All articles from DC Theatre Scene
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DC Theatre Scene ends its 15 year run today. But we won't be disappearing any time soon. Thanks to a generous donation, we will be able to remain online for the next 3 years. I know many of …
These are the plays that won't let go. They are there as I drift off to sleep, or, unbidden, come to me during the day. This happens more often now, as work here slows to a close. You probab…
After death, two professionals spring into action. The undertaker applies makeup, and puts formaldehyde in the veins, so that the forgetting may begin after a celebration. If the undertaker …
Were there magical moments on New York stages in 2020? The question is debatable " just like the definition of "theater" is being debated " since nobody has been performing on any actual sta…
Theater is at its best when it teaches us something. When it makes us think, and reconsider our stance on an issue, or when it carries us away into another land and time, where characters, f…
No, this isn't just A Christmas Carol with an accent; it is a riff on the familiar Dickens structure, transported to the equally familiar stage world of an old Irish bar. The ghosts and visi…
Puppet theater has long enjoyed popularity in Washington. The region has often generated a vibrant children's theater scene offering a multiplicity of styles for a variety of audiences.�…
Aimed at young audiences, but appropriate for children of all ages, The Snow Queen is a magical first for Imagination Stage " the theatre's first foray into online production. Billed as an "…
Congress has included a $15 billion grant package for performance and related arts, including theaters, in the $900 billion coronavirus relief package it passed on Monday. The program, calle…
"Being Alive"and "Losing My Mind" " are there any better Sondheim songs to sing at the close of a year full of loss, unrequited yearning and obsession? That they are sung by performers who h…
An old-fashioned black-draped dressing mirror is the only prop in the moody, elemental, but by no means elementary "Fuego Flamenco XVI: Intimo," presented by GALA Hispanic Theatre. The mirro…
All hail Ma Rainey. The real-life Mother of the Blues gets star power treatment of such high wattage it can scarcely be measured. Peerless acting, a tight ensemble, cinematography burnished …
You've got to hand it to Pointless Theatre- the above title alone is just about perfect for 2020, even if it started out as a simple twist on the company's clever name. As we are all in need…
Introducing the real Ma Rainey. Ahead of the premiere on December 18, 2020 of August Wilson's play Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, it is important for audiences to realize that Ma Rainey is not a …
"I'm a playwright, right?," DC playwright Richard Byrne told me on a phone call. "I miss people getting into my face with my words." But the pandemic has pushed this prolific writer and his …
What kind of weird holiday show is this? That was my initial reaction " not my usual reaction to a show by Taylor Mac, which is more  often: Wow ( to Hir, and A 24 Decade History o…
A daughter confronts her police officer father. An absurdist game show tries to determine who is the most Black. A candidate for district attorney confronts her traumatic past. A sex worker …
"During peacetime, when we need metaphors, we raid the language of war. But the idiom of wartime is food: cannon fodder, carnage, slaughterhouse. Buildings and people are pancaked, sandwiche…
It's always an awkward situation when leadership of an organization transitions. The smartest model, of course, is for the outgoing leader to separate cleanly and to fade quietly into the pa…
Do you remember the old Firesign Theatre? On their records (do you remember records?), an absurd scene would dissolve into another absurd scene, until you dissolved in laughter. To put a per…
Joel Grey sings "Give My Regards to Broadway" " in Yiddish. And he's not alone among the 50 performers of the Folksbiene Chanukah Spectacular, a fast-moving, entertaining 80 minutes that is …
In his 1996 speech, "The Ground On Which I Stand," acclaimed playwright August Wilson charged the American theatre industry to take seriously the funding and producing of Black theatre. This…
Scrooge was right, you know; it is humbug to fall like jackals upon each other for eleven months of the year, but on the twelfth to feign good will and generosity of spirit. He was a skinfli…
After fifteen and a half years and more than ten thousand articles, DC Theatre Scene will cease publishing on December 31, 2020. After December 31, there will be no more reviews, no more art…
