2020

Signature Theatre’s ‘Easy Women Smoking Loose Cigarettes’ now available for streaming

Beginning Monday, March 30, 2020, Signature Theatre patrons will have the ability to watch the world premiere production of Easy Women Smoking Loose Cigarettes by DC playwright Dani Stoller from their...

Arena Stage temporarily furloughs a majority of its staff

Arena Stage announced on Saturday, March 28th that it will temporarily furlough the majority of its staff starting on April 13th. 88 employees will be furloughed at that time. Furloughed employees...

Olney Theatre Center makes ‘The Amateurs’ available online for one week, offers other online content

Olney Theatre Center’s production of The Amateurs by Jordan Harrison and directed by Jason King Jones will be available to stream online beginning Saturday, March 28 at noon through the end of Sunday,...

Financial help for theaters and individuals to offset COVID-19 losses

During these difficult, uncertain times of the COVID-19 pandemic, we at DCMTA want to inform the theater community about financial relief that becomes available to nonprofits and individuals in the...

Feinstein’s/54 Below launches its ‘At Home’ series of free cabaret concert streamings

Starting this evening, Feinstein’s/54 Below will offer an At Home series of free one-time-only streamings of its popular cabaret concerts to keep audiences entertained during the closure of all live...

The ‘Boy Band Brunch’ is on! An interview with The Boy Band Project’s Travis Nesbitt

With the current shutdown of all performance venues in New York, The Boy Band Project has found the perfect solution to keep its popular Sunday afternoon concert, the Boy Band Brunch, scheduled weekly...

4615 Theatre Company launches first livestream performance tonight

Surprise! 4615 Theatre Company is thrilled to announce its first piece of #quarantinetheatre: a live online reading of This Vessel Is A Fragile Thing, by DC-based playwright Britt A Willis. An...

Artists Who Inspire! #2: Deb Sivigny

Welcome to the second installment of Artists Who Inspire! During this unprecedented shutdown of live theater, DCMTA will use this space to lift up local theater artists who are finding ways to remain...

Broadway coronavirus updates: emergency relief agreement for union employees and two major shows that will not go on

The coronavirus has upended the old maxim “The show must go on.” It was just announced that two major productions, which had been suspended through April 12, after playing a number of preview...

COVID-19 Emergency Relief Fund established for Washington theater community

As the world reels from the COVID-19 global pandemic, the Washington theater community— both institutions and individuals — alongside other entertainment and freelance industries, face financial...

How the closure of NYC theaters affects press agents: an interview with Keith Sherman

With this week’s government-ordered closure of all theaters and performance venues in NYC, we’ve all become aware of the impact the safety precautions implemented to deal with the coronavirus has had...

Artists Who Inspire #1: Tia Shearer Bassett

Welcome to the first installment of Artists Who Inspire! During this unprecedented shutdown of live theater, DCMTA will use this space to lift up local theater artists who are finding ways to remain...

Contemporary American Theater Festival hosts season announcement online

Shepherdstown, WV: For the past decade, the Contemporary American Theater Festival at Shepherd University has hosted a Shepherdstown Sneak Peek. Originally scheduled to be held at the Marinoff Theater...

Solas Nua celebrates 15th anniversary season with ‘Cyber Craic’

Washington might be stuck at home this St. Patrick’s Day but that’s not stopping Solas Nua from celebrating the best of Irish culture. Over the next two weeks, the DC Irish arts group will be posting...

15 Questions in 15 Minutes with Erik Ransom

Composer, lyricist, librettist, actor, singer, musician – Erik Ransom does it all, and does it all so famously that the New York-based artist was awarded last year’s Off West End (Offie) Award for...

Kennedy Center Education Artist-in-Residence Mo Willems to host ‘Lunch Doodles with Mo Willems’

(WASHINGTON)— The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts’ first-ever Education Artist-in-Residence, Emmy Award®–winning writer and New York Times best-selling author and illustrator Mo...

1st Stage announces thirteenth season

1st Stage Tysons has announced its thirteenth season, opening in September 2020. September 10 – October 11, 2020 Mlima’s Tale by Lynn Nottage directed by José Carrasquillo Pulitzer Prize Winner and...

An open letter to the DMV theater community

As passionate theater lovers and as members of the DC Theater Arts leadership team, we applaud the DMV theaters that have announced closure or postponement of current and upcoming productions. We can...

