A brilliant, pioneering jurist; an ingenious futurist; a beloved Cuban crooner. Biopics are usually fodder for the colder months at the cinema, but DC theaters are greeting swimsuit season with a raft of shows dramatizing the lives of historical figures, along with new plays from Ireland, (more) speechless Shakespeare, some guerilla Brecht, and lots else. From the top:

The Kennedy Center brings us Laurence Fishburne as Thurgood Marshall, first African-American justice to serve on the Supreme Court. (By George Stevens, Jr., opens June 1.)

Arena Stage casts the reliably excellent Rick Foucheux as the inventor of the geodesic dome in D.W. Jacobs’s R. Buckminster Fuller: The History (and Mystery) of the Universe (May 28).

GALA Hispanic Theater presents Hector Quintero’s original musical El Bola: Cuba’s King of Song, which “follows the backstage antics of a director, a flamboyant ‘diva’ and a santera,” all working on a musical about the life of Cuban singer Ingnacio Jacinto “Bola de Nieve” Villa (June 3).

Jealousy is a killer! Synetic Theater continues its silent-Shakespeare series with Othello (June 3).

The Keegan Theatre opens two new shows this month, the musical A Man of No Importance (by Terrence McNally, Lynn Ahrens, and Stephen Flaherty; June 12) and the American premiere of Kevin Barry’s There Are Little Kingdoms (June 15).