DCTS covers the 2016 Helen Hayes Awards It is an extraordinary thing to commit yourself to work in theater despite the long hours and low pay. Why do people do it? This is the second in our series highlighting this year’s Helen Hayes nominees: their work, their life, their art, their passion. It is fall, and […]
Paige Hathaway on The Pillowman’s freaky, strange set
The Pillowman from Martin McDonagh has been a hot play for more than a decade, catapulting its author to major film writing gigs and international stardom. A local version from Forum Theatre, due to its early announced powerhouse cast of Maboud Ebrahimzadeh, James Konicek, Bradley Foster Smith and now Jim Jorgensen has been my pick of […]
The Pillowman at Forum Theatre (review)
Two detainees, two cops, two (or is it three?) gruesome child-murders — that’s the triad of pitch-dark dualities that underpin The Pillowman, a Grimm-ly funny brothers-in-extremis fable that earned a best-play Tony nomination a decade or so ago for black-hearted Irish dramatist Martin McDonagh.
Shows from 2015 I’d pay top dollar to see again
I’m retired now as a critic and when I see a play it is generally as a civilian. In days of old, I might see upwards of a hundred fifty plays a year, and the experience was as commonplace for me as swatting mosquitoes or filing lawsuits. It became like going to an art gallery; […]
The Top 10 Realest Theater Awards You Won’t See at the Helen Hayes
1. Most Emotionally Devastating Deaths by Inanimate Objects in A Play – Famous Puppet Death Scenes – Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company Feel free to kick yourself if you missed this horrifyingly hilarious (or hilariously horrifying?) series of vignettes with various topics like domestic abuse, ecological disaster, failed romance, and German children’s television, but one commonality. […]
World Builders, a love story from Forum Theatre (review)
It would have been easy for Johnna Adams, whose World Builders at Forum Theatre focuses on two drug trials participants being treated for Schizoid Personality Disorder (SPD), to write a play about a misunderstood disease.
Anu Yadav returns to Forum with ‘Capers (review)
In 2001, using a massive federal grant, the City of Washington decided to turn the Arthur Capper/ Carrollsburg Housing Project into a mixed-income community, displacing the 707 families within it. You know how the road to Hell is paved, right?
It’s a big season ahead: tips on how to see more and save
This article is based, in part, on research done for DCTS’ presentation at the Smithsonian Museum on Aug 20, 2015. You can see a play in this town for nothing or next to nothing. You can also pay over a hundred bucks. Mostly it depends on what you want to see, where you want to […]
My don’t-miss dramas this season
On August 20th, DC Theatre Scene spoke at the Smithsonian Museum’s Ripley Center. Senior writer Tim Treanor talked about some of the shows he was looking forward to next season. Below is what he said (more or less) about dramas.
Stage Briefs by Keith Loria
A roundup of some of this week’s theatrical news and notes from DC Music Theatre Workshop, Forum Theatre, Ford’s Theatre, Women’s Voices Theater Festival, Constellation Theatre and Signature Theatre.
Forum’s The Shipment delivers its package using minstrel, standup (review)
Forum Theater’s affecting rendition of Young Jean Lee’s polemical The Shipment doesn’t dance around the truth, but opts instead to rip the Band-Aid off the raw, tragic, funny, and bewildering dimensions of life in black America.
Tonya Beckman, Passion Play savior: one week from first rehearsal to first audience
“I went into it expecting to be terrified. Hanging up after talking to the agency, I thought to myself, ‘Oh, I’ve just guaranteed myself two weeks of total stress.’ But it hasn’t been that way.”