Arena Stage

A teen of many talents: Ethan Van Slyke of Arena Stage’s ‘Newsies’

Think back to when you were in high school. You went to classes all day and came home and did homework, right? And maybe you took piano lessons once a week or played a sport. Seventeen-year-old Ethan...

‘Blue Camp,’ an affecting play about men surviving enlistment in the Vietnam War

Dispatch from the front. “Greetings: You are hereby ordered for induction in the Armed Forces of the United States.” For those in the audience of the Boomer generation, Rainbow Theatre’s Blue Camp...

What’s magnificent and what’s muddled in ‘Right to Be Forgotten’ at Arena Stage (Magic Time!)

Right to Be Forgotten is a play written from the outside in. By that I mean, its intention is to illustrate a legal issue: the tension in U.S. law between privacy and freedom of speech, a tension...

Thoughtful ‘Right to Be Forgotten’ at Arena Stage

How do you put a human face on a difficult, complex subject the natural habitat of which may more likely be a law review article than a stage? Such is playwright Sharyn Rothstein’s task in Right to be...

‘My Barking Dog’ Explores Wildness and Uncertainty at Caos on F

Building on its mission to produce “exciting yet profound theatre in greater Washington, DC” The Edge of the Universe Players 2 is presenting My Barking Dog, a play about “A woman. A man. A wild...

Review: The American Pops Orchestra ‘Coat of Many Colors: The Music of Dolly Parton’ at Arena Stage

Luxurious! No rags here, only riches. Luke Frazier, the Pops’ magnificent maestro, once again wove a rich tapestry of talent to compose APO’s Coat of Many Colors: The Music of Dolly Parton. If you...

Review: ‘Jitney’ at Arena Stage

When the opening moments of a play are a super loud blast of bluesy music and a checkers game on the verge of anarchy, you know you are in for a lively ride. But it was the acting in Jitney, Arena...

Ruben Santiago-Hudson on Directing August Wilson’s ‘Jitney’

Perhaps it is his distinctive voice or the fact that he has been called the “best storyteller of his generation” that makes Ruben Santiago-Hudson the apparent inheritor of the body of work produced by...

Page to Stage Festival 2019: Tastings from a Buffet (Part One)

Kennedy Center’s annual Page to Stage Festival is always chock full of tempting offerings, and the challenge of deciding what to see is daunting. It’s like an all-you-can-eat buffet…except you really...

Ray Anthony Thomas Discusses August Wilson and Playing Turnbo in ‘Jitney’ at Arena Stage

He has had major stage roles in everything from The Crucible to Moscow, Moscow, Moscow, Moscow, Moscow, Moscow. He has appeared in films as different as “Isn’t It Romantic?” and “Shutter Island.” Now...

News: Arena Stage Kicks Off 2019/20 Season with Free Community Day and Props Sale

Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater kicks off the 2019/20 Season with a free Community Day and Props Sale on Saturday, August 24, 2019 from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the Mead Center (1101...

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

When Dear Evan Hansen debuted at Arena Stage four years ago, I was so moved by the show I wrote it a love letter, republished below. Now a Broadway hit, it returns to DC for a run at Kennedy Center...

Feature: Directing ‘Ann’ at Arena Stage

Ann Richards, the late governor of Texas, and the first woman in that state to be elected in her own right, would be howling with glee if she could see the pandemonium unleashed in government today....

Dispatches from Mike Daisey’s ‘A People’s History,’ Chapters 1 to 18

Over 16 days in Washington, DC, in July 2019, Mike Daisey gave 18 different performances, each about an hour and 45 minutes long, of his epic look at America’s past, present, and future. He drew from...

2019 Capital Fringe Review: ‘If These Balls Could Talk’

There’s plenty of beef in Carolann Valentino’s one-woman musical, If These Balls Could Talk, about her life as a young actress from Texas working at a steakhouse in New York. This was not just any old...

Review: ‘Ann’ at Arena Stage

If you are a fan of Ann Richards, the straight-talking, liberal Governor of Texas from 1991 to 1995, or alternatively, if you were living on the opposite side of the globe and somehow missed coverage...

