Remembering a divide

In the fall of 2019, two plays opened on Broadway written by gay men of color. The first was Jeremy O. Harris’ Slave Play, transferring from a hit off-Broadway run. The Black writer made a provocative work set in the antebellum South, staging sexual submission scenes with enslaved people — before taking a wild turn, and engaging with power dynamics between interracial couples in the present day. The second play was Matthew López’s The Inheritance, transferring from an award-winning West End run. The Puerto Rican writer created a two-part, seven-hour epic. López translates E.M. Forster’s 1910 novel Howards End into a 2010s New York City, to explore the enduring influence of the AIDS pandemic in gay America.

In subject matter, Harris’ and López’s shows overlap. Both reveal how physical diseases create psychological trauma, arguing that historical events terrorize the present moment. Both works are also very gay, staging group sex scenes with a frank, subversive pleasure.

Yet in mood, Slave Play and The Inheritance are worlds apart. Harris writes what he calls an “exorcism,” challenging audiences with racial and sexual violence, and showing uncrossable divides between lovers. Slave Play aims to disturb, but The Inheritance aims for catharsis. López challenges audiences with beauty: characters monologue about caring for the sick, and the play’s coup de théâtre includes a resurrection of dead bodies miraculously healed. The racial makeup for each play’s Broadway production should be noted, too. Slave Play had an equal number of Black and white/“white-passing” cast members. The Inheritance had actors of color in smaller roles, but every main character was played by a white man.

In the fall of 2019, I was a junior in college studying theater, and the buzz around both shows was inescapable. I saved up some of my RA money to see Slave Play on Broadway, and left feeling devastated. The queer interracial relationships onstage felt uncomfortably familiar to my own experiences in Virginia. I hadn’t saved up enough money to also catch The Inheritance, but I ordered its playscript as soon as it was published.

On the page, I appreciated López’s detailed prose and melodrama, but The Inheritance didn’t sweep me away with emotion. Its knowing portrait of upper-class, millennial NYC felt unwelcoming. This was a gay world I knew existed, but to me as a Gen Z reader, it had little to do with the gay community I was living in. When I saw production photos of The Inheritance, they resembled Provincetown Instagram posts: attractive and sun-kissed, but insular and homogenous.

The differences between Slave Play and The Inheritance also reflected a growing divide I felt in gay academia. Slave Play aligned with a specifically Black movement led by scholars like Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, L.H. Stallings, and Frank B. Wilderson III. These writers acknowledge that Black Americans have never been treated as “human,” so these writers reject that label and slyly embrace submission and non-human modes of being. The Inheritance instead aligned itself with José Esteban Muñoz and Tavia Nyong’o: writers exploring how gay culture can create hopeful, utopic spaces of belonging through memory and imagination. Both sides of queer scholarship felt oppositional to each other. One undid the idea of belonging at all, and the other affirmed new spaces of belonging. The debate demanded I pick a side.

In a way, I chose Slave Play’s side. The year 2019 was a time when the Trump administration was wreaking havoc on American institutions, so Slave Play boldly intervened into American storytelling (joining other Black playwrights and journalists of the time). Harris’ play matched the zeitgeist of Gen Z teens looking for disruption. So as I developed my journalistic practice, I extensively covered Slave Play, championing it as a work truly of our times, a play openly exploring my biracial and Virginian identities.

Yet in many ways, the rest of the world chose The Inheritance’s side. The Broadway production spoke to the Gen X gay men who lived through the height of the AIDS crisis. The Inheritance definitively triumphed at the 2021 Tony Awards, winning four awards, including Best Play. In that same ceremony, Slave Play was nominated for 12 awards, making it the most Tony-nominated play in history up to that point. Slave Play also lost every nomination, a fact that still feels pointed to me. It seemed like the world saw two differing versions of queerness: one brutal and eviscerating, the other optimistic and comforting. The world picked the latter option, and has since seen The Inheritance produced across the globe.

The Inheritance has now arrived closer to my hometown, at Bethesda, Maryland’s Round House Theatre (where it’s playing through November 2). Today, I’m different from my 2019 self — as I’ve written about in this publication, I’ve now participated in the affluent NYC culture that once intimidated me, and traveled into queer adulthood. The Round House production presented a unique opportunity to reconsider The Inheritance from a mature perspective. 

When going to both parts of the Round House production, I tried to let go of any assumptions or biases I had about the play itself, and watch with an open mind. This revival delivers incredible performances and exquisite direction, but I still found The Inheritance to be a flawed play that doesn’t successfully engage with gay history. This Round House production does, however, achieve something far stranger for me. This show convinced me that both The Inheritance and Slave Play aren’t the best way forward for queer theater.

Watching with appreciation and fear

This Round House revival demands a closer inspection of the play’s plot. The Inheritance opens with a group of young gay men sitting on stage, hoping to write a story about their lives. One young man (played by Jordi Betrán Ramírez) returns to his favorite novel Howards End, thus summoning the presence of its author E.M. Forster (Robert Sella). The rest of the play unfolds as a communal retelling of Howards End, with the ensemble speaking in assured third-person narration to the audience.

The Schlegel sisters, the protagonists of Howards End navigating romance and class in England, have become an American gay couple. It’s 2015, and Eric Glass (David Gow) is celebrating his 33rd birthday party in his spacious Manhattan apartment, which is also about to lose its rent-controlled status. He lives with his partner, Toby Darling (Adam Poss), a snarky but endearing novelist who’s adapting his writing for the stage.

After some intense sex, Eric and Toby decide to get married. But two chance encounters with other gay men set off a chain of developments. First, the recent college graduate Adam (also played by Ramírez) arrives at Eric’s party to retrieve a mistakenly-swapped tote bag — and soon joins the friend group, even auditioning to play the lead in Toby’s play. Then, Eric starts forming a friendship with the ailing Walter Poole (also played by Sella), an older gay man married to the wealthy businessman Henry Wilcox (Robert Gant). Walter tells Eric about his romance with Henry: they found each other just before the AIDS crisis hit New York City, and escaped to an upstate house to avoid being surrounded by death. Yet Walter would use their home to care for his dying friends, leading to a strained relationship with Henry.

As an adaptation of Howards End, The Inheritance is very shrewd. López tackles the central theme of the novel — what responsibilities we owe to strangers, family, and lovers — and grounds it in the millennial generation of gay men. It’s a generation that has tangibly benefited from gay liberation movements, but one that still can’t shake oppression. By making all but one of his characters gay men, López can better dramatize connections between all the story’s characters. The Inheritance’s web of friendly, romantic, and sexual situationships is one I find accurate to modern queer life.

Director Tom Story excels when utilizing the large ensemble of this Round House production. The image of gay men gathered together recurs throughout the show — yearning individually, but connected physically. Each time that image appeared, it took my breath away. Story also encourages his ensemble to perform narration with a steady demeanor, emphasizing the show’s metatheatricality. I’m reminded of the gay film critic Parker Tyler, who wrote in 1944, “The [film] spectator must be a suave and wary guest, one educated in a profound, naïve-sophisticated conspiracy to see as much as he can take away with him.” At its best, The Inheritance feels like López’s witty conspiracy to take away as much from Howards End as possible. This ensemble likewise makes the audience feel like we’re part of a suave in-crowd, seeing everything gay NYC offers.

