Monday, October 24, 2016
I’d never been to Beertown, though I knew it by reputation as a must-visit burg. Folks had told me of this storied hamlet in the heartland where the local citizenry gather every five years…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:36AMSaturday, October 22, 2016
Like a gift that keeps on giving, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream keeps on rekindling. Dreamer after dreamer reconceives it as if anew. And last night that classic spark reignite…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:59PMMonday, October 17, 2016
So far as I can tell, The Catholic University of America’s Drama Department turns out a lot of local talent. I keep seeing mentions of it in program bios around town. Must be something go…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:39PMFriday, October 14, 2016
“Why can’t we talk about anything real in school?” The question is posed by Solomon, a nerdy high school student and wannabe journalist, whose teacher has forbidden him to report on th…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:17PMWednesday, October 12, 2016
Now and then there comes a production of a play that is so spectacularly original it confounds one’s every expectation of what can be achieved in theater. The story—a marvel in itself—…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:47PMSaturday, October 8, 2016
Post-Play Palaver is an occasional series of conversations between DC Metro Theater Arts writers who saw the same performance, got really into talking about it, and decided to continue their…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:32PMFriday, September 30, 2016
I happen to like solo performance pieces a lot and I’ve seen many. There’s something I love about the immediacy of a single performer claiming my attention—and maybe stirring my emotio…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 05:13PMThursday, September 29, 2016
One measure of the quality of a play is how it stays in one’s mind the next few days. Or the next weeks or months or years. Not just how it plays on stage. How it remains in the brain. The…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 05:37PMWednesday, September 28, 2016
Near the end of What We’re Up Against, Theresa Rebeck’s incisive comedy about workplace sexism—just opened in a kick-ass production at The Keegan Theatre—a question is posed by Eliza…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:26PMSunday, September 25, 2016
Having enjoyed the first weekend of Rabble Crew Productions’ How To… Sex Education, I went back for seconds—another set of four short plays on the ever popular theme of sex…and the n…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:59PMCat Stevens (as he was known then) last performed at The Kennedy Center back in November 1971 just months after it opened. Much has changed since then, including his name (which became Yusuf…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:17AMTuesday, September 20, 2016
Rabble Crew Productions has a proclivity for mounting edgy, sex-themed theater in fringey places around town. Last December they did Madeline Farrington’s Glory Us at The Fridge in Easter…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:00AMMonday, September 19, 2016
Yesterday at The Anacostia Playhouse, the real world and the world onstage converged. It was like a communal emotion-meld through theater, the human heartbreak untold in too many headlines b…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:56PMSunday, September 18, 2016
“Can feminism be funny?” inquiring minds at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company want to know. For that is the conundrum that connects Sheila Callaghan’s Women Laughing Alone With Salad, Woo…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:30AMFriday, September 16, 2016
What is it that’s so tried and true about plays about siblings? Must be something universal, because there are so gosh darn many of them. Structurally they obviously make for auspicious ca…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 07:15PMPost-Play Palaver is an occasional series of conversations between DC Metro Theater Arts writers who saw the same performance, got really into talking about it, and decided to continue their…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 03:56PMWednesday, September 14, 2016
Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine, which premiered in London in 1979, is rightly considered a landmark play. It is pivotal for me personally as well, ever since I saw the legendary Tommy Tune p…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 01:45PMTuesday, September 13, 2016
When I saw this new musical on the fifteenth anniversary of 9/11, there were no more than ten minutes during it when my eyes were dry. They welled up from the first scene. Sure, I know I tea…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 08:18PMForum Theatre has a knack for picking trenchant works of theater that buzz with relevance to hot-button topics. Its current offering is a perfect case in point. Given this nation’s rising …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:09PMSunday, September 11, 2016
The imposing lobby of a tony Manhattan apartment building—all sleek gray marble, glass, and stainless steel—commands the spacious 1st Stage stage. Sound Designer Neil McFadden has create…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:45AMTuesday, September 6, 2016
Two of DC’s most important independent theater collectives bearing witness as black artists to #BlackLivesMatter are Brave Soul Collective and African-American Collective Theater (ACT). B…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:42AMFriday, September 2, 2016
John: I first discovered your writing when I saw Maytag Virgin during the Women’s Voices Theater Festival, and as I said when I interviewed you back then, “it was one of those experience…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 08:50AMWednesday, August 31, 2016
It is the morning after I saw a compelling and telling bioplay about Louis Armstrong just opened at Mosaic Theater Company, Terry Teachout’s Satchmo at the Waldorf. I have my earbuds in; I…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 10:58AMSunday, August 21, 2016
Step Afrika! will present free performances in all eight wards of DCAugust 24 to September 20, 2016. The full schedule of 2016 tour dates is available online. Here is John Stoltenberg’s …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 08:44PMSaturday, August 20, 2016
There’s a good chance that watching FEAR—Kathleen Akerley’s playfully subversive new comedy at Longacre Lea about a troupe of actors in the throes of performing Shakespeare—will chan…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:14PMThursday, August 18, 2016
In real life, when we are spectators to two grown men facing off in dead-serious combat—right in front of us; with words, fists, lethal weapons, whatnot; unmediated by movies and such—o…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:40PMWednesday, August 17, 2016
My four days in London last weekend offered time slots to see six plays—four evenings and two matinees. My strategy was to seek intriguing, fresh writing in a mix of West End, Off West End…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 11:13AMWednesday, July 27, 2016
Live theater is not where we turn to learn the news in real time. We have TV and Twitter and plenty other frenzied feeds for that. But live theater may be the most potent and important form …
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 02:32PMS. Ann Johnson’s Double X—an exquisitely crafted choreopoem exploring the multicultural distinctions and connections among seven women—had its DC debut Saturday after appearances in Ba…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:23AMSaturday, July 23, 2016
Musical theater and the country could use a good renegade rock musical inspired by the Occupy Movement. The demonstrations that spread across America spurred by Occupy Wall Street shared a k…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 12:13PMFriday, July 22, 2016
Fans of Cirque du Soleil know to expect wonder, beauty, and thrills, and Cirque doesn’t disappoint. It’s a brilliantly executed brand that has become a global phenomenon (21 different pr…
SOURCE: DC Metro Theater Arts at 05:26PM 
