In 2017, we will head into a social and political time unlike any other in our modern history. Theater, far from being superfluous, will be essential to helping all of us understand our lives and our world.
Sarah Ruhl wrote from a playwright’s perspective: “We write because our minds can always be free in the face of tyranny. We write with the hope that we may understand other, different minds. We write to produce knowledge in the face of ignorance. We write because we must.”
Help us be here to bring the ideas of playwrights to the wider community.
Representing producers, Molly Smith from Arena Stage wrote: “As the free press goes, so go the rest of us. Plays and musicals produced at Arena Stage, at theaters across this region and around the country involve a search for truth, not the hiding of it; a critique of power, not the exercise of it; an invitation to conversation and insight, not a shutting down of dialogue.”
We at DC Theater Scene are a member of that free press. Our interviews cover a range of voices, from a producer’s tentative first step into producing, to legendary performers looking back on their careers. Our opinions are not swayed by whether a production is on the grand stages of the Kennedy Center or in a storefront, or by an advertiser’s dollars.
On Giving Tuesday, you had the opportunity to support individual theater companies. Today, and through December, we ask that you give DC Theatre Scene whatever support you can so that we can illuminate the work of all professional companies in the area, maintain the listings services you find so valuable and celebrate the importance of the audience with our Gary Maker Award.
You read our content for free. But bringing it to you is expensive.
We are one of the few theater websites which pays our writers. And maintaining a site as technically complex as ours is quite costly. It’s important to continue to do so, not only for the ongoing coverage that our theater scene deserves, but to preserve the history of one of the busiest and most important theater centers in the country. Our archive stretches back more than ten years.
Advertising revenues don’t cover all of our operating costs or our plans to move into the future. And so we depend on — I know Tennessee Williams had Blanche call it ” the kindness of strangers,” but we call it the kindness of you. You’re not strangers. You’re part of us — the living, breathing, theater-loving Washington DC area community.
As long as there is theater in Washington, and audiences who care about it, we’ll be here.
So we ask that you give some love in support of the DC area theatre scene. Simply click here.
DCTheatreScene.com is a non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation. Your donations are tax-deductible and your gift will be gratefully accepted.
Lorraine Treanor, Editor
and the staff of DC Theatre Scene
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