John Stoltenberg

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘It’s What We Do: A Play About the Occupation’

As a medium for understanding what has been going on in the Israel-occupied territories, the art of theater can do something that other media cannot. Theater can narrate events and tell stories, of...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘mostly the VOICE: a black lesbian journey’

There are many delightful and poignant moments in mostly the VOICE: a black lesbian journey. This engaging autobiographical amalgam of poetry, original music, and storytelling—written and performed by...

DC Black Theatre Festival: ‘Plot Twists…’

An outstanding assembly of DC’s African American LGBTQ artists converged to create Plot Twists…, a late addition to the DC Black Theatre Festival lineup. Conceived and produced by Monte J. Wolfe—and...

DC Black Theatre Festival: ‘Secrets of a Black Boy’

A theater troupe from Toronto brought this play to town for three performances only for the DC Black Theater Festival. Secrets of a Black Boy speaks with great honesty and artistry. It achieves on...

DC Black Theatre Festival: ‘Finally Quiet in My Head’

Madness has been dramatized in theater at least since the ancient Greeks. The mind come loose from its moorings, the persona altered, a terror deep in the self—whether in life or on stage, this...

2015 Capital Fringe Preview #11: ‘Out of Silence: Abortion Stories from the 1 in 3 Campaign’

“It’s really important that we are able to hear our stories on the stage,” said Marie Byrd Sproul as we talked about the show she directed—Out of Silence: Abortion Stories from the 1 in 3...

‘The Book of Mormon’ at The Kennedy Center

Two years ago I saw the touring production of The Book of Mormon at The Kennedy Center and was utterly blown away. I wrote a column at the time about the profound content of The Book of Mormon,...

‘Occupied Territories’ at Theater Alliance

The theater is no a stranger to the wounds of war. Countless plays and performance pieces have opened our hearts and minds to that which is unhealed and raw, to that which persists as pain and trauma,...

Magic Time! ’The Word and the Wasteland’ at The Source Festival

At the center of this taut, trenchant play by Timothy Guillot is a fascinatingly enigmatic character named Benjamin Harding. He has very few lines. For the better part of two hours, Joshua Simon...

‘The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife’ at Theater J

A hit Broadway comedy, The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife, rounds out Theater J’s 2014–2015 season in a production smartly directed by Eleanor Holdridge. Written in a mainstream mode by Charles...

Magic Time! Update 6/6/15: ‘Out/Spoken: Intimate Stories of LGBT Pride: Meet the Storytellers of ‘Out/Spoken’-Onstage at 9:30 Club June 5th by Michael Poandl and John Stoltenberg

Update on 6/6/15: A near-capacity crowd gathered in the 9:30 Club Friday night, June 5, 2015—not standing in wait for a band to come on but seated in folding chairs for an evening of storytelling. The...

‘NSFW’ at Round House Theatre Company

Round House Theatre just opened a stunningly good production of NSFW directed by Meredith McDonough. The script by British playwright Lucy Kirkwood is a marvel in itself, because it is a scathingly...

UPDATED 6/1/15: Magic Time!: ‘I’m an Improviser by Trade’: A Q&A With Matthew R. Wilson, Director of Faction of Fools’ ‘Our Town’

Updated 6/1/5: Before seeing Faction of Fools’ Commedia dell’arte interpretation of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town in full production (I’d previously seen it in a workshop), I was skeptical whether the...

‘happiness (and other reasons to die)’ at The Welders

You might think a suicide pact among losers who meet on line would not be a terribly good premise for a warmhearted comedy—much less a noir one à la Martin McDonaugh. You might assume there’s not a...

‘The Trap’ at Ambassador Theater

The gaunt and haunted figure of Franz Kafka obsessed the renowned Polish poet, novelist, and dramatist Tadeusz Różewicz (1921-2014). His two-act play The Trap—part expressionistic, part...

Magic Time! ‘Out/Spoken: Intimate Stories of LGBT Pride: Meet the Storytellers of ‘Out/Spoken’-Onstage at 9:30 Club June 5th by Michael Poandl and John Stoltenberg

Storytelling is at the core of theatre, but it also stands alone as a unique form of entertainment. Not quite monologue, not quite stand-up comedy, what storytellers do best is blend their personal...

Magic Time! ‘Theater from the Heart’: A Q&A with ‘Jumpers for Goalposts’ Playwright Tom Wells

The morning after Jumpers for Goalposts opened at Studio Theatre, I sat down to talk with its very talented playwright, Tom Wells. He had been in town watching the last few weeks of rehearsals,...

