Thanks to this year’s contributors:
theatre critics Brad Hathaway, Ellen Burns, Gary McMillan,
John Glass, John Stoltenberg, Steven McKnight and Tim Treanor
In this time of celebration and gifting, we hope you will take a moment to remember those playwrights, performers and producing companies which gave you the greatest gifts this year, be it of laughter, tears, comprehension, or compassion. Whether or not they have sent you a request, why not simply thank them with a donation?
To thank all theatermakers, you could send a contribution to these caring funds: theatreWashington’s Taking Care of Our Own.
Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids, and The Actors Fund.
We asked some of our favorite theatre critics to suggest some wrappable gifts. We hope you enjoy this year’s gift guide.
Take a look, then tell us your favorite theatre gift ideas
| Category | Suggested by | Gift | To buy, click on the Image |
|---|---|---|---|
| Streaming Music | Brad Hathaway Website | Spotify This might well be the year you give musical theater lovers (or likers, for that matter) a nearly inexhaustible collection of show music recordings. Instead of physical objects, try giving a subscription to a streaming library that includes a large collection of "our kind of music." Spotify charges $9.99 a month for unlimited access to more music than anyone can ever listen to. It is the library I check when I want to hear the music of a show that I don't already own. A recent search just on the term "Broadway Cast" brought up over four hundred albums! Not all of them were, in fact, Broadway cast albums but hundreds were. Some items that caught my eye: Shirley Jones and Jack Cassidy in Maggie Flynn Carol Channing in Show Girl Shirley Booth in Juno Phil Silvers in Top Banana Herschel Bernardi in Zorba Polly Bergen in First Impressions Julie Andrews in The Boy Friend and the 1964 World's Fair show To Broadway With Love. The Spotify app for your browser brings all these treasures into your computer. It is an app that needs improving (its search function suffers from inflexibility and its listings not as accurate as they should be) but the ability to simply type in a show title and instantly have the score playing is to be treasured. |  |
| CDs | Brad Hathaway Website | And the World Goes By So you think one of the theater lovers on your holiday gift list already has this score in his or her collection? No, not this way! You see, the original cast recording of this off-Broadway revue of the songs of Kander and Ebb, as wonderful as it was, was nowhere near complete, nor did it preserve the original orchestrations. The 1991 recording that Jay David Saks produced for RCA gave us only 22 songs on one disc. Now, Bruce Kimmel's Kritzerland label gives us a new two-disc set to make a completist's heart flutter. Not only did Kimmel record all 32 songs in the show, he reached back to the original arrangements and orchestrations of David Loud and David Krane. What is more, just to make sure it is as complete a set as possible, he throws in the entr'acte, three short cross-overs that converted individual songs into something akin to a medley, the music to which the cast took their bows and, as bonus tracks, six of the play-offs: those short snippets that cover the exit of a singer vacating the stage to the next number. It must have been a daunting task to come up with a cast to rival the original, but Kimmel reached into his rolodex to call on stars he's recorded frequently in the past (Brent Barrett, Christiane Noll, Jason Graae) and then added two new names for his contact list, Kyra Da Costa and Kristin Towers-Rowles. They perform these theater songs with a thoroughly satisfying theatrical flare. |  |
| CDs | Steven McKnight DCTheatreScene Archive | Christmas at Downton Abbey While this new two CD set does not involve Broadway, most theatre I know enjoy the beloved PBS show Downton Abbey. If you like Christmas music, this new two CD collection has well-known carols and hymns chosen to evoke the Christmas At Downton Abbey spirit. In addition to classic Christmas music performed by a mix of solo performers (among them, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa) and choirs, Christmas At Downton Abbey includes exclusive new recordings of traditional carols from Downton Abbey cast members Elizabeth McGovern (Lady Cora) and Julian Ovenden (Charles Blake) plus a special, spoken word Christmas story read by Jim Carter (Mr. Carson). Also, Downton Abbey composer John Lunn has written a new & exclusive extended seasonal suite version of the Downton Abbey theme music, and part 1 & part 2 open each disc. It’s a great value, too (over 40 songs for under $15 on Amazon.com). |  |
| CDs | Gary McMillan, An unabashed lover of musicals and former writer for DC Theatre Scene Archive | Barbara Cook, Count Your Blessings I've described Ms. Cook below (see DVDs) here is her delightful Christmas album. |  |
