Longlegs Gives the Uncanny Feeling You’re Bearing Witness to Actual Evil
The new serial killer film Longlegs is a brilliant exercise in misdirection. Sometimes it’s formal, like when certain camera compositions obscure a character so haunting they’re beyond basic human understanding. Sometimes the misdirection is in the script itself—a riff on ’90s thrillers such as The Silence of the Lambs and Seven—because writer and director Osgood…
Beautiful Makes One Thing Clear: Carole King and Cynthia Weil Paved the Way for Today’s Women Chart-Toppers
Taylor Swift was still in her Red era when Beautiful: The Carole King Musical opened on Broadway in 2014. The high-end jukebox musical about the intersection of songwriting and relationships hits differently a decade later, in the golden age of Spotify. Today listeners analyze song lyrics like Bletchley Park codebreakers. Is Joe Alwyn “the smallest…
Marissa Higgins’ Extreme Talent Is on Display in Her Novel A Good Happy Girl
Though she no longer calls D.C. home, writer Marissa Higgins knows her way around the District, where she lived in various Northwest neighborhoods from 2014 to 2020. The city even celebrated her work in 2020 with a grant for her nonfiction writing, which has appeared in numerous publications including The Atlantic, Salon, and Slate. Unfortunately,…
Step Afrika!’s Remounted Migration: Reflections on Jacob Lawrence Is Still Good, Could Be Better
In the 13 years since D.C.-based Step Afrika! debuted Migration: Reflections on Jacob Lawrence, the field of percussive dance has grown by leaps and bounds. Black performing artists have benefited from an influx of support, including millions from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott. Meanwhile, many historically White arts organizations are continuing to increase racial diversity, both onstage…
Forget the Fourth: DC Does Dischord, Sixth Sense in a Cemetery, and More City Lights for July 3–10
Friday: Yesterday & Today: DC Does Dischord Release Party at the Black Cat D.C.-based label For the Love of Records is putting on a show to celebrate the release of their new compilation album. Entitled Yesterday & Today: DC Does Dischord, the LP is a tribute to the area’s hardcore punk heritage by some of…
The Creative Partnership Behind Team Rayceen Productions
The story of Team Rayceen Productions, a local advocacy and events organization that was honored earlier this year when the city declared March 18 Team Rayceen Day, begins with a couch. The year was 2014, and the couch was in the since-shuttered Liv Nightclub, where queer activist and noted socialite Rayceen Pendarvis was setting up…
Don’t Rain on Her Parade: Funny Girl Goes Girlboss
The funny thing about Funny Girl is that the stories surrounding the musical are often more interesting than the play itself. The plot is loosely based on the life of Fanny Brice, a vaudevillian comedian who became one of America’s first mega-celebrities with the Ziegfeld Follies. (The play doesn’t even cover Brice’s extensive film and…
Retro Review: Brian De Palma’s Blow Out Watches You Watch
Blow Out is here to trick you. It pretends it has something deep and profound to say about America. Set on the weekend of the fictional Liberty Day Parade in Philadelphia, Blow Out revolves around a political assassination and cover-up, and concludes with a murder committed under fireworks and in front of an enormous American…
Lavender Evolutions Creates Third Spaces for QTBIPOC Washingtonians
Some of the best ideas are born in the living rooms of D.C. group homes. Lavender Evolutions, the ever-growing D.C. collective, began as one of those ideas. While living together in the Petworth home, lovingly referred to as the Giant Peach for its vibrant peach-painted facade, Madi Dalton and Leslie Tellería continued the group house’s…
Julianne Nicholson Gives a Towering Performance in the Quietly Powerful Janet Planet
It is only natural that Annie Baker would eventually write and direct a feature film. The accomplished playwright, whose work has been performed in D.C. theaters including Studio and Signature, has always had an interest in the movies. You may recall The Flick, the play that earned Baker a Pulitzer, is set in a movie…
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