Norton Statement on the Passing of Zelda Fichandler

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today released the following statement on the passing of Zelda Fichandler, co-founder of the Arena Stage theatre.

“Enjoying D.C.’s Arena Stage, or any of D.C.’s performance venues, may leave the impression that D.C. was always a performing arts mecca. The passing of Zelda Fichandler, a co-founder of Arena Stage in the 1950s, reminds us of how much we owe to Fichandler and the pioneers of theater and performing arts here. As the District struggled for home rule, it had to invent not only a political culture, but culture itself. D.C. was a great tourist city with no local government to promote our monumental sites. Fichandler, who grew up in D.C. and graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School, took her hometown seriously enough to believe that we could be a center of serious theater. It is no accident that the transformation of the District of Columbia is marked by the coming of self-government, the rise of theater and the performing arts, and the desegregation of entertainment venues, with the Arena State again as a pioneer. We celebrate Zelda Fichandler, who was not content to leave her city in the backwater of American culture and dared to use the stage to lead us to become today’s cosmopolitan D.C.”