Washington Revels and Community Partnerships

Imagine showing up at noon, learning sketches, songs, and dances, and staging a performance by dinnertime. Sound crazy? But that’s what 150 adults and children did last November at Cedar Lane Unitarian Church in Bethesda, launching Washington Revels’ new Community Initiative to help churches, schools, and other groups in the D.C. area celebrate and build their communities by putting on performances together.

Every year, the adults, teens, and children who stage The Christmas Revels form and strengthen their own community as they work together for months to prepare the show. Now, Revels is helping other groups share a similar experience. “We introduce them to the Revels ‘Aha!’ of communities coming together in large-scale celebration centered around traditional material,” says Greg Lewis, Executive Director of Washington Revels. Like all Revels productions, the program brings together people of all ages, abilities, and experience; many have never performed or worked on a production before. Revels supplies a basic production staff; the partner community supplies performers, much of the production team, and the audience— who are invited to participate, of course.

Community Initiative productions take two forms: one-day affairs such as Festival Day, and scripted productions with a longer rehearsal schedule. The longer shows include Noye’s Fludde, a dramatization of the Noah’s Ark story by English composer Benjamin Britten; and Bridges of Song, which celebrates the music and history of African-American communities east of the Anacostia River. New productions are planned.

Bridges of Song grew out of the 1998 Christmas Revels. After a performance of Bridges of Song with a Revels cast, Lewis asked Carolyn Scales, an associate minister at Allen Chapel AME Church on Alabama Avenue in Southeast D.C., if she would like to stage the production with her church. “When Greg asked me this, I almost started to cry,” she wrote later. The church partnered with Revels to put on two shows with 125 adults and children at THEARC, a community center near the church with a professional stage; nearly 500 church members helped with the production or came to watch and participate as audience. “The positive impact on the individuals who performed, many of whom had never acted or believed they could sing...and the pride in the audience members...was wonderful to see.”

For Noye’s Fludde, about 60 children at St. Columba’s Episcopal Church in Tenleytown appeared as animals from mice to giraffes, while others took on the parts of Noah’s sons and their wives or played in the orchestra; 35 adults rounded out the performers. During the six weeks of rehearsal, parishioner Graeme Browning was assistant director to Roberta Gasbarre, artistic director of Washington Revels. “She directed and I just scurried around behind her taking notes and trying to stay out of her way,” Browning says. “I’d never had so much fun in my life.” Now she is volunteering on the wardrobe crew for The Christmas Revels, making sure all the costumes stay presentable and in good repair throughout the run of the show.

Washington Revels has now hired a full-time Community Initiative Director. While the first productions have been with churches, the singing animals, bridges of song, and festival day joy will be branching out to schools and neighborhood communities. Coming together in Revels style is magic. What better way to start a new quarter-century of Revels in Washington than to share that magic with other communities?