33 stories by "Elizabeth Bruce"
Assimilation. The Cherokees tried, or so a glance at American history tells us. Finally conquered by the Europeans, they tried t acculturate themselves, to do what the white man said would r…
The first thing one notices about Brazilian Director Ron Daniel's production of Othello is the bank of gigantic fans high up on the upstage wall–huge, overpowering industrial machines …
Do yourself a favor: Transport yourself out of the snow and slush of politics and hie thee to Folger Theatre for AÂ Midsummer Night's Dream of enchantment. Superbly directed by Aaron Posne…
With enough stage charm to bridge the pond, esteemed British actor Paterson Joseph brought his one-man show, Sancho: An Act of Remembrance to the Kennedy Center's World Stages, and the audie…
Among the 50+  world premieres of plays by women playwrights being produced in metropolitan Washington as part of the Women's Voices Theatre Festival is British playwright Clare Lizzim…
"Yo, Miss," the students in the South Bronx high school greet the newbie drama teacher, and in her one-woman show,  Ripple of Hope: One Teacher’s Journey to Make an Impact, Karen…
Tartuffe, David Ball's sleek adaptation of Moliere’s classic skewering of a scumbag grifter hiding under the skirt of piety, receives a gloriously wicked co-production with South Coast…
UrbanArias' production of Blue Viola, a new short opera by Peter Hilliard and Matt Boresi, fills the Artisphere’s Black Box with deep, resonant voices; an accessible, compelling narrat…
Friedrich Schiller’s Mary Stuart, a modernized version of which by Peter Oswald, is now playing at the Folger Theatre, is a taut historical drama about two of the fiercest Queens in…
A central irony of Life Sucks Or The Present Ridiculous, Aaron Posner's new, hyper-hip adaptation of Chekhov's classic Uncle Vanya"-now making its World Premiere at Theatre J—is that t…
Word is, storytelling prowess is an evolutionarily superior characteristic of the Irish, and in his 3-character play, Terminus, Irish playwright Mark O'Rowe ratchets up the RPMs of storytell…
With its new production of Beauty and the Beast, Synetic Theater ventures much more deeply into the changeable world of shadow play.  Featuring marvelous shadow puppet storytelling tec…
Arena Stage's exquisitely intimate Kogod Cradle is home to a new mutli-voiced, multi-authored production, Our War, about the contemporary reverberations of America's own civil war 150+ years…
In the other half of its repertory tour at Shakespeare Theatre South Africa's Isango Ensemble transformed the Bard's poetic telling of the Venus and Adonis myth into a glorious, multi-dimens…
Shakespeare Theatre launched its 2014-15 Presentation Series with the ebullient work of South Africa's Isango Ensemble, which is presenting adaptations of Mozart's opera, The Magic Flute " I…
Ackerley not Ackerby Hermetic, as in obscure and difficult for outsiders to understand. That's the word for Kathleen Ackerley's  new play, Pol Pot & Associates, LLP, Longacr…
Aaron Posner’s Stupid F***ing Bird soared to a triumphant return to Woolly Mammoth this week–a complete remount with its sensational original cast re-assembled and rearing to …
Theatrical theorists weary of plays with their 4th walls intact and the audience's willing suspension of disbelief tucked safely into their breast pockets can have some fun with John Feffer'…
The noted writer and teacher Richard Bausch posits that a writer can do anything except bore or confuse the reader. Presumably, the same tenet applies to the playwright, with the proviso…
The late August Wilson is one of America's great playwrights, and his extraordinary canon of plays is making its debut at Olney Theatre Center in Olney, Maryland. Â Theatregoers should not…
The Noel Coward-based play Brief Encounter, the Kneehigh import now playing at the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Landsburgh Theatre, comes to Washington as if from another era, anot…
Once in a rare while, a work of art comes along that so utterly captures the capacity of the imagination that audiences can but weep with laughter and leap to their feet in splendid delight.…
Marguerite Duras’s play Savannah Bay follows a young woman desperate to discover the truth about her mother’s suicide the day after her birth. Writer Marguerite Duras, b…
If you love Ella Fitzgerald"heck, even if you were born last week and are thus only vaguely familiar with Ella Fitzgerald (in fact, especially if you're only vaguely familiar with her)–…
Lovers of French song and lovers of beautiful music and beautiful dance will love La Vie en Rose. And lovers of art forms that blend ballet with transcendent voices, lush musicianship, a…
