Spooky Action Theater

Beautifully simple ‘Man Covets Bird’ shines at Spooky Action Theater

A short and sweet escape into a parallel world with an invisible bird.

Finegan Kruckemeyer on his magical ‘Man Covets Bird’ at Spooky Action

A man awakens as a stranger, finds a bird companion, and embarks on a fantastical quest of self-discovery…

Spooky Action’s unrealistic ‘Realistic Joneses’ is a complete treat

The text keeps us off-kilter in a way that tickles us silly even as a sobering undercurrent churns.

Spooky Action announces three plays for live reopening

The imaginative company’s 2021–22 season launches October 7 with Will Eno’s ‘The Realistic Joneses.’

Spooky Action’s ridiculous ‘Real Inspector Hound’ is truly heady fun

The perfect play to comment on the bizarre virtual spaces we’ve been in lately.

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...

Spooky Action Theater’s ‘To the Earth’ literally zooms into space

As the pandemic continues to take its toll on live theater, smaller-budget theaters are staying nimble and daring, thanks to generous support from donors. One of these deft companies is Spooky Action...

Playwright Ian August zeros in on ‘Zero,’ from Spooky Action

Interview by Roberta Alves Spooky Action Theater’s New Works in Action play-reading series continues Sunday, August 16, with Ian August’s Zero, a dark comedy about three miscreant teens—Nil, Julia,...

Playwright Jack Novak probes life’s phases in ‘Transferal,’ online from Spooky Action Theater

Interview by Roberta Alves Spooky Action Theater’s livestreamed New Works in Action play-reading series concludes Sunday, June 21, at 3 pm with Transferal by Jack Novak. Directed by Bridget Grace...

A war-wounded woman meets myth in ‘Circular’ by Laura Shamas, livestreaming from Spooky Action Theater

Interview by Roberta Alves Spooky Action Theater’s livestreamed New Works in Action play-reading series continues Sunday, June 14, at 3 pm with Circular by Laura Shamas. Her heritage includes...

Playwright Matthew Kelly on queering power in ‘We Victorians,’ online Sunday from Spooky Action Theater

Interview by Roberta Alves Spooky Action Theater’s New Works in Action play-reading series continues livestreaming Sunday, May 31, at 3 pm with We Victorians by out queer playwright Matthew Kelly. In...

Spooky Action shifts new play readings to YouTube

Due to the COVID-19 epidemic, Spooky Action Theater’s New Works in Action play-reading series has been shifted to a virtual meeting space on the company’s YouTube channel. “We are excited to explore...

Family-friendly Tennessee Williams puppet show pops up for the holidays

After two sell-out previews and a spectacular run at the Tennessee Williams Festival in Provincetown, The Lady from the Village of Falling Flowers pops up at the trendy Shaw-neighborhood speakeasy...

Review: ‘The Oldest Boy’ at Spooky Action Theater

Sarah Ruhl’s The Oldest Boy is a graceful meditation on motherhood: its joys, its sorrows, and its unforeseeable costs. Director Kathryn Chase Bryer offers a visually lovely and emotionally moving...

Magic Time!: ‘The Oldest Boy’ at Spooky Action Theater

Sara Ruhl’s The Oldest Boy tells a gut-wrenching story serenely, almost gently. At the heart of it is the bond between mother and child, a tie that Ruhl knew intimately when she wrote the play,...

In the Moment: ‘Among the Dead’ at Spooky Action Theatre

Spooky Action Theatre continues to beguile with its distinctive play selections. Under Artistic Director Richard Henrich’s open mind, Spooky Action regularly produces the usually unexplored: women’s...

Review: ‘Among the Dead’ at Spooky Action Theatre

Hansol Jung is an imaginative young playwright whose work focuses on feeling perpetually uprooted. Born in Jeonju, South Korea, she moved with her family to South Africa at the age of 6. When she was...

Review: The Welders’ ‘In This Hope: A Pericles Project’ at Spooky Action Theater

From the moment the audience enters the large square room that is Spooky Action Theater’s church basement home, Environmental Designer Colin K. Bills has already communicated to the audience for In...

Review: ‘New Guidelines for Peaceful Times’ at Spooky Action Theater

It is mid-April, 1945. The war in Europe is nearly over. However, neither a proper armistice nor formal surrender has been signed by the Allies with the former Nazi regime. It is an unsettled time...

