My husband and I brought our just turned 20-month-old twins to a performance of Inside Out, a Theatre for the Very Young production at Imagination Stage in Bethesda. Our family is no strange…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 02:00PM“I can’t tell you how incredibly, outrageously funny this show is.” So said Ann Randolph about her solo show Loveland, which recently opened at Arena Stage as part of its Kogod Cradl…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:03AM“Eric tends to be attracted to dark, poetic worlds.” Matthew Gardiner is directing Tender Napalm at Signature Theatre, where he is the Associate Artistic Director. I began our conversa…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:03AM“Look at that face! Look at that happy face!” This was my husband, Jay Hardee, speaking about our daughter after a recent performance of Under the Canopy. Much hand wringing occurs a…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 02:10PMSince its inception, Washington Stage Guild has done 22 productions of 27 plays by the playwright with whom the group is most closely associated, George Bernard Shaw. (Some of the producti…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:05AM“It’s a rock concert for people who don’t go to rock concerts anymore.” Kevin Casey is the Music Director of the touring production of Mamma Mia!, currently ensconced at the National…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:45AMAround WSC Avant Bard, where she was Managing Director for several years and directed a number of productions, Lee Mikeska Gardner is known simply as LMG. Among her legacies is what has co…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 09:39AM“Here’s a representation of a culture that doesn’t get a lot of stage time. We had an audience last week that included 51 deaf community members. That was about three-quarters of t…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 03:21PM“It’s a story that is largely about a character who is trying to steal a baby. We’re not shying away from how disturbing that can be.” Matthew Pauli was talking a…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:24AM“How to Succeed at Olney Without Really Trying,” is how Jason Loewith described his game plan for Olney Theatre Center, the venerable Montgomery County institution whose reins he took ov…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 09:42AMPeter and the Starcatcher is a lot of fun. It’s creatively staged, wonderfully acted, impressively designed, genuinely funny, and anytime it felt as if a little something different was n…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 02:16PMWhat can you expect to see at Shakespeare Theatre Company next season? Plays by Shakespeare, of course. However, you will also have a chance to see the work of Stoppard and Cervantes, Mo…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:00AMViolet is a musical that’s not big and brassy and flashy. Based on a short story, its concerns, like that form’s, are more with character and local color than with, say, life and death…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:10AM“Top billing Monday, Tuesday you’re touring in stock…” If there was a Helen Hayes category for quick turnaround, the award would undoubtedly go to Sherri L. Edelen. Last weekend, s…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:35AMFolger Theatre is extremely excited about its upcoming production of Richard III. And the play’s director, Robert Richmond, seems to be the most excited of all. “It’s one of the mo…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 10:41AM“It’s the greatest anti-war play of all time,” Molly Smith said about Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children. Smith, Artistic Director of Arena Stage, is directing a cast…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:59AMWe’ve all heard about the actor’s nightmare, a dream during which the actor is about to go on stage without having learned the lines. At the opposite end of the spectrum, what might th…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:48PM“At one point, he even said, ‘No more singing pretty songs.” Daniel Beaty was speaking about Paul Robeson, the legendary actor-singer-activist who is the subject of The Tallest Tree in…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:39AM“Summertime and the living is easy…” That is, of course, the beginning of “Summertime,” the song which is the most recorded in Broadway history, Sumayya Ali tol…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 09:24AMStephen Sondheim is the Shakespeare of musical theatre, Joe Calarco told me. To extend the comparison, does that make the role of Mama Rose in Gypsy Sondheim’s Lear? Certainly the powe…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:47AMMove Over, Chris Rock. This might not lead you to expect something about the coming of age of August Wilson. However, I learned during a conversation with Todd Kreidler, a close associate of…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:42AM“I’m discovering something new.” Todd Kreidler was referring to his temporary DC digs. He had just arrived and was exploring them during our phone interview. Earlier in the…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 09:49AMWhat could possibly be more exciting for a DC theatre-lover than this? Mikhail Baryshnikov, indisputably the best-known classical dancer in the world, has arrived in town. And it’s not…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:06AM“I walked out of the audition feeling as if I had just had sex with a stranger.” Was this said to me by someone remembering the heyday of the 60s avant-garde; an audition for Dio…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 03:00PMAnthony Rapp is ready. On a recent evening, he was at the National Theatre. Along with the rest of the If/Then company, he was rehearsing that show’s finale. He told me about looking o…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:02PMCheck out the latest run of dog and pony dc’s Beertown, at Round House Silver Spring through Oct. 19th. Read the actor bios in the program. When you do, you will read one that might be…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 02:38PMHow's this for an actor demonstrating stunning range: Bruce Randolph Nelson's next project is playing the driven, intense (eventually suicidal) artist Mark Rothko in John Logan's Tony-winnin…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:22AMTrivia question: what Tony Award was Michael Kahn nominated for in 1983? Second trivia question: who was sitting in front of him at the awards ceremony? I’ll reveal the answer to the f…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 11:59AMHere’s a job that you might not expect to be the sort that will prepare you to run a theatre company later in life: usher. On the other hand, maybe it’s the perfect sort of on-th…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 01:07PMI attended the theatreWashington summit a few weeks ago. I read the recent Nelson Pressley article in The Washington Post on one of the topics addressed at the meeting, whether to split exi…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 09:49AM“It’s about trust…like a stage dive.” Most Artistic Directors of local theatre companies would probably not compare a change in ticketing policy to taking a flying ju…
SOURCE: DC Theatre Scene at 12:12PM