Arena Stage’s ‘Celia and Fidel’ explores the influences on Cuba’s revolutionary leader

Part of Arena Stage’s ongoing Power Plays, the world premiere of Celia and Fidel transports the audience back to a time when Fidel Castro was not just a name in the history books, but a feared...

The coronavirus makes the lights go out on Broadway: all shows suspended until April 13, 2020

It was just announced by The Broadway League that all Broadway performances are suspended immediately, in the midst of the busy opening season. This comes following the breaking news that an usher at...

4615 Theatre’s world premiere ‘Museum 2040’: An extraordinary immersive installation

Museum 2040, a world premiere written by Playwright Renee Calarco and directed by Artistic Director Jordan Friend, is an extraordinary immersive installation, which confirms 4615 Theater Company’s...

Conor McPherson takes a new approach to the jukebox musical in ‘Girl from the North Country’ at the Belasco Theatre

In Girl from the North Country, playing an open engagement at Broadway’s Belasco Theatre following successful runs in London and Off-Broadway at The Public Theater, Irish playwright and director Conor...

Multidisciplinary arts platform Indicoe relaunches as Alveo Creative

Online arts platform Indicoe recently rebranded and relaunched itself under the name Alveo Creative. As Alveo Creative, the company will continue to promote collaboration and support for artists, but...

One family’s struggle with immigration and deportation in ‘72 Miles to Go’ at Roundabout Theatre Company

Among the most widely debated topics in our country, not just during this current primary election season but over the past decade, are the laws and politicized views on immigration. In 72 Miles to...

Olney Theatre Center’s ‘The Amateurs’ is a comedy of ‘epidemic’ proportions

There is nothing like a good old-fashioned plague to get you pondering life’s big questions: the Bubonic Plague, the AIDS Crisis, COVID-19, really any epidemic will do. Of course, Jordan Harrison’s...

A masterful exhibition of conceptual art and clowning by Joel Jeske in ‘The Artist Will Be with You in a Moment’ at A.R.T./NY Theatres

As you enter the Jeffrey and Paula Gural Theatre at A.R.T/NY, you make your way through a professionally installed conceptual art exhibit, in which the artist is one of the works on display. It’s a...

A harrowing ‘Pass Over’ powerfully performed at Studio Theatre

There is a drama on stage right now at Studio Theatre—Pass Over by Antoinette Nwandu—so harrowing it will stop your heart. In it, Christopher Lovell and Jalen Gilbert give two of the most powerful...

‘Riffs and Relations’: WNO’s Cafritz Young Artists Program sounds so very American

You’d have to be dead not to enjoy a recital of the caliber given this past Sunday in the Phillips Collection Music Room by members of the current class of Washington National Opera’s Cafritz Young...

Concept overshadows content and quality in ‘West Side Story’ at the Broadway Theatre

Trouble and controversy have plagued Belgian director Ivo van Hove’s re-envisioned revival of West Side Story, playing an open-ended run at the Broadway Theatre, since the beginning, with a delayed...

Ancient mysteries astonish and delight at IN Series’ Women Composers Festival

‘Here Be Sirens’ is the phrase cartographers used for many centuries to warn sailors of marine dangers. Composer Kate Soper borrowed the name for her musically complex, theatrically rich opera, her...

Hexagon’s ‘One State Two State Red State Blue State’: A chuckle for a good cause

News got you nervous? Quaking over coronavirus? Morose about the stock market? Fed up with the Fed? Sick of the swamp? And yet, do you fear if you take your mind off it all for a second, things might...

Another lost female genius found, in ‘Einstein’s Wife’ at ExPats Theatre

The history of science is studded with female geniuses snubbed by sexism. There’s biophysicist Rosalind Franklin, geneticist Nettie Stevens, chemist Alice Ball— And several such brilliant women’s...

Monumental Theatre Company’s ‘Head Over Heels’ is a toe-tapping celebration of life, love, and self

After receiving a foreboding prophecy of loss and destruction, the King of Arcadia is determined to outwit the gods and save his kingdom’s “beat.” To do so, he takes his queen, two daughters, and...

‘Rasheeda Speaking’ is a ticking time bomb of workplace racial animus

Something struck me as incredulous about Rasheeda Speaking, a ticking time bomb about racial paranoia interlaced with the destructive power of office politics. But its recently deceased playwright...

