MONDAY, JANUARY 27
FILM Observe International Holocaust Remembrance Day with a screening You Only Die Twice at the Embassy of Austria. The 2018 documentary shows the director’s mother as she tries to prove her lineage to inherit a home from a distant relative. But when they uncover two death certificates with her father’s name, the filmmaker tries to uncover the story of the man who stole his grandfather’s identity. One man with his grandfather’s name was an Austrian Jew who moved to Palestine to raise a family; the other was the president of a Jewish community in Austria. The filmmaker meets a descendant of the second man, who also struggles to understand his family’s decisions during the war. Free, 7 PM.
THEATER Hear a reading of the play No Desert Roses at the Atlas Performing Arts Center. Presented by Mosaic Theater as part of its Voices From a Changing Middle East Festival, the play follows an Egyptian writer and other characters living in the middle of a revolution. $15, 7 PM.
TUESDAY, JANUARY 28
THEATER Signature Theatre presents the world premiere of Gun & Powder, a musical inspired by a true story from the Wild West. Two African American twin sisters pass themselves as white to secure funds to get their mother out of a debt, but their identities and family bonds are tested when they fall in love with different men, one black and one white. Through February 23. $40-$100.
DANCE The National Ballet of Canada will perform two different repertoires at the Kennedy Center’s Opera House. See works by Forsythe, Kylián, and Ratmansky on January 28-29; from Thursday through Sunday, the company will perform The Sleeping Beauty. Through February 2. $29-$149.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 29
BOOKS Obsessed with true crime? Learn about the mysterious double murder of two women hitchhikers in 1980 in West Virginia. Thirteen years later, a farmer was convicted of the crimes, then released very soon afterwards when a known serial killer confessed. Following the investigations, author Emma Copley Eisenberg captured the story in her book, The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia, recreating the courtroom proceedings and showing how the murders affected the local community. Eisenberg will speak about her research with writer Michelle Delgado at Politics and Prose at Union Market. Free, 7 PM.
COMEDY Drafthouse Comedy is keeping it local with a show by DC comedian Camille Roberts, who has performed at a number of local comedy festivals (Underground Comedy Fest, Charm City Comedy Festival, and District Queer Comedy Festival). Hear her riff on mental health, gender issues, and more; opening acts are locals Pearl Rose and Rose Vineshank. $10, 8:45 PM.