| CDs | Brad Hathaway Website | Forbidden Broadway Comes Out Swinging There are times when we theater fans come across as a bit too self important. (I know it is hard to believe, but it is true.) Thank goodness, then, that we undergo Gerard Alessandrini's periodic pretension puncturings. For the 2014 edition of Forbidden Broadway, the one that surveys the season that briefly had Rocky: The Musical in the Winter Garden at the north end of the Broadway theater district while Billy Porter duked it out with Daniel Stewart Sherman in Kinky Boots to the south in the Al Hirschfeld, Alessandrini's troupe is in a pugilistic mode. There are plenty of other targets for their jabs, however. The new recording on DRG Records takes on Pippin and Matilda, the live TV Sound of Music and even throws in a juke box medley from juke box musicals. |  |
| CDs | Steven McKnight DCTheatreScene Archive | Kristin Chenoweth - Coming Home While the perfection of a studio production is often preferred, the charm and personality of a performer such as Kristin Chenoweth practically demands a live album complete with audience patter. Her new 15-song CD Coming Home is now available and the DVD of her Nov. 28th premiere performance on PBS directed by Kenny Ortega is coming soon. Kristin’s concert was recorded in her hometown of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, which is one reason why she sounds so sweet and sincere and the live audience is so enthusiastic. Her operatic-quality soprano soars on a range of Broadway standards (I Could Have Danced All Night, Over the Rainbow, Bring Him Home) and a few contemporary songs (Enough is Enough, Paul Simon’s Father’s and Daughters). Yes, Wicked fans, she also sings Popular and For Good. This CD may not help you fully appreciate the quality of Kristin Chenoweth’s singing voice, but it demonstrates why she is such a popular performer. |  |
| CDs | Brad Hathaway Website | Fred Astaire: The Early Years at RKO You might pardon the inclusion of recordings from Hollywood movie musicals in this theater-related list if you reflect that before he became a great movie star, Fred Astaire was a great stage musical star both on Broadway and on London's West End. Add in the fact that the songs for his movies at RKO were written by the likes of Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin, Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields, Cole Porter and Vincent Youmans and Gus Kahn. Turner Classic Movies joined with Sony Masterworks to release a two disc set that includes the studio recordings of songs introduced by Astaire in RKO films like Porter's The Gay Divorcee, Gershwin's Shall We Dance, and A Damsel in Distress, Berlin's Top Hat and Follow the Fleet, Kern's Swing Time and Youmans' Flying Down to Rio. |  |
| CDs | Steven McKnight DCTheatreScene Archive | Holiday Wishes, Idina Menzel If you are in the mood for an album of (mostly) Christmas music sung by one of Broadway’s most iconic voices or your children can’t get enough of the Disney film Frozen, check out Idina Menzel’s first holiday album. Holiday Wishes has a dozen songs that are wonderful mix of traditional carols (Silent Night), Christmas standards (White Christmas, The Christmas Song), and contemporary holiday songs (All I Want for Christmas is You). Some aren’t technically considered Christmas songs, but fit in well, such as her duet of Baby It's Cold Outside with Michael Bublé, a beautiful rendition of Joni Mitchell’s River, and When You Wish Upon a Star. The only new song is December Prayer co-written by Idina. While some enjoy lush albums with big orchestrations, the relatively spare arrangements produced by Walter Afansieff (who has worked with Barbra Streisand, Celine Dion, and Mariah Carey) allow a great vocalist to shine. |  |
| CDs | John Stoltenberg DC Metro Theater Arts Archive and Magic Time! Website | If/Then I saw this show when it debuted at the National late last year and again when it opened on Broadway in March. The music and lyrics knock me out all over again each time I listen—as I do now and then on Spotify. And I've been thisclose to buying myself the jewel-case version just so I can have and hold it. If/Then is simply one of the smartest, deepest, truest musicals around, and thankfully it survived the critics. |  |
| CDs | Brad Hathaway Website | Roberta New World Records has just released the latest in their "The Foundations of the American Musical Theater" project: a modern recording of the full score for Jerome Kern's 1933 Roberta with enough of the libretto of Otto Harbach to utilize all the underscoring in the reconstruction of the charts by legendary orchestrator Robert Russell Bennett. Rob Berman leads the Orchestra of Ireland with soloists like Annalene Beechey, Patrick Cummings, Kim Criswell, Diana Montague and Jason Graae in the role originated by Bob Hope. (That role was then played by Fred Astaire in the movie version … interesting pedigree.) The score gave us the standard "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes," but there are so many lush and lovely melodies that that classic almost seems just one more magical item. The two-disc set includes a good deal of dialogue, so listening to it is more akin to hearing a two hour and 21 minute radio program than a record. Track-by-track notes help you imagine exactly what was taking place on the stage of the New Amsterdam Theatre in 1933 and 34. |  |
