214 stories by "Anne Valentino"
Often, we have difficulty seeing beyond the challenges and barriers specific to our own situation or to our own country. Plays like Shakespeare Theatre Company's production of "Kunene and Th…
Perhaps best known for his Pulitzer-finalist "Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo," playwright Rajiv Joseph walks a different artistic path with "The Lake Effect" now playing at 1st Stage. A rel…
Immersive theatre can take a number of shapes and occur in any number of venues. Bob Bartlett's "Love and Vinyl" is immersive, record-store theatre with a quirky, highly entertaining edge. S…
Given this incredibly challenging artistic and national moment, it is so good to see that DC theatres aren't afraid to embrace material that may be considered on the more controversial side …
Acclaimed DC playwright Karen Zacarias's "Native Gardens" has been well produced in regional and community theatres across the country"with good reason. While on its surface, this is the sim…
The Reading Room Festival at the Folger Theatre kicked off Thursday with a deep dive into the historic-minded Shakespeare. Artistic Director Karen Ann Daniels invited a few friends to help h…
The mood as audience members were leaving Studio Theatre following the production of Bruce Norris's "Downstate" was somber to say the least. Given the play's themes and several of the events…
Playwright Alexis Scheer seems to possess uncanny insight into what it means to exist with a foot in two different worlds, or more, depending on how many feet you can muster. The characters …
Always putting on a show full of spirit, heart, and an abundance of feel-good vibes, the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington DC (GMCW) delivers yet again with their holiday extravaganza. Presente…
The Coil Project's newest "Strange Tales" installment brings four new short plays with equally bizarre, sometimes macabre, and definitely unconventional twists to the stage of Capitol Hill A…
Musicals don't get much darker than "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street." Stephen Sondheim's 1979 show, based on a 19th-century penny dreadful, reveals the secret life and diabol…
Joshua Harmon's 2024 Tony-nominated, epically expansive script, "Prayer for the French Republic," investigates the horrors of the Holocaust, albeit as more of a side note than headline, hold…
The intellectualism of Tony Kushner's work can sometimes obscure the bigger-picture themes and stories and yet, it is this intellectualism that brands his work as distinctly of its time in a…
Following a sold-out Off-Broadway run in 2023, York Walker's acclaimed "Covenant" has come to Theater Alliance. Described as "Southern gothic meets the blues," the show offers some soulful s…
Marlene Dietrich is perhaps best known as a symbol of the ever-so distinctive brand of talent and glamour that epitomized the heyday of "Old Hollywood." German-born, Dietrich came to the US …
Getting a new play off the ground takes a great deal of work. Playwright Marshall Logan Gibbs and director Maxwell Wolf seemingly hit the ground running with "MonstÓ r (Or, #MeToo Brute),"…
"Night Sky," a new play by Pipeline Playwright Patricia Connelly at Aldersgate Church Community Theater (ACCT), tells the story of Julia (Patricia Nicklin) who, now in her seventies, must gr…
Dramas about high school students often center on the catastrophic issues that trouble younger generations today. These are generally bigger-picture issues. While certainly incredibly worthw…
A prominent part of the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston has become an acclaimed artistic figure helping define a literary generation and pave the way for those who would follow. Laure…
Eboni Booth won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Drama with her play "Primary Trust" and is currently being presented at Signature Theatre. It's a rather intimate play that investigates the theme…
Two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and Tony Award-winner Branden Jacobs-Jenkins returns to his DC roots with "The Comeuppance." This being only the third production of this play, it centers on…
With a 2023 world premiere on Broadway, it would seem that "Jaja's African Hair Braiding" is already bound to become a canonical part of American theatre. The first leg of its tour kicks off…
Immediately, the set design of GALA Theatre's "The 22+ Weddings of Hugo" whisks you into a quasi-paradisiacal realm in which anything seems possible despite the obstacles and detractors that…
Presidential elections have this way of bringing out the claws. The desire to win, the need to have one party decimate the other"people's baser instincts tend to emerge, even in the nicest o…
Caryl Churchill's work has this uncanny way of harnessing the big picture questions of history, science, and philosophy and distilling them down to what these kinds of questions mean for hum…