I used to like to joke that my goal was to be a professional basketball player, and that I hoped to play for the Washington Generals. This joke never went anywhere, so I removed it from my repertory, but now seems like a good time to explain myself.
The Washington Generals formed in 1952, since then have only
managed to win six games. They have lost 13,000 times and counting. As a
bookish art critic with a diet that consists almost entirely of gruel, if I have a
shot at playing for any professional team, it is for the Generals.
They are, of course, the foil to the Harlem Globetrotters,
who will be performing their signature comedy athletics this Saturday at CenturyLink Center. And the Generals might not be the
best place to even start a discussion about the Globetrotters – I could easily
wax eloquent for 1,000 words about their theme song, “Sweet Georgia Brown,” and
the extraordinary version used by the sports team by the unfairly obscure
Brother Bones.
But by now you must have noticed that I can wax eloquent
about just about anything for 1,000 words. Since I mentioned a jazz
standard, let’s move on to a related topic.
Some are content to listen, but for those of you inspired by
great music to make some of your own, there is a workshop in songwriting
starting on Saturday at the 402 Arts Collective. The three-part class, called “Find
Your Voice: Songwriting Series,” is led by Kait Berreckman. Educated at the
Berklee School of Music, Berreckman’s own music, or at least what I have heard
of it on YouTube, pairs intimate, confessional lyrics with exquisite, jazz- and
country-tinted melodies; it’s frequently exquisite.
I’m a bit surprised to discover improv troupe TheWeisenheimers are still about, only because they've been around so long, and improv teams typically have the lifespan of a garage rock band. I attempted to produce a series of late-night
performances by them at the Blue Barn Theatre more than a decade ago, which,
due to miscommunication that I still feel badly about, fell apart. I later
worked with one of the former Weisenheimers, and he seemed sanguine about the
whole affair, but still. You want to support local artists, and sometimes
things go pear shaped.
They’re at the Pizza Shoppe Collective on Saturday, still
doing the sort of short-form improv they were doing when I first met them – it’s
the sort of improvised games that “Who’s Line Is It Anyway” made famous, and is
about the most inherently crowd-pleasing sort of improv comedy out there. It’s
a style that benefits from a quick wit and a sudden sense of the absurd, which
I recall the troupe having in spades.
I still know one of the performers, in the way everyone in
the local theater scene sort of knows each other. Theresa Sindelar is a
mainstay of the local acting community, and is something of a Playhouse
superstar, having turned in a series of brash, comically outrageous
performances on their stage in the past few years. She possesses a certain
performative fearlessness, which is always welcome in theater but absolutely
essential in comedy, and should be on full display this weekend.
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