| CDs | Brad Hathaway Website | West Side Story Michael Tilson Thomas and his San Francisco Symphony have rectified a disappointing situation that has rankled for nearly 30 years with a glorious complete recording of the Broadway score of West Side Story. The recording on their in-house label, SFS Media, is a live capturing of the concert Tilson Thomas staged in 2013 using the charts that Bernstein had used in his opera-tinged recording of 1985. How excited I had been when that Bernstein recording was announced, but how disappointed I was when I put on the records (remember records?) and found the vocals sounded stilted and formal in an operatic mode. Worse, the role of Tony was sung by Spanish accented José Carreras who sounded more like a Puerto Rican Shark than a Jet. Bernstein's orchestra sounded superb, but I could never get over the non-Broadway feel of the vocals. Now, with the Tilson Thomas live recording we get all the glory of the Broadway score with an unsurpassed performance from a first class orchestra as we had with the earlier recording. But now we get vocals that sound as if they belong on a Broadway stage. That's not surprising as the role of Tony is sung by Cheyenne Jackson, whose Broadway performance in the 2009 revival of Finian's Rainbow remains a treasured memory, and Maria is sung by a British stage star with a crystal voice, Alexandra Silber. It was worth the wait. |  |
| DVDs | Gary McMillan, An unabashed lover of musicals and former writer for DC Theatre Scene Archive | Barbara Cook - One Singular Sensation Barbara Cook, unofficial patron saint of librarians, created three legendary Broadway roles more than half a century ago -- Cunegonde in Candide (1956), Marian (the librarian) in The Music Man (1957), and Amalia in She Loves Me (1962) -- and is lauded as one of the best song interpreters on the planet. She premiered Barbara Cook Sings Mostly Sondheim at Carnegie Hall in 2001 and reprised the performance in acclaimed Broadway and West End runs (garnering Tony and Olivier Award nominations) as well as in a national tour which played the Terrace Theatre during the Kennedy Center's 2002 Sondheim Celebration. That Terrace Theatre performance was astonishing, capped by an a cappella rendition of "Anyone Can Whistle." |  |
| DVDs | Gary McMillan, An unabashed lover of musicals and former writer for DC Theatre Scene Archive | Sondheim Celebration at Carnegie Hall The Carnegie Hall celebration features a medley of "Losing My Mind"/"You Could Drive a Person Crazy" by Dorothy Loundon that is priceless. |  |
| DVDs | Gary McMillan, An unabashed lover of musicals and former writer for DC Theatre Scene Archive | Two Company-ies Company is a trailblazing, modern musical. Filmed four years apart (2007 and 2011), both productions offer unique pleasures in their extraordinary ensemble casts. [Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS is one of my favorite charities, so I was delighted that the Broadway (2007) cast held a fundraising auction after the performance I attended. I had the winning bid for the final item. I never dreamed that would include a backstage meeting with Mr. Esparza, but he sought me out to thank me. The auction item? An instrument Esparza played in the show autographed by him (he plays two instruments--a grand piano in the "Being Alive" finale and a kazoo--guess which?). And he autographed the Playbill to me personally.] You'll know you've caught the theatre bug when you purchase a third, fourth or fifth cast/studio recording of a musical. And when people scoff at you, the approved reply is "It's the cast, stupid!" |   |
| DVDs | Gary McMillan, An unabashed lover of musicals and former writer for DC Theatre Scene Archive | Three that will keep you in Stritch-es Theatre lost a one-of-a-kind legendary actor this summer at the much too young age of 89 --Elaine Stritch. The lady was a bundle of contradictions: indomitable and fragile, brassy and classy, deadly serious and outrageously funny ... well, you get the idea -- anyone who could play lead roles to critical acclaim in everything from Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and A Delicate Balance to Noel Coward's Sail Away and, yes, Stephen Sondheim's Company, has a bit of a range. Watch these three shows (two documentaries and a tour de force, autobiographical Broadway show) and you will understand why a photo of Stritch well could serve as the dictionary illustration for the words "unabashed" and "talent." |    |