‘The Shipment’ at Forum Theatre

If there were a Richter Scale for risk-taking in theater, Forum Theatre’s production ofThe Shipment would register right up at the top. In brazenly challenging assumptions about how we perceive race...

Magic Time! ‘Good Hope Road’ (Staged Reading)

For decades theatergoers have warmed to plays set in rooming houses. Playwrights have been fond of the form too, because it permits an otherwise random mix of boarders to become an engrossing cast of...

Next Day Theater’s Matt Spangler Recaps Their May 16, 2015 Performance at Tropicalia

When you go to one-night-only theater, you never know what you’ll get. There’s no word of mouth, no buzz, no yelping from critics. It’s like speed blind-dating And if the one-night-stand in question,...

Magic Time!: ‘I’m an Improviser by Trade’: A Q&A With Matthew R. Wilson, Director of Faction of Fools’ ‘Our Town’

It’s kind of a tossup these days whether Matthew R. Wilson is more newsworthy because he’s leaving as artistic director of Faction of Fools, the Commedia dell’arte company he founded, to teach...

Magic Time! ‘Unpacking Racism’: A Q&A with Psalmayene 24, Director of Forum Theatre’s ‘The Shipment’

Before I spoke with Psalmayne 24 about his direction of The Shipment—which plays through June 13, 2015, at Forum Theatre—I read the play by Young Jean Lee. John: I found the script powerful and deep....

Magic Time! ‘Cabaret’ at Signature Theatre

By the end of Act One, I was stunned and shaken. By the end of Act Two, I was speechless, not wanting to move. And I had seen this show before. The movie too. I already knew that it has a dark...

‘Jumpers for Goalposts’ at The Studio Theatre

There have been some great plays set in locker rooms that lay bare the anxieties underlying men’s lives. After all, the sports locker room is the archetypical site of respite from the male-male combat...

‘The Call’ at Theater J

Tanya Barfield’s play The Call seeks to give dramatic expression to the stark chasm between first world problems and third world problems. In so doing it tackles a topic with vast global consequence...

‘Dontrell, Who Kissed the Sea’ at Theater Alliance

A bright 18-year-old named Dontrell has had a dream. He saw a man with the face of his father who is captive on a slave ship crossing the Atlantic. In the dark hold of the vessel he saw that man and a...

‘The Great Lieutenant Sprinkle Didn’t Save Me’ at Field Trip Theatre

“Every ghost story is kind of like a history lesson,” says the young woman identified as A History Major in The Great Lieutenant Sprinkle Didn’t Save Me, an intriguing new play by Jack Novak now...

‘On Approval’ at Washington Stage Guild

The Broadway and West End audiences that made Frederick Lonsdale’s On Approval a hit in the 1920s could not possibly have guessed how this light comedy would play in 2015. Bet they would be surprised....

Free Play Reading Today at 2 PM of LOVE GODFREY/LOVE GEORGE, by John Stoltenberg at the MLK Library in DC

LOVE GODFREY/LOVE GEORGE, by John Stoltenberg has a FREE staged reading TODAY, Sunday, May 3, 2015, at 2:00 pm at the MLK Library John: Readers of DCMetroTheaterArts know you as a writer about...

John Stoltenberg Interviews John Stoltenberg About His Play ‘Love Godfrey / Love George’ That Has a Free Reading on May 3rd @ 2 PM

A play by contributing writer John Stoltenberg will have a staged reading Sunday, May 3, 2015, at 2:00 pm at the MLK Library. John sat down with himself to pick his brain about it. John: Readers of...

Magic Time! ‘Closet Land’ at Factory 449 by John Stoltenberg

When we are ushered into the tiny dimly lit theater, constructed as a claustrophobic black box with only two rows of chairs on all sides, we enter a nightmare more harrowing and disquieting than any...

‘The Revolutionists’ at The Catholic University Department of Drama (Review)

The Revolutionists, an ambitious and promising new play by Lauren Gunderson, is getting a spiffy first full production courtesy of The Catholic University Department of Drama prior to its professional...

Magic Time! ‘Murder Ballad’ at The Studio Theatre by John Stoltenberg

The fourth-floor black box at Studio Theatre has housed some extraordinary original storytelling. Recent productions of Terminus and Moth leap to mind. The space, called Stage 4, seems like a magnet...

