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IN Series to Present World Premiere of ETHIOPIA, May 16–June 1

Banned 1937 “Living Newspaper” by Arthur Arent Brought to the Stage for the First Time Featuring New Work by Sybil R. Williams and Original Music by Janelle Gill

This marks the final production in IN Series’ 2024–2025 season, “Illicit Opera”—a season highlighting operatic and theatrical works once deemed too radical or controversial to be performed.

 

WASHINGTON, D.C. – IN Series announces the world premiere production of ETHIOPIA, a powerful theatrical revival of Arthur Arent’s 1937 “Living Newspaper,” paired with a new response play by acclaimed playwright and professor Sybil R. Williams, and an original score by celebrated DC-based composer and pianist Janelle Gill.

Performances will run May 16–18 at 340 Maple Drive (new venue in Southwest, DC), and May 30–June 1 at the Baltimore Theatre Project (45 W Preston St, Baltimore, MD).

“Giving Arthur Arent's ETHIOPIA its long-awaited World Premiere is at once about righting a historic wrong, celebrating one of the only uniquely American forms of theater innovation in the guise of the original ‘living newspaper,’ and more about bringing to stage a still powerful and shockingly prescient piece of theater about the dangers of nationalist, appeasement, and isolationism, with powerful resonance to the global stage of today” said Artistic Director Timothy Nelson. “Pairing it with Sybil R. Williams' bold, brilliant, and beautiful new response that explores the same moment in time through the lived experience of Black women around the world reveals the presence of stories unsung happening all around us every day, in every event, at every moment.”

Reviving a Lost Classic for Today

 IN Series presents a bold new staging of ETHIOPIA, the first Living Newspaper play, originally created under the Federal Theatre Project during the Great Depression. This uniquely American form aimed to educate and engage audiences through dramatizations of current events while employing out-of-work theater professionals.

ETHIOPIA confronted the global silence surrounding Italy’s 1936 invasion of Haile Selassie’s Ethiopia—a timely choice, as the original cast included a stranded African opera troupe. Featuring direct quotes from FDR and other leaders, the play was shut down by the Roosevelt administration and never staged—until now.

 

A New Response Play by Sybil R. Williams

Williams, an acclaimed scholar and artist whose work bridges African diasporic performance, feminist theory, and theater for social justice, brings a bold and contemporary voice to ETHIOPIA. Her response play reframes the original work through the lens of Black resistance and resilience in America, focusing on the true story of Mayme Richardson, a pioneering Black soprano from the 1940s who became an outspoken activist for the Ethiopian cause. Williams also explores the broader ways in which Black and Brown communities across the United States responded to European aggression during this era.

In her program essay A Dawta’s Ethiopia, Williams writes with urgency and resonance:

“With open and unabashed attacks on media, education, and science, WE NEED ETHIOPIA. This little play warned us about unbridled power, amorality masked as political expedience, and how electing mediocre leaders gives rise to cowardice. It also, by being censored, showed us the power of theater to teach us, in the words of Emperor Haile Selassie I, ‘to become something larger than we have ever been.’”

Original Music by Janelle Gill

Composer and pianist Janelle Gill contributes a striking original score that seamlessly blends jazz, classical, and African musical traditions. Her compositions are enriched by West African percussion, performed by drummers from both Ethiopian and West African traditions, creating a sonic landscape that is at once grounded in heritage and boldly contemporary.

Gill draws inspiration from Emahoy Tsegué Mariam Gebru, the revered Ethiopian nun, pianist, and composer whose music embodies a deeply spiritual synthesis of Ethiopian scales and Western classical forms. In describing Tsegué’s influence, Williams reflects:

“The largesse of both her musical gifts and her commitment to African people make ETHIOPIA the perfect tool to show our current generation of artists and activists that to stand together in solidarity and resistance is to make beauty.”

PRODUCTION INFORMATION
For more information, visit www.inseries.org

ETHIOPIA
A Living Newspaper by Arthur Arent
A New Play by Sybil R. Williams

With New Music by Janelle Gill
Directed by Timothy Nelson
Music Direction by Janelle Gill
Designed by Tsedaye Makonnen, Adrienne Gaither, Kathryn Kawecki
Lights by Alberto Segarra
Costumes by Rakell Foye
Projections by Hailey LaRoe

FEATURING:
Marvin Wayne Allen III
Ezinne Elele
Elise Jenkins
Madison Norwood
Shana Oshiro
Daniel J. Smith
Nakia Verner

MUSICIANS:
African drums and instruments led by Jabari Exum

PERFORMANCE DATES
340 Maple Drive (DC Waterfront/Wharf), Washington, DC

Friday, May 16 at 7:30pm - Board Night Reception to follow
Saturday, May 17 at 2:30pm - Talk-back to follow
Saturday, May 17 at 7:30pm
Sunday, March 18 at 2:30pm - Talk-back to follow

Ticket prices:
Reserved Seating: $72
General-Rear: $49
Student: $35

The Baltimore Theatre Project
45 W Preston St, Baltimore, MD

Friday, May 30 at 7:30pm
Saturday, May 31 at 7:30pm
Sunday, June 1 at 2:30pm

Ticket prices:
General Admission: $30
Student: $20

ABOUT IN SERIES
IN Series is the standard-bearer for innovative opera theater in Washington DC. We make theater from music: transforming artists, audiences, and community by disrupting expectations, nourishing empathy, stimulating insight, and deepening the conversation. IN Series envisions a thriving global community in which opera is a fully integrated and essential part of collective conversation. In picturing the journey to this end, IN Series is a change-maker – a force that, with each groundbreaking production and outreach event, radically transforms perceptions of the “who”, “what”, “where”, and “why” of opera: who gets to make opera and for whom is it made; what is defined as an operatic experience; where operas take place; why we make opera; and why opera matters.

Founded by Carla Hübner in 1982 as a concert series of the former Mount Vernon College, “The In Series” became an independent non-profit arts organization in 2000 and has been a resident company at Source Theater since 2008. Timothy Nelson assumed the artistic directorship in 2018, quickly establishing the newly rebranded “IN Series” as DC’s home for “Thought, debate, history, and innovation” (DC Metro Theatre Arts) in opera.

IN Series is supported in part by major funding from the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz, Dallas Morse Coors, Billy Rose, Paul M. Angell Family, and Revada Foundation of the Logan Family Foundations; Bloomberg Philanthropies; The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and National Endowment for the Arts; HumanitiesDC; Opera America.  We gratefully recognize the generous support of Share Fund, The William G Baker Jr Memorial Fund, Dimick, Eugene M. Lang, The Theodore H. Barth, John J. Leidy, Robert N. Alfandre, Sami & Totah, Deus ex Machina Family and M&T Foundations.