| DVDs | John Stoltenberg DC Metro Theater Arts Archive and Magic Time! Website | A Midwinter's Tale The usual seasonal entertainment fare doesn't much interest me, but this 1995 comedy by writer/director Kenneth Branaugh—about out-of-work actors ineptly putting on a Christmas production of Hamlet—gives me the giggles every time I've watched it. Must remember to do so again this year. |  |
| DVDs | Lorraine Treanor DC TheatreScene Archive | Preview this gift on NBC, Dec. 4th. Peter Pan Live with Christopher Walken as Capt Hook, and Broadway stars Kelli O'Hara, and Christian Borle in the beloved musical. Get in line now for the Dec 16 ship date. |  |
| DVDs | Gary McMillan, An unabashed lover of musicals and former writer for DC Theatre Scene Archive | The documentary Six By Sondheim explores Sondheim's art through the development of amazing show songs, most widely know, but at least one relatively unknown. The exploration of each song is a master class. |  |
| DVDs | Gary McMillan, An unabashed lover of musicals and former writer for DC Theatre Scene Archive | Putting It Together was a vehicle for Carol Burnett's return to Broadway. Growing up in the Midwest when her variety work was Must See TV (beginning from the Garry Moore Show when I was 7), I never thought I'd get to see her on stage. My two strongest memories of this show are that Carol, the renowned comedienne, excelled in the dramatic musical numbers, and Ruthie Henshall was lightning on S&P age. Oh, yes, three guys are nice backup. |  |
| DVDs | Lorraine Treanor DC TheatreScene Archive | Slings and Arrows Unbelievable, but there are still those out there who have not seen the best and most captivating TV series ever produced about theatre. (Sorry, Smash.) If you like star watching, there is Paul Gross and a young Rachel McAdams. The Phoenix got it right: "Backstage masterpiece this one-in-a-million TV show". John Dellaporta reviewed each episode for us. |  |
| DVDs | Gary McMillan, An unabashed lover of musicals and former writer for DC Theatre Scene Archive | Sondheim: The Birthday Concert Two Sondheim tributes brought together an iconic group of Sondheim performers performing their extraordinary signature songs. The Carnegie Hall celebration is listed above under 'CDs'. The Sondheim birthday concert features a Stritch number that's incredible. | |
| Books | Brad Hathaway Website | American Musicals - Complete Broadway Collectors The Library of America has finally recognized that great American musicals belong on shelves in private homes and public school and university libraries just like other examples of the great literature of our culture. Laurence Maslon of the Tisch School of the Arts has edited a two-volume boxed set of the complete books and lyrics of sixteen classics. Volume one presents Show Boat, As Thousands Cheer, Pal Joey, Oklahoma!, On the Town, Finian's Rainbow, Kiss Me, Kate and South Pacific. Volume two moves forward to Guys & Dolls, The Pajama Game, My Fair Lady, Gypsy, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, Fiddler on the Roof, Cabaret and 1776. Complain if you want to about the missing classics, that's not a bad list to start out with. Maslon provides a very brief introduction, production history and original cast and creative team credits along with notes on the more obscure references in the texts and a description sources used to create these versions of the scripts which, to the extent Maslon could do it, represent the show as it premiered on Broadway. There are also some 48 color plates to help give a feeling for the look of the shows. Each volume even has a bookmark sewn into the binding so you can keep your place as you work through this treasure trove of American culture. |  |
| Books | Brad Hathaway Website | Bernstein Meets Broadway: Collaborative legacies The title of Carol J. Oja's book promises a bit more than the book actually delivers, but it is a valuable addition to the literature about Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Comden and Green, and the show that is just now receiving a revival on Broadway, On The Town. Oja actually devotes only about 25 pages to the collaborative creation of the Broadway show but delves at greater depth into the background of the collaborators and then takes up fascinating aspects of the show's place in the racial history of Broadway and of greater American culture. When the show opened, the United States had been at war with Japan for three years and our government had excluded people of Japanese ancestry from much of the western part of the country and locked them up in internment camps, and yet one of the stars of this show, playing a role that was only "exotic" and not specifically Japanese or Asian, was Sono Osato. Indeed, Oja reports that Osato's father couldn't attend her Broadway performances because he was interred! The show also featured black dancers, singers and even the conductor of the orchestra was black. Oja include biographies of some of these African-Americans and also reports that the integration extended backstage as well, where dressing rooms were assigned without regard to race. |  |
