What role can Avant Bard play in resisting the nihilism, intolerance, and authoritarianism plaguing the world? As part of Season 36, we offer The Resistance Readings, staged readings and other acts every 3rd Sunday of the month at The Filling Station in Arlington, VA. Select “Buy Tickets” to reserve your seat!
Sunday, April 19, 2026, 5:00 p.m.
Avant Bard Theatre presents Songs & Stories of Immigration with Elena La Fulana.* and an exclusive encore performance of La Pluma Theatre’s The Lady Bird of Saint John.**
*Elena La Fulana is a Latin Grammy-nominated instrumentalist, bilingual Latin-folk singer-songwriter, and the lead for Elena & Los Fulanos. Originally from Managua, Nicaragua, Lacayo identifies as both American and Nicaraguan and her music, which ranges from twangy, heartbreak-themed folk Americana, to soothing, introspective, violin-infused Latin cumbia reflects this dual identity. Her dedication to art and activism was brought to light when she was selected to be in the Washington City Paper “The People Issue 2017” of notable Washingtonians.
**The Lady Bird of Saint John brings together Rosa and Verónica, two sisters who migrated to the United States following very different paths. One arrived with documents. The other crossed the border without them.
After years apart, they reunite in Verónica’s apartment in downtown Chicago. What begins as a long-awaited reunion slowly reveals the weight of their shared past: family expectations, sacrifice, resentment, love, and the complicated choices people make in search of a better life.
As the night unfolds, the sisters confront painful truths about immigration, class, and the meaning of family. Hidden secrets surface, memories clash, and the fragile bond between them is pushed to its breaking point. Their conversation becomes a reflection of a larger reality affecting thousands of families across borders.
Inspired by the political climate surrounding immigration policies in the United States, The Lady Bird of Saint John is an intimate story about separation, survival, and the consequences of systems that divide families.
Note: This play contains strong language and themes of immigration trauma, family conflict, violence, and references to the detention of migrant children. Viewer discretion is advised.
Food & drink will be available for purchase.
Past Resistance Readings
MARCH 2026
Singing & Screening Resistance
Singing Resistance with Katelyn Kyser and a screening of Red Flag of the Future.
Katelyn Kyser is a performer, music teacher, and song leader from Arlington. She began her career as an professional oboist – receiving a master’s degree and artist diploma from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and then moving to Bosnia and Herzegovina to play principal oboe in the Sarajevo Philharmonic Orchestra. She’s traveled the world to learn from song leaders in Bosnia and Herzegovina, South Africa, and the country of Georgia. Seeing the ways people use music for peacebuilding and reconciliation has inspired her to bring these traditions back to the United States. She now works as an Arlington public school music teacher and as a community song leader. She sings and leads songs in an effort to build community and share the message of love, joy, connection, and resistance.
Red Flag of the Future is a new opera based on Laura Schlachtmeyer’s translation of Ernst Toller’s Masse-Mensch (1919). Examining the play’s history reveals why a tale of human dignity and revolution that global audiences found compelling in the 1920s feels viscerally immediate in our own moment.
FEBRUARY 2026
New Works & Music Inspired by The Two Gentlemen of Verona
A Collaboration with DC Bushwick Book Club
The DC Bushwick Book Club collaborated with Avant Bard to present new works and music inspired by The Two Gentlemen of Verona. The evening included a sneak peak of two original songs of resistance from Avant Bard’s March production of The Two Gentlemen of Killarney, adapted and directed by Seamus Miller.
JANUARY 2026
Ionesco’s Rhinoceros
Adapted by Tyler Herman
Rhinoceros follows an ordinary person watching, one by one, as everyone around them transforms into rhinoceroses—a comic and unsettling metaphor rooted in the rise of fascism in 1930s Romania. This adaptation stages the many forms of ideological conformity that continue to threaten democracy and the rule of law.
DECEMBER 2025
The Deplorable
By Séamus Miller
The Deplorable is a history play for the present. Episodes (both real and imagined) from the American Revolution and Civil War collide with actual congressional testimony from four police officers in the aftermath of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.