Interviews and Features

A Juneteenth benchmark of local #WeSeeYouWAT action

A measure of antiracist work underway and a reminder of work yet to be done.

NSO reunites with live audience after 15 months of silence

For the first time in more than a year, audiences lined up outside the Kennedy Center’s Concert Hall to hear the National Symphony Orchestra perform last week. Musicians and their public were together...

Women composers to revel this weekend at WoCo Fest 2021

Cellist Amanda Gookin joined the legions of artists whose lives were upended when the pandemic robbed them and their public of sharing music in the same space. But that all changes on Saturday, June...

Company | E returns to live performance with new works on climate change

Company | E put out a bold call for choreographers early this spring. In the era of COVID cancellations and livestream programming this announcement provided a bright spot, a hint that change was on...

A feel-good podcast from theatermakers Matt Conner and Stephen Gregory Smith

Do you have those friends who are so crazy talented, smart, and wonderful that you wonder how in the world you are lucky enough to have crossed paths with them? That’s Matt Conner and Stephen Gregory...

A close look at ‘City in Transition,’ Theater Alliance’s love letter to DC

Transition as a noun means “the process or period of changing from one state to another.” As a verb it means “to undergo or cause to undergo a process or period of transition.” Both definitions, from...

Cheryl L. West on her Broadway-bound musical about Sister Rosetta Tharpe

In an exclusive interview, the book writer for ‘Shout Sister Shout!’ shares the joy and bravery of the Godmother of Rock ’n’ Roll.

Making actor-centric art, new Virtual Repertory Theater Collective goes ‘Wilde’

“I wanted to give actors the chance to have a real creative say.” —Founding Artistic Director Kari Kitts

I took Natsu Onoda Power’s ‘Okinawa Field Trip’ and came back with questions

In a world where our lives are bounded by pandemic restrictions, performance and travel alike have been reduced mostly to private viewings and stay-cations. The situation has spawned experiments to...

The next generation of theatermakers will include these young Black voices

As the pandemic has left live theater dark for the past year, we have been given an unexpected gift: the opportunity to take in virtual theatrical productions from companies we may not be familiar...

Future arts managers at GMU look to rebuild show business

The performing arts, which have been and are dealing with major stressors, need passionate change agents to lead into the future. While that seems clear to me, I wanted to know what might be on the...

The Reclamation Project holds space to heal past harm in theater

The convergence of the COVID-19 pandemic and the political uprisings resulting from the anti-Black violence that killed George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Tony McDade last year (as well as the...

A fresh look at a hookup in ‘Frankie and Johnny’ from MetroStage

MetroStage continues its exploration of the works of the late multi-Tony Award winning playwright Terrence McNally with a virtual reading of Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune. Directed by Stefan...

Tuyet Thi Pham reclaims her family origin story in ‘Motherland’ at Atlas

What can be discovered if we find the time and ability to have a conversation with our parents about the time before we existed? Think of what we might learn. Think of the unremembered or...

The reopening long shot

It’s been quite the terrifying year for us connected to the performing arts. An absolute scary time that began in mid-March 2020 as theaters went dark, lit only by their ghost lights. And now it seems...

How Asolo Rep has weathered COVID and committed to BIPOC representation

As the run of Fannie: The Music and Life of Fannie Lou Hamer came to a rousing close on March 3, 2021, Artistic Director Michael Donald Edwards and Managing Director Linda DiGabriele made themselves...

Trans Lives and Theater as Change Agent: A Q&A with Dane Figueroa Edidi and Natsu Onoda Power

In observance of the the 12th annual International Transgender Day of Visibility (March 31, 2021), we republish this in-depth conversation with two leading lights in DC-area theater. —John...

A year into COVID, how theater is changing maybe forever

At first, the shutdown of live theater came as a shock. Then, once artists were left to think quick on their feet, an extraordinary evolution began to happen. At the beginning of the coronavirus...

The Bengsons create new indie-folk musical for Arena Stage

Shaun and Abigail Bengson met in New York City at a party and after talking, decided to start a band together. Their first rehearsal turned into their first date, and three weeks later, they were...

Roaring back: Noseda returns to lead NSO in four filmed concerts

Gianandrea Noseda has returned to the podium of his beloved National Symphony Orchestra, awakening the sleeping giant that is the sound he has crafted as the ensemble’s music director since the...

On toxic artistic leadership (part three): Manifesto for theater ethics

Back in the 1980s, the Harvard University Business School dismissed offers to create a curriculum in ethics—free of charge, if I remember correctly; an alumnus even offered to pay for it. The Business...

My search for Black women’s unsung voices, or, Why theater needs a ‘Reset’

Questions of “canon” have haunted me throughout my theatrical education and subsequent professional career. As a precocious young child obsessed with the performing arts, I searched and searched for...

On toxic artistic leadership (part two): Training actors to be abused

The departure of Ethan McSweeny from the American Shakespeare Center was only one among many over the past year. Taken as a whole, the protests and departures/firings raise issues that all of us must...

On toxic artistic leadership (part one): When workers unite in protest

News of Ethan McSweeny’s departure as artistic director of the American Shakespeare Center has prompted a variety of responses—and the mainstream theater critics seem divided on how to handle it. A...

Art, ritual, and connection to meet up at ‘Shrines’ by the Arcanists

The Arcanists, creators of the cult-hit interactive variety show The Tarot Reading, have devised a new site-specific experience called Shrines, led by multi-award-winning scenic and costume designer...

How Imagination Stage is making sure the kids are okay during COVID

A new guard is stepping in at Imagination Stage, led by longtime Artistic Director, now Producing Artistic Director Janet Stanford. Rounding out the leadership trifecta are Meghann Babo-Shroyer as...

