Susan Galbraith

About Susan Galbraith

Susan Galbraith received a BA in English and Drama from Tufts University, graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. Settling in Minneapolis for a time, she earned an MFA from the University of Minnesota, founded a theatre company, Performers Ensemble, and also collaborated with Prince on writing songs and the first draft of Purple Rain. Susan moved to Boston where she was part of Boston Shakespeare Company’s acting company under Peter Sellars. Since 1991, she has made D.C. her home where she has enjoyed the opportunity to write plays, direct, act, and produce. She helped co-found Alliance for New Music-Theatre and collaborated on original works across disciplines, styles, and cultural expressions of music-theatre. For the Alliance, Susan co-wrote and directed Sandaya: Burmese Lessons and has collaborated with the Czech Embassy on several works inspired by great Czech writers, including Vanek Unleased and an adaptation of Kafka’s Metamorphosis. She has collaborated with composer Maurice Saylor on adapting Karel Capek's R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) as a retro-futuristic cabaret musical, and, with composers Dawn Avery and Milad Yousofi and co-writer Yalda Baktash Women has developed Troy/Voices from Afghanistan, a music-theatre work featuring the stories of Afghan women and American female veterans. She is grateful to Lorraine Treanor and the opportunity of DCTheatreScene to jump into the privileged audience seat from time to time to learn from and be inspired by her colleagues making theatre and opera in the Greater Washington area.

Review: El Perro del Hortelano (The Dog in the Manger) from GALA Hispanic Theatre

November 13, 2020 by Susan Galbraith

February 8, 2020 I sat in GALA’s historic entertainment “palace” to review Nilo Cruz’ Exquisita Agonia. It was the last time (pre-Covid) I enjoyed live theater. Nine months later, Managing Director Rebecca Read Medrano has done what no other theater in Washington has been able to do – mount a season and reopen an indoor […]

Review: The interrogation of Alberto Gonzales hits its musical mark in Gonzales Cantata

November 6, 2020 by Susan Galbraith

Election night 2020 IN Series opened a cantata-as-opera based on the Senate Judiciary hearings of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. It was bold enough that Artistic Director Timothy Nelson had announced earlier this year that his company IN Series would be “the first completely virtual opera house” and produce a full season of works. Then came […]

Review: Synetic’s Joy! Maria Simpkins balances defiance with cheeky humor

October 19, 2020 by Susan Galbraith

I click on the link and settle in for the new show, Joy!, delivered into my living room by Synetic Theater. A special surprise “Joy” box at my side ready to be opened. Check. Glass of prosecco poured and ready to be partaken (they said “Joy” didn’t they?) Check. Zoom video camera on. Check. Audio […]

Opera Review: Miranda: A Steam Punk VR Experience, LUMA’s bold experiment

September 26, 2020 by Susan Galbraith

Steam Punk as a style launches viewers into a futuristic universe while it casts a glance backwards nostalgically to a simpler, more elegant world. Miranda: A Steam Punk VR Experience creates the alternative-futuristic setting through animation and virtual reality technology to deliver a short opera by Kamala Sankaram, and it’s one of the freshest, most […]

Remembering Ruth Bader Ginsburg

September 21, 2020 by Susan Galbraith

Ruth Bader Ginsburg well earned the sobriquet “Notorious.” Everything about her seemed to live in happy contradiction. She followed her mother’s “dueling” advice: always to be a lady and to live a life of independence. She sparred almost daily with her more conservative “constitutionalist” colleague on the Supreme Court, Antonin Scalia, yet considered him a […]

Opera Lafayette heads to Colorado cattle country for live open air performances of The Blacksmith

September 11, 2020 by Susan Galbraith

Learning about performance companies leaping into bold adventures and rediscovering the impulse of sharing their art in new creative ways has never been more welcome. Opera Lafayette, a company known primarily for its performances of lost operatic masterworks staged in period costumes with accurately reconstructed choreography, has busted out of its well-accoutered walls and heads […]

Review: Synetic Theater’s The Decameron, Day 10. It’s a wrap!

July 20, 2020 by Susan Galbraith

We have come to the end of Synetic Theater’s series of short videos based on Boccaccio’s classic “in-the-time-of-the-plague” entertainments. Like one of those imported Masterpiece Theatre series, it feels that, tucked into one of those massive houses, is a world of people and their stories. I have come to know the family of characters and […]

Review: Synetic Theater’s The Decameron, Day 9. Imaginings run wild

July 18, 2020 by Susan Galbraith

Boccaccio’s world of The Decameron continues as cyber-theater for two more rounds of short videos by Synetic Theater’s company members and close associates. Imbedded in the program is one of the best short works in the series. Joseph McAlanan has found a nugget of a story to display his stage combat talents. Boccaccio’s third story in […]

Review: Synetic Theater’s The Decameron, Days 7 & 8. Unraveling minds.

July 17, 2020 by Susan Galbraith

In trying to capture the times of our modern plague, the sum of the Synetic artists who have made these short performance works have shown us life as it has been reduced: clowns in cramped spaces, unraveling minds, and chaos. Rachael Small pushes boundaries, creating one of the wackiest of all of the Synetic videos […]

Review: Synetic Theater’s The Decameron, Day 6. We dance!

July 15, 2020 by Susan Galbraith

The short videos from Synetic on this sixth day of content give us three worlds and stories through the language of dance. In classical ballet’s repertoire there is no greater or more physically demanding role than the dual swan role of Odette-Odile. Italian ballet dancer Valentina Palladino has used as her inspiration pieces of the […]

Review: Synetic Theater’s The Decameron, Day 5, a silent trio of humor and noir

July 14, 2020 by Susan Galbraith

Day 5 brings us three new short works by Synetic Theater members as studies on life in the time of Covid. Kat Cárdenas-Cruz put a smile on my face with her short piece, “An Artist Struggles.” She directly links back to Giovanni Boccaccio, the progenitor of ten days, each with ten tales, that we know […]

Review: Synetic Theater’s The Decameron, Day Three. From somber to sexy

July 12, 2020 by Susan Galbraith

”And how shall we entertain ourselves?” the characters in Boccaccio’s 14th century story collection, The Decameron, keep asking, and each in turn tells a tale. In Day 3 of Synetic Theater’s streamed Decameron, three women take a whack at “entertaining” in the time of COVID-19, using a wild variant of means and tones. Elena Velasco […]