TO MARCH 30
To the theater of genitalia, which includes The Vagina Monologues and Puppetry of the Penis, we can now add That Takes Ovaries! Bold Females and Their Brazen Acts (cast is pictured), edited by Rivka Solomon from her book of the same title. Solomon collected stories from women who in ways big and small drew on latent courage to defy fear, mores, and, of course, the Man. On a spare set of backlit Japanese screens and a few black boxes, the Horizons Theatre Company sings and dances its way through these stories. Some are touching because any woman can identify with the characters: High-school girls confront the boys who have embarrassed them by rating their figures in the lunch area; a plus-size woman buys her first tank top”Why cover what we can’t hide?” the clerk cajoles herand then is too shy to wear it. Others are deeply affecting because the women are in situations most of us can’t imagine: A documentary filmmaker risks her life to expose Indian brothel owners who buy children from impoverished villages; a poor mother of six from El Salvador defies the “coyotes,” more vicious than the Border Patrol, whom she has paid to guide her to the States. But if Solomon et al. really want to popularize ‘ovaries’ as a distaff companion for ‘cojones’ they should come up with a nickname that will catch on with the kids. Huevos? Logical, but taken. Easter baskets? Fabergés? Think up your own at 8 p.m. Thursdays to Saturdays; and at 7 p.m. Sundays to Sunday, March 30, at George Washington University’s Mount Vernon Campus Hand Chapel, 2100 Foxhall Road NW. $22. (703) 243-8550. (Janet Hopf)