Anacostia Arts Center

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...

WAPAVA Presents ‘The Ghosts of Christmas Past: The History of Ford’s Theatre’s A Christmas Carol’

The Washington Area Performing Arts Video Archive is holding a free event Monday, December 16th from 7 pm-8 pm at the Chevy Chase neighborhood library. Join WAPAVA’s Executive Director Bridget Grace...

‘Agnes of God’ at Factory 449 glories in a trinity of divine performances

Following on Factory 449’s electrifying production two years ago of Lela & Co.—which earned Helen Hayes Awards for both its director (Rick Hammerly) and star (Felicia Curry)—the company now presents...

Review: ‘Never Thought I was Black Till I Came to America’ (DC Black Theatre & Arts Festival)

The joyful spirit of Kenyan actress and storyteller, Anna Mwalagho filled the black box theater at Anacostia Arts Center as she performed her one-woman Black woman’s rites of passage message play,...

Review: ‘The Tarot Reading (V)’ at Anacostia Arts Center

The circusy-party vibe begins before showtime. The place is festooned with streamers, furnished with comfy sofas, bedecked in colored light, and stocked with bags of popcorn to share. A friendly Fool...

Magic Time!: 10 Questions for the Brains Behind ‘The Tarot Reading’

Even in this theater town abounding in innovation, The Tarot Reading stands out as an original. I can’t think of anything it’s quite like. After I saw an iteration last year (The Tarot Reading IV), I...

Magic Time!: ‘Safeguards’ by Brave Soul Collective at Anacostia Arts Center

Brave Soul Collective is a hidden gem of theatrical truthtelling about black men who are LGBTQ. Periodically the collective surfaces with a one-night-only showcase of work by local writing and...

Review: ‘Guerrilla Theater Works 3: A New Nation’ by Convergence Theatre

Sunday morning, before I drove from my home in Western Maryland to see Convergence Theatre’s production of A New Nation, I noted the following in a letter to the editor of my local newspaper: “There...

Magic Time!: ‘East of the River’ at Anacostia Musical Theatre Lab

Community engagement is a noble aspiration for a lot of theaters around town. The challenge is to make theater matter to folks who live in the nabe. To connect the institution to the community, to be...

With ‘A New Nation,’ Convergence Theatre’s Elena Velasco Aims To Make Theater Visceral

Art and activism are long-time partners. What better place than the DC area to meld the two in an effort to stimulate social justice and discover humanity from a progressive perspective. Or should I...

Review: ‘The Tarot Reading (IV)’ at Anacostia Arts Center

Despite its occultish name, The Tarot Reading is not a cabalistic rite for mystics. It is actually an ingenious theater game for hipster questers who are psyched to play along. To be sure, the...

Post-Play Palaver: ‘Lela & Co.’ by Factory 449 at The Anacostia Arts Center

Post-Play Palaver is an occasional series of conversations between DC Theater Arts writers who saw the same performance, got really into talking about it, and decided to continue their exchange in...

Review: ‘Lela & Co.’ by Factory 449 at The Anacostia Arts Center

The story of Cordelia Lynn’s Lela & Co. is a universal story, told across many borders and many nationalities, ethnicities, and races; during wartime and peacetime, at Super Bowls, World Cups, and...

Review: ‘Doubt: A Parable’ at SeeNoSun OnStage

We live in a world where self-righteous anger is the new god. It’s getting to the point where we can barely shift our torches and pitchforks aside long enough to tweet or post on Facebook. We hate so...

‘Doubt: A Parable’ has Press Night Tonight at SeeNoSun OnStage at the Anacostia Arts Center

SeeNoSun OnStage will open a four-week run of Doubt: A Parable, John Patrick Shanley’s controversial Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning drama. The play examines the Catholic Church abuse scandal...

Review: ‘[gay] Cymbeline’ at Theatre Prometheus

Queering Shakespeare may be gilding the lily. And if so DC these days has seen quite a few such embellished flowers. Like, golden nosegays for days. One of the best and freshest in the bunch is...