Yet for most of The Inheritance’s runtime, I could feel Story (and this Round House production) working overtime to massage the play’s flaws. The most consistent critique of the Broadway production was that despite the play being written by someone of Puerto Rican descent, The Inheritance’s cast was too white. López defended himself in 2020 by stating, “Eric Glass, my central character, may be a white man, but he is a white man who was created by a Puerto Rican one. That has fundamentally informed his journey through the play.” It’s a valid rebuttal, one I’ve seen playwrights of color Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and Larissa FastHorse make while defending their Broadway shows led by white actors. What these playwrights fail to address is that productions about people of color aren’t often produced at the same level. It’s because Eric Glass is white that he can journey to Broadway.

Thankfully, the cast of this Round House production is much more diverse, adding dimension to the play’s social mobility narratives. When the actor of color Adam Poss plays Toby Darling, suddenly his search for wealth makes more sense to me. In Toby, I recognize my own Asian American family members who think succeeding under capitalism will end their feelings of alienation. Looking through the playbill, I also discovered that Ramírez previously played B in Sanctuary City. That play stressed how safety can feel maddeningly arbitrary in America, and that same idea also animates Ramírez’s characters (Young Man 1, Adam, and later Leo).

Still, these resonances for audiences of color are all subtext. López writes with detail about Eric’s German immigrant family, but doesn’t offer that same specificity to Toby’s family. In fact, Toby’s character arc is a textbook definition of the trauma plot: for nearly six hours, López dangles Toby’s horrific backstory in front of the audience like a carrot on a stick. When López finally gives us the backstory, he’s hoping to provide justification for all of Toby’s anger, and to deliver a wallop of pathos. I mostly felt manipulated. Toby didn’t feel like a real person, just a sentimental, tragic archetype.

That’s the same problem facing Leo — a poor, Gen Z sex worker who makes a treacherous journey through NYC. Still, Ramírez delivers a heartbreaking performance as the character, conjuring an intense daze of desperation. It’s through Leo that López writes most incisively about the AIDS pandemic. “He thought of the chain of infection that had been passed along the years,” Leo states, “decades and generations, his particular lineage moving from person to person, until it was eventually passed to him. A bitter inheritance. And yet, despite this chain of humanity, Leo never felt so alone in all his life.” 

Deep into the show’s second part, these lines made my ears prick up. Even if Leo was an archetype, maybe he would speak up for truly marginalized Americans. But just as Henry Wilcox retreats into his wealth to escape the AIDS pandemic, López retreats into his wealthy characters and away from his poor, HIV-positive ones. Leo is granted a few moments of delicate feeling, but The Inheritance is far more focused on cataloging bespoke restaurants, dazzling art performances, and opulent apartments. Within this epic is nearly an hour of Vogue-esque lifestyle writing.

This writing reveals López’s ownership over NYC, one he sees as hard-earned. In a 2019 New Yorker profile, López shared his sadness at having been raised in Florida, stating, “I feel like what was taken from me without my consent — before I was born — was my birthright, which was being a New Yorker.” López’s attitude reminds me of Jeremy Atherton Lin’s book Gay Bar: Why We Went Out, wherein Lin recounts a 1990s gay San Francisco reeling from AIDS but also doubling down on gentrification. “I’d imagined that homos moved to the city out of rebellion,” Lin writes. “I hadn’t considered entitlement as a motivating factor.” López’s entitlement fuels The Inheritance. Although the playwright has dramatized NYC’s changing neighborhoods, here López doesn’t explore gay men’s status as harbingers of urban displacement. The Inheritance itself sometimes feels like a work of gentrification, of sanitized luxury. López wants to show wealthy gays in all their splendor, bitchiness, and beauty.

The song can’t last forever

Beauty, more than anything, is the goal of this production of The Inheritance. Tom Story encourages us to appreciate the male form; Colin K. Bills’ lighting design bathes actors in exquisite colors; Lee Savage’s scenic design includes gorgeous cherry blossoms. Historically, AIDS narratives have been tragedies rendered ugly and stomach-churning. The Inheritance offers a corrective of sorts, envisioning a gay future of sun-dappled beauty.

Yet after hours of tasting The Inheritance’s sweetness, I wondered where Leo’s “bitter inheritance” had gone. In 2018, writer Doreen St. Félix critiqued the film adaptation of If Beale Street Could Talk, arguing that the film’s beauty sanded down the rough edges of James Baldwin’s original novel. When I’m feeling most cynical, this is exactly what I see López doing to the AIDS pandemic. It’s ironic that Washington, DC is an important site of gay activism, but none of that energy is captured in this DC production. Watch the documentary How to Survive a Plague and you’ll see ACT UP protesters putting red dye in fountains to make them resemble blood, chanting, “Bringing the dead to your door, we won’t take it anymore!” and spreading the ashes of AIDS victims on the White House lawn. 

I don’t expect every AIDS narrative to stage polemic moments like that. Still, it’s telling that López felt obligated to include activist characters in The Inheritance, but didn’t fully explore them. Black characters like Jason #1 (John Floyd) and Tristan (Jamar Jones) reference the double standards Black and transgender people face in the LGBTQ community. But they mostly state statistics, serving as human virtue signals not woven into the larger arc of the show. The play’s sole leftist character, Jasper (Hunter Ringsmith), is similarly underwritten. Jasper keeps bringing strained identity politics into his capitalist critiques — and while some 2010s activists certainly did this, I just don’t buy that this middle-aged character would make those mistakes. Jasper feels like a straw-man López writes just so that a billionaire gay man can tear him down. The Inheritance hints at disturbing histories in the gay community — but the play ameliorates those histories with flowery writing. Similar to the AIDS Memorial Quilt, The Inheritance sometimes smothers horrors under a fastidious beauty.

I’ve loved this kind of beauty before. The Inheritance reminds me of Sufjan Stevens’ song “The Only Thing” (coming from Stevens’ album Carrie and Lowell, a stunning reflection on his mother’s death). In the song, the narrator encounters the dangers also faced by Toby and Leo: addiction, self-harm. The only thing protecting him? Beauty. He recalls constellations of stars, animals in nature, and his mother’s face. When the narrator asks “Should I tear my eyes out now, before I see too much?,” it’s because the world is too beautiful to bear.

When I’ve been at my lowest, I’ve needed this message. “The Only Thing” has sometimes been the only thing stopping me from harming myself. Stevens’ voice reminds me there’s so much wonder in the world. Recently, though, Stevens has disavowed this message. For the 10th Anniversary Edition of Carrie and Lowell, the singer-songwriter wrote an essay stating that this music was an unhealthy way to grieve:

I could never make sense of the nothingness that consumed me, and it was foolhardy to believe anything good could come of superimposing my mother’s memory onto my music in the first place. But I did it just the same. And the result was a hot mess. For the first time in my life, I was faced with the limitations of a creative process that exercised exploitation and exhibitionism as expressions of personal truth. My music failed me.

