We think of DC Theatre Scene as a virtual theatre lobby where people from both sides of the stage come together to learn from one another, and share history and opinions about theatre in the Washington DC area.
We began in 2005, when Ronnie Ruff, along with three writers, created DC Theatre Reviews. The site was committed to fostering a lively discussion of the busy Washington, DC professional theatre community, especially the small stages, whose productions, until then, had been given little attention.
In October, 2007, we incorporated as DC Theatre Scene, the new Web site and name recognizing that we had expanded our coverage beyond reviews into features, news, and opinion columns.
Today, DC Theatre Scene goes where you, our audience goes – whether it is to a theatre in the DC area, Baltimore or New York, to the movies or to TV screen. We help theatregoers make tickets buying decisions through our partnership with TheatreinDC. At the end of each season, we nominate and let you decide which productions and performances emerged as the best of the season, through our DCTS Audience Choice Awards. And we have created the Gary Lee Maker Audience Award to honor the absolutely essential ingredient of any performance – the audience.
Questions? Concerns? Compliments? We’d love to hear from you. Email us.
Or call 301 638-1137
Staff currently contributing to DC Theatre Scene
(Click on their names to view their DCTS archive)
Lorraine Treanor, Publisher and Editor, member, Board of Directors
As editor for DCTS, Lorraine Treanor has the best job in town, and makes it all happen from a log house in Waldorf, MD. She attended Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts, and has produced plays and concerts in her hometown of Chicago, and in two Capital Fringe Festivals. Her daughter, Nina Norris, is an artist working in Chicago. Life’s a blast because she shares it with her husband, writer Tim Treanor.
Sarah Ameigh is a graduate of Pennsylvania State University, where she studied sociology, advertising, and theatre. After graduation she back-packed across Australia, and moved to DC where she now works in non-profit advocacy. She loves theatre, writing, music, and buys entirely too many books.
Travis Andrews is a Washington, D.C.-via-NOLA-based writer who has written for Salon, The Washingtonian, OffBeat Magazine and reported for several newspapers throughout his native Louisiana. He spends his time as a contributing editor for NBC’s DVICE, a science and tech blog, and writing about the arts. His love of the arts comes from his New Orleans heritage. His love of science is fairly mysterious. Though he’s pretended otherwise since before time, his favorite food is the French Fry. It’s time the truth came out. For more about Travis M. Andrews, go to www.travismandrews.com. Or follow the Metairie native on Twitter @MetairiesFinest.
Jayne Blanchard has been a critic covering DC theater for the past 10 years, most recently for the Washington Times. Prior to that, she was a theater critic in the Twin Cities and a movie reviewer in the Washington area. A proud resident of Baltimore, she now reviews Baltimore productions for DCTS as well.
Joe Brack, is a theatre artist currently residing in Washington, DC. He is a huge fan of all forms of the arts and is intrigued by the process in which we all create. Follow Joe’s adventures in theatre and art at JoeBrack.weebly.com
John Dellaporta is a DC-based actor, singer, and guy who “moves well”. Onstage credits have included performances at Adventure Theatre, the Olney Theatre Center, Toby’s Dinner Theatre, and Washington Savoyards, where he now also serves as a senior staff member. John intermittently posts television recaps and thought pieces on his blog, johndellaporta.blogspot.com.
Ben Demers, a Baltimore native, has been a theater enthusiast since a young age. He studied drama and voice at Vassar College, performing in numerous plays, musicals, and operas. By day, he is a legal assistant in a DC law firm, and in his spare time, he enjoys debating the artistic merits of horror movies, tearing up the dance floor, and performing music on guitar and piano. He is thrilled to experience all the dynamic, exciting theater that DC has to offer.
Robert Duffley is a rising senior at Georgetown University, studying English, Theater, and Japanese. He is the associate producer of Georgetown’s Nomadic Theatre company. His favorite plays include “The Flu Season,” “References to Salvador Dalí Make Me Hot,” and “Therese Raquin.”
Susan Galbraith is a playwright, librettist, director and actor in theatre. Currently, she serves as President of Alliance for New Music-Theatre.
Brad Hathaway, Theatre Shelf columnist – Brad covered theater throughout the Washington area for over a decade. He is best known locally for his work as the editor and reviewer for Potomac Stages from 2001 to 2010. Among the publications that have featured his writing are The Hill Rag, the Connection Newspapers of Northern Virginia, Show Music Magazine and The Sondheim Review. As a member of the American Theater Critics Association, he hosted their 2008 annual conference in Washington and currently serves on that association’s executive committee. Brad received a League of Washington Theatres’ Offstage Honors Award for contributions to the Washington DC theater community. He and his wife Teddie live on a houseboat in Sausalito CA.
Amrita Kahlid is a film school dropout who moved to DC from Southern California to become “a serious person”–it’s a work in progress. Her high school Shakespeare teacher once told her that the Bard was meant “to be heard and not read”, and she took this to mean it was okay to not read the plays and just see the Ian McKellan version of everything instead. Despite these early setbacks, she went on to cover the local theatre beat for the AU Eagle and the Washington City Paper. She’s made a living as a researcher for Government Executive and National Journal. When she’s not consuming art or news, you can find her at your nearest bikram yoga studio or the Columbia Heights Target.
Debbie Minter Jackson is a writer and has been a performer in musical theater for 30+ years. Originally from Chicago, she has performed throughout the Washington, D.C. area including the Kennedy Center in productions with the legendary Mike Malone. Her scripts have been commissioned and produced by Source Theater, throughout Washington, D.C. and New York, and she is a member of Footlights and the Black Women Playwrights’ Group which is celebrating its 20th Anniversary this year. By day she happily works in a federal public health agency as a Senior Program Analyst.
