Rainbow Theatre Project Kicks Off Season With BLUE CAMP

Rainbow Theatre Project will begin the 2019-2020 season with the world premiere production of Tim Caggiano and Jack Calvin Hanna's Blue Camp, a play that takes audiences inside of the blue barracks on a U.S. Army base. Blue Camp will run October 31 - November 24, 2019 at the Thurgood Marshall Gallery at Saint Augustine's Episcopal Church.

Intensely relevant, Blue Camp is a drama, with humor, that depicts what soldiers accused of homosexuality experienced while waiting to be discharged from a Blue Barracks. Along with a glimpse into the lives of the criminal soldiers awaiting discharge in the Green Barracks, this play will give audiences a unique glimpse into an Army base in the days leading up to the Vietnam War.

"Blue Camp is set in 1964. The year of the Civil Rights Act, of the first demonstration against the gay ban in the military, of the Beatles first album released in the U.S., of the war on poverty, of the release of the Warren Commission Report, of Malcom X's "Bullets or Ballots Speech," of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, of Susan Sontag's "Essay on Camp," and of The Gulf of Tonkin," states Hanna. "Against this background and facing a dishonorable discharge from the Army a group of gays and a group of straight soldiers who have committed crimes come to terms with the possible loss of the G. I. Bill and the real possibility of being swept up in the fervor of events leading to the Vietnam War."

"I have said before that a story told by members of a community about that community is at its most powerful," shares Producing Artistic Director H. Lee Gable. "What else I have discovered over these past seven years is the overwhelming desire to tell these stories. These stories are our histories, our lives."

The performance will be helmed by Christopher Janson and the cast includes Noah Beye (Steve), Moses Bossenbroek (Billy), Ivan Carlo (Alvin), Jared Graham (Sergeant Swanger), Craig Houk (The Colonel), Rocky Nunzio (Barry, The Captain), Lansing O'Leary (Gary), Reginald Richard (Theus), Daniel Riker (Arnold), and Jared Swain (Jantzen).

In 1964, gay soldiers and criminals await dishonorable discharge as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution seals their fate. Blue Camp, a drama with humor, is a story of discrimination in the military, as relevant now as it was then.

Blue Camp will run October 31 - November 24, 2019 at Thurgood Marshall Gallery at Saint Augustine's Episcopal Church at 555 Water Street SW Washington, DC 20024 (across from Arena Stage, 1 block from Waterfront Metro Station). Tickets are general admission and can be purchased online ahead of time for $35 (not including the service fee). Tickets will also be available for purchase at the door for cash only; no credit card payments will be accepted. For tickets please visit: m.bpt.me/event/4318561