When I watch The Inheritance, I see a similar “hot mess” of art and grief. Both López and Stevens transform suffering into an almost holy tableau, but fail to truly understand their pain. Just as Stevens superimposed his mother’s death onto his music, López superimposes the entirety of the AIDS pandemic onto his drama. He’s created a redemption fantasy for the dead so gorgeous it threatens to mask the agony of the people who were (and are) victims of the AIDS pandemic.

The Inheritance is beautiful. But that beauty comes at a terrible cost.

Who shall inherit the stage?

I’m not the only person of my generation who feels this way about The Inheritance. I’ve spoken to multiple gay friends my age who saw the play’s Broadway production, and they all arrived at the same conclusion: this is history we want to remember, but maybe this specific play isn’t the best way to restage it. The creative team behind this revival cares deeply about passing along this play to subsequent generations, but The Inheritance already feels like a dated 2010s period piece. The play’s epilogue, written for a future 2022, now takes place in the past.

The six years between the 2019 Broadway production and this 2025 Round House production have felt like a lifetime. But it’s a lifetime where, as the recent film One Battle After Another puts it, “very little has changed.” The COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement promised transformational changes to society, but those changes are now erased from existence by the second Trump presidency. Just like in 2019, The Inheritance feels overly optimistic in the face of destruction. In The Inheritance, there’s little discussion about political strategies to resist Republican administrations; gay men find solace only through individual acts of kindness.

If anything good has come from discourse around The Inheritance, it’s that queer writers are now more conscious of the politics shaping their stories. Joel Kim Booster’s rom-com Fire Island also translates a classic novel of manners (Pride and Prejudice) into the gay community. But thankfully, Booster properly explores divides across race, class, and body type in his film. Steven Phillips-Horst’s article “We’ve Reached Peak Gay Sluttiness” also lovingly catalogues a sexually liberated friend group, yet with a keener eye for the influence of capitalism and technology.

Dramatists are also filling in the narrative gaps that López missed. The Inheritance only features one woman character: Margaret, a mother who discusses caring for her sick son. Yet Paula Vogel’s Mother Play, being staged by Studio Theatre next month, offers more multidimensional women. Drawing on her own experiences caring for a brother who died of AIDS, Vogel writes more candidly about the physical demands of care labor, and creates a detailed look at homophobia within the DC community. Even Drew Droege’s play Messy White Gays, currently in previews in NYC, seems to more directly address race and entitlement.

Nowadays, I feel ambivalent about both López’s work and Slave Play. For years, I’ve approached Slave Play from a defensive stance: no regional theater in DC has staged Harris’ work, a sign to me that it’s not considered “palatable” enough for DC audiences. But Slave Play and The Inheritance now seem like two theatrical extremes: one overwhelms me with cruelty, the other overwhelms me with beauty. Both are unsustainable to stage in the long run. And for me, both offer unsustainable political practices, for both queer theater and queer life. I can’t feel devastation or catharsis all the time. 

If there’s one play I’ve seen that synthesizes Slave Play and The Inheritance, it’s Jordan Tanahill’s Prince Faggot (now running in NYC’s Studio Seaview). The show opens similarly to The Inheritance: a group of LGBTQ actors gather to reminisce on their queer childhoods and the culture that’s shaped them. Tanahill’s show then imagines what would happen if a future heir to the English throne was a gay man, with the six-person ensemble playing multiple roles.

Just like López, Tanahill is invested in what responsibilities gay men have toward strangers, family, and lovers. Similar to The Inheritance, Prince Faggot is an ambitious epic, spanning decades of history, exploring what’s inherited across generations of gay men. Yet Tanahill’s work also picks up on the best parts of Harris’ Slave Play. Prince Faggot is unafraid to shock its audience with intense kink and sex. The show also investigates the uncrossable divides in interracial relationships, staging the horrific legacies of the United Kingdom’s colonialism.

The show’s most ingenious moments are also its most affecting. After scenes about the royal family, Prince Faggot’s actors will seemingly break the fourth wall, delivering part-fictional, part-real monologues to the audience. After a sex scene, Rachel Crowl shares a bold story about watching that scene in rehearsals, feeling a mixture of admiration and jealousy as a trans woman. After a parade scene, N’yomi Allure Stewart talks frankly about not caring about the royal family unless Black people like Meghan Markle are involved. She discusses NYC’s ballroom culture and the need for queer people to create their own monarchs.

Crowl and Stewart deliver powerful, personal interventions into Tanahill’s play. The actors remind me of the interventions critics of color like me have made into both Slave Play and The Inheritance — but when Crowl and Stewart perform their monologues onstage, their criticisms felt so vulnerable that I started to tear up.

I hope that future productions of The Inheritance, and future dramatists writing about the queer community, will include some of the directness of Prince Faggot. That radical honesty might create more sustainable political practice. Radical honesty might create theater that’s even more beautiful.

The Inheritance plays through November 2, 2025, at Round House Theatre, 4545 East-West Highway, Bethesda, MD (one block from Bethesda Metro station). Tickets ($50–$108) can be purchased by calling 240-644-1100, visiting the box office, or online (Learn more about special discounts here, accessibility here, and the Free Play program for students here.) Tickets are also available on TodayTix (Part One) and (Part Two).

Running Times:
The Inheritance, Part One: Approximately three hours and 25 minutes, including two 15-minute intermissions.
The Inheritance, Part Two: Approximately three hours and 15 minutes, including one 15-minute intermission and one 5-minute pause.

The digital program for The Inheritance is here

Advisory: Photography and video are strictly prohibited. Upon arrival, patrons will be asked to place a sticker over the camera on their phones, and it must remain in place for the duration of the performance. (Stickers are residue-free and are easily removed at the conclusion of the performance.)

The post Can queer theater ever be true to queer life? appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

This article was originally published in American Theatre Magazine on October 15, 2025. 

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has always been a part of my life. Growing up just outside of Washington, D.C., in the 2000s, I always saw its large marble building as integral to my city’s landscape, just as much as the Washington Monument. I came of age in the building, seeing Theater for Young Audiences as a kid, national tours of Broadway musicals as a middle schooler, and music concerts as a high schooler.

The creation of such a multifaceted arts organization was only possible thanks to the federal government. In 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Cultural Center Act, which allocated D.C. land for a culture center, and mandated that it would be a privately funded organization. President John F. Kennedy helped fundraise for the building before his assassination, and his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, helped dedicate the center as a “living memorial” to Kennedy. Johnson remarked at a groundbreaking ceremony that “artistic activity can enrich the life of our people, which really is the central object of Government.” The Kennedy Center officially opened in 1971.

More than 50 years later, from August 2022 through March 2025, the Kennedy Center was my employer. My official title was junior copywriter/coordinator, advertising communications, in which role I collaborated with marketers and programmers to promote the Center’s wide range of performances. I edited dance season brochures, interviewed artists for a patron magazine, wrote radio ads for comedians, and sent emails for free Millennium Stage shows. I was especially proud to promote the Social Impact team, which provided outreach programs to local and national communities. The team often used the Center’s recently built REACH space to provide classes, staged readings, discussions, festivals, and more.

