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Capital of Culture Washington, DC has traditionally been an unbalanced city when it comes to the life of the mind. It has great national monuments, from the Smithsonian museums to the Library of Congress. But day-to-day cultural life can be thin. It attracts some of the country s best brains. But far too much of the city s intellectual life is devoted to the minutia of the political process. Dinner table conversation can all too easily turn to budget reconciliation or social security This is changing. On October 1st the Shakespeare Theatre Company opened a 775-seat new theatre in the heart of downtown. Sidney Harman Hall not only provides a new stage for a theatre company that has hitherto had to make do with the 450-seat Lansburgh Theatre around the corner. It will also provide a platform for a large number of smaller arts companies such as the Washington Ballet, the Washington Bach Consort and the CityDance Ensemble. The fact that so many of these outfits are queuing up to perform is testimony to Washington s cultural vitality. The recently-expanded Kennedy Centre is by some measures the busiest performing arts complex in America. But it still has a growing number of arts groups which are desperate for mid-sized space downtown. Michael Kahn, the theatre company s artistic director, jokes that, despite Washington s aversion to keeping secrets, it has made a pretty good job of keeping quiet about its artistic life. The Harman Centre should act as a whistleblower. | 
