photo courtesy of artcars.com
This is the weekend to get your Shakespeare fix here on the Hill. Get started on Friday night at CHAW with the opening of an all-girl production of Measure for Measure. Taffety Punk presents Shakespeare’s most sexually-charged and shadowy plays, featuring a city of fops, madams, fake friars and virgins handed over to a licentious and scheming governor (sounds like South Carolina, eh?) The show ($10) starts Friday at 7:30 p.m., and performances continue through Oct. 10.
The bard loved plants, and mentioned over 200 of them in his plays — so continue your Shakespeare weekend with a tour of the Folger’s Elizabethan Gardens. Docents will lead tours and offer insights into plantings and Elizabethan customs during tours at 10 and 11 a.m., allowing you plenty to time to hit Surroundings, Ginkgo’s or Frager’s for some literary additions to your yard.
Surely you’re in the know about the H Street Festival happening on Saturday. If you think this is your average street fair, then you’re wrong. The festival, which highlights the evolving business and arts district along the historic avenue, boasts a tattoo competition, speed chess, double dutch contests, a battle of the junk bands and lots local foodie delights (ie, not limited to the standard “kabobs and lemonade” ‘fest food). Me, I’m heading straight to the art car exhibit. Read more about the event and see the stage schedule here.
For those of you who prefer to spend your weekends in on the south side of the Hill, head to the Capitol Riverfront for the Front Door Home Tour and Community Picnic. Check out Canal Park and enjoy free BBQ, and drinks, live music by Cazhmiere. Feeling playful? There will be lawn games including badminton, ladder golf, hula hoops and more. Feeling nosy? You can tour a variety of homes from renovated historic row houses to recently completed luxury condos, apartments and townhouses. One house boasts a floor made of salvaged wood from Monticello. There will also be walking tours departing at 10:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. to explore the sustainable features and historical past of this mixed-use neighborhood.
You know the “official” history of Capitol Hill, but do you know about the neighborhood’s place in gay and lesbian history? Meet guide Kim Sescoe, of the Rainbow History Project., at noon at Mr. Henry’s to learn about the early club scene along Pennsylvania Avenue and 8th St. Highlights include the first gay “super” clubs, Lammas (the de facto women’s center of its day), the Furies collective, the founding of the Metropolitan Community Church, and the first drag shows on Capitol Hill.
On Sunday, take it easy and enjoy Music at Eastern Market. Outside Port City Java, you’ll hear Brazilian jazz by Rio Garage at 10:30 a.m., followed at 1 p.m. with Smithsonian Folkways stars Little Bit of Blues, playing of course, a little bit of blues.
For another dose of history, visit “the earliest structure in the city built to serve an ecclesiastical purpose” according to the Society of Architectural Historians. No, there’s no Dan Brown connection. Join Right Rev. John B. Chane, Bishop of Washington, at Christ Church on Sunday at 9 a.m. to celebrate the historic site’s 200th anniversary. Membership of the church, founded in 1794, has included luminaries such as Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams and John Phillip Sousa.
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