2019 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Iphigenia in Splott’

Set in a blighted corner of Wales, Iphigenia in Splott is a breathtaking one-woman show, imported from the UK and written by Gary Owen, a Welsh playwright and winner of the Meyer-Whitworth Award for...

2019 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Six Months of Winter’

By Helen Ganley Conjuring up images of day and night, one imagines the sun cascading into a pink and purple horizon while the moon excitedly and stoically takes its place in the sky. The picture, in...

2019 Capital Fringe Review: ‘She Sings Light’

She Sings Light, written by Claudia Rosales-Waters and directed by Josh Sticklin, is one of four ‘curated’ shows in the 2019 Capital Fringe Festival. That means that this highly symbolic drama—which...

2019 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Veneer of Beauty’

Last year, Shaun Michael Johnson put himself on the map as a master storyteller, whose protean moves captivated audiences at the Capital Fringe Festival with Sobriety of Fear, a compelling story about...

2019 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Hold the Tomato’

Back at the Fringe Festival after their successful 2018 appearance, Laugh Index Theatre’s production of Hold the Tomato strikes a number of funny bones during its fast-paced series of comic sketches....

Daily Dispatches from Mike Daisey’s ‘A People’s History’

[CLICK HERE to read all 18 dispatches in chronological order.] Chapter 18: The Living Moment, July 21 7pm This final chapter continued to retell and reinterpret a people’s history, meaning the...

2019 Capital Fringe Review: ‘A Short History of Unfortunate Animals’

Aficionados of modern dance and movement theatre take note: if you are hungry for something unique, abstract and poetic, get thee to the Plum space at Arena Stage for A Short History of Unfortunate...

Magic Time!: Why ‘A People’s History’ Is “Painful”: A Q&A With Mike Daisey

John: Before you brought A People’s History to DC, you performed all 18 parts three times—once through in Minneapolis and twice through in Seattle. I can imagine people could be picking and choosing...

‘A People’s History’ at Capital Fringe Will Rock Your Worldview

I remember being so bored by my high school American history class that I got a D in it. This was not normal. My report cards always had A’s and B’s. So the kindly elderly woman who taught the course,...

Arena Stage To Host 11-Hour Marathon Reading of the Mueller Report, Volume II, July 11, 2019

Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater, in association with activist and actress Jjana Valentiner, will hold a public, nonpartisan 11-hour marathon reading of Special Counsel Robert...

Capital Fringe Basics: How To Buy Tickets and More

Tickets are on sale now for the 2019 Capital Fringe Festival bringing over 500 individual performances, 89 productions, and five Capital Fringe curated shows across 13 stages in Southwest DC. Do not...

‘Pointed Conversations’: A New Community Engagement Initiative from Pointless Theatre

Pointed Conversations invites members of the community to further engage with Pointless Theatre Company’s artistic work through discussion on the themes and ideas of their current production....

Interview: Sean-Maurice Lynch of ‘Jubilee’ at Arena Stage

The reviews are in: Jubilee is being praised for honoring and preserving the impact of the Negro Spiritual upon the American Songbook. In the Arena Stage production, Director Tazewell Thompson gives...

Review: ‘I Am What I Am: The Music of Jerry Herman’ by The American Pops Orchestra

The American Pops Orchestra’s presentation of I Am What I Am: The Music of Jerry Herman was nothing short of spectacular. Maestro Luke Frazier created an uplifting and thrilling show, with a fresh...

Review: ‘Jubilee’ at Arena Stage

In 1871, Fisk University – an all-Black institution of higher learning in Nashville, Tennessee – was in dire financial straits. To raise money for the institution, Treasurer and Music Professor George...

Take Ten With The Creator of the ‘Take Ten’: theatreWashington’s Michael Kyrioglou

We’ve all read his columns, now get to know the person behind them! In the midst of last week’s Helen Hayes Awards-fever, I asked theatreWashington’s Michael Kyrioglou to answer some questions...

Helen Hayes Tribute Recognizes Jennifer L. Nelson as a DC Theater Trailblazer

Actors, by definition, play all sorts of roles. But for Jennifer L. Nelson—a theater veteran who’s been working on stage and off ever since she landed in DC at the age of 22—the multi-tasking involves...