My job dramatically changed early this year. On Friday, Feb. 7, The Atlantic reported the Trump administration’s plans to fire Kennedy Center board members (who historically were appointed by the president for six-year terms). Trump stated these intentions himself with a Truth Social post on the same day, which also said, “Just last year, the Kennedy Center featured Drag Shows specifically targeting our youth — THIS WILL STOP.”

I spent the rest of that weekend waiting for the dominos to fall, and soon they did. (To read the rest of this article in American Theatre magazine, click here.)

The post Why I left the Kennedy Center appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

This past summer, DC audiences experienced the world premiere of We Are Gathered at Arena Stage (directed by Kent Gash). The newest work by celebrated playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney, We Are Gathered traces the difficult romance between Tre and Free, two Black male artists considering marrying each other. But Tre struggles with fears of commitment, his difficult past, and the fact that he met Free while cruising at a park.

When I wrote about We Are Gathered for this publication, I found the play overwhelming and fascinating. Tre’s attempt to move beyond his traumatic origins mirrored McCraney’s desire to write beyond the adolescent protagonists that have defined his oeuvre. We Are Gathered marked a career turning point for McCraney. The show acknowledged all of the playwright’s creative influences and painful memories, but strove toward the future. We Are Gathered’s ending had a finality rarely seen in McCraney’s plays, with Tre telling his lover, “You decided to be here while I ran in a circle. And now the circle is complete. The round ‘o’ of the world is formed here.”

Now, a revival of McCraney’s most famous play, The Brothers Size, is playing at The Shed in New York City, a co-production with Geffen Playhouse. The play (first produced in NYC at the Public Theatre in 2007 and presented by 1st Stage in 2019) also follows two Black men: the boisterous Oshoosi Size comes out of incarceration to stay with his older brother, Ogun Size, a car mechanic. A “round ‘o’ of the world” is now staged literally at The Shed. At the beginning of the production, an actor pours white sand in a circle around the performance space, as if blessing a temporary altar. The script describes this moment as an “opening invocation [that] should be repeated for as long as needed to complete the ritual.” In The Brothers Size, characters try to achieve wholeness, but unlike in We Are Gathered, their circle ultimately feels incomplete.

The Brothers Size is timely and timeless, but there’s danger in McCraney revisiting such hallowed ground (he co-directs this Shed revival alongside Bijan Sheibani). How can McCraney move beyond coming-of-age narratives if he’s revisiting past ones? If We Are Gathered embraces the future, why is McCraney once again looking backward in The Brother Size? Yet watching both plays within a few months, I found these tensions more illuminating than confusing. The circles staged in We Are Gathered and The Brothers Size overlap, making Tre and Free’s lovely conclusion more unresolved, and making Oshoosi and Ogun’s open-ended conclusion more final.

—

The Brothers Size has a recurring quality: strained conversations between the Size brothers refract through dreams and memory. Oshoosi’s drawn to Elgba, a poetic friend from prison who also searches for freedom — and their connection takes a startling turn, undergirded by state violence.

Any summary of The Brothers Size’s plot risks reducing the show to a tragedy. But McCraney’s true focus is on how language creates simultaneous intimacy and distance. Characters narrate their own stage directions; their asides to the audience confirm their status as achingly real people and abstractions. When Oshoosi asks Ogun, “Why you got to be so hard all time?,” the question is both a joke and an accusation. Why can’t Ogun drop his hardened demeanor to show levity, grace? Why can’t the hard world outside of this play deliver grace, too?

Watching these productions of The Brothers Size and We Are Gathered, I’m struck by how similarly they’re staged. McCraney, Sheibani, and Gash place their performances in the round, with audiences on four sides. This allows asides and musical performances in both to feel surprisingly direct. We Are Gathered’s language also feels both intimate and distant. Tre’s monologues reveal a tortured mind that can’t plainly state how it feels. He’s a perfect foil to Ogun, who saves a monologue for the right moment, and unleashes it with a simplicity that’s devastating.

Yet Tre and Ogun feel like theatrical brothers. Whether they’re verbose or silent, extroverted or repressed, Black men in McCraney’s works (and America) still feel a desperate sense of dread. It’d be tempting to trace a linear progression from The Brothers Size to We Are Gathered: the Size brothers yearn for freedom in the “distant present,” and then Tre and Free actually experience more societal freedoms in 2025. However, there are moments in The Brothers Size when characters feel utterly safe, and many moments in We Are Gathered that acknowledge the anguish of 2025’s political climate. Freedom in both plays feels arbitrary. Age, time, and circumstance won’t necessarily save any of these characters.

McCraney emphasizes this fact through his casting in The Shed’s The Brothers Size. Although the script notes that Ogun and Elegba are “late 20s” and Oshoosi is “early 20s,” this production’s cast includes longtime McCraney collaborators who are middle-aged. Alani iLongwe embodies Oshoosi with an overcompensating bravado, trapped in a pre-prison adolescence despite being physically older. André Holland’s Ogun offers a steady counterweight, able to slow down the dialogue’s tempo (an older Ogun makes his paternalism feel even more pointed). At first, I wanted to compare this casting to that of Dance Nation. It’s older actors portraying their lost youth. However, the actors’ mix of exuberance and weariness forces me to acknowledge that the Size brothers were never granted the privilege of “youth” or “innocence” in America.

—

For me, the most refreshing element of We Are Gathered was its unabashed queerness. McCraney’s works often follow queer men, but their sexuality might be a burgeoning identity (Eric in Wig Out!) or an open secret (Pharus in Choir Boy). In contrast, Tre and Free proudly state, “We’re here, we’re queer,” enrich themselves in queer media, and surround themselves within the LGBTQ+ community. So I was hesitant watching The Brothers Size in NYC — would queerness be forced into subtext or subterfuge? Elegba offers a particularly thorny character to stage nowadays: without careful direction, his libidinal movements can feel like entrapment.

Thankfully, this production of The Brothers Size doesn’t lose the queerness of Tre and Free. McCraney and Sheibani wisely bring some of Ogun’s stillness into Elegba’s scenes. Actor Malcolm Mays often portrays Elegba like he’s trapped in a reverie, not completely in control of his hands or mouth. Sexuality is a secure, inherent part of Elegba’s identity. But it’s still a mystery to him, and to us.

McCraney’s other works also now alleviate some of the paranoia around The Brother Size’s queer desires. Ogun plays many roles for Oshoosi throughout the show: role model, friend, bully, father figure, twin, mirror. Feeling drawn to someone of the same gender — not knowing if it’s identification, attraction, or jealousy — is a uniquely queer experience, but it’s also one that’s taboo. 2007 audiences watching The Brothers Size might have been shocked to witness this dynamic, but McCraney’s other art (Moonlight, We Are Gathered) now prepares me to recognize this dynamic across multiple narratives, and multiple lifetimes.

It’s worth noting that although I’ve seen three McCraney productions — We Are Gathered, The Brothers Size, and Choir Boy on Broadway — the queer sex scenes in all were staged abstractly. But queerness encompasses different kinds of physical performance, too. We Are Gathered featured an absurdly funny parody of “trade” masculinity that quickly became fabulous. Something similar happens here. Oshoosi and Ogun lip-sync to a song late in the show, and the smooth comedic gags take on the camp of drag. Even after a Size brother’s painful confession of “I fucked up,” I’m reminded of Michaela Angela Davis’s assertion that “[Black style] couldn’t be burned up or shot up or locked up. You can’t fuck it up.”

