In the summer of 2010, a professional theater company called the Unexpected Stage Company started its first season in Gaithersburg’s Seneca Creek State Park. The couple at the helm of the company were co-artistic directors Christopher Goodrich and his wife, Rachel Stroud-Goodrich. For its second season, the company has decided to move indoors. They have set up shop in VisArts, a new performance venue in downtown Rockville. Their first play in the space is a comic fantasy called “Candy and Dorothy,” by David Johnston, an examination of a curious religious and political pairing.
“The play was first produced in 2006 in New York,” said Goodrich. “It’s about Candy Darling, who was a real-life figure and Andy Warhol superstar. She was a transsexual, living during the height of Warhol’s fame. Dorothy Day is the other real-life figure. She started and ran the Catholic Worker newspaper. She was a pacifist and was very active as a social worker.
| ONSTAGE | |
| ‘Candy and Dorothy’ | |
| » Where: VisArts,155 Gibbs St., Rockville | |
| » When: Friday through July 31 | |
| » Info: $8 to $20; 301-337-8290; unexpectedstage.org | |
“The play puts them together when they die. At the beginning of the play, we’re in the afterlife and Candy Darling and Dorothy Day are both there being interviewed. Candy Darling ends up becoming Dorothy Day’s caseworker. The play begins with these two strong characters who have to find out how they fit into the afterlife and how they can build a relationship, being so different.”
This will be the D.C. premiere of the play and Goodrich will be directing it. “There’s real beauty and grace in this play, as well as a lot of humor and marvelous language,” he explained. “Just describing the plot doesn’t do it justice. We love the play’s writing, its comedy and its humanity. The mission of our theater company centers around moving away from large ‘spectacle theater’ and concentrating on what it means to be a person. This play really exemplifies that goal.”
“I loved this play the first time I saw it,” added Stroud-Goodrich. “It’s so funny. In addition to the characters and the humor, what I appreciate about the work is the way it addresses the question: ‘What is truly great in life and really worth doing?’ It can be something as big as feeding the hungry on the Lower East Side or it can be something as little as going to get falafel with your friends.
“In terms of our mission, we’re not trying to do incredibly complicated technical things in our productions. We want to explore the intimacies and intricacies of the human experience. We’re really about the actors on the stage connecting as people and exploring what those connections mean in our daily lives.”
