Southside by Dream City Theater Group (in progress)

The Washington DC area offers a wide variety of theater.  Just a couple of weeks ago my husband and I went to see international theater director Yukio Ninagawa's production of Shintoku-Maru at the Kennedy Center.  Last spring I saw a thrilling production of Richard III at the Shakespeare Theater near the Verizon Center.  The Gala Theater stages various productions, many of which are in Spanish.  (My husband and I saw Paul Flores and Julio Cardenas' two-man play, Representa! there.)  There are also the Synetic Theater's non-verbal performances grounded in Russian theatrical tradition.  (Someday I have to go out to Virginia where this company is based.)  Tonight we saw the Dream City Theater's staged reading of Southside, a play reworking the story of the 2004 Ballou shootings in which one young man killed a football star who was bullying him.  (The picture above is of Ballou Senior High where Thomas J. Boykin shot James Richardson.)

Unlike many of the theater companies in the area, the Dream City Theater is very local.  Its productions retell the stories of people living in Washington.  The first production of Dream City Theater's that I've seen was The 70, a play set on a Metrobus traveling from downtown Silver Spring down Georgia Avenue past Howard University and then Gallery Place and to the Southwest Waterfront.  Having lived in Silver Spring and spent much time near Gallery Place, I have often seen this bus.  Here is a little more about The 70:

http://www.dreamcitytg.org/projects/the70.htm    

This summer The 70 will be performed at the Atlas Performing Arts Center on H Street.  It will be interesting to see this play in a more final form. 

Here is more information about tonight's play, Southside:

http://www.dreamcitytg.org/projects/southside.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/14/AR2008021401125.html

Washington Post journalist Rachel Beckham interviews an actor from this play, Eddie B. Ellis.  He plays the role of a thirtyish prisoner who befriends Rondell, the young shooter.  Ellis served 15 years, many in super-max prisons, for manslaughter and now speaks to audiences about his experiences. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/20/AR2008022002771.html

As the evening's performance was a staged reading, the actors read from their script, and there was some blocking but no props.  The individuals in a given scene would stand up at the front of the stage and read their lines while those not in that scene sat in a row of chairs at the back of the stage.  Actors wore street clothes although one actor playing a grandmother wrapped a sweater around herself as if it were a shawl. Several people played more than one part.  For the most part, this was not confusing.  One man played a scared security guard, a character based on former Mayor Anthony Williams, and a corrections officer.  He really was a ringer for the mayor, even without the bow tie! 

The play is not an exact retelling of the events in 2004.  The playwright, John Muller, has added a subplot about a young boy, Yummy, who sells loose candy to make money for his shiftless mother and his family and eventually takes money from a local thug ("Kojo") to shoot Rondell, the boy who shot Pee-Wee.  Yummy is based on a boy from Chicago who had committed 23 felonies and five misdemeanors before being killed himself to avenge a murder.  He became the subject of a Time cover story in 1994:  http://www.gregneri.com/Time_magazine.html  Here are links to stories about the 2004 shooting:  http://www.washingtonpos.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24158-2004Feb8.html
http://www.washingtonpos.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13630-2004Feb4.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60982-2004Dec13.html

After the performance, the theater group held a question and answer session, beginning with questions directed to the playwright and moving on to those directed to the actors.  The topics of questions ranged from the playwright's writing process to the relationship between the play and the actual events in 2004 to the casting process to the lessons that the cast had learned from the experience of performing this play to future performances in the area where the play was set.  Again, this play is a work in progress, so the playwright was eager to find out what we thought. 

I will continue to keep an eye on Dream City Theater's work.