Rosalind Lacy, who hails from Los Angeles, has enjoyed writing for DCTheatreScene since 2006. A 20-year journalism veteran, with newspapers such as the Pittsburgh-Post Gazette, the Butler Eagle in Pennsylvania, the Suburban Newspapers of Northern New Jersey, Rosalind won a MD-DC press award for the Montgomery Journal in 1999. Since Rosalind’s heady days training and performing professionally in summer stock out of New York City, Rosalind has taught drama in high school, directed and acted in community theaters, and is the proud mother of three young adults. Still an avid theater nut, Rosalind is a former board member of www.Footlightsdc.org, and an aficionada of Spanish theater history.
Andrew Lapin, film and theatre critic. Andrew graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in English — always the telltale sign of a life steeped in the arts. An editorial fellow at Government Executive magazine, he also writes film criticism for NPR and a sports column for The A.V. Club. Though a native of metro Detroit, he now resides in Washington D.C. and continues to devote an unhealthy portion of his brain to esoteric film trivia.
Roy Maurer, a former U.S. Marine, and filmmaker/screenwriter, switched to journalism in 2003. He has covered theatre in Los Angeles, Bloomington, Indiana,(where he co-founded a weekly arts publication and added political reporting to his roster) and here in DC for NBC Washington. He is an editor/reporter covering occupational safety, health and security issues for HR News.
Steven McKnight is a member of the DCTS Board of Directors. Steven is a recovering lawyer who now works in a lobbying firm and enjoys the drama of political theatre on both sides of the aisle. He admires authors, actors, athletes, teachers, and chefs, and has dabbled in all of those roles with mixed (and occasionally hilarious) results.
Scott Meslow DCTS Film and Theatre critic. When Scott came to us he wrote for The Atlantic and for Campus Progress and WealthBriefing. He has moved to NYC to become Entertainment Editor for online magazine The Week. He promises to come back once in a while to write for us.
Jennifer Perry has been a DC resident since 2001 having moved from Upstate New York to attend graduate school at American University’s School of International Service. When not attending countless theatre, concert, and cabaret performances in the area and in New York, she works for the US Federal Government as an analyst. Jennifer previously wrote for Maryland Theatre Guide and DC Metro Theater Arts and continues to review theatre for BroadwayWorld.
Terry Ponick A former college English professor, technical writer, and policy analyst, Terry Ponick started writing on theater in 1987, first for northern Virginia’s Connection newspapers and currently for the Times Community newspaper chain. Along with his wife Fran, he created a series of Siskel and Ebert-style dueling review columns that won the couple a 1993 Washington Dateline Award for theater criticism. In 1994, he moved to the Washington Times to become that paper’s classical music and culture critic.
Richard Seff, NY Theatre Buzz columnist. Richard, a true Broadway quadruple-threat – Broadway actor, agent, author and librettist- has, among his many accomplishments, has written the book for Shine! The Horatio Alger Musical!, which debuted at the 2010 New York Musical Theatre Festival and the his well-received Broadway autobiography, “SUPPORTING PLAYER: My Life Upon the Wicked Stage”. Each year, Actors Equity recognizes the year’s most outstanding supporting player with, appropriately enough, the Richard Seff Award. ‘This Is Broadway’ a radio series of 60 short interviews with Broadway stars which Richard co-hosted with Isobel Robins in the 70′s can be heard on AmericanTheatreWing.org.
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Hunter Styles is the Artistic Director of Artists Bloc, a locally-focused workshop and presentation series for early-development performing arts pieces. He has written plays produced by Rorschach Theatre, Forum Theatre, Wayward Theatre, Flying V, and Grain of Sand. He received a Helen Hayes Award nomination for co-directing the Andy Warhol musical POP! at The Studio 2ndStage and has directed and assistant directed with Theater J, Rorschach Theatre, Synetic Theater, Doorway Arts Ensemble, Georgetown and American universities, and more. He is currently a staff member at Signature Theatre in Arlington and a company member of Factory 449. He has been writing for DC Theatre Scene since 2008 and for American Theatre magazine since 2012.
Tim Treanor, Senior Writer, member, DCTS Board of Directors. Since 2005, Tim has written over 400 reviews and numerous news articles, features and interviews for DCTS. He has been a member of the American Theater Critics Association since 2009 and sits on its Executive and New Plays committees. He is also a fellow of the National Critics Institute, run by the O’Neill Theater Center. His interactive murder mystery,Murder in Elsinore, enjoyed a brief run in 2003. By day he is a trial lawyer for the Federal government. He lives with his dear bride, Lorraine, in a log house in the woods of Southern Maryland.
Jeffrey Walker. Jeffrey Walker is proud to be a contributor to DC Theatre Scene and Broadway World’s DC region. He also writes ‘Stage Views,’ a column for the theatre reviews and views for a weekly newspaper. When not writing about the theatre, he teaches theatre arts in Northern Virginia and lives with his wife and sons safely below the Beltway. Follow him on Twitter: @StageViews.
Leslie Weisman A longtime subscriber to a half-dozen DC theatres, Leslie also writes for the Washington DC Film Society, where her articles on the Berlin and Munich film festivals appear regularly in the Society’s online newsletter Storyboard. Leslie is also a regular contributor to the Orson Welles website Wellesnet.com, and wrote a review for the site of the play Obediently Yours, Orson Welles which she saw in its Paris and Barcelona premieres.
Hi. I’m a retired clergyman/theologian who has published a lot of books, mostly nonfiction. I now have two or three plays I’m ready to show to someone, but haven’t been able to find the names of agents in the DC area (I live 40 miles SW, in Warrenton, VA). Could someone please recommend some? I’d be very grateful. John