Magic Time!: ‘The Small Room at the Top of the Stairs’ at Spooky Action Theatre

The mystery at the center of this adroit drama keeps getting mysteriouser and mysteriouser: What’s in the small room at the top of the stairs? Playwright Carole Fréchette has crafted a cagey...

Review: ‘The Small Room at the Top of the Stairs’ at Spooky Action

Looking for something well-crafted, suspenseful, and with plenty of lingering moments of anxiety? Then head on to Spooky Action Theater’s production of The Small Room at the Top of the Stairs. Written...

Review: ‘The Lathe of Heaven’ at Spooky Action Theater (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

Puppets, people, props, projections, and sci-fi pop up a lot on DC stages, but not often with the narrative verve, literary cred, and nonstop wit of The Lathe of Heaven. Adapted and directed by...

Tributes to Ursula K. Le Guin, whose novel ‘The Lathe of Heaven’ will be staged at Spooky Action Theater (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

This year’s Women’s Voices Theater Festival features 24 plays, four of which are adaptations. Three are based on works by great male writers—Shakespeare, Congreve, Ibsen—and one is based on the work...

Review: ‘I Killed My Mother’ at Spooky Action Theater

Andras Viskey’s I Killed My Mother, now in production at Spooky Action Theater, is a challenging bit of business. Its wordless opening is several minutes of wandering by various members of the company...

Review: ‘The Man Who’ at Spooky Action Theater

Curious questions tease the brain during this peculiarly provocative production. One is: Is this theater? Another is: What are we to make of it? The Man Who, just opened at the estimably idiosyncratic...

Review: ‘The River’ at Spooky Action Theater

Jez Butterworth’s The River does not yield itself to easy interpretations. Uncertainty flows through the story, jostling us repeatedly. Its questions about truth and morality are specific and seismic...

Magic Time! ‘The River’ at Spooky Action Theater

A man has a remote rustic fishing cabin. There are lot of fish in the water nearby. He’s a rugged, outdoorsy guy and he loves to fish. In a Hemingway novel he would not be a fish out of water. This...

Spine: ‘Rameau’s Nephew’ at Spooky Action Theater

The 18th century French playwright and philosopher Denis Diderot is known best among theatre folk for his theoretical writings: on the actor, the 4th Wall, and the emergence of scenography as an...

Magic Time! ‘Rameau’s Nephew’ at Spooky Action Theater

There comes a scene in Rameau’s Nephew at Spooky Action Theater when Robert Bowen Smith playing He (the titular character) coughs an aria. Literally. Just like an opera singer except without music or...

Review: ‘Rameau’s Nephew’ at Spooky Action Theater

An intellectually manic world, propelled by a charming, whimsical disrupter with an abundance of prickly opinions aimed at the cultural elite, awaits audiences at Spooky Action Theater. It is Rameau’s...

Review: ‘Happy Hour’ at Spooky Action Theater

A ticking clock is an amazing motivator. So is competition. Blend them together with a dose of live theatre and some spectacular technology, and you have Happy Hour, created by machina Ex and...

Meet The Cast of Spooky Action Theater’s ‘Collaborators’: Part 1: Paul Reisman

In Part 1 of our series with the cast of Spooky Action’s Collaborators, meet Paul Resiman. Joel: Please introduce yourself and tell our readers where they may have seen you perform on the stage? Paul:...

The Women’s Voices Theatre Festival: ‘Duir-wyyd: The Dreamer’s Doorway’ at Spooky Action Theater

It is intriguing to see a work in progress that has real merit. Sandra Kamman’s Duir-wyyd: The Dreamer’s Doorway, a play with music, straddles time and space to metaphysically interconnect the stories...

Spooky Action Theater’s ‘Don’t Complain’ Plays Tonight Through October 25th

A soaring, poetic Irish ghost story for the Women’s Voices Theater Festival Spooky Action Theater launches its 2015-2016 Season with a World Premiere: Can’t Complain by Christine Evans Directed by...

In The Moment: An Interview with Richard Heinrich, Mario Baldessari, and Lynn Sharp Spears on Spooky Action Theater’s Reading of ‘The Bison Beast of Dubois’ on 8/22 & 23

Having recently returned from some time away in Wyoming from the hustling of DC, my eyes widened when I saw an email from Spooky Action Theatre for several staged readings for a play that takes place...

