2020

Capital-area community theaters plan fundraising telethon

As COVID-19 continues to ravage the country, its effects on the arts have been devastating. Many organizations have turned to creative ways to raise funds in an effort to offset losses from canceled...

Significant streaming for the week of the 4th

While most of us will be celebrating Independence Day remotely this year, there’s a significant selection of virtual performances by New York theater artists that will enrich your 4th of July week. In...

What ‘Into the Woods’ can teach us about surviving COVID-19

Broadway has been dark since March 12 due to the coronavirus pandemic, the longest shutdown in its history. With theaters shuttered from Broadway to the Beltway, musical theater fans have an...

Broadway closure extended again, through the remainder of 2020

The Broadway League has just announced another extension of the cancellation of Broadway performances due to the coronavirus pandemic. Ticket refunds and exchanges on all Broadway shows are now...

Two entertaining serial podcasts for summer binge-listening

Originally issued in weekly installments, the complete editions of two engaging serial podcasts are now available in full, so you can binge on them all at once, or listen to the individual chapters at...

Rorschach Theatre to stream ‘Magic in Rough Spaces’ this weekend

Four pieces developed by Rorschach Theatre artists will be showcased in online readings this weekend, June 27 and 28, 2020, as “Magic in Rough Spaces.” Three works are brand new; one is a “bonus...

In Brave Soul Collective online debut, raw monologues about anti-Blackness

Brave Soul Collective (BSC) launches their virtual performance season Sunday, June 28, 2020, at 7 pm EST with Question Marks—an online event of raw, thought-provoking theater that addresses one...

Alden Theatre’s ‘Drive-Thru Drama’ offers family-friendly joy

The ever nimble Alden in McLean has developed a unique way to provide theatrical entertainment in this era of COVID-19. With indoor live theater on hiatus for more than three months, the Alden is set...

Ballet Hispánico’s upcoming ‘Noche Unidos’ brings people together through dance

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Ballet Hispánico, America’s leading Latino dance organization, with a mission of giving voice to the community’s cultural identity and experience through...

Why a whisper network turned into a tornado at Flying V

On Monday evening, June 22, 2020, the Board of Flying V Theatre Company terminated Cofounder and Artistic Director Jason Schlafstein following a weekend of sexual misconduct and harassment allegations...

Continuing the celebration of Pride month

For this last week of Pride month, New York theaters and performing artists continue their celebrations of the LGBTQIA+ community and its history with an ongoing calendar of events culminating, on...

DMV-area organizations plan for a virtual summer camp experience

As the end dates for social-distancing recommendations keep being pushed further toward the end of the year, many DC, Maryland, and Virginia arts organizations are committing to an effort to connect...

Summer reading selections of theater-themed books

New, recent, and soon-to-be-released books on theater-related topics offer a variety of genres for interesting summer reading. From personal recollections to historical fiction to the spotlighting of...

Youth respond to COVID-19 in heartfelt ‘Inside Voices’ film from Arena Stage

For school-age children, their world has turned upside down because of COVID-19. Over the past three months, children and youth have lived from a distance in a virtual world, lived with a muffled...

Winners of Broadway Black’s inaugural Antonyo Awards for 2020

Recipients of the first annual Antonyo Awards, created and presented by Broadway Black (in association with The Black Theatre Society) to recognize achievements of Black theater artists for both...

Black Lives Matter and the universality of Shakespeare come together this Juneteenth in a powerful new video from The Public Theater

As part of its weekly digital series #BraveNewShakespeare, which challenges members of the theater community to create their own interpretations of what Shakespeare’s words mean to them today, The...

Hot button issues for Black theater: A roundtable on revolution

Juneteenth 2020, Washington, DC—In response to the historic Black Lives Matter movement, DC Theater Arts has committed to offer our communications channel to help amplify the BIPOC voices (Black,...

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...

