In Time Is on Our Side, Recreating the Past Isn’t Easy

Thomas' script is intimately epic, creating a vivid Philadelphia where queer millennial characters discover just how little they know of the history of gay and lesbian life.

This fall, doors are reopening, seasons are being announced, and tickets are on sale—something previously routine that feels especially precious 17 months after COVID-19 closed area theaters. If press night for Perisphere Theater’s production of R. Eric Thomas‘ Time Is on Our Side at the Silver Stage Black Box is any indication, this season’s new […]

by Ian Thal

D.C. Theaters Announce COVID-19 Vaccination Requirements for Audiences

More than a dozen D.C.-area theaters have announced that patrons will need to show proof that they are fully vaccinated to attend indoor, live performances.

On Aug. 5, 13 D.C.-area theaters announced they will require audience members to provide proof of vaccination to attend indoor, live performances. The organizations include major theaters like Arena Stage, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Studio Theatre, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, and Arlington’s Signature Theatre. Theatre Washington will maintain a running list of all the theaters requiring […]

by Emma Sarappo

In the End, We’re Gonna Die Is Full of Jubilance Amid Grief

The show is weird, funny, and timely as we slowly process the personal impacts and global tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The self-loathing of a useless uncle. Rejection from friends in childhood. The brutal suffering of a dying parent. The perfidy of a wickedly careless spouse. Walking the pain side of the line more than the comic, playwright Young Jean Lee’s decade-old musical We’re Gonna Die is a future cult classic. Concluding Round House Theatre’s 2020-2021 […]

by Diana Michele Yap

People Watching Closes The Distance Between Us With Binoculars

The literal distance, that is: The performers in CulturalDC and Extreme Length Productions' new show are situated in vantage points around Navy Yard and Anacostia, while the audience watches from a rooftop.

“Who was I before?”  That’s the question People Watching, the latest production co-produced by Extreme Lengths Productions and CulturalDC, invites us to ask ourselves. Part of CulturalDC’s Mobile Arts Season, the show isn’t held in a theater or even on a stage: Audience members standing on a rooftop use binoculars to watch a string of […]

by Julie Gallagher

Political Debate Is a Contact Sport in Alexandra Petri’s Inherit the Windbag

The satirical web series, originally intended to be performed on stage, reimagines the 1968 debates between William F. Buckley Jr. and Gore Vidal.

In Alexandra Petri‘s satire Inherit the Windbag, the past becomes the present. She resurrects the late editor-in-chief of National Review William F. Buckley Jr. (John Lescault) and playwright, novelist, and commentator Gore Vidal (Paul Morella) at the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library, where, because “America has suffered from a fever of words,” an animated simulacrum […]

by Ian Thal

For One Theater, Live Shows Weren’t an Option. Video Games Were.

During the pandemic, 4615 Theatre Company developed Dark City, a video game, to give its patrons an “irreplicable” remote experience.

Late at night in Aeolus City, Paaya Gaiason (Yesenia Iglesias) stands on a public terrace. Long staircases lead to the lit city streets below. Paaya waits for an unnamed contact. He arrives; there is a scuffle. She plummets to her death. Days later, there are eulogies from Mayor Sirmon and Antonin Leap, managing director of […]

by Ian Thal

In the Middle of the Fields Takes on Cancer and the Messy Business of Living

Solas Nua's empathetic in-person production of In the Middle of the Fields is staged in the middle of a field west of Dupont Circle.

Long before the pandemic made indoor theater a relic of the time before social distancing, Solas Nua became Washington’s finest purveyor of site-specific theater, hosting shows in bars, shows on piers, and shows in private homes. The small company dedicated to contemporary Irish theater (the name means “new light” in Gaelic) is remarkably adept at finding […]

by Rebecca J. Ritzel

This Zoom Play Comes With a Multi-Course Meal From a Local Pizzeria

Love Story: A Meal in Five Courses is an interactive exploration of what we talk about when we talk about love.

Il Tuo Tavolo, one of the District’s newest pop-up restaurants, has a twist: You can only get a table there on Zoom. It’s the fictional setting of Love Story: A Meal in Five Courses, a new interactive theater production produced by Joy and Pang Productions.  Opening March 5 and running through April 4, Love Story […]

by Sarah Cooke

Without Significant Relief Measures, Theater Professionals Question Their Future in the Industry

In the D.C. area, more than 62,000 jobs in the fine and performing arts had been lost as of July.

Kate Eastwood Norris and her husband Cody Nickell lost all their acting work in March, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced theaters to cancel performances. Since then, their only source of income has been Norris’ other job as a theater professor at Mary Baldwin University in Staunton, Virginia. Norris says her husband will soon have to […]

by James Jarvis

Mosaic Theater Company’s Dear Mapel Invites Audiences and Critics to Consider a Work-in-Progress

Playwright and performer Psalmayene 24 breaks down his relationship with his father, Mapel, in a series of performed letters.

Enter the access code provided in an email by Mosaic Theater Company and after a few on-screen opening remarks, playwright/actor Psalmayene 24 begins to read stage directions: Welcome to theater in the year 2020. He describes a setting familiar to those who have seen the work of Spaulding Gray or Mike Daisy: A “sturdy and […]

by Ian Thal

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