—

Even though The Brothers Size functions as a complete story, it’s often understood as a brief glimpse into a long, emergent history. Ogun and Oshoosi are named after Yoruban spirits, so their personal woes take on the weight of a spiritual struggle. The Brothers Size is the middle chapter of McCraney’s trilogy The Brother/Sister Plays, so Ogun is haunted by the choices of a previous play. Maybe Ogun senses that his actions will haunt future stories.

At this point, Ogun’s actions haunt all of American theater. McCraney’s The Brother/Sister Plays has inspired too many contemporary plays to count (it’s so influential that, like the past, you can’t escape it). I’m reminded of a scene where Elegba brings a broken-down car to Ogun’s shop, and Ogun remarks, “…those one of those American Classics. / Those, ‘I will run longer and stronger then the human / Body’ cars. Man, please that car got plenty of run in it.” The Brothers Size has since become its own American classic. The play will outlast all of the bodies onstage in NYC.

Somewhere in this country — in a college classroom, in a regional theater, in a reader’s imagination, in an audience’s memory — Oshoosi and Ogun are running. They’re collapsing or returning or leaving each other. Even with the benefit of safety and time, maybe it’s a sign of grace that McCraney still joins their forever struggle.

Yet part of what made We Are Gathered so exciting to me was its dedication to closing the book on the past, to finally achieving some kind of peace. The Brothers Size may always be trapped in the middle of generational, spiritual, and theatrical narratives. But McCraney gracefully takes some of the decisiveness of We Are Gathered and shifts it over to this Shed production. I’ve reread The Brothers Size countless times, but it was only watching this performance — and somehow feeling McCraney’s metatheatrical presence — that the play’s ending finally felt like a relief. Just like Tre and Free, McCraney lives with a freedom the Size brothers can only imagine: McCraney can safely revisit his past. He can return home.

The post ‘The Brothers Size’ in NYC continues the exploration of ‘We Are Gathered’ at Arena appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

For IN Series Artistic Director Timothy Nelson, opening the new season with Alessandro Stradella’s St. John the Baptist next month isn’t just an artistic decision; it’s a long-held passion. With a bold new English libretto, a 1970s setting, and its first-ever full staging, Stradella’s explosive oratorio comes alive as a work of staggering musical invention and psychological complexity. The story retells the biblical account of John the Baptist’s final days as he’s caught in a dangerous triangle with the lustful Herod and the manipulative Salome, whose shocking demand for John’s head leads to a climactic act of violence. I had the pleasure of speaking with Nelson to hear his thoughts on why this rarely performed baroque masterpiece is the perfect piece for right now and how its themes of identity, repression, and forbidden desire hit harder than ever. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

What drew you to Alessandro Stradella’s St. John the Baptist as the IN Series season opener, and why now?

It’s a piece I’ve been wanting to do for almost 20 years. It’s a little-known piece, but there was a recording that was put out in the late eighties. The music is just astonishing — you can’t even believe that this music was written at all. And the storytelling is so novel, especially for the 17th century. The story of Salome, even though it’s really familiar, is not set very often, and it has an inherent drama and psychological complexity and sexual terror. We don’t think of baroque opera or Baroque theater as something that is so fraught and has so much inherent drama. So, between the music and the chance to do this really vivid story, I’ve always wanted to do the piece. Then, in doing a season of all premieres, I thought, how cool to open with actually the premiere of something that was written over 300 years ago?

You’ve said that Stradella’s version asks something “different” of us than Strauss’s Salome. What exactly is that difference, and how does your staging bring it out?

When we think of Oscar Wilde’s version, the thing we most think about is how shocking it was. The theater play was banned in Britain for 30 years after it was written. There were riots in Chicago when they tried to do the American premiere of it. It’s a piece that is shocking and salacious, even from the time it’s written. But this version, in a way that’s very similar, is equally as shocking musically and dramatically. It’s totally unique, and that’s not surprising coming from Stradella, because his life was shocking. He was shocking. The music he created, the art he created, and also his personal life. So in that way, it’s similar to the Strauss Oscar Wilde version, but that version focuses on Salome as the main character and as a character who has incredible psychological complexity and depth and changes over the course of the opera. Stradella’s version of Salome is important and gets amazing, fearsome, terrifying music — especially for the soprano having to sing it. It’s really about Herod, and Stradella hints at this past relationship between Herod and John. And Herod is sort of forced into killing this person that he clearly has a great affection for. So, in that way, it’s very different from the Oscar Wilde. It’s equally as crazed, equally as subversive, but it changes the focus.

Stradella’s opera was originally written as a concert work. What challenges or opportunities did that present when fully staging it for the first time?

It doesn’t present challenges in the way people would think because we think of oratorio as a concert form that is something more respectable and more spiritual and more tame than opera. But in fact, oratorio was invented in Rome because opera and theater were banned by the church in Rome. But it didn’t mean that the people who had power and money didn’t want to see opera or to see theater. It’s just they weren’t allowed to. So the only way they could experience drama or musical drama was to invent oratorio. But the pieces are no less dramatic. They’re no less sometimes scandalous. They chose stories from the Bible, but they chose very scandalous stories from the Bible. And so as a piece of music theater, it is equal in drama to the early operas that were being rented in Venice at the same time — maybe even more dramatic. Actually, I would find it hard as a conductor to make a concert piece out of it because you can’t believe it’s not meant to be staged. It is fast-paced, the characters are etched with remarkable psychological depth, and it’s very plot-driven. As a stage piece it’s very natural. There are some oratorios that would be more complicated and that maybe don’t have the same sort of dramatic momentum that this piece has. But this piece was very well suited to become a stage work. It’s hard to believe that no one had done it earlier, actually.

This production incorporates a new English text by Bari Biern. How did you collaborate with her on shaping the narrative and tone?

Bari is someone who’s had a relationship with our organization for many years, long before I came in 2018. But I think Bari had been writing translations for us, sometimes performing with us, and she used to write for Capital Steps, and won a Helen Hayes. During my tenure, she did our translation of Rigoletto last year. Bari is a brilliant rhymer and a brilliant comedian. This piece is not a comedy, but it has certain elements of absurdity and of grotesqueness, and I thought Bari would be really well suited. I wanted to give Bari a chance to do something that wasn’t silly and that was kind of dark and sometimes funny, but ultimately quite a tragedy.

However, rhyming was really important to the original piece, and by doing it in English, we needed someone who was really good at clever and smart rhyming. We’ve chosen to set this particular production in the 1970s because we’ve delved into this relationship between Herod and John. I wanted to find a place where a relationship between two men was at odds with the social norms — of heteronormative American suburbia of the 1970s. Putting it in the seventies gives an opportunity to the English translator to have fun with language, since the seventies were a time when the American language was really rich with unique words that we don’t use now. I thought Bari would have a good time digging into how language could fit with music, but particularly language from that period.

As both director and music director, how do you balance the visual storytelling with Stradella’s richly expressive score?

