Anacostia Playhouse

‘A Snowy Nite at the Dew Drop Inn’ sparks joy at Anacostia Playhouse

The show consists of popular R&B songs that featured Aframerican performers and is all about having a good time in a world full of dark, cold nights.

Clayton LeBouef’s dreamy ‘RS/24’ returns to Anacostia Playhouse

Summoning a galaxy of African American recording stars, this poignant one-act sometimes seems like a sublime dream with vintage music. There are ethereal visions, vivid Afrofuturist visitations, and...

‘Black Nativity’ inspires and uplifts at Anacostia Playhouse

There are many joyous traditions this time of year, but to my mind the most indispensable has become Black Nativity. With its spiritual values on its finely-woven sleeve, it’s a show that inspires...

Review: ‘A Nite at the Dew Drop Inn’ at Anacostia Playhouse

Director Stephawn Stephens has deep family roots at the Dew Drop Inn, having started as a performer in A Nite at the Dew Drop Inn. When asked how he pulled off the latest edition he said he simply...

Review: ‘Vivian’s Music 1969’ at The Essential Theatre

It was 50 years ago. Lost deep in the pages of the June 26, 1969 edition of The New York Times was this, “Firebombings, rock throwing and rifle shots marked a third straight night of racial violence...

Review: ‘The Heroes’ Tale’ (DC Black Theatre & Arts Festival)

This power plant of a play knocked me out two years ago during the Capital Fringe Festival and knocked me out all over again in the DC Black Theatre & Arts Festival. The Heroes’ Tale debuted in 2011,...

Opening weekend at the DC Black Theatre & Arts Festival (photo feature)

The opening weekend of the DC Black Theatre & Arts Festival was a lively family reunion of art, food, music and drama. DCBTAF chair and dancing diplomat Nana Malaya served as ring leader and founder...

A ‘Life-Affirming’ Journey: Playwright Samuel A. Simon and Actor Chuk Obasi Discuss ‘The Actual Dance’

“It is what I am supposed to do in my life,” The Actual Dance playwright Samuel A. Simon told me in a phone interview. He was speaking about the play he developed and has performed that began when he...

Review: ‘American Moor’ at Anacostia Playhouse

American Moor, in a return engagement at Anacostia Playhouse, lambasts the audience with a series of provocative questions: can an actor play a role without tapping into the darkest parts of their...

Anacostia Playhouse Suffers Robbery, Spurs Fundraising Efforts

The Anacostia Playhouse community is reeling after a December 26th robbery in which burglars broke into the theater, ransacked the offices and stole thousands of dollars worth of supplies. The...

Review: ‘Driving Miss Daisy’ at Anacostia Playhouse

Driving Miss Daisy, at Anacostia Playhouse, tackles many subjects: growing older, race relations, and all sorts of personal drama encountered by its Southern protagonists over a 25-year period,...

Review: ‘Blight’ by Pinky Swear Productions at Anacostia Playhouse

A few years ago, the teenage son of a single mom shot up a Planned Parenthood clinic, and now the nice suburban home they lived in is a blight. The house not only brings the neighborhood down; it...

Magic Time!: ‘Chocolate Covered Ants’ by Restoration Stage at THEARC

When three hours in the theater elapse faster than many a 90-minute performance, it’s a good bet you’ve been in the thrall of a master storyteller. And that’s what happens in Chocolate Covered Ants,...

Review: ‘Happy Ending’ at Anacostia Playhouse

Happy Ending is a one-act satirical comedy written in the 1960s by Douglas Turner Ward, co-founder of the Negro Ensemble Company. He had written an op-ed for the New York Times called “American...

Review: ‘People for Whom the World Spins and Turns’ at The Essential Theatre

The boarding house play is a staple in theater. Assorted folks who might otherwise never cross paths are thrown together by a playwright who then grips us with their backstories, intertwined character...

Review: ‘Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill’ at Anacostia Playhouse

“These are my friends,” Billie Holiday (Anya Nebel) tells her accompanist (LeVar Betts), gesturing at the audience. It is March of 1959, and Holiday will be dead in four months. She’s singing at...

Review: ‘Riches’ at Anacostia Playhouse

Act 3 of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1962) is entitled, “Exorcism” and, indeed, the infamous Martha and George exorcise their demons, as well as the demons of academia everywhere....

Review: ‘Yellowman’ at The Anacostia Playhouse

I first saw Dael Orlandersmith’s Yellowman at the Manhattan Theater Club in 2002, with Orlandersmith herself in the role of the dark-skinned Alma and Howard W. Overshown as the light-skinned Eugene....

Review: ‘Chocolate Covered Ants’ at Restoration Stage

Chocolate Covered Ants, a new play by Steven A. Butler, Jr., and now on stage at the Anacostia Playhouse, is that rarity of theatrical experience in that it explores the psyche of the African American...

‘ColorBlind: The Katrina Monologues’ at The Anacostia Playhouse

September of this year marked the tenth anniversary of the Katrina flooding. ColorBlind: The Katrina Monologues, a superb play written by Tom Flannery, and directed by a great director and actor,...

‘Solomon and Marion’ at Anacostia Playhouse

Anacostia Playhouse hosts “dog days of summer theater festival” this August 2015 and for its mid-August show they have Solomon and Marion, Lara Foot Newton’s touching drama about the search for...

‘American Moor’ at Anacostia Playhouse

As I walked into the cool confines of the Anacostia Playhouse, I was greeted by soft, far-upstage lighting that gently illuminated the sole performer, Keith Hamilton Cobb, idly looking over his lines...

‘Frozen’ at Anacostia Playhouse

In The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell writes: “The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light.” And, to be sure, in...

‘Red High Heels’ at Anacostia Playhouse

Making theatre is hard. Making any kind of art is hard, but the challenges that accompany mounting a live production – logistical, administrative, financial – are far more complicated than making a...

‘Bondage’ by Pinky Swear Productions at Anacostia Playhouse by Yvonne French

Is it possible to engage in S&M and appear heartwarming at the same time? The answer is ‘yes’ if you are in the cast of Bondage by Pinky Swear Productions. What an excellent contrivance! People might...

Synesthesia: In Sight and Sound: Live De(a)f Poetry II@ Anacostia Playhouse at Black Theatre Festival on 6/27@7

The 4th Annual DC Black Theatre Festival will present In Sight and Sound: Live De(a)f Poetry II. The unique use of the word “De(a)f” reflects that half of the artists will be deaf and that all of the...