Meet the Director and Cast of Spooky Action Theater’s ‘Jarry Inside Out’: Part 3: Carla Briscoe

In Part 3 of a series of interviews with the Director and cast of Spooky Action Theater’s Jarry Inside Out, meet actress Carla Briscoe. Why did you want to become a member of the cast of Jarry Inside...

Meet the Director and Cast of Spooky Action Theater’s ‘Jarry Inside Out’: Part 2: Catherine Tripp

In Part 2 of a series of interviews with the Director and cast of Spooky Action Theater’s Jarry Inside Out, meet Director Catherine Tripp. Please introduce yourself and tell our readers where they may...

In the Moment: ‘After Seeing ‘Jarry Inside Out’

Much has been written about Spooky Action Theater’s premiere production Jarry Inside Out by Richard Henrich. I take this opportunity to connect it to popular culture, in a different manner than I have...

Meet the Director and Cast of of Spooky Action Theater’s ‘Jarry Inside Out’: Part 1: Ian LeValley

In Part 1 of a series of interviews with the Director and cast of Spooky Action Theater’s Jarry Inside Out, meet Ian LeValley. Why did you want to become a member of the cast of Jarry Inside Out? I...

‘Jarry Inside Out’ at Spooky Action Theater

The author of the infamous Ubu Roi, the play which proudly proclaims high culture as but “pshit” sculpted into attractive façades, Alfred Jarry is now the subject of a new script playing at Spooky...

Meet the Cast and Director of Spooky Action Theater’s ‘Last of the Whyos’: Part Four: Meet Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi by Roberta Alves

This is the forth in a series of interviews with the cast of Spooky Action Theater’s Last of the Whyos. In Part Four: Meet Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi. Roberta: Why did you want to become a member of the...

‘Last of the Whyos’ at Spooky Action Theater

What do sea lions, circus freaks, and 19th century gang violence have in common? Nothing. But they all feature prominently in Spooky Action Theater’s intriguing, baffling, and brilliantly designed...

Meet the Cast and Director of Spooky Action Theater’s ‘Last of the Whyos’: Part Three: Meet Tia Shearer by Roberta Alves

This is the third in a series of interviews with the cast of Spooky Action Theater’s Last of the Whyos. In Part Three: Meet Tia Shearer. Roberta: Why did you want to become a member of the cast of...

Meet the Cast and Director of Spooky Action Theater’s ‘Last of the Whyos’: Part One: Meet Randolph Curtis Rand by Roberta Alves

This is the first in a series of interviews with the cast of Spooky Action Theater’s Last of the Whyos. In Part One: Meet Randolph Curtis Rand. Why did you want to become a member of the cast of Last...

Spooky Action Theater Announces Their 2014-2015 Season with 2 World Premieres by Roberta Alves

A Season of World Premieres Spooky Action Travels to New York and Paris, Back and Forth in Time Last of the Whyos by Barbara Wiechmann Directed by Rebecca Holderness Feb 5 – Mar 1, 2015 Featuring...

This Sat 8/16@8 and Sun 8/17@3: Two Free Readings of Christine Evans’ ‘Can’t Complain’ at Spooky Action Theater by Roberta Alves

New Works Completes Its First Year in Action 18 Readings and 5 Workshops under our belt and counting Created by Kristy Simmons to give Washington area authors the opportunity to show and test their...

‘Kwaidan’ at Spooky Action Theater

The invention and innovativeness of Spooky Action Theater are endless, and for the first time they are using the entire physical space of The Universalist National Memorial Church – where they have...

Meet the Cast of Spooky Action Theater’s ‘Kwaidan’: Part 1: David Gaines and Tuyet Thi Pham

In Part 1 of a series of interviews with the cast of Spooky Action Theater’s Kwaidan, meet David Gaines and Tuyet Thi Pham. Joel: Why did you want to become a member of the cast of Kwaidan? David:...

Tonight at 7 pm: Spooky Action Theater’s Free Performance of ‘The Asphalt Kiss’ by Nelson Rodrigues

TONIGHT AT 7 PM – Admission is Free The Asphalt Kiss by Nelson Rodrigues, directed by Abel Lopez Wed, Feb 26 @ 7 PM – Admission is Free Spooky Action Theater at The Universalist National Memorial...

‘The Wedding Dress’ at Spooky Action Theater by Justin Schneider

“Mysterious and evocative”: these were the words that Spooky Action Theater’s Artistic Director Richard Henrich used to describe their production of Nelson Rodrigues’ The Wedding Dress. And after...