Creative DC Profile: Gina and Jack

An essential ingredient of a creative community is people who enjoy and appreciate other people's creative work. That's why, for my third Creative DC profile, I've decided to feature the most avid theater goers I've ever met: my in-laws.

Gina and Jack, who've lived in the area for over 25 years, attend an average of about 3 plays each month. They have subscriptions to the Woolly Mammoth, The Shakespeare Theatre Company, Round House Theatre and the Everyman Theatre in Baltimore. In addition, each year they attend the Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, and sample plays from Theater J, Cherry Red Productions and other local outlets.

Gina and Jack recently sat down with me to talk about their theater habit, and to reflect on how DC theater has changed over the years.

How long has theater been such a big part of your life?

Gina: We started going to the theater in New York.

Jack: We went to 3 plays on our honeymoon.

Gina: One of them was The Wall, one of them was –

Jack: Hello, Dolly!.

Gina: Yes, and Oh! What a Lovely War. Growing up in New York, you could see a play for $3 or $5 with student ID. As kids we got to go to plays - schools encouraged it, our parents encouraged it.

"About where the Home Depot is...there was a theater."

Jack: When we moved here for the first time, in 1965, there was virtually no local theater. It was national road companies. We saw a couple things at the National Theater. On Shady Grove Road, about where Home Depot is now, there was a theater…it was a theater in the round. They specialized in musicals, carried a lot of national touring companies of big shows --

Gina: We saw...the one with Felix Unger...

Jack: The Odd Couple. Now we avoid national touring companies.

Gina: We went [to the theater] occasionally [when we lived] in San Francisco. We saw a local production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. There was the one with the live sex acts… in the North Beach area. So, theater’s always been somewhat important, but it got a lot more important about 25 years ago. The kids were old enough for a babysitter. But we didn’t do the volume that we do now.

You've talked about how there didn't used to be as many local productions. How else has the DC theater scene changed over the years?

Gina: We used to go to the Source a lot, but now that’s gone. In fact, the Source was one of our favorites -- it was sad to see that go.

I think we’ll always remember the all-male version of The Importance of Being Earnest... And then there was Vampire Lesbians of Sodom -- we took [our youngest son] when he was in high school and he thought we were so cool. We were one of the very few mixed [gender] couples in the audience, and one of the only ones with a child.

Jack: We were the only ones with a child.

Gina: A lot of these theaters used to be ratty old places, but now they’re very nice… the Studio has a great new space. We really liked Frozen.

Jack: Woolly Mammoth started in the Lansburgh building, when it was still an abandoned department store. They were urban pioneers – they led the march to upper 14th Street.

Gina: And the Source.

Jack: I’m pretty sure [Woolly] came first. Then the Studio, then the Source...another change is that so many professional theaters have opened in Virginia that we don’t even know about, other than seeing the reviews in the Post.

"When we first lived [in DC], everything closed by 10 on Saturday."

Gina: DC, in the years that we’ve lived here, has changed a lot. It’s a lot more sophisticated in things like theater and art...When we first lived here, everything closed by 10 on Saturday, you couldn’t even find a donut shop. [Now], more has opened up around the theaters – before and after, nightlife. You can have dinner before the theater, coffee or a drink after.

Jack: [Theater is also] more expensive. As the productions get more professional, they have to charge more.

Are there particular actors or directors you follow?

Gina: If I hear Nancy Robinette (who’s a secretary and does this part time – she’s fantastic) and Sarah Marshall are going to be in something, I try to get tickets. It used to be the same way with Marty Lodge, but I don’t see him around much anymore; he must have left the area. Bruce Nelson. Kyle Prue. Floyd King. Emery Battis. And the actress we saw [at a restaurant] - Jennifer Mendenhall.

Jack: Gina loves to accost actors.

Gina: I do. And they love it!

Jack: None of them, for me, have that effect- I’m much more interested in what the play is and whether it appears to be a good production. I think the companies we go to regularly do a very good job on the basics – casting, choosing a director, lighting, scenery, sound, costumes – they’re all at a very good, professional level for those things. Sometimes the choice of plays is a problem. Woolly has a habit of choosing plays that are built around themes for shock value, which tend to play well in first act, but then in the second act no one knows what to do.

Gina: I wouldn’t say they have a habit of that – they do it sometimes.

Do you talk about the plays you see afterwards?

Gina: We always talk about them.

Him: "That's the appeal of theater generally...that it makes you think."

Her: "We like movies, too, but plays are more interesting."

