We’re Number Two! We’re Number Two!

From the Washington City Paper’s Best of DC:

Staff Pick: Best Place for Readings

Best: Politics & Prose

Second-best: Washington D.C. Jewish Community Center

If you’re an author who wants to give a reading in the District, Politics & Prose is where you want to be. But if you’re an author who wants to give a reading in the District, it’s not where you’re gonna be—not unless you’re attached to a large publishing house or have achieved a kind of cult status you can never hope to attain. (Hell, Roberto Bolaño got an event there a few months back, and he’s dead.) That’s not to say that the DCJCC has a lousy lineup for readings: Its annual festival, Nextbook series, and other events attract top talents like Etgar Keret, Rivka Galchen, Bernard-Henri Levy, and Shalom Auslander. But its focus on Jewish culture and authors at least gives aspiring writers a more specific theme to aspire to. Still have to be brilliant, though. 

—Mark Athitakis

CiPa’s Best of DC Names Aaron & Cecile Goldman Theater as “Best Theater for a View”

Okay, so you know how in the last post I said lists are stupid? I misspoke. What I meant to say was that lists are stupid unless you happen to be on the list.

The first Washington City Paper Best of DC list in nearly twenty-one years has named the 16th Street J’s Aaron and Cecile Goldman Theater as the venue with the best view. This is no small honor when you consider the building boom of theaters in the past couple of years–Wooly Mammoth, Studio, Shakespeare, Atlas and Signature all have newer spaces. They all have their merits, but our 236-seat theater which begins on the second floor of the building and ends on the third has a rake that guarantees every seat is a good one.

And while the view in the Goldman is great, what it really provides is the perfect balance of intimacy and fourth wall during performances of Theater J or for that matter during concerts, readings and films. Above and beyond that however, is the superb quality of the art that appears on the stage–the best view in the world is worthless if the art isn’t up to scratch.