Washington DC

A gay man with a disability asks “Hi, Are You Single?” on the Woolly dating app

Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in association with IAMA Theatre Company present Ryan J. Haddad’s celebrated autobiographical solo show Hi, Are You Single? directed by Laura Savia and Jess McLeod. “I...

A son summons his absent father in ‘Dear Mapel’ at Mosaic Theater

Urgent times call for urgent theater. And urgent theater has been Mosaic Theater Company’s calling card since its founding — rather unexpectedly — five years ago, by artistic director/playwright Ari...

4615 Theatre Company unveils a new season in a wild variety of forms

Hot off of winning the 2020 John Aniello Award for Outstanding Emerging Theatre Company, the 4615 Theatre has created a multifaceted solution to meet the challenge posed by the pandemic. For the first...

Annapolis Shakespeare Company captures the magic of ‘A Christmas Carol’

Annapolis Shakespeare Company’s production of A Christmas Carol is a moving, faithful adaptation of Charles Dickens’ beloved holiday tale, now playing virtually for stay-at-home audiences. Adapted by...

‘Signature Vinyl’ spins first-rate versions of turntable classics

Directed and conceived by Matthew Gardiner, Signature Vinyl delivers a filmed concert of songs performed by an excellent cast of singers and musicians, captured live at several DC-area outdoor...

Make December merry and bright with local holiday arts offerings

When the holiday season approaches, we tend to turn to things that give us joy and comfort. The arts always seem to take center stage during these darker months – providing togetherness, light, and...

A beautiful winter rose blooms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ at ASC

One of my family’s most cherished traditions this time of year has been to visit family down south (of course), but also to stop off in Staunton, Virginia, for a few days. It is a great time of year...

‘A Protest in Eight’ at Theater Alliance packs a social-justice punch

No doubt about it, in just fifteen minutes, protest theater can pack a powerful punch. Theater Alliance’s creatively ambitious A Protest in Eight, with its lineup of eight fierce young playwrights,...

Taylor Mac puts on the glitz in ‘Holiday Sauce’ on demand

Taylor Mac is an acquired bad taste, and fans who remember fondly Taylor Mac’s over-the-top Holiday Sauce—which played live one-night-only last year at The Kennedy Center—will be gladdened to know a...

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...

Update: Mosaic’s #ENOUGH plays against gun violence now available on Vimeo

Mosaic Theater Company will participate in the nationwide reading of #ENOUGH: Plays to End Gun Violence, seven winning short plays in a nationwide competition for middle and high school students. On...

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...

Studio’s bold and smart ‘I Hate It Here’ is a seismic theatrical experience

Ike Holter is a trickster playwright so right for our quicksand-ridden times. In his new audio play commissioned by Studio Theatre (he also directed), Holter creates a grand hall of mirrors full of...

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...

Adrienne Kennedy festival replays a painful drama from her own life

When Ohio State University invites the distinguished author Suzanne Alexander back to her alma mater, she is asked specifically to lecture on the theme of violence in her works. Brace yourself, Ohio...

Signature Theatre heralds five-show cinematic season

Signature Theatre has announced the full lineup for its 2021 Signature Features season, and it will be all online: five fully staged plays and musicals, made exclusively for the screen and...

The joys of watching actors in virtual ‘Lobby Hero’ at Silver Spring Stage

Silver Spring Stage’s streaming production of Lobby Hero is a pleasure to watch. Filmed on the theater’s stage, it combines the joys of seeing actors physically interacting together with some of...

1st Stage joins nationwide reading of plays against gun violence Dec. 14

1st Stage is proud to be participating in the #ENOUGH: Plays to End Gun Violence project, working with visionary teenage playwrights across the country who have come together to speak out against gun...

Elegies for empty stages, by Whitney White and Psalmayene 24

Remembering The Amen Corner at Shakespeare Theatre Company By Whitney White with Daniel Soule Working on James Baldwin’s The Amen Corner was one of the most fulfilling artistic experiences I have ever...

What’s next in Prologue Theatre’s monthly new works series

Prologue Theatre has launched FOREWORD: A New Works Series. Each month through March 2021, a creative team will come together for two weeks to workshop a playwright’s new play, culminating in a...

A slapstick look at the spoiled rich in Happenstance Theater’s ‘Barococo’

It’s one thing to be cooped up and have an excuse for it; COVID has us all hunkering down, and we all teeter on the brink between tedium and madness—with good reason. It’s another thing entirely to...

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...

Studio’s new audio play is an anthem for a world on the brink

As the world collectively plans to close the door (and maybe throw away the key?) on 2020, Studio Theatre offers a reflection on this complicated, unexpected, and consequential moment in history with...

New Solas Nua interim executive director arrives from Ireland

Solas Nua, the DC-based contemporary Irish arts organization, has appointed Miranda Driscoll its interim executive director. Having served for five years as director/CEO of Sirius Arts Centre in...

Update: GALA Hispanic Theatre’s comedy ‘Dog in the Manger’ to get a run online

Live performances of The Dog in the Manger at GALA Hispanic Theatre have ended, but the company has announced that the production will be available to enjoy streaming. Tickets may be purchased online...

A Black son’s assault by police, powerfully told in the Adrienne Kennedy festival

Twenty-nine years before George Floyd was murdered on camera and 18 years before Black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested for “breaking and entering” into his own home, Antioch College...