Jack: I think that’s the appeal of theater generally – the idea that it makes you think. Which may be why we’ve gotten away from the big spectacle shows, and more towards shows built around an idea.

Gina: We really want to see things that are new, or unusual – even if we don’t like them. We always find something fascinating in it to talk about. Like the one we saw recently about the men in the Beirut jail (editor's note: the name of the play is Someone to Watch Over Me).

We like movies too – but plays are more interesting. They’re smaller – they’re not on a big screen, there aren’t as many props - you’re looking more at the performances; in movies, with all the cinematogrpahy and all that, sometimes the acting is secondary.

Do you have any pre- or post-theater rituals? –a particular place you go to get a cup of coffee, or…?

Gina: Only with Shakespeare and Woolly, and it’s because they’re right near each other. We always go to Olsson’s. Jack browses books and records, I read The City Paper and sit in the coffee shop and have a latte. It’s where a lot of the [family's] Hannukah gifts come from!

Jack: It’s also good to go to the bathroom there first if the play doesn’t have an intermission.

Gina: And we used to walk to Café Luna, when we went to the Source and the Studio with [our friends] Phyllis and Jim.

Do you see a lot of plays with DC themes?

Gina: We’ve seen a lot of gay-themed plays.

Jack: One thing that you’ll see – not necessarily the play itself, but the production, they’ll throw a bit of business in that isn’t in the script, that clearly has a political implication. It just sort of whizzes past – it’s just them making a little statement.

Gina: I think it’s to get a little recognition or applause from the audience. We see a lot about lost people, depression – I’m thinking of The Faculty Room – people who are not who you’d consider your next door neighbor type people…family dysfunction.

In all of our play-going, I’ve noticed you really don’t see the [full] DC population represented [in the audience], unless it’s a black-themed play.

What’s the weirdest play you’ve ever seen?

Jack: Probably something by Charles Busch or Charles Ludlum.

Gina: I loved Psycho Beach Party, but I don’t know if that was the weirdest. Vampire Lesbians of Sodom was pretty weird.

Jack: Goodnight Desdemona, Good Morning Juliette – it was about a time traveler, a woman who was a researcher for a professor, who finds herself living with the characters of Othello, and then the characters of Romeo and Juliette, and most of the characters in Romeo and Juliette are gay…there’s a scene when they’re piling on each other, and a female character steps back and says, “does no one sail straight in Verona?”

"[There was] that one where they threw blood at us..."

Gina: And that one where they threw blood at us – that was Cherry Red Productions. They don’t technically throw blood at the audience, they throw it at themselves, and the first two rows get it.

The worst?

Gina: That one act Korean woman thing that we came out in a snowstorm for. That was so bad, I felt so cheated.

Jack: She’s a Los Angeles-based performance artist who was sort of developing a new show and using us as guinea pigs, but it was sold as a real show.

Gina: The first play Woolly Mammoth did in their new space – there weren't a lot of people in the audience, because people had heard [it was bad], and after intermission there were even less people. Something about dead puppies. Big something. Big Death and Little Death.

We can tell you the plays we’ve walked out on. Jack’s walked out on more of them. We walked out on The Cherry Orchard – a terrible production of a not very interesting play.

Jack: I walked out on Homebody Kabul –I thought it was just dreadful. It starts out with this really annoying woman – she’s supposed to be annoying, but I quickly found myself hating her, and not caring what happened after that. I understand what Kushner was trying to do, which was to turn it into a kind of history lesson about Afghanistan, but I don’t think it was an effective piece of theater. And it's one of the few times that I really disliked the production itself – the accents were beyond the actors’ skills.

The best?

Gina: Ooh, there are so many. I love Les Miz – Les Miz to me is a perfect play. Jack hates it. I’ve seen it 4 times – he saw it once and was miserable. But you know, it’s hard to say [which play is best] – every season there are things that stick out.

Jack: To me there is no best or worst. We’ve seen a lot of good stuff, and we've seen a lot of crap.

Do you save all your programs?

Jack: Yes, but we make it a point to not organize them. It’s not like we could retrieve something quickly when memories fade. The programs are more like our memories - you never know what you might come up with.

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Do you go to a lot of plays in DC? Why or why not? What are the best, worst and weirdest plays you've seen? What do you love about local theater, and what do you wish was different?

Or, is there another creative community in DC that you help keep alive through your appreciation and support?
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Past Creative DC Profiles:

• Kimberly Wilson, creative director, Tranquil Space Yoga
• Mark Chalfant, artistic director, Washington Improv Theater