Thursday, November 03, 2011

VP Biden Does H Street

Notice an uptick in traffic on H Street tonight? Blame it on Vice President Biden. Former Secretary of Defense William Cohen’s wife (noted journalist, author and playwright Janet Langhart Cohen) wrote a play, and lots of local VIPs were there to enjoy it. The play, Anne and Emmett, imagines a conversation between Anne Frank and Emmett Till. From the Atlas website:

Anne and Emmett is an imaginary conversation between Anne Frank and Emmett Till, both victims of racial intolerance and hatred. Frank is the 13-year-old Jewish girl whose diary provided a gripping perspective of the Holocaust. Till is the 14-year old African-American boy whose brutal murder in Mississippi sparked the American Civil Rights Movement.

The one-act play opens with the two teenagers meeting in Memory, a place that isolates them from the cruelty they experienced during their lifetime.

The beyond-the-grave encounter draws the startling similarities between the two youths’ harrowing experience and the atrocities against their respective race.

In Memory, Anne recounts hiding in a cramped attic with her family after German dictator Adolf Hitler ordered the Nazi military to round up Jews and put them in concentration camps en route to gas chambers. Anne died of typhus at the Bergen-Belsen Nazi concentration camp in March 1945, a few weeks before British troops liberated the concentration camp.

Emmett tells Anne about how he, in 1955, ended up being brutally attacked by a group of racists and thrown in the Tallahatchie River with a cotton gin fan tied to his neck. This happened after he whistled at a white woman while visiting his uncle in Money, Mississippi.

Playwright Janet Langhart Cohen has more than mere conversation in mind, as she draws an astonishing connective thread between two seemingly unrelated events. Ultimately, Anne and Emmett is a passionate call to action for those who care about the persistence of intolerance and injustice in the modern world and seek hope.
Performances are recommended for general audiences 12 years old and up.
For more information on Anne and Emmett, visit www.anneandemmett.com.

Thursday, November 3, 2011 at 7:30 PM
Friday, November 4, 2011 at 7:30 PM
Saturday, November 5, 2011 at 2:00 PM & 7:30 PM
Sunday, November 6, 2011 at 4:00 PM

Tickets:
Adults $35
Seniors $25
Students $15

Here's the tweet from the Atlas confirming the VP's attendance:

AtlasPACDC AtlasPerformingArts
Sorry for all the cars in front of the theatre blocking H St folks but when you're VP Biden that's how you roll.

Multiple reports that Michael Douglas might have been there too.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Michael Douglas was there too.

East_H said...

We are going to have a lot more sightings like this as the corridor matures into the city's premiere arts and entertainment area. Congrats to everybody on the Atlas Theater team!

Joe Blowhard said...

The VP is an utter joke. Does anyone take him even remotely seriously? Way cooler that Michael Douglas was there.

Hillman said...

Blowhard:

Could we not celebrate the attention paid to H and not get into petty politics?

Even for one day?