Obviously, the practice in opera is to have a separate conductor and director, which is very different from the way we think of theater. Even in music theater, there’s ultimately one person in charge in the room, the stage director. And there’s a hierarchy of the stage director and the music director. But in opera, they’re equal in the rehearsal room. So, trying to find someone who can do both is logistically a challenge. But I think it’s a much better way to make a piece of musical theater opera because there shouldn’t be a division between music and text and music and drama. The two are telling the same story, and they’re telling it together as one unified thing.

If you have one person or one creative mind that is shaping the music, the embodiment of that music in a way that is telling a unified dramatic story, to me, is a better way to get to a cohesive whole. It’s not possible when you get into romantic opera, where the orchestra parts are so complex and the size is so big and you have a chorus, but this is five singers and a baroque orchestra. It’s the sort of space where we can do this really unique experiment, and what it means to have just one artistic vision for the project.

Stradella’s music was admired by the likes of Handel and yet remains relatively obscure today. What do you think contemporary audiences will find most surprising about his music?

Handel, Bach…brilliant. Bach, especially, beyond words. Monteverdi, who is about a hundred years earlier than those guys, even a little more equally brilliant. People think of Stradella as a kind of a bridge between those poles — between Monteverdi and early opera and Handel. That’s really unfair to Stradella, who wasn’t just a byway between the two. Stradella was writing music that was wholly original, wholly his own, and super complex. His dissonances, his use of rhythms and syncopations, the way he etches character. One example: Salome, when she’s trying to cajole Herod and convince him to cut off John’s head. This young 13-year-old girl saying I want you to cut off the head of this man is a really gruesome idea. She does it in a way that is vocally pyrotechnic almost like Whitney Houston. It goes from the bottom to the top of the range, very fast, rageful, and crazy. That sets up an aria that is totally still and eerie and placid. So Stradella is the master of surprise — the master of doing the thing you’re not supposed to do. He was an outlaw and it comes out in the music.

Were there particular scenes or musical moments in St. John the Baptist that felt like breakthrough moments for you as a director?

The scene of Salome going between emotional poles to try and win her argument — and this argument is actually part of a larger scene in the second act — is all her trying to convince him to give her the head. And it’s a masterpiece of a character, psychology and music, and the shifting psychologies of people. The piece is famous also for its final duet because Salome is singing a very happy, joyful line, and her text is all about how she’s filled with elation and she doesn’t know why. And underneath, Herod is singing different music that is about how he senses impending doom. He’s so frightened and he doesn’t know why. And it ends suddenly just in the middle of the line and we know it’s the end because Stradella writes that’s the end of the oratorio. We assume that’s the moment the head gets cut off. That’s another moment that is really interesting to figure out how to embody as a director. The piece is full of those sorts of innovative moments.

You’ve led IN Series through productions that combine opera with other forms — from immersive theater to contemporary dance. What role does cross-disciplinary collaboration play in your creative process?

I love bringing together diverse artists, and by diverse I mean artists that are coming from different cultural expressive histories and working in different forms — forms that we would never think go together. Then we all get in a room and find a way to weave something that, again, makes the whole so much more than just the sum of the parts. So, for me, it’s very central in my practice, and it’s not just because I like working with people and collaboration is fun, but it’s really about a view of globalization, doing something positive for the world rather than what globalization actually costs the world. So bringing these voices together — which of course jazz is speaking to classical music and speaking to a whole economic and political history that was going on from the 19th and the 20th century — and having the arts openly having that conversation by putting those different things together and in dialogue with each other is really interesting and fun for me as an artist.

What has this production taught you about Stradella, about opera, or even about yourself?

In a way, it’s a homecoming. I wanted to do this piece for years, and as a harpsichordist and a baroque scholar of music, in a way, it’s my music. But I’ve never done Stradella before, and tend to do pieces that are optimistic and about joy. Even if that joy is found through grief and spiritual transformation. This is a piece that is gothic, gory, and dark, and there is some transcendent music in it. There is a beautiful message, especially in this production, about being true to the way God made you and not letting social pressure make you deny who you are. But ultimately, the story is very dark and almost so dark that it becomes satirical. That’s not the sort of work I do, so it’s fun to dip my toe in that space.

How has your time in DC influenced the kind of work you want to create?

I was overseas for about 15 years, and in opera, especially in classical music, we’re taught that Europe is the continent where we’re supposed to want to go and do work. That’s where there’s so much funding and where the productions are new and big in opera. And I was very early on in my time in Europe dissatisfied with being so far from the country that matters to me. Quite honestly, it was Trump’s first election that made me want to come back because I just felt it was wrong to be in the cheap seats. I wanted to be making work, even if it’s harder to make work in America, ’cause of the way the work is not funded. The work is somehow, at least to me, more important because it’s able to tap into real conversations that real people are having. And that, of course, is much more true now than it was eight years ago. Especially making work in DC feels like there’s the opportunity to do something that is relevant and will make a difference in people’s lives, whereas for me in Europe, I knew from day one that I was making work that felt easy, and I wanted to do stuff that felt hard.

What do you hope audiences walk away thinking or feeling after experiencing St. John the Baptist — especially those unfamiliar with Baroque opera?

The musician in me wants people to have a revelatory experience of not knowing this music and not knowing that this type of music existed, and that it could be so powerful, strange, and affecting. In a larger sense, this piece is so dramatically taut and so immediate and impactful that I want people to almost feel like they never thought opera could be so strong and so fast. I think people tend to think of opera as a space that can give these great, emotionally overwhelming moments. And between those moments, there’s a lot of waiting to get to the next moment, whereas theater tends to be something people think of as more immediate and compelling. I would hope people see this and realize that opera, when it’s done well and it’s the right piece, can actually be both at the same time.

Can you give a quick preview of what else is to come this season?

The next project in December, called The Delta King’s Blues, is kind of what was the germ for the whole idea of the season of premieres. It’s a work we’ve been spending the last three years commissioning. We have a resident artist program named the Cardwell Dawson Artist Fellowship — named for Mary Cardwell Dawson, who ran the National Negro Opera Company in DC in the forties. We started during the pandemic for local Black opera singers who wanted to explore some aspect beyond just singing — whether that’s composing, writing, or directing. And so this is the culmination of that with one of our artists, Jarrod Lee. He’s a librettist and he’s written with the composer Damien Geter a blues opera about the legend of Robert Johnson, the guitarist who sold his soul to the devil to learn the blues. So this is an opera that will combine a blues ensemble and a western classical ensemble and will be set in an immersive juke joint. And then in the spring, we’re doing a festival called Passion Plays, which are three works inspired by the medieval tradition of passion plays, but looking at contemporary themes. One is about police violence, police brutality, or political violence using the music of Bach. One is called Passio, which brings together eight female artists from around the world. It’ll include musical artists from Moroccan traditional Arabic music, Indian drumming, and more that all speak kind of a common language of improvisation. And we’ll talk about their experiences as women in this globalized society. And then the last piece is called For Women Serving Time, which is a new opera by Adrienne Torf about the experience of incarcerated women in America based on a poem by a scholar named Fatemeh Keshavarz. Our final piece is an opera I wrote about six years ago and never thought would be performed called Song of Sakuntala. It’s based on a 14th-century Indian play, and it brings together Indian classical music and western classical music and instruments into sort of a dance opera based on that play — which in the Indian tradition is sort of as ubiquitous as Hamlet is in the West.

