The George Fulginiti Series: Cabaret, Cocktails, & Conversation
Co-Sponsorship Between Alliance for New Music-Theatre
& Arts Club of Washington
In Flanders Fields
Tuesday, November 11th, 2025, 7:00 pm
OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
$55 Members - $65 Non-Members
One True Sentence: A Cabaret Evening with Singer-Songwriter and Broadway Bound Composer Josh Cleveland.
This Veterans Day, Alliance for New Music-Theatre artists John Boulanger, Alan Naylor, and Cara Schaefer will transport audience members back in time some hundred years in our nation’s history. Portraying noted essayist, biographer, and playwright John Jay Chapman, his wife, Elizabeth Astor Chapman, and son Victor, they reminisce about Victor’s signing up with the French Foreign Legion while on a family trip to Europe.
The evening represents a “Special Event” presentation and partnership with the Arts Club of Washington and will take place in the historic Monroe House, which served as the Presidential residence after the White House was damaged during the War of 1812.
Victor Chapman in 1916
The program commemorates the story of Victor Chapman, who joined the Foreign Legion in September 1914. After a year in the trenches, he joined the “Lafayette Escadrille,” the Legion’s American Aviation Corps, and was the first American aviator to perish in the conflict, all before the United States entered the war in 1917.
The program will serve as a “salon event,” and invitation into the Chapman’s home as they read from Victor’s letters from the front, interspersed with poetry and songs written during the “Great War.” Selections include the iconic “In Flanders Fields” by John McCrae and poems by other noted war poets including Wilfred Owen, Alan Seeger, and Siegfried Sassoon.
You’ll also hear American popular songs by George M. Cohan and others of the period, settings of John McCrae’s famous title poem by Charles Ives and John Phillip Sousa, and a group of settings of A.E. Housman’s “A Shropshire Lad” poems by George Butterworth, a British composer who died in the “War to End All Wars.”
Boulanger curated the first version of this program in 2017, with founding company member and soprano Laura Lewis, which was presented at the Woodrow Wilson House to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the United States’ entry into the war.
Boulanger and Schaefer were seen last fall as Julius Caesar and Wo-Man Ray in New Music-Theatre’s original opera The Man Ray Project: Caesar & The Mannequin by composer Andrew Earle Simpson. They reunite here to pay tribute not only to the men who died in WWI but the artists whose expressions led us through the arc from a vision of heroic combat to the grim and heartbreaking realities of that terrible conflict.
They are joined by Helen Hayes award-winner Alan Naylor, who will serve as pianist in addition to portraying the young Victor Chapman.
Period attire, medals and pearls, are encouraged.
The Arts Club will provide a small bites buffet and beverages, included in the price of the ticket. The salon program starts at 7:00 pm.
6:30 pm Doors open
7:00 pm Program
8:30 pm Reception with the artists
Discounted parking is available after 6 pm (free for members with membership card)