Review: ‘What Men Don’t Say’ at Anacostia Arts Center

J Weeks Entertainment’s What Men Don’t Say, starring and directed by J the Actor and written by Mone’t Bradley, is a mini-tour de force that puts a new twist on an old theme about men and their love...

‘What Men Don’t Say’ Plays at The Anacostia Arts Center on June 18th at 5 & 8 PM

The title What Men Don’t Say in itself stirs up a plethora of emotions from women and especially men. Many of these emotions originate from experiences, perception and history with both genders as...

Magic Time! A Report on ’24/7′ at African-American Collective Theater

For the 24th year, the African-American Collective Theater marked DC Black Pride Weekend with readings of seven short plays, collectively titled 24/7, all written and directed by Alan Sharpe, whose...

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....

‘Bug’ at SeeNoSun OnStage (Review #2)

Bug by Tracy Letts is not a show for anyone with a weak stomach. Blood, violence, nudity, and drugs are rampant in this dark comedy but, being October, this production will be exactly what many thrill...

‘Bug’ at SeeNoSun OnStage at Anacostia Arts Center (Review #1)

When I saw the SeeNoSun OnStage production of Tracy Letts’s first play, Killer Joe, a year ago June, I wrote a rave and called it “a powerful knockout of a show.” So it was with keen anticipation that...

‘Bug’ Opens on October 8th at SeeNoSun OnStage

SeeNoSun OnStage Presents Another Chilling Play by Tracy Letts SeeNoSun OnStage will open a four-week run of Bug, Tracy Letts’ tale of love, loss and government conspiracy on October 8th, 2015 at the...

2015 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Journey of a Bombshell: The Ina Ray Hutton Story’

Journey of a Bombshell: The Ina Ray Hutton Story offers audiences a rare glimpse into the big band culture of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s — from a female bandleader’s perspective. Written and performed by...

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! ‘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...

Spine: ‘Closet Land’: “A Lie Told Often Enough Becomes the Truth (Lenin, Vladamir)” by Robert Michael Oliver

Radha Bharadwaj’s Closet Land is not for the faint of heart. At least, not how it is done by Rick Hammerly of Factory 449 at the Anacostia Arts Center, where audience members walk into a closet, hear...

‘Closet Land’ at Factory 449 at The Anacostia Arts Center (Review) by David Siegel

Closet Land is certainly haunting. There was no shelter from this play’s unremitting psychological ferocity and physical fierceness of political D/s (Dominance and submission). Over time it became far...

‘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...

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...

Screening of Web Series Shot in DC Metro Area Screened at Anacostia Arts Center Tomorrow at 8 pm

Washington has long had a strong film community from over 70 annual festivals (including ROSEBUD which exclusively honors DC, Maryland and Virginia filmmakers) to professional networking organizations...

‘Countdown to Yuri’s Night’ Tonight at Anacostia Arts Center from 8 PM-2 AM

Astro Pop Entertainment is like a mad scientist’s lab of pop art, burlesque and theatre. Jared Davis, who runs Arlington County Cultural Affairs Scene Shop along with spouse Kate Taylor Davis,...

LiveArtDC Holds its First Annual ‘LiveArt in a Day’ on Saturday, April 5th by James Radack

5 Plays + 3 Bands + 1 Great Cause = 1 Amazing Night of DC Talent and Stories What do you get when you bring together five local playwrights, five local directors and 25 local actors?…LiveArt in a Day!...

Allyson M. Lewis Performs ‘WORDZ’ on Friday & Saturday, November 1 & 2 @7:30 PM at Anacostia Arts Center

WORDZ is a spoken word stage play that speaks on Love, Hip-Hop, Spirituality, and Resistance. This play flows in poetry, music, and movement. Playing on November 1st & 2nd 2013 at 7:30 PM at Anacostia...

‘Ass Chronicles’ at DC Black Theatre Festival by Yvonne French

Ass Chronicles is a booty call and a call to booty power. Playwright Empress Joyner was inspired by The Vagina Monologues, for which she was cast in New York. Her own play starts with ‘Musical...