Running Time: 75 minutes with Intermission.

St. John the Baptist plays October 2 to 5, 2025, presented by IN Series performing at 340 Maple Drive (IN Series’ new venue in Southwest, DC), and October 10 to 12, 2025, at the Baltimore Theatre Project (45 W Preston St, Baltimore, MD). Tickets range from $45 to $77 in DC and can be purchased online. Tickets range from $25 to $35 in Baltimore and can also be purchased online.

The post Timothy Nelson on staging the shocking opera ‘St. John the Baptist’ appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

If you’re a fan of improv, chances are you’ve heard of The Improvised Shakespeare Company®, who perform regularly in DC as they tour around the country.

But did you know that the District has its very own improvised Shakespeare group?

The Merely Players: An Improvised Shakespeare Show hits the Washington Improv Theater (WIT) stage on September 28 for a limited run of four consecutive Sunday performances at 7 PM. It’s part of WIT’s fall show series Laugh Riot: Comedy in the Face of Everything!, which started September 19.

The Merely Players are directed by veteran improv performer Shawn Westfall, who says his homegrown homage to The Bard packs the punch of a five-act play into a 40-minute spectacle.

He sat down with WIT’s Anna K. Nelson to talk about why audiences can’t seem to get enough of improvised Shakespeare in this capital city, where, one imagines, a good number of people go around thinking, “Don’t you know how important I think I am?”

Anna K. Nelson (WIT): Let’s start with the troupe’s name. Presumably, it’s taken from As You Like It?

Shawn Westfall: That’s right, from Act II, Scene VII: Jacques says this as a preface to his “seven ages of man” speech:

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts…

I love this speech because it corresponds to something I’ve long believed about identity, that we — all of us, not just “actors” — are playing roles constantly, and these roles shift over time and are sometimes forced upon us. I think recognizably “self-aware” people are more accurately “selves-aware” in that they understand this, as well as how a modicum of insincerity and “performance” is occasionally necessary for graceful human interaction.

And I love how comically the word “players” is diminished when it’s modified by “merely,” suggesting that players, i.e., you and me, are not, and never are, as important as we think we are in the grand scheme of things.

What made you want to start up an improvised Shakespeare group here in DC?

To be candid, DC’s seen its share of improvised Shakespeare already. A lot of us got hooked after catching Improvised Shakespeare at the Del Close Marathon in NYC — what, 20 years ago? We were like, “Wait, you can improvise a genre? Even THAT one?” To my mind, that show basically kicked off the whole genre-improv wave, and DC folks were eager to try a Shakespeare one. A few short months later, some of us — including WIT’s Artistic and Executive Director Mark Chalfant — cobbled together Crude Mechanicals for WIT’s annual festival of experimental improv called Improvapalooza. When I ran my own theater here in DC, I leaned hard into genre improv with an improvised Shakespeare structure as a tentpole show that I directed and performed in. Later, in Portland, Oregon, I joined former Philly improv-scene mainstay Kristen Schier’s Love, Shakespeare show, and once I was back in DC, Rails Comedy asked me to direct another improvised Shakespeare show — and of course I said “Yes.”

That’s the long answer, obviously. The short answer? I’ve loved Shakespeare ever since my undergraduate English survey class, and I’ve loved improv ever since I began performing it in the mid-’90s. For me, it’s two great tastes that taste great together.

Shakespeare can be challenging to perform on a good day (and without the added pressure of making the words and the plot all up in real-time while staying in character!). What are some particular challenges The Merely Players have faced as you’ve been rehearsing?

I mean, none, obviously! Why should there be any challenges whatsoever? Rehearsals are flawless and executed perfectly! Why do you ask this silly question?

(Just kidding, of course.) The primary challenge for us is narrative time. Shakespeare had the luxury of five-act plays into which he shoved a lot: characters, soliloquies, swordplay, romantic banter and bawdiness, ghosts, physical comedy, battles, marriages; scenes that changed locations quickly and by turns from, say, Rome to Cairo and back again. He also had audiences for whom this was their primary means of entertainment, essentially their “streaming service:” There was little else to do back then except go to a weekend Globe Theatre show and spend the afternoon drinking beer and seeing what this chatty, crazy Hamlet fellow is going to get up to next.

The Merely Players, on the other hand, have approximately 40 minutes to create a couple of characters, the worlds/milieus they inhabit, and then — without a script — find ways to bring these worlds together such that it appears “Shakespearean,” doing our best to incorporate the above. But it’s a tightrope that’s not only fun to walk, but fun for the audience to watch us walk. I think.

What are the most thrilling aspects of improvising Shakespeare? It must be quite a rush for the players!

Indeed, and a rush for their director as well! I always enjoy seeing how this cast’s unique individual skillsets flavor their choices, characters, and tropes. We have one actor who excels at high-status roles and naturally plays royalty and another who is effortless with rhyme and meter and rattles off soliloquies. We also have a performer who embodies lower-class characters with ease, plus a couple with deep Maryland Renaissance Festival experience, which proves invaluable. Another actor shines at physical comedy. The whole cast has sharp improv skills and remarkable memories, weaving audience suggestions into the show in ways I could never predict. Those in-the-moment discoveries delight the audience, the cast, and me — it’s a joy watching how much fun they’re having!

Shakespeare’s use of language, character, setting, and genre was so intentional that one might be forgiven for thinking it a fool’s errand to play with it to such a degree. And yet, improvised Shakespeare works so well. Why do you think that is?

It may be a fool’s errand to tinker with Shakespeare’s language, characters, and settings — but Shakespeare, a fool himself, did it often. He freely borrowed plots and lifted characters from numerous sources, altering them as needed for his own plays. His sources range from, among others, Holinshed’s Chronicles (the source of both King Lear and Macbeth) to even older versions of Hamlet like the 12th-century Amleth and the now forever lost Ur-Hamlet, written a few decades before his Hamlet. Copyright, in the sense we now understand it, didn’t exist, and plagiarism hadn’t been defined as we now know it. Later eras even rewrote his plays — Romeo and Juliet was, in the early 18th century, staged with a happy ending. The “doomed” lovers were no longer ill-fated but surviving and marrying instead! (I know, right?)

I think an improvised Shakespeare show works because — and please, don’t tell anyone this — we’re not really “improvising Shakespeare.” The Merely Players are parodying what people think Shakespeare is: lofty, inaccessible, “high art,” the bastion of intellectuals and the academy,performed by snotty actors who take the plays and themselves way too seriously. That’s what I love about it: parody is baked in. It knocks Shakespeare off that perceived pedestal and returns him to what he was in the first place — entertainment, not Art-with-a-capital-A. I can’t prove it, but I doubt Shakespeare ever thought of himself as an “artist.” He was an entertainer, and a popular one at that.

What would you say to someone who’s not a huge fan of Shakespeare as to why they should come out and see The Merely Players?

The cliché, pedantic answer is that even if you think you don’t like Shakespeare, you kind of do: the English you speak every day is packed with phrases he invented, and if you’ve enjoyed movies like The Lion King (Hamlet) or Ten Things I Hate About You (The Taming of the Shrew), you’ve enjoyed Shakespeare.

