Patrons & Players

Washington has entered the white-hot spotlight as a performing arts hub. It’s a mashup of scene stealers and their powerful patrons who are making it all come together.

Player: Eric Schaeffer
Washington’s wizard of musical theater never has just one project going at any time. In addition to his duties as the artistic director of the Tony Award-winning Signature Theatre, Schaeffer has taken his star-studded, critically acclaimed production of Follies, which premiered at The Kennedy Center, to Broadway, where it’s garnering $1 million in revenue each week and will run through late January. The opulent show, which was Schaeffer’s fourth to hit Broadway, got its financial blessing from philanthropist and cultural godmother Adrienne Arsht, as a result of the namesake musical theater fund she established at The Kennedy Center. “With Follies, there were a lot of pieces in the puzzle to figure out,” Schaeffer explains. “Having Adrienne’s support meant that we could actually create the production we all dreamed it could be.” The harmony won’t end there. Schaeffer plans to host Arsht as the chair for this spring’s Sondheim Award Gala. “It’s a perfect fit,” Schaeffer says. “We’ll find things we both want to do together down the line, I’m sure.”

Patron: Adrienne Arsht
“My admiration for Eric Schaeffer stems from what he did for Follies,” says Adrienne Arsht, the namesake contributor of The Kennedy Center’s $5 million fund for musical theater. “There is genius in his recreating a work that was first produced 40 years ago. He made it a big hit on Broadway,” she explains. “We extended the run and are now looking for another theater once our time runs out there.” The former bank chain chairman and major supporter of the Washington National Opera, The Washington Ballet, the Blair House and the Fine Arts Committee of the U.S. Department of State has made a deep impression in local cultural circles since her return to town in 2009. Her patronage of DC artists isn’t solely limited to the District. Schaeffer’s other recent Broadway hit Million Dollar Quartet will open at Miami’s Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts on Dec. 27. “I will definitely be there,” she says.

Patron: Charles Fishman
As the manager and producer for the late jazz great Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Fishman traveled the world promoting jazz. “DC was a way station when I’d come back from Europe, South America, Australia and elsewhere,” he says. It wasn’t until 11 years ago, when his parents took ill, that Fishman settled into the District and began to take in the local scene. But the jazz aficionado wanted more. “I’d been to jazz fests all over the world,” he says. “I was shocked to learn that we didn’t have a festival in the capital of the nation where jazz was born.” In 2005, he launched what is now the DC Jazz Festival, producing acclaimed concerts at dozens of venues—including the Kennedy Center and The National Mall—for two weeks each summer. Fishman, who just won a 2011 Distinguished Service to the Humanities Award, is eager to expand the festival, which has become a launching pad for up-and-coming musicians like Akua Allrich. To wit, Fishman has reserved a premier spot on the 2012 roster for the songstress. “Jazz is what the foundation of our country means,” he says. “It’s freedom of expression, unity, diversity and democracy.”

Player: Akua Allrich
Akua Allrich is something of a doctor of soul. Once headed into the field of medicine, the Howard University graduate veered away from science to pursue music. The choice has paid off. Dubbed “the next big thing” by Charles Fishman, who founded the DC Jazz Festival, the jazz vocalist isn’t just a rising star. She’s a skyrocket. Though the daughter of a well-known saxophonist, Allrich only started singing professionally two years ago. Building her fan base in anticipation of Fishman’s 2012 festival, she performs often at Bohemian Caverns and will be on stage Dec. 8 at the Black Cat. The groovy phenom also has a début album, A Peace of Mine, which was distributed internationally. The release in Japan happened just prior to the country’s devastating earthquake. “It was a blessing in disguise,” she says. “I would get tweets from people there saying that my music really helped them.” This spring, Allrich will release a fan-funded full-length album and an EP entitled Lost in Translation.

Players: The Lucys
Intrepid explorer Lucy will be doubly delightful in this spring’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, a groundbreaking collaborative production by Imagination Stage and The Washington Ballet. Each character in the whimsical tale will be played by both an actor and an accompanying ballet dancer. For her part, Lucy will be played by an international pop star and a prima ballerina. Actress Justine “Icy” Moral has performed with touring companies of South Pacific and Les Miserables. The 20-year-old local also has had a hit Filipino pop album. “It will be good to have a visual example of how someone else portrays this exciting role,” she says. Having danced The Nutcracker more than 300 times during her 10 years with The Washington Ballet, principal Morgann Rose is thrilled to enter Narnia as young Lucy, as well as the White Witch. The 29-year-old California native, who’s performed for Michelle Obama at the White House, shares her character’s curiosity. “I can be inspired by any role I play, whether it’s a mouse or the Sugar Plum Fairy.”

