Magic Time!

Magic Time! ‘The Glass Menagerie’ at Ford’s Theatre

What’s the best way to stage a modern classic that is both reverential and revelatory? How does one mount a production that is respectful of the author’s intent yet freshly insightful. How can a...

Magic Time! An Interview With Kieyontaye D. Johnson-Carter, Author of ‘Love in Time of HIV’

When I first saw Love in Time of HIV in May 2012, I was deeply impressed. Giving voice to a young generation’s encounter with the health crisis left them by their elders, the play by Kieyontaye D....

Magic Time! ‘The Critic & The Real Inspector Hound’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

I just love it when theater laughs at itself. Who can forget the clockwork guffaws of Michael Frayn’s Noises Off, or Shakespeare’s enchanting send-up of theatrical conceits in the “Pyramus and Thisbe”...

Magic Time! A Look at ‘Wrestling Jerusalem’ at Mosaic Theater Company of DC

“It’s complicated.” So begins—on a note of supreme understatement—Writer/Performer Aaron Davidman’s captivating and insight-rich solo show, Wrestling Jerusalem, the third provocative production in...

Magic Time! A Look at Signature Theatre’s Stunning ‘West Side Story’

Signature Theatre’s production of West Side Story is every bit as eye-filling and ear-thrilling as any lover of this great American musical could wish. On a spacious thrust stage inside the intimate...

‘Sons of the Prophet’ at Theater J

Theater J’s first triumph of the season was Caleen Sinnette Jennings’ semi-autobiographical Queens Girl in the World. Its second is also loosely autobiographical: Stephen Karam’s Sons of the Prophet—a...

Magic Time! ‘Appomattox’ at Washington National Opera by John Stoltenberg

Appomattox, the magnificent and powerful opera by Philip Glass and Christopher Hampton that premiered at The Kennedy Center last night, looks at American history with a breathtaking urgency and...

Magic Time! ‘Gender-Flipping the Bard: A Q&A with Brave Spirits Theatre’s Kevin Finkelstein’

Back in December 2014 I had a conversation with the Director Kevin Finkelstein that has stayed with me. I had just seen his staging of A Klingon Christmas Carol, a one-night-only seasonal novelty...

Magic Time! ‘World Builders’ at Forum Theatre

To judge by social media, love and madness are a thing. Here are a few choice examples now making the rounds in the meme-osphere: “Love is merely a madness….” (William Shakespeare) “There is always...

Magic Time! ‘Winners and Losers’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

I left Winners and Losers thinking, Wow, there’s more here than meets the eye. Or, as one of the performers said in an interview, “The show really bangs around in your head….” On the face of it,...

Magic Time! The Women’s Voices Theater Festival: Darius & Twig’ at The Kennedy Center

I cannot help but think that if W.E.B. DuBois were alive, he would absolutely love Darius & Twig, the passionately purposeful play by Caleen Sinnette Jennings adapted from Walter Dean Myers’s popular...

Magic Time! A Report on ‘Straight Outta Hell’ at Next Day Theater

With a stand-up comedy act plus five skits, the laughs last Saturday at Straight Outta Hell—Next Day Theater’s one-night-only sketch-comedy surprise—were well earned. Producer Matt Spangler had once...

Magic Time!: Blown Away by a Bible Story Midway Through the Women’s Voices Theater Festival

To date I have been to 20 productions and one staged reading that are officially in DC’s Women’s Voices Theater Festival (11 of which I have written about for DCMetroTheaterArts), and I am booked to...

Magic Time! The Women’s Voices Theater Festival: A Report on ‘Lady Lay’ at Scena Theatre

As you take your seat at Scena Theatre’s production of Lady Lay, don’t be surprised to see the spitting image of Bob Dylan in the house. It’s the actor Ron Litman, who will pop into the play anon....

Magic Time! The Women’s Voices Theater Festival: A Conversation With the Director and Writer of Arcturus Theater Company’s ‘The Point’ Ross Heath and Marilyn Ansevin Austin

I’ve made a point to see as many productions in the Women’s Voices Theater Festival as I can. Some have thrilled me; some have not. For me theatergoing is like a gambling addiction. I always go...