‘Doctor Faustus’ at Gallaudet University Theatre and Dance Program

A steampunk staging of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus without any spoken or signed language? Just movement and mime and lighting and scenic effects? Sounds crazy, right? Well, depending on the...

‘Don’t Die in the Dark’ at Studio 1469

Last night, on the 150th anniversary of the assassination of President Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre, I was in a DC theater venue of a very different sort: a tiny white-box art-gallery space down an...

‘Very Still & Hard to See’ at Rorschach Theatre Company

Very Still & Hard to See is neither quiet nor a challenge to perceive. Its aural and optical pleasures are bountiful. For this production of Steve Yockey’s cycle of supernatural short plays, directed...

‘Drunkle Vanya’ at LiveArtDC

When I arrived to see Drunkle Vanya last night, the first thing I did was order a vodka. I don’t typically drink before I review, but in this circumstance it seemed part of my job, since the show was...

‘Emerge’ at Howard University

Watching the annual student spring dance concert last night at Howard University, I was taken aback from the get-go. What I saw was so impressive in conception and execution, so powerful in its...

Magic Time!: ‘Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike’ at Arena Stage at The Mead Center for American Theater by John Stoltenberg

There is no humor in one’s own unhappiness. To be lonely and disappointed in life is not to be amused. To feel empty and over the hill is not to be tickled. Yet when we laugh at the woes and sorrows...

‘The Margins’ at Molotov Theatre Group by John Stoltenberg

There be eerie goings-on inside the DC Arts Center black box where Molotov Theatre Group is staging a spell-binder of a show about a psychic experiment to create a ghost by occultish committee....

Magic Time! ‘Lights Rise on Grace’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company by John Stoltenberg

Now playing at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company is a depiction of eroticism so intimate and artful that it left me woozy with awe and wonder. No one takes their clothes off. There are no phony porny...

Magic Time! ‘The Norwegians’ (‘Da Norvegians’) at Scena Theatre by a Norvegian

So dere’s dis play goin’ on in town called Da Norvegians, and it’s set in Minneapolis and it’s got Norvegian characters in it, so I tought I should go check it out, on accounta I vas born dere and...

Post-Play Palaver: A Passionate Response to Forum Theatre’s ‘Passion Play’ by Michael Poandl and John Stoltenberg

After Michael Poandl and John Stoltenberg, both DCMTA writers, saw a recent performance of Passion Play at Forum Theatre, they found themselves chattering back and forth trying to figure out why the...

‘Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead’ at The George Washington University

You’d be hard pressed to find a better theatrical catharsis for high school angst than Dog Sees God, Bert V. Royal’s funny/poignant reimagining of characters from the Peanuts comic strip playing this...

‘See Jane Sing! An Evening With Jane Lynch’ at The Birchmere

The crowd that came to The Birchmere last night to See Jane Sing! got a great big ol’ cabaret show full of offbeat tunes and upbeat fun. Jane Lynch wowed ‘em with her artful blend of agile song...

Magic Time!: ‘A Fan Chat with Jane Lynch’ Who is Birchmere-Bound on March 24 and 25th

Jane Lynch is an award-winning actor on stage, in movies, and on TV. She plays Sue Sylvester on Glee. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. And gosh darn it, she’s really fun to talk with on...

‘The Mad: A Fracking Fairytale’ at Theatre du Jour

In the words of Countess Aurelia, the title character in Jean Giraudoux’s comedy The Madwoman of Chaillot, ”Nothing is ever so wrong in this world that a sensible woman can’t set right in the course...

Magic Time! Passion for a Play: A Q&A With Michael Dove, Director of Forum Theatre’s ‘Passion Play’

Sarah Ruhl’s Passion Play is an epic three-part play set in three eras—Queen Elizabeth’s England, Adolf Hitler’s Germany, and Ronald Reagan’s America. It’s a fancifully sprawling story, and each act...

‘Bigger Than You, Bigger Than Me’ at Field Trip Theatre

If there is a post-9/11 theater in America—the way there was, for instance, a postwar theater in Europe—it just got bigger than before. A new play opened last night that offers a sharp new take on our...

‘Kid Victory’ at Signature Theatre (Review) by John Stoltenberg

“You have no idea what I’ve been through,” says Luke early on in Kid Victory, the nervy and unnerving new musical by John Kander (music) and Greg Pierce (book and lyrics) that just opened at Signature...