Humans have been observing the longest night for millennia. From the wondrous ancient astronomical observatory at Stonehenge to reports of wild parties of the Roman Saturnalia to the Chinese Han dynasty’s practice of venerating ancestors’ tombs to the celebratory Yuletide fest in Germany, the darkest day of the year called for communal gathering to revel in the light, for the next morning, daylight will be slightly longer.
This is the 43rd annual production of Winter Revels, which has chased away darkness while building a community across generational, religious and racial differences. Across the years, Revels groups have spread throughout the nation, but the birth of this community-based amalgamation of folk music, song, dance, spirituality and storytelling was in the Washington, D.C., region.
Revels’ DMV Roots
John (Jack) Meredith Langstaff grew up singing in the church choir in Brooklyn Heights and came to love traditional music. After studying at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and the Juilliard School in New York, he found himself leading the music department at the Potomac School in Virginia. His first “Christmas Revels” in 1957 ran at Lisner Auditorium in Washington, D.C., and drew on medieval music, dance and theater with an audience singalong. Nine years
later, Langstaff was invited to write and host “A Christmas Masque” for Hallmark Hall of Fame’s TV broadcast, featuring the same concepts as his stage revels. A young Dustin Hoffman played the dragon in the mummers’ play “St. George and the Dragon”
on the program.
More than 40 years later, the Washington Revels maintains a strong presence in the region. Now helmed by artistic director Roberta Gasbarre, a director, producer, playwright and theater education specialist, who ran the Smithsonian’s Discovery Theater for children for decades, it presents a popular annual winter solstice show, along with spring programs, choral concerts and educational options for children. Curtis Scott Dunn keeps the lights on, the performers in costumes and the cast in rehearsal and performance spaces as executive director, overseeing operations of the $834,000 annual budget, comprised of approximately 40% earned income and 60% contributions and grants.
This year’s Winter Revels celebrates the cultural confluence of Sephardic Jews, Moorish Arabs and Spanish Christians during what was known as the Golden Age of Al-Andalus in the 10th and 11th centuries, when Arabs ruled Spain. While Gasbarre and her artistic team first presented a version of this show about 14 years ago, the timing felt right at this political moment. “When we planned this, [the political situation] wasn’t actually as dire.
We just thought that this was a beautiful show … sharing these cultures. I can only say that the Revels muses brought us this wonderful show at the exact right moment.”
Song and Story Told in English, Ladino and Arabic
The story unwraps in ancient Spain as three foolish adventurers, one from each culture, discover a hidden treasure alight with a joyful glow. A quest ensues when the light fades on the year’s darkest night. Songs are sung in English, Arabic and Ladino, or Judeo-Spanish, while dances include the celebratory flamenco Sevillanas dance. With music from locally-based Trio Sefardi (Howard Bass, Susan Gaeta and Tina Chancey) and Arab-American composer, singer and oud player Laith Alattar, joined by Abderrahim Amthqal and Ali Bandeali, along with Spanish villancico carols and traditional audience singing, Revels builds bridges and warms hearts. And, Gasbarre promises: “We will teach you, and you will sing with us; audiences always sing.” This year’s community song will be in Hebrew and Arabic: “shalom chaverim and salam alayhum” – a song of welcome and peace.
Gasbarre came to Revels in 1991, invited to choreograph a number for the teen chorus. “I was struck,” she says, “with what an impact something like this can have on an audience of all different kinds of people … so I stayed.” Four years later, she stepped into the director’s role and began conceiving and developing the script, which changes each year.
Previous Winter Revels productions have been inspired by an English country Christmas, Celtic culture, Nordic celebrations, the Elizabethan winter solstice, the Italian Renaissance, French Canadian practices, Victorian England and Appalachia, to name a few. While the winter show is its largest, Washington Revels also produces an annual May Revels at its current home base in Glen Echo Park and at the National Cathedral Flower Mart. And keep an eye out for other holiday celebrations over the year, like a Halloween program and a
Purim masque.
Creating Community and Family Through Song
The core of every Revels event remains the approximately 75 community singers, actors and musicians and 30 or so more working backstage on crew, costumes and sets. They range in age from about 9 to 94. Following auditions, in September, the cast met for the first time in the Spanish Ballroom at Glen Echo Park for the introductory rehearsal, fondly called Dog and Pony. Singers, dancers, kids and adults picked up their music, listened to a description of the show, met the actors playing central characters and heard a sampling of music. Before they ended the evening in a large circle, the group practiced a song or two from their sheet music. In October, rehearsals began in earnest.
Jim Harkless of Montgomery Village spent his professional life as a labor arbitrator. But he’s been singing since he was a teen, and performed in his first Revels in 1986. The 94-year-old baritone said he loves performing, particularly with Revels’ all-ages cast. Fourteen-year-old River Pintea White of Silver Spring has been participating in Revels workshops for almost a decade. White said her first Revels performance was online in 2020. Since then, White says, “I’ve learned a lot about working with different people and how to manage myself on stage.” She planned to practice her song parts before the next week’s rehearsal.
For Andrea Blackford, an Alexandria resident, Revels is more than a hobby. Simply put, it’s family. New to Washington, D.C., in the early 1990s, Blackford missed her choral experiences from her youth. “I saw an ad [for Revels auditions] and thought it would be a choir,” Blackford says. “Boy, was I wrong! I thought it was a cult …
but I was smitten.” Now retired, the former communications executive serves as associate artistic director, collaborating with Gasbarre on conceiving and writing scripts and sharing in directing responsibilities.
Chasing Away Darkness
About a dozen years ago, Meredith Cabe’s middle daughter saw a Winter Revels performance and was hooked. Cabe signed her up for the organization’s youth education program. These days, it’s Cabe who remains involved, both as a board member and now as the stage manager for the children’s choruses.
With her daughters in college or on to other activities, Cabe remains a dedicated reveler. “A really powerful thing about Revels is that it celebrates connection and storytelling,” she says. “For me, especially, with Winter Revels, we really explore a specific culture or set of cultures to tell a story. But really, these shows are about universal ideas, what we share across traditions and cultures, the notions of where people find connection, where we find light on the shortest, darkest day of the year.”
“Andalusian Treasures,” Washington Revels, Dec. 12 to 14 and 18 to 20 at Montgomery College Cultural Arts Center, 7995 Georgia Ave., Silver Spring. Tickets $45 to $75. Visit revelsdc.org/shows-events/winter-revels.
Award-winning arts journalist Lisa Traiger writes from Wheaton, Maryland.