Magic Time!: The Women’s Voices Theater Festival: ‘Animal’ at The Studio Theatre (Review #1)

After I saw an early Women’s Voices Theater Festival production (I’ve been to 16 and counting), a question lingered in my mind: Exactly what distinguishes a play as being in a woman’s voice other than...

Magic Time!: A Report on the Women’s Voices Theater Festival Reading of Lisa Loomer’s ‘Roe’ at The Kennedy Center

The Kennedy Center’s entry in the Women’s Voices Theater Festival was a one-night-only reading of Roe, a new two-act play by Lisa Loomer that dramatically personalizes pivotal chapters in the...

Magic Time!: An Interview with Playwright Stacy Jewell Lewis On ‘7 Layers Captive’: Her True Story of Being Sex Trafficked, Playing at The Kennedy Center on October 10th at 7 PM

Back in summer of 2014, I discovered an extraordinary play, playwright, and performer—7 Layers Captive, written and performed by Stacy Jewell Lewis based on her own true story of being abducted into...

Magic Time!: Women’s Voices Theater Festival: ‘Queens Girl in the World’ at Theater J

Theater J has just extended the run of Caleen Sinnette Jennings’ semi-autobiographical Queens Girl in the World through October 18, and my viewing of the play last night left no doubt in my mind about...

Magic Time! ‘an awQward noise’

Who gets to say what in the theater has become an increasingly pressing question. Of course the question has been pressing for a long time; it’s just now getting paid significant attention by folks...

Magic Time!: ‘Dogfight’ & ‘Dear Evan Hansen’: Pasek & Paul Transforming the Course of American Musical Theater

Last season The Keegan Theatre mounted a Vietnam War–era musical called Hair. In a column I described that production as “radiant and thrilling,” “an exuberant love fest as timeless as human hope.”...

Magic Time!: A Love Letter to ‘Dear Evan Hansen’

Dear Dear Evan Hansen, I know it might sound odd, but this is a love letter to a musical. I saw you for the first time in my life last night, and I knew right away I had to write you to tell you it...

Magic Time!: DC Theater’s Whopping Wayfinding Problem

When I, a longtime theater buff, moved to DC nearly a dozen years ago, I discovered something weird: The Metro DC theater scene is utterly confusing to anyone who doesn’t already know their way around...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Post-Play Palaver: Robert Michael Oliver and John Stoltenberg Look at ‘Light Rises on Grace’

Robert Michael Oliver and John Stoltenberg saw and wrote about the same opening night performance of Lights Rise on Grace at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, but they seem not to have seen the same...

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...

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...

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...

Magic Time! ‘Back to Methuselah’ at Washington Stage Guild (Article)

People rarely go to the theater anymore to know what a playwright thinks. We go to be entertained, we go to be moved, we go to be told stories, which might involve hearing what assorted characters...

Magic Time! A Hard Look at the Theme of Pornography in ‘Rapture, Blister, Burn’

I knew I would be bummed if I missed the Round House Theatre production of Gina Gionfriddo’s Rapture, Blister, Burn. Everything I read told me, “John, you gotta see this.” So when I caught its...

Magic Time! A Look at ‘Cherokee’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company (Article)

The connectivity crew at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company creates some of the most imaginative audience-engagement gimmicks in town. Typically tied to, and expressive of, the themes inside a play, these...

‘Fires in the Mirror’ at Howard University

Anna Deavere Smith’s classic Fires in the Mirror is getting a fascinating production this weekend by a very talented ensemble of student actors at Howard University. And on two counts this iteration...

How the Writer of ‘Life Sucks’ Reimagined the Women of ‘Uncle Vanya’: A Q&A with Aaron Posner, Judith Ingber, and Monica West

John Stoltenberg: It’s great that Molly Smith, artistic director of Arena Stage, and Eric Schaeffer, artistic director of Signature Theater, have initiated what will become the Women’s Voices Theater...

Magic Time! Look Who ♥s ‘The Vagina Monologues’

Each year at Valentine’s Day time, thousands of college and community groups around the world present staged readings and productions of The Vagina Monologues, by Tony Award–winning playwright Eve...

‘Out of Silence: Abortion Stories from the 1 in 3 Campaign’

No girl grows up dreaming of terminating a pregnancy. There are plenty of aspirational fantasies out there—some good for her, some not—but to be in a situation where she decides to have an abortion is...