Small-town redemption still resonates in Rockville Little Theatre’s ‘The Spitfire Grill’

The Spitfire Grill was in Off-Broadway previews on 9/11. In part because its heartwarming, American roots/small-town spirited songs and characters struck a powerful emotional chord in the days that...

How is Broadway addressing the issue of the coronavirus?

The Broadway League – the national trade association for the Broadway theater industry, with more than 700 members comprising theater owners, operators, general managers, suppliers, producers, and...

An emotional elegy to love and art in ‘Incantata’ at Irish Repertory Theatre

Irish Repertory Theatre’s US premiere of Incantata, which made its acclaimed debut at the 2018 Galway International Arts Festival, is an emotion-packed elegy to the enchantment of love, life, and art...

IN Series’ ‘Dorothy Fields Cabaret’ honors first woman inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame

In my 20s, I lamented that despite being well-schooled in American literature, I’d ended up a failure at knowing much of our nation’s poetry by heart. But when I set out to entertain myself and a...

Behind the lines: A pre-opening peek at 4615 Theatre’s ‘Museum 2040’

When Jordan Friend, the highly inventive founder of 4615 Theatre Company, invited me to attend a rehearsal of Museum 2040 a few weeks ago, I jumped at the opportunity. The show, billed as an...

Plenty to chew on in ExPats’ thoughtful production of ‘Einstein’s Wife’

Ready for a dandy production about the complicated life with a child-like diva who happens to be a genius? Then consider Einstein’s Wife from ExPats Theatre. Written by Serbian playwright Snezana...

Fearless feminist dance takes the stage in Martha Graham Dance Company’s ‘The EVE Project’

On the eve of the day we learned that we still can’t elect a woman as qualified as Elizabeth Warren president, the Martha Graham Dance Company returned to the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater with...

Artistic Director Dianna Cuatto reflects on 17 years at Ballet Theatre of Maryland

Dianna Cuatto, artistic director of the Ballet Theatre of Maryland (BTM), recently announced she would retire in June after leading the company for 17 years. She answered DC Theater Arts’ questions...

Piano duo from Portugal work outward from their country’s folk melodies in Embassy Series visit to Washington

Taking music from a performer’s own culture and pulling it together with more familiar-sounding music into a coherent program for an American audience is often tricky business. If it comes across as...

‘Bandstand’ at the National Theatre is a musical love letter to veterans and their families

Bandstand, a heart-wrenching musical about a group of veterans returning home from World War II, with music by Richard Oberacker, and book and lyrics by Rob Taylor and Oberacker, is at The National...

Bittersweet lessons ‘About Love’ and life in Culture Project’s new adaptation of Turgenev at The Sheen Center

Russian author Ivan Turgenev’s autobiographical short story “First Love,” first published in 1860, is the subject of a new retelling in Culture Project’s About Love, now playing a limited engagement...

“I want to make space for women who make mistakes”: A Q&A with Dani Stoller, author of ‘Easy Women Smoking Loose Cigarettes’ at Signature Theatre

Dani Stoller’s world-premiere comedy Easy Women Smoking Loose Cigarettes is funny and witty and in its own quirky way quite deep. Plus it puts the screw in screwball. Discovered in the SigWorks...

Music of The Go-Go’s powers Monumental Theatre’s ‘Head Over Heels’

Monumental Theatre is providing DC-area audiences with a first look at the jukebox musical comedy Head Over Heels. The production features nearly two dozen musical numbers from The Go-Go’s propelling...

WNO’s ‘Don Giovanni’ signals the cultural and healing power of Washington’s arts scene

The Washington National Opera’s current production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni confirms two important ideas. The first is that while opera is most effective when it entertains, its intrinsic value is...

New theater company in Takoma Park announces inaugural season and open auditions

There’s a new theater in town. Encore Theater Company, a new nonprofit theater based in the Takoma Park community, has announced its inaugural season. The 2020/21 season will feature two intimate,...

Avant Bard’s finely-tuned ‘Suddenly Last Summer’ keeps the audience on its toes

Let us never forget that Tennessee Williams, for all his genius with poetic language, was one of the most fearless, gut-wrenchingly honest playwrights of the twentieth century. We have Blanche DuBois...