How do we love in the time of COVID? Rep Stage counts ten ways.

For its first production since shutdown, Rep Stage explores how love can help us connect and heal in a time of isolation and unrest. The fully produced, filmed theater event of ten original...

No mansplaining in this all-women’s storytelling show

The question is, Who Tells Our Story? In a response to that question, Better Said Than Done is presenting the 2021 Women’s Storytelling Festival. The virtual event will be live online March 19–21,...

A riveting E. Faye Butler lifts up Black history as Fannie Lou Hamer

Sarasota, Florida’s Asolo Rep continues its 2021 outdoor season with the Rolling World Premiere of Mississippi native Cheryl L. West’s Fannie: The Music and Life of Fannie Lou Hamer. Originally...

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra to play composers silenced by Nazis

Four composers who died in Nazi concentration camps are known to have written entire compositions while imprisoned there, and the Washington–Baltimore region deserves its share of credit in bringing...

Ken Ludwig on his parents’ love story and the lost art of letter-writing

When I interviewed Ken Ludwig about his latest play, Dear Jack, Dear Louise, which opened at Arena Stage more than a year ago, I was curious about his parents—the Jack and Louise of the title—and the...

Meet the talented teens who won Mosaic’s playwriting contest

Mosaic Theater Company announces and celebrates the talented winners of its inaugural Playwriting Contest for high school students. Each winning play will receive a reading by professional actors as...

Metro update: Without Biden bailout, slashed service still likely

We at DCMTA continue to track the WMATA budget and any service-cut issues, given Metro’s critical importance to the survival of live performing arts. Based upon our reach-out to arts leadership, Metro...

Stepping to Go-Go, Step Afrika! takes on COVID prevention

“We have a shared responsibility to keep our communities safe,” Step Afrika! founder C. Brian Williams told me at the top of our phone conversation. With the pandemic continuing to ravage the DC area...

Ditch the “Is this theater?” debate, by Jordan Friend and Gregory Keng Strasser

Gregory Keng Strasser (producing director): Hey, Jordan. Jordan Friend (artistic director): Hey, Greg. I guess we have to pretend like we don’t talk to each other every day. Greg: So. 4615 GO — where...

Why Trump has made Shakespeare matter more than ever in DC

There is something inherently Shakespearean about DC. It’s easy to picture Lincoln wandering the corridors of the White House reciting his favorite passages. In his journal, John Adams once observed a...

MetroStage to stream ‘Mothers and Sons’ in tribute to Terrence McNally

What does a gay man call another gay man to whom he is committed? The character Cal in Terrence McNally’s Mothers and Sons gropes for the right word: Andre and I were what people called “boyfriends”...

‘Twelve Days of Watchmas’ from #WeSeeYou is a blunt and raw must-read

Revolution is rooted in protest. And in revolutionary ways, protest theater promotes social change. The ubiquitous We See You, White American Theater movement courageously flips the script using the...

The year that COVID canceled live theater and a revolution came to life

Theater history will long remember that 2020 was the year that COVID canceled live performance. It canceled lots else, of course, including, tragically, hundreds of thousands of lifetimes. But it is...

A tribute to Lorraine Treanor, Washington theater’s booster-in-chief

In June 2005 Lorraine Treanor, a relatively new theater-maker transplant from Chicago, who had followed her husband’s work to settle in the Greater Washington area, joined with Walter “Ronnie” Ruff to...

How the pandemic got music educators to think outside the box

In a typical year, Sound Impact reaches some 8,000 students throughout the United States and Central America. But typical, 2020 is not. The upheaval brought on by the pandemic left this collective of...

Tennessee Williams’s ‘Lady from the Village of Falling Flowers’ returns

Spooky Action Theater’s utterly charming production of The Lady from the Village of Falling Flowers—a recently discovered early work by Tennessee Williams directed for puppets and people by Natsu...

In Audrey Cefaly’s wistful ‘Story of Walter,’ a lonely dad and his daughter

Social media once again proves invaluable to connect theatergoers with performance. This instance is courtesy of Signature Theatre’s SigWorks: Monday Night Play Readings. Not only was there a reading...

Three queer yeshiva grads defy “ex-gay” therapy in ‘Abomination’ at Theater J

Sure, we theatergoers miss live productions. But then again, for the adventuresome, there is a veritable taster’s menu of virtual theatrical events. No need to leave home, no need for Metro or...

Using Zoom in a new way to create theater that transforms how we see

By Neal Davidson “Dramatic Betweenness”: A new theatrical experience Here’s an incredibly simple idea: a play written and performed as a video call. Nothing more. Not a streamed live production, a...

Solas Nua’s latest is one time only and off the wall

Virtual connections have become a life force in these days without live performance as the pandemic is reaching its ninth month with us. What was once considered off-putting, if not cold, is now a way...

George Mason University to center Black voices in artist-activist conversations

As the DC-area theater community reckons with and takes steps to combat racism through open, heartfelt conversations and real-world actions to bring forth equity, diversity, and inclusion, we at DCMTA...

Tiny chamber concert series strikes audience gold in crisis

When Ellen Hwangbo launched a chamber concert series in November 2019 that included a venue just a stone’s throw from the White House, little seemed brazen about it. But within months, American...

Why Shaw’s wit is a perfect fit for Washington Stage Guild online

In mid-March DC-area theaters went dark and theatergoers’ calendars emptied of live shows to take in—but light and sound and performances are coming into view by way of Zoom and YouTube. When we...

Patrons pining for in-person performance are now finding it by the carload

We thought the days of drive-in movie theaters, with patrons braving the weather for the sake of a good time, were a thing of the past. But pandemic desperation has brought this back, easing some of...