Woolly Mammoth launches new Connectivity Core Partner Program

As the nation grapples with profound racial unrest—in addition to a global health crisis that is disproportionately affecting Black and Indigenous people—DC’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company is...

Peter Michael Marino to livestream ‘Desperately Seeking the Exit’ in The Queerly Festival

With the NYC Pride Parade going virtual for this year’s 50th-anniversary celebration, The Queerly Festival – Frigid New York’s annual Pride platform for LGBTQ+ indie theater artists since 2014 – is...

Stars of ‘The Prom’ kick off Pride episodes of ‘My Broadway Memory’ on BPN

Co-hosts Michael Kushner and Brian Sedita welcome actors Caitlin Kinnunen and Josh Lamon to kick off their first Pride episode of “My Broadway Memory” on Thursday, June 18, at 7 pm. The live weekly...

Broadway Podcast Network launches its new ‘My First Show’ interview series

Broadway Podcast Network (BPN) – offering a wide range of premiere digital programming in theater and the performing arts, with all-star hosts, actors, storytellers, producers, writers, and other...

In ‘May 22, 2020’ from Arena Stage, a day in the life of the COVID DMV

“I read the news today, oh boy… / the news was rather sad…” That day was May 22, 2020. In a leap into film docudrama creation, Arena Stage’s Artistic Director Molly Smith chronicles a sad day in the...

TOSOS to livestream Robert Heide’s ‘The Bed’ for Gay Pride

In the mid-1960s, Joe Cino, founder of the iconic Greenwich Village coffee-house theater Caffe Cino (hailed as the birthplace of Off-Off-Broadway), urged some of his trailblazing playwrights to write...

See who won the 65th Annual Drama Desk Awards

Recipients of the 65th annual Drama Desk Awards for outstanding achievements in New York theater (on, Off, and Off-Off Broadway) of the 2019-20 season were announced tonight by a star-studded roster...

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...

DMV theaters take a knee and take a stand

Beyond mourning and outrage, these DC Metro performing arts institutions have gone on the record with commitments to make a difference and be accountable. (Last updated June 12, 2020, 3:30 pm.: added...

Diverse online offerings to watch this weekend

Even though it’s remote, you can still keep your connection to the theater strong with a diverse selection of virtual offerings this weekend. From livestream concerts, original cast readings, and...

Remembering the power of live theater: My night of rapture under a ‘Silent Sky’

By Christopher Lancette I sit down at Ford’s Theatre a few months ago—back when there was no coronavirus and the world was normal—to watch a play. I have never been much of a theater guy. Not because...

15 Questions in 15 Minutes with stage and screen star Alyssa May Gold

Last seen on the New York stage in her critically-acclaimed performance in the award-nominated supernatural coming-of-age comedy Our Dear Dead Drug Lord at Off-Broadway’s WP Theater, Alyssa May Gold,...

Theatermakers of color call white theater to account for systemic racism

The cultural momentum powering protests that followed the May 25 murder of George Floyd has galvanized a national and local movement for transformational change in American theater led by Black,...

Actor Jamyl Dobson discusses his livestream reading of ‘one in two’ for Playbill’s Pride Plays

For its first installment in this month’s primetime series of Pride Plays, commemorating the 50th anniversary of New York’s Gay Pride Parade with livestreams of four significant LGBTQIA+ works,...

Nominations are in and voting is on for Broadway Black’s first Antonyo Awards

In a livestream ceremony on Facebook and YouTube last night, hosts Kristolyn Lloyd (Dear Evan Hansen) and Bryan Terrell Clark (Hamilton) announced the nominations in 23 categories, along with a...

Solas Nua puts ‘Being Here’ on pause to address protests for racial equality

From Artistic Director Rex Daugherty June 9, 2020: Dear friends of Solas Nua, I wanted to let you know that we are pausing our production of BEING HERE to give the artists more time to make the...

