John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

The Kennedy Center is Washington, DC's, principal venue for large-scale music and theatre performances. Musicals, opera, symphonic and chamber music, ballet, dance and jazz can all be enjoyed here. In addition to its five performance spaces, the Kennedy Center also offers free performances by a variety of musical groups every day at the Millenium Stage. (The Millenium Stage is located at either end of the Grand Foyer.)

Performance spaces are the Concert Hall, Opera House, Eisenhower Theter, Terrace Theater, and Theater Lab. (The popular comedy Shear Madness has been playing at the blck box Theater Lab for years.) Resident companies at the Kennedy Center are the National Symphony and the Washington National Opera. National and international touring ensembles and solo performers visit regularly.

Beautiful views of Washington and the Potomac River (best at night) can be seen from the outside Roof Terrace and the River Terrace

Tickets to performances can be popular and it is a good idea to reserve tickets online at the web site.

The performing arts center is also a memorial to John F. Kennedy, the 35th Presdient. A bust of Kennedy, by sculptor Robert Berks, stands in the center of the Grand Foyer.

This a review of the national tour of Spring Awakening that will be at the Kennedy Center July 7-August 2.

As I was waiting in the lobby before the show, I was extremely excited. I had acquired a seat onstage, a unique trait of the musical Spring Awakening. I had already seen the show twice on Broadway, and loved it, but I was anxious to see the national touring cast. I had also never sat onstage before, so that only added to my excitement.

Now seems like as good a time as any to explain the show. Spring Awakening is a musical based on Frank Wedekind's 1890s German expressionist play about the lives of a group of rural teenagers as they enter a period of self-discovery and deal with the issues that plague their age group. The play was banned for a long time, and as such it is not extremely well-known. In the early 2000s, Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater came together to make the play into a musical. They kept most of the original plot and dialogue (though they did add and modify some plot elements) and inserted a contemporary rock score. Add in unique staging and choreography and you have a refreshing new musical that effortlessly juxtaposes old with new in a way that is relevant to every teenager.

But back to this cast. I was not disappointed at all. It seems to be a tenet of theater that everyone prefers the first cast they saw of any show, and that did hold true for me. However, I was very pleasantly surprised by Steffi D's performance as Ilse and some of the boys, like Ben Moss (Ernst), Matt Shingledecker (Georg), and Anthony Lee Medina (Otto). In addition, I was much more aware of the ensemble members because of my position on stage, and I must say that they really add to the show. They all are very talented, and I even got to see one of them, Lucas A. Wells, go on for Hanschen in one performance (his acting was superb). The rest of the cast was also outstanding, but I still preferred the cast I saw originally. The portrayal I liked the least was Blake Bashoff's Moritz. He was a good actor, but I am personally not a fan of his voice. I also have a very high opinion in my head of my first Moritz, Gerard Canonico.

There will be a few changes to the show that will be made in DC, and I am very excited to see them. Jake Epstein from Degrassi will officially be playing the lead role of Melchior starting at the Kennedy Center. Also, apparently, they are adding a countermelody to the song "Whispering" (Duncan Sheik & Steven Sater wrote it and it was used in the London production). I'm not sure how I feel about this yet, but I am eager to see how it's done.