Jacqueline Youm, founder of one of DC’s newest companies, JaYo Théâtre, is from Senegal, the daughter of an International Monetary Fund economist. Watch below as this talented performer, in her striking monologue “Beautiful Burden/Je Suis Noire/I am Black,” describes her shock in first encountering the daily, brutally lived American form of theater of the absurd […]
When will DC audiences return? What changes do they support? Shugoll Research revisits its audience survey
A new survey from Shugoll Research shows that area theatergoers are even more reluctant to return to theater in the face of the coronavirus than they were when the survey was conducted last April. The new survey, which Shugoll conducted between June 25 and 30, shows that audiences will come back later than previously thought […]
J. J. Johnson talks about WANNABE, his comic play about growing up Black in a White VA town
J. J. Johnson, who extends his talents as a DC stage actor (recently, Les Deux Noirs: Notes on Notes of A Native Son) into film and and commercial work, now adds playwright to his resumé with the debut of WANNABE. Produced by 4615 Theatre Company, the Zoom performance can be seen starting this Thursday, July […]
Racism within DC area theatres. DCTS Roundtable calls for reckoning
On Thursday, July 16, seven gender diverse artists and leaders in our theatre community gathered for a Roundtable to talk about the barriers that Black women, femmes, and nonbinary folx face in our community, guided by JR Nexus Russ. Watch the full discussion on the DCTS Facebook page. These conversations are not new. Whiteness and White […]
Denied a stage, Academy of Classical Acting 2020 grads perform Shakespeare and Shaw as live radio plays
Due to the coronavirus, the intensive one-year MFA in Acting, Academy for Classical Acting, a joint venture between Shakespeare Theatre Company and George Washington University, was unable to hold final live performances for its students, but that doesn’t mean the class won’t perform. Under the guidance of ACA Program Director Alec Wild, the school’s 20th […]
Shattered Space: Between Zoom and film, creating a new theatrical experience
A new company is launching audiences into space with an exciting confluence of new technology and theatre. In Shattered Space by The Scattered Players, audiences take on the role of Star Jockeys aboard a spaceship which travels through a solar system visiting different planets on the verge of a major cataclysmic event. Shattered Space: $15. […]
Artist Carlos Walker asks white America “What If?” it were you
The theater is the place where things are shown: that is, it’s a mirror where things that we don’t make overt in daily life are brought out in front of us to see. While we usually talk about the action that takes place on the stage, the primary and maybe most important drama takes place […]
A Movement Unleashed: Black Lives Matter Protest, Photo Essay from DC
We are like clay. Life, a chisel. Every experience we have brings us one step closer to seeing our ultimate form. Every hardship, every heartbreak, every trauma, every laugh forever shaping us into the people we see today. This month in America, the people took back our tools. Forever through with a culture that deemed […]
Playwright Michael R. Jackson (A Strange Loop) on self love and self acceptance in these turbulent times
Strange Loop, Michael R. Jackson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning musical, is, itself, stuck in a strange loop. The smash Off-Broadway hit was scheduled to come to Woolly Mammoth Theatre in September on its way to Broadway. (It’s been rescheduled in DC for summer, 2021.) Meanwhile, his musical on hold even as it piles up accolades, Jackson is […]
DC poet John Johnson performs a poem of protest, “Coffeeshop”
Native Washingtonian poet and playwright John Johnson told us: “I am inspired to create art because I was born a artist it goes along with my breathing and heart beat, it is like a vital organ, it is my contribution to the planet. Moreover, every time I look in my children’s eyes I see infinite […]
Artists persist: Playwright Bob Bartlett writes Starbucks romance MIXTAPE for Facebook audiences
I always root for romance, even in plague times. Maybe that’s why I was completely drawn in by THE MIXTAPE, local playwright and Bowie State professor Bob Bartlett’s “connection during coronavirus” play that unfolds entirely through a series of Facebook posts and in his readers’ imaginations. Bartlett, who memorably set his play, The Accident Bear, […]
Pandemic Theatre gets all-out playful with Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing
Of the many pitches about online content we have received, the announcement from Pandemic Theatre of how they were presenting Shakespeare’s barbed romantic comedy, Much Ado About Nothing, struck us as especially unusual: a changeable presentation style, a cast taking on differing roles depending on their preferences, released once a week over 5 weeks, and […]
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