| Books | Brad Hathaway Website | Leonard Bernstein: American Musician A broader view of Bernstein's life is presented in Allen Shawn's new biography Leonard Bernstein: An American Musician. Shawn doesn't concentrate on his subject's Broadway career but surveys his activities as a composer, conductor and educator. Being a professor of music history and composition, it isn't surprising that Shawn is a little heavy on technical descriptions of "classical" pieces for those not either schooled in the form or used to reading liner notes of albums of classical music. But he rarely goes on too long and often seasons the discourse with interesting connections to Bernstein's life story. But through its 280 well written pages a picture emerges of Bernstein the man that makes Bernstein the Broadway composer a bit more understandable and always fascinating. |  |
| Books | John Glass DramaUrge.com Website | Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical Follies The ultimate behind-the-scenes showbiz book charts the development and ultimate success of the last great artistic mega-musical, Follies, courtesy of Stephen Sondheim, James Goldman, Hal Prince, and Michael Bennett in 1971. Written by a student gofer (though a very well connected one who is now the President of the Rogers and Hammerstein Organization), the book offers a worm's-eye view of celebrity. You'll see all of the creative team and stars up close and very impersonal. But for the Mr. Chapin's reworking of his undergraduate project in 2003, we would be all the poorer. |  |
| Books | John Glass DramaUrge.com Website | On Directing by Harold Clurman Covers the heyday of American Theatre, from Group to Method to Theatre of the Absurd. The writer, director, and critic has seen it (and them) all. Respectful of the process and its participants (including the audience) to a fault, you’ll learn what it’s like to put on a great show, with examples drawn from his own impressive resume. When Clurman breaks down a script you’ll understand it from a historical, intellectual, and practical standpoint. Time-tested advice and insight will delight pros and fans alike. |  |
| Books | John Stoltenberg DC Metro Theater Arts Archive and Magic Time! Website | Fosse Plays I discovered this fascinating Norwegian writer—he's a bit like Becket and Pinter with echos of Ingmar Bergman—when Scena Theatre did a staged reading of Someone Is Going to Come in October. Virtually unknown in the US, Fosse is one of Europe's most-performed playwrights. The few things of his I've read in translation make me want more. I discovered there's a five-volume set of his plays in English that even the Drama Book Store in New York didn't completely have on the shelf. Fortunately for the serious play reader, Amazon has the lot of them. |  |
| Books | Tim Treanor DC TheatreScene Archive | If you ever go to Signature in New York, check out their book store. I did, and discovered Reimagining A Raisin in the Sun, a compendium of four plays for which Raisin was a spiritual antecedent, including, of course, Bruce Norris' astonishing Clybourn Park. I regret that this collection does not include Kwame Kwei-Armah's excellent Beneatha's Place, but Etiquette of Vigilance, in which young Travis reappears as a bitter old man with a daughter named Lorraine, is by a playwright familiar to us here: Robert O'Hara (first production directed by Timothy Douglas). Ultimately the Youngers dreamed that Travis would rise above his father and grandfather; but in Etiquette he is a bus driver, who had hopes that his daughter would become a doctor. Alas, Lorraine dropped out of medical school to become a playwright. Ambition, resegregation and the further deferral of the dream are the themes of this powerful piece. Also included: Gloria Bond Clunie's Living Green, a story of an African-American family which has become so successful that their children have the same sense of entitlement that their white classmates do. But the family needs to sell the house in order to finance the daughter's education, and the question of returning to their roots on Chicago's mostly-black West Side becomes increasingly compelling as the play moves on. By far the most disturbing piece is Brenden Jacobs-Jenkins' unsettling Neighbors, which may owe more to The Colored Museum than to Raisin. Richard, an African-American married to Jean, a white woman, moves to a small college town in order to step in for his mentor, who is being treated for cancer. At the same time, the most offensive African-American icons -- Sambo, Topsy, Mammy, and Jim Crow Jr. move next door preparatory to putting on their minstral show. Be clear: these are not actors assuming the roles, these are the roles themselves, come to life. Jean and their daughter, Melody, react to them as people, but Richard knows who they are. Warning: some of the most offensive scenes I have ever read are included in this play, and I double-dog dare a local company to produce it. |  |
