Tuesday, April 23, 2019
There’s a notion these days in theatrical circles that the hallmark of a great play is that it can only be a play; that the story being told wouldn’t work in any other medium. As I was w…
Linked From DC Theatre Scene at 07:32PMTuesday, April 9, 2019
In his note in the program of Rainbow Theatre Project’s new production of Tennessee Williams’ lesser-known play Clothes for a Summer Hotel—his last to be produced on Broadway in his li…
Linked From DC Theatre Scene at 11:18AMMonday, March 25, 2019
“We’re in a strange relationship with our fiction, you see,” Warren Ellis, the English comic-book writer, novelist, and screenwriter, once wrote. “Sometimes we fear it’s taking us …
Linked From DC Theatre Scene at 12:36PMMonday, March 18, 2019
Was Anton Chekhov touched with the gift of prophecy when he wrote the first of his four major plays, The Seagull? Or, even rarer, with self-awareness? The piece, which begins with a disastro…
Linked From DC Theatre Scene at 10:48AMMonday, February 25, 2019
Morrie Schwartz, the sociology professor and subject of Mitch Albom’s bestselling book, Tuesdays with Morrie, once said, “Death ends a life, not a relationship. All the love you created …
Linked From DC Theatre Scene at 11:17AMMonday, February 11, 2019
They say you should never meet your heroes, but what about crowd-surfing them? That was what I was thinking the night of February 8, as I helped keep John Cameron Mitchell aloft as he made h…
Linked From DC Theatre Scene at 10:24AMMonday, February 4, 2019
Few words strike fear into the hearts of wide swaths of the theatre-going population than ‘Audience Participation.’ But when said participation involves sipping champagne, swanning aroun…
Linked From DC Theatre Scene at 12:48PMMonday, January 21, 2019
A couple of weeks ago, the satire site McSweeney’s published an article entitled, “How Can I Help to Promote Diversity Without Relinquishing Any of My Power?” This title alone could se…
Linked From DC Theatre Scene at 03:18PMThere’s no such thing as love without risk. Risk of rejection. Risk of your partner finding someone else. But for gay men in the ‘80s and ‘90s, at the height of the AIDS crisis, love a…
Linked From DC Theatre Scene at 01:04PMWednesday, December 5, 2018
Several years ago, a good friend of mine married a Swiss citizen. Over many glasses of wine, she detailed to me having to provide emails, OkCupid messages, photos, a dn receipts to prove the…
Linked From DC Theatre Scene at 09:06AMTuesday, November 13, 2018
In fraught times, where do you go to find hope? Assuming the answer is not “within yourself,” might I suggest the basement of a church where, seated in a circle with a group of strangers…
Linked From DC Theatre Scene at 07:54AMWednesday, October 24, 2018
In the promotional materials for their production of Iris Dauterman’s Sing To Me Now, Rorschach Theatre has been highlighting one particular quote from the script: “Every second you hesi…
Linked From DC Theatre Scene at 10:54AMWednesday, October 17, 2018
Imagine a large group of college students, surrounded by the international media, anxiously awaiting the moment when a statue depicting a key figure from their country’s racist past is top…
Linked From DC Theatre Scene at 12:24PMWednesday, September 26, 2018
Before you read this review, I’d like to ask a favor of you: open a new browser tab and navigate to your favorite news/politics site and spend five minutes browsing the stories there. Seri…
Linked From DC Theatre Scene at 11:12AMMonday, September 10, 2018
While a very popular musical currently running at the Kennedy Center is asking audiences, “Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?” across town at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Bran…
Linked From DC Theatre Scene at 01:24PMSaturday, August 25, 2018
It’s become a truism in the queer community that coming out of the closet isn’t a singular event. And yet, the very expression “coming out” conjures up images of individuals in their…
Linked From DC Theatre Scene at 10:32AMFriday, August 3, 2018
What do you get when you take one of America’s most controversial theatre artists and its most divisive political issue and put them in a room together in our nation’s capital? In the ca…
Linked From DC Theatre Scene at 08:42AMSunday, July 15, 2018
At this point, theatrical works about gay men and their over-the-top, overbearing mothers practically comprise an entire genre unto themselves—think Torch Song Trilogy and Mothers and Sons…
Linked From DC Theatre Scene at 01:48PMSaturday, July 14, 2018
Sometimes the identities we construct for ourselves become our prisons. This is the scenario playwright M. Cristina Garcia uses as the central conceit of her play, Lesbians and the Men Who L…
Linked From DC Theatre Scene at 12:36PMSome of the best theatre presents you with an impossible choice and asks what decision you would make in each character’s place. In the case of 2000FeetUp Theatre Company’s The Body of a…
Linked From DC Theatre Scene at 11:32AMMonday, July 9, 2018
Dating. Dating in DC. A play about dating in DC. “This must be dystopian,” I thought as I entered Caos on F to take in the latest world premiere by Nu Sass Productions. To my delight, wh…
Linked From DC Theatre Scene at 09:06PMSunday, July 8, 2018
There are certain individuals who haunt the Capital Fringe festival (and I’m not talking about the reviewers). Antigone and Medea always seem to make an appearance. And, of course, every c…
Linked From DC Theatre Scene at 08:54AMMonday, June 18, 2018
Many theatrical experiences are perfect for Pride Month, but few are devised specifically for the celebration. Enter Brett Abelman’s Switch, a new play set on the night of DC Pride, during…
Linked From DC Theatre Scene at 01:48PMMonday, June 4, 2018
Fans of Jordan Tannahill’s work, including his 2015 book Theatre of the Unimpressed: In Search of Vital Drama—a screed against the ubiquity of the well-made play and the modern theatre…
Linked From DC Theatre Scene at 01:25PMSaturday, May 12, 2018
Montagues and Capulets. Vampires and werewolves. Rock musicians and DJs? The conflict between the latter is the proxy war at the center of Laura Eason’s The Undeniable Sound of Right Now, …
Linked From DC Theatre Scene at 09:04AMMonday, April 9, 2018
Rainbow Theatre Project’s production of Kevin Michael West’s comedy Top and Bottom contains total male nudity—of both the physical and emotional varieties. What begins as a bondage-fi…
Linked From DC Theatre Scene at 09:57AMThursday, April 5, 2018
“My drag isn’t a costume I use to hide in,” famed performance artists and playwright Taylor Mac says, “it’s exposing what I look like on the inside.” And the same…
Linked From DC Theatre Scene at 10:37AMTuesday, February 13, 2018
Traditionally, a peepshow is a one-way affair—someone performs and someone (or someones) else observe, usually without being seen themselves. But I knew walking into dog & pony dc’s …
Linked From DC Theatre Scene at 07:09PMMonday, January 22, 2018
Autism, family obligation, and innovative design collide on stage in Olivia Haller’s This Is All Just Temporary, Convergence Theatre’s contribution to the 2018 Women’s Voices Theater F…
Linked From DC Theatre Scene at 10:41AMFriday, December 8, 2017
Mashuq Mushtaq Deen’s one-person show Draw the Circle is a radical act of empathy. Not only does he explore the impact his life and gender transition has had on his loved ones and other …
Linked From DC Theatre Scene at 12:24PMMonday, December 4, 2017
The convening of people who may not have anything more in common with one another than shared DNA at holiday time can result in more misery than merriment for all involved. A funeral, too, c…
Linked From DC Theatre Scene at 12:04PM 