Interview: JaBen Early in Arena Stage’s ‘Junk’

JaBen Early is a Washingtonian through and through. His father worked at the Smithsonian, and his mother was a teacher in DC. He went to Morehouse College and Sarah Lawrence University, and studied...

Review: ‘Junk’ at Arena Stage

“When did money become the thing—the only thing?” asks an ambitious young financial journalist in her opening monologue. She then answers her own question: “The mid-eighties. 1985 to be exact…. It was...

Review: ‘JQA’ at Arena Stage

Leaving Arena Stage’s world premiere of JQA, the fictionalized account of John Quincy Adams as imagined by playwright/director Aaron Posner, I’m feeling this: Adams was a sour, stiff-necked, rigid man...

Arena Stage Voices of Now Artists Return from Trip to Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina

(Washington, D.C.) Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater, in partnership with the U.S. Embassy in Zagreb, Croatia and the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, sent four Arena...

Arena Stage Announces 2019-2020 Season

Arena Stage announced its 2019-2020 season this morning. The season will include the following: Ann By Holland Taylor In the Kreeger Theater | July 11 – August 11, 2019 Jitney By August Wilson...

Nancy Robinette, Winner of Last Year’s Top Theater Award, Triumphs as Aunt Lavinia in ‘The Heiress’ at Arena Stage

From the moment she enters—decked out in widow’s weeds and descending a carpeted stairway—Nancy Robinette commands attention. That’s not unusual, since this actor—awarded the 2018 Helen Hayes...

The American Pops Orchestra To Present ‘NextGen: Finding the Voices of Tomorrow’

Imagine seeing Stefani Germanotta perform before she became Lady Gaga, or seeing Beyoncé sing before she was famous. That’s the vision for The American Pops Orchestra’s NextGen: Finding the Voices of...

Arena Stage Announces Additional Playwrights to Join Power Plays Initiative

Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater has announced that three additional commissioned playwrights will join Power Plays, an ambitious initiative that will commission and develop 25 new...

Review: ‘The Heiress’ at Arena Stage

Women are on the move today. A US Congress reflects the voices of women as never before. #MeToo movements everywhere are fighting the forces that would stifle those voices. So, on the surface, it...

Misha Kachman: A Russian-born Designer Sets the Stage for ‘Kleptocracy’ at Arena Stage

One of the scariest moments in Kleptocracy – Kenneth Lin’s drama about the struggle for power in post-Soviet Russia – occurs when the shadow of a tiger prowls the length of an elevated cage. The cage...

Review: ‘An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly’ at American Pops Orchestra

The American Pops Orchestra recently presented their original adaptation of the children’s story, An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly. Writer, Claybourne Elder, has taken the madcap rhyme and transformed...

Review: ‘Kleptocracy’ at Arena Stage

A young Vladimir Putin (Christopher Geary) steps onto the stage, wearing a 1980s tracksuit, quoting a passage from the Soviet absurdist and surrealist writer Daniil Kharms (1905-1942) “How a Man...

LA TI DO to present Joel Markowitz Award at ‘LUCKY: A 7th Anniversary’

LA TI DO will present its second annual Joel Markowitz Award at LUCKY: A 7th Anniversary on January 28, 2019. Washington, DC’s premiere cabaret series will award DC business owner Russwin Francisco...

Review: ‘Striking 12’ by Free Range Humans at BlackRock Center for the Arts

Striking 12 is a striking exception to the mandatory Christmas sappiness occupying most entertainment venues this time of year. It’s set at holiday time, but the holiday in question is New Year’s Eve,...

‘Indecent’ at Arena: Victor Raider-Wexler Returns to Washington in the Role of a Lifetime

The role of Otto in Paula Vogel’s Indecent—the Tony Award-winning play at Arena Stage—is an actor’s dream. The play, about a Yiddish melodrama that scandalized Broadway nearly a century ago, opened on...

In the Moment: ‘Indecent’ at Arena Stage

“Why must every Jew on stage be a paragon?” A key question asked without bombast by one of the fictional characters created by playwright Paula Vogel for Indecent, her daring stage play composed of...

Review: ‘Indecent’ at Arena Stage

The controversial scene that ends this “true story of a little Jewish play” has been foretold at length throughout the show and mentioned in much publicity, so it’s no spoiler to report that we all...