| Books | Lorraine Treanor DC TheatreScene Archive | Show and Tell by John Lahr, who after 20+ years, left his desk as Chief Drama Critic for The New Yorker. But here you have 8 years worth of his profiles on Woody Allen, David Mamet,Irving Berlin, Mike Nichols, Wallace Shawn, Arthur Miller and others, including his father, actor Bert Lahr. Not convinced? here is his tribute written last month to Mike Nichols. |  |
| Books | Ellen Burns Website Writes for BroadwayWorld Archive | In The Untold Stories of Broadway series, you'll read all the secret Broadway stories you never knew you wanted to know!! Broadway's own theater historian and producer, Jennifer Ashley Tepper, has uncovered the best theater lore from all the insiders, actors, ushers, stage managers and more at the legendary Broadway theaters. The stories are arranged by theater, with Volume 1, released in 2013 taking you behind the scenes at the Winter Garden, the Richard Rodgers, the Marriott Marquis, the Al Hirschfeld, the Neil Simon, the August Wilson, the Mark Hellinger, and the Lyceum. The just-released Volume 2 includes the Barrymore, Circle in the Square, the Criterion Center Stage Right, the Gershwin, the Nederlander, the Palace, the Shubert, and the Vivian Beaumont. Be the fly on the wall, as Tepper talks theater with those who live the theater life. |   |
| Books | Brad Hathaway Website | Who Should Sing 'Ol' Man River'? What a great idea for a book! And it comes from just the right author. Todd Decker, who gave us the well written, thoroughly researched and cogently presented study Show Boat: Performing Race in an American Musical, follows it up with a single volume concentrating on one of its great songs, the one which combines the emotional depth of a negro spiritual with the popular appeal of a Broadway anthem. He deals with the origin and history of "Ol' Man River" as it became a standard in the great American songbook with renditions of very different types from pop, jazz, theatrical, rock, rap and even comedy artists. (There is even a cogent analysis of Stan Freberg's "Elderly Man River"!) He devotes full chapters to Paul Robeson's role in the creation of the song as an iconic aspect of American culture, Frank Sinatra's use of the song over nearly a half century, the use of the song for parodies, its featured use on television and in the age of easy listening before turning to the most modern uses in the post-pop period. |  |
| Favorite Online Place to Browse | Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids online store. Broadway's Holiday Gifts from Broadway Cares on Vimeo. |  | |
| Gift cards for shows | Ellen Burns Website Writes for BroadwayWorld Archive | Telecharge Gift Cards |  |
| Gift cards for shows | Lorraine Treanor DC TheatreScene Archive | DC's own TixCertificates from theatreWashington. Good for performances at nearly all the theatres in our area. |  |
| Subscriptions | Lorraine Treanor DC TheatreScene Archive | The Soul of the American Actor There is no publication I dive into more eagerly and share more often than actor Ronald Rand’s The Soul of the American Actor, a carefully collected series of essays by major theatre artists and original interviews. You can receive the 4 times a year print edition for $16. Or read it free - each edition is shared in full online. May I suggest you be an angel and send them a donation anyway? |  |
| Subscriptions | Lorraine Treanor DC TheatreScene Archive | The Sondheim Review Lovers of all things Sondheim would enjoy receiving this glossy quarterly magazine, packed with well-researched essays - such as, Merrily We Roll Along started out in 1934 not as a musical - and Sondheim news and interviews from around the world. |  |
| Ellen Burns Website Writes for BroadwayWorld Archive and Lorraine Treanor | Since supporting causes has become a favorite of gift givers, and the arts are particularly deserving, I suggest a membership to a local theater. Memberships support the theater's mission and provide benefits to the member that sometimes include special events, discounts, etc. Unlike a subscription, a membership won't commit the recipient to particular shows or plans; and unlike a gift certificate, it's a true measure of support to the theater. Memberships are available in a range of amounts, so they work for large or small gifts, and are often tax deductible! | Here are some links to explore! Signature Theatre Arena Stage Shakespeare Theatre Kennedy Center Ford's Theatre Theatre Lab Forum Theatre Folger Library/Theatre Studio Theatre Pointless Theatre or contact your favorite theatres and arrange a gift. | |
| Lorraine Treanor DC TheatreScene Archive | If you enjoy our writing, if we have helped you discover new plays and theatres, we hope you will consider a tax deductible gift in any amount that is comfortable to you to help support payments to our writers and staff, the Gary Maker Audience Award and operating costs. |  Click to donate to DC Theatre Scene |
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