Monthly Archives: March 2014

Entertainment, The Daily Feed, We Love Arts
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We Love Arts: Beaches

Alysha Umpress as Cee Cee (left) Mara Davi as Bertie (right). Photo by Margot I. Schulman.

Alysha Umpress as Cee Cee (left) Mara Davi as Bertie (right). Photo by Margot I. Schulman.

For a number of years, Broadway musicals based on their respective movies have been a staple on the Great White Way. In fact, more than one-third of the musicals currently on Broadway were films before they were ever stage productions. While some of these live adaptations fare very well with audiences, producers often find that taking a beloved film, musicalizing it, and then putting it on stage is a risky venture. One of the major reasons new productions are put through a series of workshops and premieres before opening on Broadway, in fact, is to gauge the potential success it will have and to edit and make changes along the way.

Signature Theatre has been instrumental over the years in assisting these budding new shows find footing by producing their world premieres in its Arlington facility, with almost 40 productions to date, including their current musical, Beaches. Based on Iris Rainer Dart’s 1985 novel, which the 1988 film with Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey was adapted from, Beaches follows two friends through a 30-year friendship. One a brash performer, the other a WASP-y blueblood, these seemingly different women forge a powerful companionship when a chance meeting on the beach as young girls in the 1950s leads to a lifelong friendship that tests the bonds of sisterhood and shows the strength of friendship. Continue reading →

Featured Photo
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Featured Photo

At the Zoo TheRobbStory

It would seem there’s a new animal enclosure at the National Zoo. The exhibit consists of four human twenty-somethings and allows us a unique view into how they interact with each other. As we can see in Robb Hohmann‘s photo they spend a fair amount of time sitting in close proximity to one another but apparently never actually make eye contact. In fact, it seems as if they are stuck in very awkward and uncomfortable positions, hunched over and looking at some kind of electronic device. Is this how they actually communicate with each other? Do they make any vocalizations at all? How much time is spent on this activity? How do they eat? Earn a living? Get anything done? Clearly more research will need to be conducted to fully understand the behavior we are seeing. It is unknown at this time whether the National Zoo will be installing a live camera so we can watch these humans from the comfort of our own homes but we will update this post immediately if such an announcement is made.

Entertainment, Essential DC, Special Events
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Share Your DC with LiveArt in a Day

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Get ready to share your love for DC. On Saturday, April 5 at the Anacostia Arts Center, We Love DC is joining collaborative theater company LiveArtDC in holding the first annual LiveArt in a Day. We want your ideas to help create this unique presentation of five 10-minute plays that will be written overnight by local playwrights, rehearsed the next day, and performed twice that night only.

LiveArt in a Day will feature two performances of the plays, at 7pm and 9pm, in addition to three sets by local bands The Iris Bell, South Rail, and Clarence Buffalo, and a silent auction. Tickets are $15 in advance and $20 at the door. All proceeds from the evening will benefit LiveArtDC (that rhymes with “Give Art DC”), a DC-based company of artists who believe in the power of collaboration to create engaging stories for theater. You may have seen their inaugural show I Heart Hummels at the Capital Fringe Festival. Now it’s your chance to join in the collaborative fun.

During the LiveArt in a Day event, plays will explore the sites, personalities and events that make DC the special place it is. But, we need your ideas to make it happen.

What are your quintessential DC experiences, the stories that make living here so unique? What locations or personalities would you want a play built around? How about that time you entered the annual High Heel Race? Or pelted an ex at the Dupont Circle Snowball Fight? Proposed at the DC World War I Memorial? Cried at the Eastern Market fire? Sat next to Kojo Nnamdi at the Kennedy Center? Started a family in Brookland? Shadowed Ian MacKaye at the Black Cat? There are so many possibilities. From simply telling us your favorite landmark or your favorite local character, to sharing more complex stories, we want to hear them all.

Share your ideas on We Love DC in the comment section below with Leave a Reply, or tweet your ideas with hashtag #liveart24 to @liveartdc. We’ll select the most promising and creative ideas for the LiveArt in a Day playwrights to choose from, and they’ll craft their plays from your themes.

Your love for DC, your life in DC. All in a day. Let’s go.

The Nationals
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Nationals Preview: In the beginning, there is Viera

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Sunday marked the first televised broadcast of a Nationals game, and though we’re in the midst of a snowstorm at the moment, that marked the start of an early spring for many DC area residents. Friday afternoon brought us the first radio broadcast, as Dave Jageler and Charlie Slowes first took a moment to celebrate the beginning of their 9th season together as a radio team. It was 26°F in Vienna, VA as I drove to a client, but inside my head, it was suddenly the midst of summer.

The start of Spring Training often means the dissection of a number of story lines, and it’s gotten to the point where there are some really good mad libs for constructing your own. You won’t find much of that here, because the Spring Training stories this year aren’t going to be about a number of position battles where wily veterans make their cases against young prospects. There are really just two battles right now: Second Base (Danny Espinosa vs. Anthony Rendon), and the last Bullpen slots (Mattheus vs. Roenicke vs. Davis vs. Garcia vs. Delcarmen). This team is largely the same as it was for their 2012 NL East Title squad and their 86-win-yet-still-disappointing run 2013 season, though, and I suspect the drama will not be intense in Florida.

All that said, the Nationals have some interesting folks to watch this spring, and here’s a few names in the infield to keep an eye on:

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Weekend Flashback
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Weekend Flashback: 2/28-3/2

At the Zoo TheRobbStory

By the time this gets posted, we’ll know if this is a boom or bust storm. Good news is, most of us got an extra day off because of it. On second thought, who am I kidding, this is DC; the one place in the country where people get angry for being forced to stay home from work. I’m sure most of you are reading this during your planned ten minutes of morning goofing off! So, to rephrase: enjoy this unscheduled, yet sanctioned, work from home day DC.

And to make that ten minutes of goofing off worth it, here’s another great assortment of photos from the weekend. Enjoy! Continue reading →

Life in the Capital, The District, WTF?!
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How To: Appeal Your DC Real Estate Assessment

DC residents paid more than $3.6 billion afagen

This past week, DC’s Office of Tax and Revenue sent out the FY 2015 (which begins in October 2014) appraisals for property taxes in the city. That means: if you own a house or a condo or a plot of land, the city assesses the value of that land and property so it can tax it appropriately.

According to RESO interviews Showcase IDX’s Kurt Uhlir, the property taxes represent about a third of the annual budgetary pie for the District, and the largest single revenue line item on the city’s budget. This year, I got the assessment from the city and had to go find a place to sit down.

My assessment had gone up 20%, a growth of about $80,000 in assessed value, and at current property tax rates, about $680 in additional taxes. Now, I’m no Tea Partier, and I’m certainly a believer in the necessity of taxation, but it ought to be on a fair market value evaluation of the property, and this new figure just wasn’t coming up as kosher to me. I called a friend of mine who is an experienced real estate agent looking for options, and he offered a good place to start.

As it turns out, you can fortunately appeal the OTR’s assessment of your home, and the process for that is pretty straight forward.

Continue reading →