“I’ve been doing a lot of research on great women in music,” says Roz White. “And what they had to deal with, as far as the industry was concerned, was only one small piece of it. Around them, their world was literally crashing and burning because of people’s hatred. And so, to still be able to sing, and to still be able to make people laugh or evoke happy emotion or hope, is a power I think we possess that we sometimes take for granted.”
White pays tribute to five persevering predecessors in a new cabaret presented as part of Signature Theatre’s annual “Sizzlin’ Summer” series. Resist: A Revolutionary Cabaret highlights Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Alberta Hunter, Abbey Lincoln, Roberta Flack, and Nina Simone. “I basically become each woman as I’m telling their story, and give you a little insight into their thinking during the time of their heyday.”
Over the past decade, White has done just that, often at Alexandria’s MetroStage. In 2008, she co-wrote and starred in that theater’s superb Pearl Bailey…By Request. “All of these women endured great hardships,” she says, “[and] each one was revolutionary in the music industry as well as just in pop culture in general.” Tharpe, for instance, was “basically kicked out of the church because she played the guitar and rock-and-roll,” and Lincoln rejected being a sex symbol by wearing “Afrocentric clothing and covering up more, to make people really listen to her music.”
White’s cabaret will also touch on progress made over the last century. “I want to show how women in the industry had to go from an image being imposed on us to taking control and empowering ourselves and creating our own image,” says White, adding that it’s a general lesson that the newer generation could stand to learn.
“We’ve got to teach younger people how to fight and how to resist. It’s not about throwing things and burning things and destroying things, it’s about building.” It’s also not relying on social media and technology to provide answers.
“Somebody doing a live feed [from] their living room saying, ‘Black Lives Matter’ is a huge difference [from the] effort that went into these women being able to have a voice. We didn’t have the technology. It was a lot more work, a lot more legwork, a lot more resist. We had to push through.” –Doug Rule
Roz White’s Resist: A Revolutionary Cabaret is Saturday, July 8, at 9 p.m., in Signature Theatre’s The Ark, 4200 Campbell Ave., Arlington. Tickets are $35, or $175 for an All-Access Pass to the Series, which starts Wednesday, July 5, and runs to Sunday, July 22. Call 703-820-9771 or visit sigtheatre.org for a full schedule.
Barry Manilow announced in an Instagram post that he has lung cancer.
"As many of you know, I recently went through six weeks of bronchitis followed by a relapse of another five weeks," wrote the 82-year-old singer-songwriter. "Even though I was over the bronchitis and back on stage at the Westgate Las Vegas, my wonderful doctor ordered an MRI just to make sure that everything was OK. The MRI discovered a cancerous spot on my left lung that needs to be removed.
"It's pure luck (and a great doctor) that it was found so early," Manilow continued. "That's the good news."
Douglas Sills loves to laugh. It's a big laugh, hearty and life-affirming. And it -- along with a warm, impossibly broad smile -- blankets a conversation with him in warmth and comfort. The laugh bursts forth at unexpected moments, such as when the actor, known for stints on Broadway and as French chef (revealed to be a Kansas cook) Monsieur Baudin on HBO's The Gilded Age, is asked if he has ever been part of a play that's gone terribly wrong.
"I don't have a disaster in my head offhand," he grins. "Do I? I don't. Maybe it's because you go to work every day for months and you're pouring your heart and soul into it, you're there for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours, and you're giving up everything to do it, and it's not a high-paying thing. And so you drink the Kool-Aid -- you have to. And so maybe that's why it doesn't feel like a disaster to me." He pauses. "But I've seen some disasters."
Not since Hedwig and the Angry Inch have I so enjoyed a one-person musical about an internationally ignored female artist overshadowed by her famous male partner as much as I enjoyed Rebecca Simmonds and Jack Miles' enchanting In Clay.
Making its American premiere at Signature Theatre, following sellout runs in London, the jazz-infused portrait of early-20th-century French ceramicist and painter Marie-Berthe Cazin doesn't have too much else in common with hard-rocking Hedwig. Except that both shows are powered by a knockout batch of songs, and the galvanizing force of a woman reclaiming her time, her art, and her story.
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