DCMetroTheaterArts
Your source for theater news, reviews, and interviews in DC, MD, Northern VA, and New York
The Word, in spiritual parlance, is the creative power of God made audible and visible through His Son. It is the energy of the divine dynamic made manifest through Self-revelation. True to principle, Word Becomes Flesh is a creatively powerful flow of self-revelatory narratives from a young black father to his unborn son. This viscerally […]
I first encountered Hooded, or Being Black for Dummies five months ago, when it was presented at The Kennedy Center’s Page-to-Stage Festival. Hearing the play at that first public reading was an electrifying experience. Now this dark comedy—the third in a series about coming of age in America—is having its world premiere as a fully-staged production […]
There is a laugh track with this show. As in a prerecorded TV sitcom where the studio audience was cued to be amused, there’s an overhead LAUGH sign that flashes intermittently accompanied by canned har-hars and rim shots. Sometimes the LAUGH sign lights when something is howlingly funny—as happens a lot in this marvelously mischievous […]
Like a gift that keeps on giving, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream keeps on rekindling. Dreamer after dreamer reconceives it as if anew. And last night that classic spark reignited at Gallaudet University, where the Theater and Dance Program presented a production to be delighted by—whether this be your first Dream or umpteenth. “It is […]
There is a critical conversation going on in Anacostia right now that may be one of the most urgent and honest exchanges between black women and black men the American theater has ever known. The conversation is between two choreopoems, one composed and staged from a black man’s point of view (Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s Word […]
Updated 6/1/5: Before seeing Faction of Fools’ Commedia dell’arte interpretation of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town in full production (I’d previously seen it in a workshop), I was skeptical whether the show was going to work. That uncertainty had prompted me to want to talk beforehand with Director Matthew R. Wilson (see below). But let’s be honest: What lover […]
Faction of Fools does it again with an innovative production of Thornton Wilder’s revolutionary and Pulitzer Prize-winning play Our Town, which originally debuted in 1938 about a New Hampshire town at the turn of the century and also death, love, marriage, life, and making breakfast. This is an inspired choice for Faction of Fools, a […]
Hit Musical Visible Language to Livestream on HowlRound TOMORROW, NOVEMBER 16, 2014 AT 2 PM WSC Avant Bard and the Gallaudet University Theatre and Dance Program announce today that their co-production of Visible Language will livestream on the HowlRound TV networkSunday, November 16, 2014. This final performance in the show’s near-soldout run can be viewed live […]
WSC AVANT BARD is Giving Away 5 Pairs of tickets for anytime in their run TO THERE IS A HAPPINESS THAT MORNING IS THERE IS A HAPPINESS THAT MORNING IS Lusted. Then busted. A comedy in couplets. Back by popular demand! A delightful tale about teachers behaving like horny students. Mickle Maher’s smart and sexy […]
There is a shortlist of great American plays about hopes and dreams, wrenching and emotionally exacting dramas exposing the anguish when righteous aspiration is tragically not enough. Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is one. Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun is another. Such plays endure not just because they are uncommonly well written […]
This weekend at Gallaudet’s Eastman Studio Theatre WSC Avant Bard and Gallaudet University Theatre and Dance Program opened their world premiere, historically based musical, Visible Language. Aside from its historically rich text and beautifully complex bi-lingual style of presentation, Visible Language by Mary Resing also moves its audience with an urgent yearning to communicate beyond […]
I’ll be the first to admit that I was… concerned when I heard that one of DC’s funniest acting troupes was staging one of Shakespeare’s trickiest tragedies. I’ll also be the first to admit that I shouldn’t have worried. In the hands of the Faction of Fools, William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus is transformed into the […]
Imagination Stage presents Cinderella: The Remix, an exciting retelling of the classic written and directed by Psalmayene 24, with hip-hop beats by Nick Hernandez. The final production in Psalmayene 24’s highly successful Hip-Hop Children’s Trilogy, this Remix is everything that a powerhouse children’s production should be– thrilling, fun, and with an inspirational message that pulses […]
The house lights dims, and the stage is flooded with elegant people dressed up for a formal occasion. I spot a man who looks around trying to fit in, and awkwardly raising his glass and barely understanding what was the occasion, but he caught on. He tries to rise to the occasion by giving a […]
Often we struggle to be heard, to be recognized. In this production of Shakespeare’s Richard III, directed by Dr. Lindsey Snyder, Richard is not depicted in the usual interpretation, but rather, reinterpreted as a Deaf Man who struggles to be heard in his own family. This way, Richard (Ethan Sinnott) uses this as a motivation […]
After the discovery of Richard III’s remains in a Leicester car park in August 2012, it was concluded that far from being a hunchback, as some have stated, he suffered from scoliosis, an abnormal sideways curvature of the spine. He was, as Ross noted in his classic biography, small and slight (Richard III, Yale English […]
In anticipation that A Commedia Christmas Carol is here to stay, I am giving it the most Washington of all things: an acronym (ACCC). ACCC is based on the Charles Dickens novel A Christmas Carol, and comes complete with the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future. But Writer/Director/Choreographer Matthew R. Wilson freshens his script […]
DC is now considered the second biggest theater town in the United States, after New York. It also has one of the biggest deaf communities, which means there is a lot of culture: deaf culture! What follows are several shows that will be sign interpreted or captioned for people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. Captioned […]
Broken Spokes is a complex production with excellent acting that packs an emotional wallop while lending insights about Deaf culture. Says Writer-Director Willy Conley, “My intention was to write a gritty, realistic Deaf drama that veers away from the sweet, helpless, sexless, angelic view that the hearing public generally has of deaf people.” Broken Spokes […]
Here are DCMetroTheaterArts writers’ choices for their favorites designs of production in the the DC Metro Area in 2012. I always felt that Designers never received enough ‘ink’ or credit or respect in reviews and were usually ‘clumped together’ in one sentence. I am very proud to say that the writers of DCMTA give designers […]