The credits at the end of this A Christmas Carol list a cast of 51 characters " 50 of them portrayed by Jefferson Mays. He's the narrator, as well as Ebenezer Scrooge, Scrooge's clerk Bob Cr…
Any creative way that local companies find to bring us original theater feels like a lifeline these days, and We Happy Few's genteel caper, Loveday Brooke in 'The Mystery of the Drawn Dagger…
You're never quite sure which Claus is independent in Jackob G. Hofmann's meandering, pointless 70-minute video comedy until the very end, and by that point it doesn't matter. In Best Medici…
Shakespeare Theatre Company announced yesterday that it will cancel its limited in-person production of Blindness in light of an increase in the number of DC coronavirus cases. The increase …
About 15 minutes into the HBO film adaptation of "Between The World and Me," Ta-Nehisi Coates best-selling 2015 book framed as a letter to his son about what it means to be Black in America,…
The economic havoc caused by the coronavirus has claimed another local victim " Brave Spirits Theatre. The nine-year-old company was in the midst of an ambitious project to produce Shakespea…
"Existentialism; that word puts us to sleep," master clown Bill Irwin was saying on my computer screen, "even though true questions of existence…keep us awake at night." The word "Existent…
The DC Theatre Community has been undergoing much transformation throughout the pandemic, beginning with the removal of powerful white men in positions of power. (The Washington Post even re…
Brothers and sisters, think back to the day you asked your Heart of Hearts to join you in eternal matrimony, if there was such a day. Did you do it in the traditional way, at a restaurant, k…
An embittered Ari Roth today announced that he has resigned as Artistic Director of Mosaic Theater Company, the company he founded six years ago after parting with Theater J. Board of Di…
At its heart, Trans Am is an autobiographical ode in the style of a rock opera, that draws inspiration from the folk-rock like stereotype of the singer-storyteller. Lisa Stephen Friday, in h…
The tangy DC streets or a soulful bowl of NOLA. From Gumbo to Mumbo celebrates each from its first notes"for what writers and performers Drew Anderson and Dwayne Lawson-Brown do is something…
February 8, 2020 I sat in GALA's historic entertainment "palace" to review Nilo Cruz' Exquisita Agonia. It was the last time (pre-Covid) I enjoyed live theater. Nine months later, Managing D…
Tom Prewitt, Avant Bard Theatre's Artistic Director, died suddenly yesterday, the company announced on Facebook. W. Thompson Prewitt, wAvant Bard's Executive and Artistic Director since Febr…
Live theater is a dangerous place. We know it as a place where audacious ideas and forms " The Seagull, Death of a Salesman, Angels in America, A Strange Loop " saunter their risky walks acr…
Election night 2020 IN Series opened a cantata-as-opera based on the Senate Judiciary hearings of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. It was bold enough that Artistic Director Timothy Nelson …
Before James Corden became known to American audiences as host of "The Late, Late Show," he became a theatrical star in the Royal National Theatre's 2011 production of One Man, Two Guvnors.�…
IN Series is presenting its 2020-2021 season completely online and free through its platform, INvision, though paid access has additional perks. Their production of Orphée et Eurydice (whic…
When I first encountered Adrienne Kennedy, through her Obie award winning 1964 play Funnyhouse of a Negro as a student in graduate school, I was surprised I had never heard of her. After …
Roaring is a peek at the tumultuous 1920's as seen through the eyes of a plucky go-getter, Mabel Daniels (Kara Burri). In this fun-filled digital original by Best Medicine Rep's John Mor…
Melissa Dunphy's The Gonzales Cantata, which will begin its run on In Series' website November 3, is an opera with a unique libretto " transcripts of the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing…
theatreWashington has expanded its Taking Care COVID-19 emergency grant program and will now be increasing the amount of grants available to any theater professional in need living in the DC…
There are not many towns which could be riveted by a tale which revolves around the tax treatment that carried interest gets, but, by God, Washington is one of them. Of course, the carried i…
Shakespeare Theatre Company's peripatetic Artistic Director Simon Godwin, having instituted a six-production 2020-2021 season for STC notwithstanding the pandemic, has decided to use his spa…
All stories are about the loss of power " or, more correctly, loss of the illusion of power, and the more fundamental the loss, the more heart-wrenching the story. Here we are, in the prime …
