Forum Theatre

Review: ‘Nat Turner in Jerusalem’ at Forum Theatre

The unsettling sight of a young man in shackles sitting on a bare, plank-wood floor; a glimmer of night sky piercing the darkness through the barred window of a simple jail cell; and the tense,...

Magic Time!: ‘Nat Turner in Jerusalem’ at Forum Theatre

By coincidence, Nat Turner in Jerusalem opened at Forum Theatre the day that The Raid closed at Theater Alliance. The two plays seen in succession are powerfully connected. Idris Goodwin’s The Raid...

Magic Time!: The Birth and Revelation of ‘Mom Baby God’: A Q&A with Playwright/Performer Madeline Joey Rose

Mom Baby God—a solo show written and performed by Madeline Joey Rose about the right’s attack on abortion rights—is as playful as it is powerful. The play centers on a fourteen-year-old girl,...

Review: ‘Love and Information’ at Forum Theatre

The vignette “Secret” encapsulates the ingenuity of Forum Theatre’s production of Caryl Churchill’s Love and Information. Two office workers sit at their computers, back to back. One (Samy El-Noury)...

Magic Time!: ‘Love and Information’ at Forum Theatre

This is a most peculiar play, but in a very good way. It’s more about its form than its content. And that’s what makes it one of Forum Theatre’s most fascinating offerings. The famously unorthodox...

Review: ‘Building the Wall’ at Forum Theatre

The dystopia delineated in Building the Wall is predicted by the playwright, Robert Schenkkan, to happen in America very soon. By the time the play is set, in the year 2019, the two characters are...

Magic Time! ‘Dry Land’ & ‘What Every Girl Should Know’ at Forum Theatre

I’ve seen some harrowing-to-watch theater in my time, but I recall nothing as excruciating as a particular scene in Dry Land, now running at Forum Theatre. The play by Ruby Rae Spiegel is set in the...

Review: ‘What Every Girl Should Know’ and ‘Dry Land’ in Rep at Forum Theatre

One hundred years separate the young women in What Every Girl Should Know and Dry Land, now playing in rep at Forum Theatre. In Monica Byrne’s What Every Girl Should Know, the four teenage girls are...

Magic Time! ‘(Re)Acts: Where Do We Go From Here?’ at Forum Theatre

“We certainly didn’t prepare ourselves for this,” said Forum Theatre Artistic Director Michael Dove Monday night at the Silver Spring Black Box Theatre. He was addressing a packed house of folks who...

Review: ‘I Call My Brothers’ at Forum Theatre

Forum Theatre has a knack for picking trenchant works of theater that buzz with relevance to hot-button topics. Its current offering is a perfect case in point. Given this nation’s rising tide of...

Magic Time! ‘(Re)Acts: #Orlando’ at Forum Theatre

Live theater is not where we turn to learn the news in real time. We have TV and Twitter and plenty other frenzied feeds for that. But live theater may be the most potent and important form we have...

Review: ‘Blackberry Winter’ at Forum Theatre

Does a play about an incurable progressive disease not sound like something you’d care to see? Does a character’s long, lone monologue about her mother’s memory loss to Alzheimer’s not seem appealing?...

Magic Time! The Cathartic Comedy of Martin McDonagh: A Q&A with Yury Urnov, Director of Forum Theatre’s ‘The Pillowman’

Martin McDonagh is one my favorite living English-language playwrights and I’m not really sure why. His plays are hilarious and horrific at the same time. And I experienced that counterintuitive combo...

(Re)Acts: ‘Forced From Home #RefugeeCrisis’ at Forum Theatre

The event had a provocative hashtag in its title: As if to reference an emergency that is tragically trending worldwide. As if to signal the evening’s explicit link to a global community of concern....

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...

‘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! ‘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....

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...

‘Passion Play’ at Forum Theatre

During the Roman times, theatre was a savage sport: need a crucifixion, grab a slave. During the Dark Ages, theatre disappeared under the cloak of Catholicism: better to have no fun, if having fun...

Magic Time!: ‘The T Party’ at Forum Theatre

Natsu Onoda Power’s delightfully devised theater piece The T Party could not have a more perfect home than Michael Dove’s quintessentially inclusive Forum Theatre. At Forum every walk-up ticket is Pay...

‘The T Party’ at Forum Theatre

Just so we’re clear: Natsu Onoda Power’s new devised performance piece is neither an homage to Ted Cruz nor a biography of Michelle Bachmann. In fact, as mentioned in one of several deliciously self...

Spine: Hip-Hop, Flow, and ‘How We Got On’

When I think of Hip-Hop my imagination immediately flies to urban America, to a gritty, “tougher than leather” New York City filled with N.W.A, LL Cool J, and of course Public Enemy (#1). When I think...

‘How We Got On’ at Forum Theatre

How We Got On, a brilliant new play from Forum Theatre by playwright Idris Goodwin, tells the story of three kids in 1988 who fall in love with rap and hip hop and set out to make a record together....

Suspect Arrested Tonight in the Frank Britton Assault

Tonight 18-year-old Elijah Jeremiah Smith of Washington, DC, was arrested in the assault and robbery of actor Frank Britton earlier this week in Silver Spring, MD. According to Montgomery County...

‘The Last Days of Judas Iscariot’ at Forum Theatre

Redemption on Trial Celebrating Forum Theatre’s 10th Season, is the Helen Hayes-nominated return production of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, directed by John Vreeke.The 2005 play written by Stephen...

Actor Frank Britton is Assaulted and Injured on His Way Home From the Cast Party of ‘Judas Iscariot’ Last Night

Actor Frank Britton was mugged and beaten on his way home last night from the cast party after the opening of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot at Forum Theatre. He is in Holy Cross Hospital in Silver...

‘Meena’s Dream’ at Forum Theatre by Christina Marie Frank

Meena’s Dream takes a look at the impossible struggle of a single parent immigrant family surviving in America. The story is told form the perspective of 9 year old Meena, who deals with her mother’s...

‘Agnes Under the Big Top’ at Forum Theatre by Maddie Gaw

Forum Theatre’s season debut begins with a tongue-in-cheek pre-show announcement. It acknowledges a sort of cultural sameness that we feel as theatergoers, and as city-dwellers, particularly about...

‘The T Party’ at Forum Theatre by Christina Marie Frank

Audiences don’t like to feel like they are being taught. So how do you inform an audience without seeming preachy? How do you make educational theatre entertaining and fun? Ask Natsu Onoda Power, who...

‘Clementine in the Lower 9′ at Forum Theatre by Sydney-Chanele Dawkins

Heart, Soul, and the Blues There is a calm before any storm. The hurricane of human turmoil, and the whirlwind of hope that remains afterwards, is the story of Clementine in the Lower 9. The profound,...

‘Church’ at Forum Theatre Company by Lauren Katz

Forum Theatre’s mission is to bring controversial and discussion inspiring theater to society. From what I witnessed on Saturday July 13, they seem to have met their goal. Church, written by...

‘The Illusion’ at Forum Theatre by Anne Tsang

Forum Theater’s production of Tony Kushner’s The Illusion, directed by Mitchell Hébert, entrances the audience right from the start. As the magician Alacandre says,“When you start these things, you...