Tom Teasley, Shu-Chen Cuff, Chao Tian to perform an inspired virtual concert

The headlines tell us to stay put. To not travel so we protect ourselves, our loved ones, our communities and the Nation as a whole—advice that DC-area residents seem to be heeding this Thanksgiving....

Woolly Mammoth’s ‘JookJOYnt’ was a truly joyous journey

Woolly Mammoth Theatre recently released their mixed media streaming production of The JookJOYnt, A Black in Space Powered by Makers Lab Experience. The video is a funky intergalactic collage of...

‘This Zoom Life’ could be the the best comedy web series since COVID

These days, in lieu of live scripted comedy, I’ve learned to feel lucky whenever I find online theater that gets me LOLing all alone. To be honest, that happens rarely, and never all the way through....

COVID claims another local theater: Brave Spirits to close

Brave Spirits Theatre announced in September that its acclaimed eight-play Shakespeare’s histories series would end (“A tribute to Brave Spirits as it calls off Shakespeare’s histories due to COVID”)....

Silver Spring Stage goes online with arresting opener ‘Lobby Hero’

Silver Spring Stage is offering a new season of virtual performances. First up is Lobby Hero by the Academy Award–winning Kenneth Lonergan, an absorbing play where good intentions can be undermined by...

COVID cancelations to cost Kennedy Center over $80 million

Responding to the mounting COVID-19 pandemic, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has canceled all previously scheduled programs through April 25, 2021. Additionally, Washington...

Mosaic Theater to move on without its founding artistic director, Ari Roth

In a meeting Tuesday night, November 17, 2020, the 26-member board of Mosaic Theater Company of DC unanimously accepted the resignation of Ari Roth, who founded the company six years ago “to be a home...

‘This Is Who I Am,’ a father-son drama, to Zoom live from two kitchens

Separated by continents, an estranged father and son reunite over Zoom. From their respective kitchens in Ramallah and in New York City, they recreate a cherished family recipe and struggle to bridge...

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...

In two live shows at Keegan Theatre, a transwoman and two Black men get real

The Keegan Theatre’s streamed live performances from their stage are the closest thing I’ve seen so far to theater as we remember it avant le deluge. They are presenting two pieces in repertory, which...

Adrienne Kennedy festival opens with haunting letters between lovers

Round House Theatre, in association with McCarter Theatre Center, has launched its digital series of works by Adrienne Kennedy with the enigmatic He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box, directed by Nicole...

Essential Theatre resurrects a heart-wrencher, ‘The Resurrection of Alice’

“If you like theatrical storytelling—the kind that catches you by the heartstrings, gets you all wrapped up, then doesn’t let loose until the very end—you’re going to love The Resurrection of Alice.”...

Washington Stage Guild to serve up an intellectual feast over Thanksgiving

Washington Stage Guild will present a “heavenly” online performance of George Bernard Shaw’s Don Juan in Hell, the famous dream sequence from his play Man and Superman. Audiences are invited to savor...

Opera Lafayette takes a French comic classic to the Old West

Take any decent road trip through the American West and you’re bound to pass half a dozen old opera houses in varying states of disrepair, or repair — if there happens to be a local renaissance...

‘JookJOYnt’ from Woolly and Makers Lab to jump with Black LGBTQ+ joy

Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and DC creative collective Makers Lab reunite for The JookJOYnt, a free, five-part video experience exploring themes of vulnerability, intimacy, and connection. The full...

Update: Creative Cauldron’s ‘On Air’ to stream November 16 to December 13

“Dancing and singing over the wireless airways—how might it have happened? What might have been a dry history lesson is given delightfully appealing musical charm in Creative Cauldron’s world premiere...

IN Series’s amusing ‘Gonzales Cantata’ musicalizes a congressional grilling

The Gonzales Cantata, a streaming production of the IN Series online program Invision, The Logan Operahouse Without Walls, is a cleverly done “docu-opera.” Composer Melissa Dunphy has taken the...

Round House begins monthlong tribute to living legend Adrienne Kennedy

Round House Theatre, in association with McCarter Theatre Center, has announced updated details for The Work of Adrienne Kennedy: Inspiration & Influence, a four-week festival highlighting the...

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...

IN Series’s emotional ‘Orphée et Eurydice’ evokes loss of a loved one

Orphée et Eurydice, a streaming production of the IN Series online program Invision, The Logan Operahouse Without Walls, is a cleverly updated version of Gluck’s classic 1762 opera. It features...

IN Series’s ‘Gonzales Cantata’ tells a true story of political corruption

Just when American politics could not seem more fraught, IN Series is offering a cheeky throwback to a shockingly simpler time: a made-for-film production of Melissa Dunphy’s The Gonzales Cantata....

How the Kennedy Center is keeping live performance alive (cautiously)

Update November 18, 2020: COVID cancelations to cost Kennedy Center over $80 million Scheduled performances through April 25 are off; Broadway musical tours are postponed; Kennedy Center Honors are...

Keegan Theatre’s fall rep to stream in real time from onstage

Keegan Theatre returns to mainstage programming with a pair of productions streaming live in rep November 12 to 29, 2020. Performed from the Keegan stage, the fall repertory includes the world...