Pittsburgh Cultural Trust announces virtual Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival

Now in its 61st year, the Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival, a production of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, announces the festival will be presented for the first time all-digital. From June 5 to...

Gay Pride goes virtual for this year’s 50th anniversary star-studded festivities

This year marks the 50th anniversary of New York’s first Pride Parade. And despite the ongoing shutdown of large public gatherings to guard against the spread of the coronavirus, the celebration will...

A challenge to theaters to reopen now—outdoors

When are the Small Box theater companies going to throw off the straightjacket of conventional space-bound theater and explore alternative venues? Black Lives Matter Plaza was created overnight with a...

Exploring Sondheim’s ‘Finishing the Hat’ on ‘Poetry in America’ with The Sheen Center

To continue this year’s milestone celebration of Stephen Sondheim’s 90th birthday, Off-Broadway’s The Sheen Center is teaming up with Poetry in America – a new series produced by Verse Video...

Scenes of radical hospitality for #OpenYourLobby at STC and Woolly (photos)

Six DC theaters welcomed #BlackLivesMatter protesters the weekend of June 5 to 7, 2020 . Photographer Malcolm Lewis Barnes reports from two of them, Shakespeare Theatre Company and Woolly Mammoth...

The stirring street theater of Black Lives Matter in DC (photos)

The sheer creativity and inventiveness of the protesters was on full display at every turn as they each seemed to come prepared with energy and a message. As if re-experiencing What to Send Up When It...

NOVA playwright Soo-Jin Lee’s streaming ‘Peaches’ is bittersweet and affecting

With DMV theaters still shuttered because of COVID-19, there has been the opportunity to explore original streaming content written by local playwrights. One of those playwrights is Northern Virginia...

Lobbies closed by COVID reopen to support #BlackLivesMatter

“We call on theaters to #OpenYourLobby in support of protestors,” said the impassioned post on social media. Do not equate the property violence of protestors to the massive, state-sanctioned violence...

LA TI DO revises LA TI DOnline launch to support Black Lives Matter

LA TI DO Productions (LTD) has delayed its launch of LA TI DOnline to create space for the communities its connected to in support of focusing on Black Lives Matter protests resulting from the deaths...

Jesse Corbin’s new song ‘Dance (On Our Own Together)’ delivers a much-needed uplifting message

Actor/singer/songwriter Jesse Corbin has been spending his time in isolation productively. In addition to his weekly appearance with The Boy Band Project in the group’s brunch-time Digital Get Down on...

How does ‘Homebound’ happen? A peek behind the screens

There has been oodles of well-deserved praise for Round House Theatre’s homegrown Homebound, an original ten-installment web series exploring life under stay-at-home orders. Penned by some of the DC...

Free streamings of two top musicals to end May with a bang!

Two blockbuster show-biz-themed period-piece musicals – one classic, one cult-classic, and both filled with spirited song and dance – are available for complimentary streaming this weekend to end your...

Call for submissions for the first ‘Virtual Theatre Festival’ this summer

Broadway Theatre Studio, producers of the popular long-running Off-Broadway musical-mixology series The Imbible, is partnering with the iconic theater magazine Playbill to host a brand-new Virtual...

15 Questions in 15 Minutes with Lauren Marcus of ‘Be More Chill’ fame

Sheltering in place hasn’t kept actress/singer/songwriter Lauren Marcus from creating, performing, and entertaining audiences everywhere with her talent, passion, and commitment. Just in time for the...

A void in live protest theater is a silenced cry of pandemic proportions

Once again, anti-Black violence strikes at the heart and soul of America. We are shocked and saddened to watch an unarmed, handcuffed Black man struggle to breathe as he lies helpless on the ground....

ARTSFAIRFAX announces $100,000 emergency COVID-19 grants program

ARTSFAIRFAX today announced $100,000 in available funding through the newly created Emergency Relief and Recovery Grant Program. Funding will provide critical support to Fairfax County and the Cities...