy Smith-derived organ, and Latin jazz-originated percussion. Astatke was born in Ethiopia, but his parents sent him to Wales to study engineering in 1959. But his love of music led him to the Trinity College of Music in London, and later the Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he was the first African student. It’s also where he developed his vibraphone and percussion skills. His time in New York City led him to combine sounds he heard in the city—Afro-Latin, jazz, and funk rhythms—with traditional Ethiopian music. Atatke’s efforts with Ethiopian groups and his 1973 collaborative appearance with Duke Ellington in Ethiopia led to acclaim in his homeland and within the Ethiopian diaspora, but most of his acclaim elsewhere came later. In the late 1990s a French label released a series of reissued recordings of Ethiopian music that included an entire album of his earlier music, which introduced him to a new audience. One such listener, American film director Jim Jarmusch later placed seven Astatke songs on the soundtrack of his 2005 film, Broken Flowers. Over the decades, the now-80-year-old artist has worked with a variety of different bands, perfecting compositions both upbeat and melancholy to reflect his musical vision, combining his own vibraphone chops with busy bursts from his horn players and danceable chords from his rhythm section. Mulatu Astatke performs at 8 p.m. on June 23 (sold out) and June 24 at the Howard Theatre, 620 T St. NW. thehowardtheatre.com. $35. —Steve Kiviat

Closing June 28: Photographic Images and Matter: Japanese Prints of the 1970s at the Japan Information & Culture Center

The works in the Japan Information and Culture Center’s current exhibit about 1970s contemporary Japanese art straddle the line between photography and prints, buffeted by the era’s artistic movements. Of the exhibit’s 14 artists, some produced painterly works aligned with the abstract expressionists of the previous generation, including Lee Ufan’s and Shoichi Ida’s elemental homages to Adolph Gottlieb and Robert Motherwell. Other artists in the exhibit were shaped by 1960s movements. The exhibit’s conceptualists include Satoshi Saito, who photographed what appear to be carefully arranged glass panes placed in various urban settings, and Koji Enokura and Tatsuo Kawaguchi, who experimented with stains on paper (in Kawaguchi’s case, caused by small metal tools embedded in the paper). Still, others artists in the exhibit responded to op art, including Arinori Ichihara, with an image of a dizzyingly textured surface, and Jiro Takamatsu, with a streamlined, sharply receding portrayal of three upside-down park benches. Ultimately, the two most compelling artists are Akira Matsumoto and Sakumi Hagiwara. Matsumoto deconstructed photographic images into colored arrays of Ben-Day dots that sometimes devolve into dreamlike interference patterns. Hagiwara, meanwhile, created repeated images of various objects to mark the passage of time in seconds, minutes, hours, a day, a month, and a year. (The last used an apple that grew ever more desiccated over time). It’s a smart distillation of multiple strands of the era’s artistic trends. Photographic Images and Matter: Japanese Prints of the 1970s runs to June 28 at the Japan Information & Culture Center, 1150 18th St. NW. Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. us.emb-japan.go.jp. Free. —Louis Jacobson

Ongoing: Sarah Hood Salomon at Multiple Exposures Gallery

The recent arc of Sarah Hood Salomon’s art began with ethereal photographs of trees, then morphed into the interaction between mutually encroaching swaths of nature and the human-built environment. Her current exhibit at Multiple Exposures Gallery allows man-made structures to replace flora entirely, as Salomon destroys some of the nature photographs she’s made to use them as fodder for resin-encased sculptures. If you look closely at the traces of Salomon’s “purposefully scratched, cut and puréed” photographs, you might make out a shading of light or dark here and there. Mostly, though, you’ll see linguine-shaped strips arranged into organic forms that suggest curled hairs, hanging moss, feathers, and brushy plant matter. Some of Salomon’s more intriguing works use thin, parallel cross sections of photographic remnants suspended within clear, hardened cubes, as if they were prepared microscopic slides. Even more compelling are Salomon’s experiments with “sanded” detritus from photographs, with dust either encased in clear, snow globe-like spheres or piled up in empty lucite boxes like a miniature experiment in land art. Artistically, it’s not clear that the sculptural transformations are more remarkable than Salomon’s original photographs were on their own. (I chose her tree photography as the second-best photography exhibit in D.C. of 2019.) But the process of altering her images is undeniably poignant. As Salomon writes in her artist’s statement, the trees she photographed were about to be uprooted for development, and by sending her images through the blender, she makes sure that they “can’t be reconstructed, just as landscapes altered by humans can’t be reassembled.” Sarah Hood Salomon’s Questioning the Photograph runs through June 30 at Multiple Exposures Gallery, 105 N. Union St., Alexandria. Daily, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. multipleexposuresgallery.com. Free. —Louis Jacobson

Next Thursday: Mdou Moctar at the 9:30 Club

The Nigerien guitarist has come a long way from his first United States tour in 2017, when his whirlwind immersion in Washington culture included a gig at the Library of Congress and a three-day residency at Episcopal High School before culminating in a headlining performance at the Black Cat. In May, Moctar released Funeral for Justice, his second album on Matador Records, graduating from small stages and, at times, restrained folkish rock to a huge, positively head-banging rock sound. And to think he learned how to play on a homemade instrument. Moctar is modest about his distinct musical voice, explaining, “I don’t know what rock is exactly … I only know how to play in my style.” He was born in a small village in Niger and came up through the ranks of intrepid indie label Sahel Sounds, whose catalog includes such pivotal compilations as Music from Saharan Cellphones. Moctar even unofficially remade Purple Rain with the 2016 film Rain the Color Blue with a Little Red In It, a rock ’n’ roll movie whose drama lay not in the typical resistance from his family, but in the daily lives of the Tuareg people. With his latest album, Moctar lends his love for ZZ Top to a crucial message. In his new album’s anthemic title song, he pleads (in translation), “African leaders, hear my burning question, Why does your ear only heed France and America?” Moctar’s band includes Mikey Coltun, with whom Moctar has worked since 2017. Coltun, now 31, grew up in D.C.’s punk scene—at 16, his group Les Rhinoceros recorded for John Zorn’s Tzadik label. Mdou Moctar plays at 7:30 p.m. on June 27 at the 9:30 Club, 815 V St. NW. 930.com. $28. —Pat Padua