Keegan’s about to go live (stream) with Trans Am and Gumbo to Mumbo
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 across the...
View ArticleTom Prewitt, Avant Bard’s leader, memorial service announced
Update: A memorial service for Tom Prewitt will be held Sunday, Nov 29, 2020 at 1 pm ET. Tom’s family invites you to join them in remembering Tom’s life and celebrating his memory. For a link to the...
View ArticleReview: El Perro del Hortelano (The Dog in the Manger) from GALA Hispanic...
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 Director...
View ArticleReview: A fresh version of From Gumbo to Mumbo playing now
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 just shy...
View ArticleReview: Trans rock star Lisa Stephen Friday debuts her personal story in...
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 her...
View ArticleAri Roth resigns from Mosaic Theater of DC
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 Directors Bill...
View ArticleReview: The Marriage Proposal, a Chekhovian comic soufflé
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, kneeling...
View ArticleWarning: Scammer posing as British director targets women in online scheme
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 referred to...
View ArticleReview: Bill Irwin On Beckett In Screen, a performance Beckett would have...
“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 “Existentialism” did...
View ArticleCan theatres survive the pandemic? For Brave Spirits, the answer is no.
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 Shakespeare’s...
View ArticleReview: Howard University featured in Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and...
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, Susan...
View ArticleWith GALA’s cancellations, all DC-area theatres are now closed to in-person...
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 had caused...
View ArticleReview: Independent Claus from Best Medicine. Not one of its best
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 Medicine Rep’s An...
View ArticleReview: Loveday Brooke in ‘The Mystery of the Drawn Daggers’
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 Daggers’, is no...
View ArticleReview: Jefferson Mays’ extraordinary solo performance in filmed Christmas Carol
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 Cratchit,...
View ArticleDC Theatre Scene to cease publication Dec 31
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 articles, no...
View ArticleReview: A very merry Christmas Carol from American Shakespeare Center
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 skinflint and a...
View ArticleBlack Theatre: Jennifer L Nelson reflects on African Continuum Theatre Company
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 includes...
View ArticleBroadway: Happy Hanukkah. The Folksbiene Chanukah Spectacular
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 ostensibly...
View ArticleReview: I Hate It Here: Stories from the End of the Old World
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 period on our...
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