Young Playwright’s Theater was founded in 1995 by playwright Karen Zacarías in order, through interactive in-school and after-school programs, to teach DC metro area students to “promote community dialogue and respect for young artists.”

Saturday’s performance of the original student play, Out of the Shadow, was the culmination of YPT’s year-long Young Playwright’s Workshop.  The single performance provided the students the opportunity to perform their play at Capital Fringe.

Out of the Shadow deals with the hot-button issue of bullying in the schools. The student playwrights used monologues, short scenes, poetry, and song to tell the stories of students bullied for race, gender, sexuality, socio-economic status, or just for being different. [Read more...]

Imagine a man who leaves behind his wife and children in search of financial stability and a better future overseas. Imagine the man finds himself stranded abroad and returns, an unrecognizable shell of his former self. Imagine the man, now lost in a world he once ruled, without hope, or the life for which he thought he was fighting for. We see this every day as troops pour home from Afghanistan and Iraq, but it’s a timeless tale told with absolute craftsmanship in Andrew White’s adaptation of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Enoch Arden. [Read more...]

hookups is about as naked as it can get at Fringe. A quintet of engaging actors make use of an air mattress and the barest essentials to create a series of vignettes covering every imaginable hookup through history and literature, all with a wry wink and a twist. It’s both cute and crass, like that girl dancing on the pool table you just can’t help but smile at even though you think she’s a drunken idiot. She is, but so are you, so get it on. [Read more...]

iKilL is a exhibition of excellent choreography performed by a well-drilled ensemble. Auteur director Izumi Ashizawa has gathered a team of talented young actors. Together, they seek to portray the horrors and consequences of violence and war in a series of short vignettes performed in the style of Japanese physical theater. [Read more...]

They can take away your home, but they can’t take your spirit. Sara Josephine James knows this better than any of us — she’s responsible not only for her own spirit but for numerous others as well. [Read more...]

Christmas Eve. Three co-workers. The office of Homeland Security. Thus unravels the story of Shelter in Place, a light-hearted one act where three unsuspecting office mates find themselves trapped in their building during a shelter in place lockdown, instantly transforming their casual banter into confrontation as the day progresses. [Read more...]

If I See You were an item of produce, it would have been grown in a home garden free of pesticides or chemicals, being watered and pruned daily by a gentle and caring caretaker. [Read more...]

If aliens came to visit Earth, would we be proud of our world? James Levy’s joyful sci-fi rock opera puts humanity under the microscope as we observe first contact between a fading rock star and a few very groovy extraterrestrials. [Read more...]

There is no pie in A Piece of Pi.

I feel it’s necessary to point this out, because after all, there are clowns. So one might expect some pie-throwing with a show title like that. Or some mathematical musings on the nature of pi. But, there are neither.  [Read more...]