The personal is political.  In The Teacher’s Lounge or One Child Left Behind, Washington playwright Rebecca Gingrich-Jones examines one intense hour in the lives of three teachers at an urban charter school.  Actress Rachel Manteuffel plays Carli, an idealistic first-year teacher negotiating the perils and pressures of a school, and an entire educational system, seemingly on the verge of collapse. Without an official support system in place for young educators, Carli leans heavily on two fellow teachers: the brash and ambitious Maria Fuentes (Allycia Atania) and rigid and authoritarian Jann’l Crawford (Lolita-Marie). When a student learns a secret about her personal life, Carli has one hour to make a choice that will decide multiple futures. Will she hold to her personal ethics, or will she sacrifice the future of one child to save her career?

The ascendance of Washington’s school chancellor Michelle Rhee has put the city’s education system on the national stage. Just this month, The Washington Post reported that our high schools are now graduating fewer than 50% of their students on time.* The children of our city and our nation are caught in the middle of a political storm. But what of the teacher’s themselves? Can they even be considered a united front? What part do individual cultures, prejudices and sexualities play? The Washington Rogues bring the debate over the future of our schools to the stage with a play as immediate as the morning paper but as universal as human jealousy and desire. The Teacher’s Lounge is the second production from the Rogues, producers of 2008’s Fringe hit Busted Jesus Comix.

PART OF THE FIRST EVER EDWARD ALBEE FESTIVAL!

The Washington Rogues joined forces with DC’s legendary Arena Stage! The company was honored to be  invited to take part in a celebration of one this countries most prominent artists.  As part of the festival, we two staged readings of Albee’s Tony-winning masterpiece The Goat, or Who is Sylvia on Sunday, March 20th at 6:00 pm and Monday, March 21st at 8:30 pm in the Ammerman Rehearsal Hall at Arena Stage.

Busted Jesus Comix opened July 18, 2008 at the Flashpoint Mead Theater Lab as part of the Capital Fringe Festival.

Hilarious, touching, and just a little depraved, Busted Jesus Comix tells the story of Marco, a gay teenager brought up on felony obscenity charges in his home state of Florida … for publishing his amateur comic book.

EIGHT by Ella Hickson

EIGHT opened July 8th, 2010 for five performances as part of the Capital Fringe Festival. Due to overwhelming audience response, EIGHT was remounted at the District of Columbia Arts Center August 5-14.

Eight lives.  Four choices.  Take your pick.  In EIGHT, hot young British playwright Ella Hickson gives voice to a generation coming of age in an era of terrorism and economic turmoil.  Intense, political, and sexually charged, EIGHT is made up of a series of thematically-connected monologues, exposing  the parallels between American and British youth cultures in the context of events ripped straight from today’s headlines.  Eight fascinating individuals struggle to forge identity and recover from trauma with the world stacked against them.  A dynamic, interactive experience, EIGHT explores the relationship between audience and cast. The audience takes an active role in deciding whose stories will be told, picking four of the eight monologues at each performance and creating a new show every night.