D.C. POSTCARD: LAUGHING ON THE OUTSIDE

The Washington, D.C., air clung to the skin like a damp washcloth one Saturday not long ago. But inside the Mead Theatre it was almost cold enough to see your breath. A coltish woman tightened her shawl around her shoulders and watched as her fellow federal workers—some laid off, others still clinging to their jobs like passengers on a listing ship—improvised a scene.

- Sadie Dingfelder

“Your word is ‘watch,’” an instructor, Richie Khanh, called out from the audience.

“I’m standing watch, I’m looking out— out for anything bad that might be coming near us,” a woman in an orange shirt said. An analyst at the Department of Commerce, she and some others who were there asked that their names not be used.

“Like the pirate ship that’s right behind us?” Willis, a federal healthcare contractor whose contract may be at risk, asked her.

A third actor boarded the “ship” and demanded gold.

“We don’t have gold, we only have bananas,” Willis said. Then, in a stage whisper to a shipmate: “Get the guns.”

The plunder-and-betrayal plotline felt grimly familiar to the sixteen people in the room, who had shown up in response to an open invitation from the Washington Improv Theatre to “current and former federal employees,” to join a free workshop “to relieve the burden of living in uncertainty.”