In what is arrrrrrrrguably the most important holiday of this month, September 19 marks the official celebration of International Talk Like a Pirate Day. (And with that, I have now exhausted my daily quota of pirate puns.)
It should come as no surprise that in honor of this hallowed day—which was invented by two swashbucklers in 2002—the folks at Adventure Theater MTC in Glen Echo, Maryland, have announced their new fall musical How I Became A Pirate. Fans of children’s literature will recognize the titular adaptation, based on the book created by author Melinda Long and award-winning illustrator David Shannon, which opens Friday.
But avast, there’s more! Accompanying the announcement is a delightful video—produced by the theater company specially for Washingtonian!—in which a friendly pirate offers workplace advice to an obsequious DC employee who struggles to make his mark at the office.
The pirate’s advice is to begin speaking like a seaman, and Ahoy, it works! Our humble protagonist is transformed into a cool, confident, eyepatch-and-pirate-hat-wearing marauder, who definitely won’t be getting kicked out of the conference room anytime soon.
We could all do well to absorb the spritely pirate’s piece of parting wisdom: “Add some pirate talk to your DC conversations and you’ll be on a nonstop pirate ship to professional development island!”
And here’s the kicker: If you order tickets to How I Became a Pirate over the phone today with a pirate accent, you’ll receive 10 percent off your order.
Now that’s a deal better than buried treasure.
David Murrell, a former Washingtonian editorial fellow, is research editor at Philadelphia magazine.
