At the top of Dominique Morisseau’s Blood at the Root, teens burst onto the stage in a blast of energy and music, reciting lines filled with wild rhythms and formations coming every which way, bodies in a cacophony of movement, stopping in a freeze to elucidate salient points about their lives. They are exuberant teens, […]
Anacostia Playhouse robbed on Christmas Day. Recovery support needed for the Playhouse and Theater Alliance
As reported by Prince of Petworth: “Today, December 26th, the day after Christmas, our friends at the Anacostia Playhouse came to work and discovered they had been robbed. Thieves broke in and stole several laptops and computers, a tablet, box office cash, blank checks and credit cards (which they quickly used to make unauthorized purchases). As […]
Review: The Events, a survivor’s view of a mass shooting
We are riveted by a need to understand the perpetrator of a mass shooting, but isn’t it more pertinent to know what the survivor feels? After all, it’s much more likely that we will be survivors than perpetrators (in a sense, we are all survivors now). In The Events, David Greig’s odd, affecting play now […]
Review: The Trans-Atlantic Time Traveling Company
Just when you wondered what else Holly Bass would do with her arsenal of skills in hip-hop, dance, spoken word, poetry and theater, she snaps us into shifting realities. This workshop production of The Trans-Atlantic Time Traveling Company celebrates the strength of black women traveling through time all while embedded in vaudeville silliness.
Holly Bass on how the Starbucks arrest references her latest, The Trans-Atlantic Time Traveling Company
The Trans-Atlantic Time Traveling Company, Holly Bass’ latest work, conceptualizes one of the most urgent ideas of our time: what it means to be free and how we can all move towards an equitable and just society. The multidisciplinary performance and visual artist teams with Theater Alliance and the Anacostia Playhouse for 6 special performances.
2018-2019 Theater Alliance season will be Colin Hovde’s last as Artistic Director
Colin Hovde, who has served as Artistic Director of the Anacostia-based Theater Alliance since 2011, will be stepping down from that position at the conclusion of the 2018-2019 season, the company announced yesterday.
Theater Alliance’s summer shows start July 25 and their next season
Five minutes into Flood City — clearly as part of that play’s idiosyncratic plot — Theater Alliance Artistic Director Colin Hovde interrupted proceedings to announce, among other things, that he would soon reveal the company’s 2018-2019 season. Although it’s doubtful that Flood City required that the season be announced on June 21, it was, and […]
Review: Flood City
“More matter and less art,” Queen Gertrude enjoined Polonius during one of his interminable dissertations. After watching Gabrielle Reisman’s Flood City, I feel ya, Your Majesty! Seldom have I seen so fine a cast, in service to a play by so gifted a writer, be put to more pointless a use. Flood City is, in […]
Violence versus pacifism . Brown versus Douglass. The Raid at Theater Alliance (review)
“Everyone in this play is dead,” Harriet Tubman (Tiffany Byrd) announces minutes into the first act. Frederick Douglass (Marquis D. Gibson), John Brown (Nicklas Aliff), Henry Kagi (Josh Adams), Emperor (Dylan J. Fleming), John Brown Jr. (Robert Bowen Smith), and Mahala Doyle (Moira Todd), speak directly to the audience from seats among us, and introduce […]
Word Becomes Flesh loses none of its strength in its return to Theater Alliance (review)
Hey, put down your guns! I’m not talking about hand-carrying, capitalist-and-NRA-endorsed devices you can buy on DC streets. I’m talking about the weapons of words we use to hate on each other and heap hate on ourselves. I’m here to tell you Word Becomes Flesh, a play not just for blacks, has returned and though […]
Gems found at Kennedy Center’s Page-to-Stage 2017
Debbie Minter Jackson sends back this report from her visit to the Saturday, September 2, opening day of this year’s Page-to-Stage festival at the Kennedy Center and brings back some standouts that, hopefully will find their way from the page to local stages .
Theater Alliance’s next season includes two reinvisioned plays
Anacostia’s Theater Alliance, which scored big earlier this past June with the debut Mollye Maxner’s devised play, Still Life With Rocket, will do itself one better this year, with two plays in redevelopment — and a third play, which Theater Alliance has already produced twice to acclaim.