Patrons: Lion Ladies
The 8-foot-long lion puppet, frosty dreamscape and double-cast roles of this summer’s pioneering The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe will require not just creative collaboration, but the financing to make it a success. Arts patrons Evonne Connolly, Jean-Marie Fernandez and Anna Marie Parisi-Trone, who support both Imagination Stage and The Washington Ballet as board members and fundraisers, were a natural choice to chair the financial efforts for the groundbreaking production, which will likely tour the country after its run at IS. “We want it to work, and we knew they needed our help,” says Parisi-Trone. The theatrical trio, whose daughters take classes at The Ballet launched an ambitious campaign. “This is a community effort that is open to everyone,” says Fernandez. Donors of every level are dubbed “producers,” and the group has already raised more than half of the initial goal. “There’s magic in this show,” says Connolly. “You can’t even imagine what it will be.”

Patron: Yuctan Hodge II
Where Mimi and Carmen once belted intense arias, now Anna Nicole Smith and Charlie Sheen star. It’s all part of Wolf Trap’s fun effort to attract new vibes and a younger crop of patrons to opera, spearheaded by General Dynamics financier Yuctan Hodge II. The 31-year-old co-founder of Wolf Trap’s young professionals group, Club 66, and associate board member for the organization, has set out to help a new generation appreciate the soaring drama of musical arts. “Wolf Trap’s opera company is really young and filled with up-and-coming singers,” he explains. Hodge’s Club 66, which has grown to more than 2,500 participants since launching in 2007, hosts ad-libbed operas with audience-chosen, tabloid-ready storylines (cue Smith and Sheen), along with full-length productions, networking events and performer meet-and-greets. “With Wolf Trap’s diverse programming, we can do things that are unique from the rest of the area.” To wit, in the coming months, the group will welcome a Celtic-influenced rock group, and comedy troupe The Second City.

Player: Jason Lee
With more than 200 applicants from all over the country competing for only 16 slots, Wolf Trap’s Studio Artists program is, as Club 66 co-founder Yuctan Hodge II says, the American Idol of the opera world. After coast-to-coast auditions, singers join a summer residency, kick-starting their careers through roles in the company’s acclaimed shows with some of opera’s biggest stars. Tenor Jason Lee is one of the brightest talents to come out of this year’s program. The 26-year-old California native nabbed roles in Wolf Trap’s productions of Sweeney Todd, The Curious Women and The Tales of Hoffman. Lee, who is currently pursuing his master’s degree in music at the University of Maryland, hopes that his ties to Wolf Trap continue into the future. After auditioning against nearly 1,000 people in the fall, he’ll learn this month whether he joins Wolf Trap’s Opera Company as a Filene Young Artist, an advanced program that places its participants in the company’s principal roles each summer season. “It’s so interesting to see what young talents like Jason go through to become stars,” says Hodge. “Meeting performers who are our age makes opera more accessible to younger supporters, such as myself.”

Player: Matt Conner
The glittering marquees of Manhattan and perfect harmony of Shenandoah University’s conservatory couldn’t keep Matt Conner from DC. The actor-turned-composer spent time in both places, before making his mark on local stages, most notably Signature Theatre. The young star won a grant through the venue as part of its The American Musical Voices Project: The Next Generation, backed financially by cultural scions Ted and Mary Jo Shen. “They really believe in new works and theater,” he says. Signature has now produced three shows by the pianist, with another slated for 2013. Conner’s productions tend toward gothic revivals, including this fall’s The Hollow, a dark reinterpretation of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and Nevermore about Edgar Allan Poe. Conner has also just released a holiday album, Snow, featuring new and classic tunes. Though currently appearing in Signature’s Hairspray, Conner is happiest composing. As a performer, he explains, “You’re a puppet of someone else’s creation.”

Patrons: Ted And Mary Jo Shen
Business tycoon and renaissance man Ted Shen fell for musicals, not under the lights of Broadway, but during a college job in a library filled with old LPs. After retiring in 1999, the avid Stephen Sondheim fan set out to find and support new artists in the genre. Shen and his wife, Mary Jo, partnered with Signature Theatre to launch The American Musical Voices Project, which supports contemporary theater by offering artists a four-year stipend with health insurance, and The Next Generation, which sources emerging talent. In the past five years, the program has commissioned 14 works, including the recent staging of Matt Conner’s The Hollow. “Matt came into music in a really original way,” Shen says. “It shows in the way he uses music to create mood, emotion and darkness. It’s something I haven’t heard before.” Now Shen himself is in the spotlight, having written and composed his first musical, A Second Chance, which is currently débuting at Signature, of course. “I guess I found myself quite inspired by all these wonderfully talented people we’ve had a chance to get to know and to see their creative process,” he says.