But here’s a better answer: Shakespeare wasn’t just an artist, as I said above. He was an entertainer — and a spectacular one at that, specifically in the sense of the word “spectacle.” He was the Michael Bay of his era. Think about it: his plays have sword fights, explosions, battles, music, murder, dance, flirty banter, groany and bawdy puns, royalty and rogues, mistaken identities, cross-dressing, lascivious jokes, and both physical slapstick-comedy and intellectually sharp wit. And, despite this entertaining spectacle, as the five-act play wore on, audiences — especially those standing on the ground of the Globe in the cheap “seats” — grew rowdy, drunk, and chatty to the point that they began talking back to the actors on stage. Thus, actors had to improvise — that’s right, improvise — in character while keeping the play moving. Oh, and that cheap-seat standing crowd? They were called “groundlings,” and that’s where the legendary improv troupe/theater The Groundlings got its name.

So don’t come for “Shakespeare.” Come for the fun, the spectacle, the laughter. And to see improv comedy’s roots.

The Merely Players cast features Catherine Mullins, Zach Myers, Meredith Garagiola, Emily Dalton, Keegan Cassady, Sammy Garcia, Matt Mansfield, JoJo Franzen, and Shawn Westfall.

See them perform at Washington Improv Theater on Sundays from September 28 to October 19, 2025, at 7 PM. (Each show includes a 25-minute opener by a DC-based indie improv troupe, followed by a 40-minute performance by The Merely Players.) General admission is $20. Shows take place at Studio Theatre, 1501 14th St NW, Washington, DC. Go to witdc.org/shows.

You can also catch them at Rails Comedy on these Tuesdays: September 30 and October 14, 2025, at 8 PM at The DC Arts Center in Adams Morgan, 2438 18th St NW, Washington, DC. Go to railscomedy.com.

The post For The Merely Players, all of WIT’s a stage this fall appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

“Do you know that I’m dead?” Those words, inscrutable as they are, mark the very beginning of The One Good Thing, a new play by Joe Bravaco that is now in rehearsals for its U.S. premiere at Washington Stage Guild.

The question, addressed by one brother to the other as they stand outside a cottage on the coast of Ireland, is left hanging, though it provides the hook for all that comes after.

The twists and turns that follow that revelation were described by the British Theatre Guide as “unexpected, compelling and dramatically satisfying.” The review appeared after the play’s official opening, in April, in a part of Yorkshire where sheep, statistically, outnumber people, though people, happily, prefer plays.

“But why is it set in Ireland?” I asked the director, Steven Carpenter, as we sat down for a lively video interview last week during a break in rehearsals.

The answer, Carpenter replied, is that the playwright, Joe Bravaco, conceived it as Irish.

“According to Joe,” he explained, “the genesis of the play was the song ‘I’ll Be Singing,’ which was written for the film adaptation of John Patrick Shanley’s Outside Mullingar. The song, echoed in this production, gave rise to the story.”

Bravaco, who lives in New Jersey, is both a playwright and a librettist. He started out as a high school English teacher who taught journalism and drama.

“The play,” Carpenter continued, “is full of magical ideas, endemic to the Irish. The way the brothers speak, for example, is similar to the work of Conor MacPherson or Brian Friel.”

Carpenter, who admits to “a little bit of Irish blood, far back in the family,” described the relationship between the brothers as one without great animosity.

“They do a fair amount of verbal sparring — what the Irish might call ‘takin’ the piss’ — but it’s mostly in fun, and is just one way they express their love for each other.”

There are many surprises in the play, which — as Carpenter warned me — cannot be revealed in this article. Audiences will have to watch the story unfold and wait till the end for answers. (One such mystery, a tantalizing clue, is the meaning of the play’s subtitle, which is or “Are Ya’ Patrick Swayze?”)

When he first read the play, Carpenter — who wears many hats at WSG, including that of associate artistic director — knew immediately that it was a winner.

“I was halfway through the first act when I knew that this was a Stage Guild play,” he said. “Our niche, as it were, is plays about ideas, plays in which the argument is the action.

“In fact, we like to say that words are the ‘special effects’ of our plays,” he laughed.

Carpenter is both an actor and director, though he thinks of himself primarily as a director-style actor. “When I’m acting, I think about the totality of the parts, as well as the effect on the audience, both of which are directorial traits.

“As a director,” he continued, “I find that the biggest challenge is communication. In a cast of six actors, I might need to find five or six different ways to speak to the actors and see which approach works best for each of them. With two actors, the job is easier.”

The two actors in The One Good Thing — Ryan Neely and Chris Stinson — are familiar faces in the theater world, with lengthy résumés listing stage and screen credits.

“Both are smart, intuitive actors who bring a lot of their own ideas to the table,” Carpenter wrote in one of our many follow-up emails. “They’ve made rehearsals stimulating and fun.”

Turning to his early life, Carpenter fell in love with theater as a student at the University of Michigan’s Flint campus. “They had a great theater department at the time,” he said, and that steered him to graduate school at the University of South Carolina.

Grad school included an internship at the Shakespeare Theatre Company, here in DC, where he worked as an extra in a season’s worth of plays.

“In nine months, I had about four lines,” he quipped.

“But the real education was being able to work with company members, such as Ted van Griethuysen, Floyd King, Ed Gero, and others. That was invaluable.”

He decided to remain in Washington, where, for several years, he worked as a freelance actor — performing many roles at WSG along with other DC theaters — before joining the company as one of its full-time managing directors when executive director Ann Norton stepped down.

Today, Carpenter is one of the four actor-directors who manage the company. The others, all co-founders, are Laura Giannarelli, Bill Largess, and Lynn Steinmetz.

“We’re like a family, and we all wear lots of hats,” Carpenter said, pointing out that, apart from his official title, he is also the casting director, the production manager, and — in one of his most memorable (and Helen Hayes–nominated) performances — a sound effects creator in It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play.

The company, which was formed in 1986 by a group of theater professionals — most of them classmates at Catholic University — still embraces an air of collegiate idealism that is hard to find in today’s largely commercial world.

The One Good Thing marks the beginning of Washington Stage Guild’s 40th-anniversary season, which combines the classics with a few contemporary plays. Highlights include Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days, George Bernard Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra, and Patricia Milton’s Accused.

“Our motto is that we’re one of the oldest theaters in America that most people don’t know about,” Carpenter said, adding that the company has flown under the radar for years.

“We try to stay relevant, and we’re even occasionally edgy. But the bottom line is that we’re a theater that’s based on words.”

On a personal note, Carpenter met his wife, Lauren Hyland, when both were working on a play in which he was the director and she was the assistant director. They have one son, a teenager who’s into athletics and who is currently not the least bit interested in theater.

One of the attractions of DC, when Carpenter first arrived in the mid-’90s, was that it had already developed a strong theater community.

That sense of community survives, though it’s open to visitors. “We welcome actors from outside, we embrace them as part of our DC family, and we enjoy seeing them again when they return,” he explained.

“But DC theater is special. To begin with, it has the smartest audience you’ll ever come upon. It’s an audience that’s highly intelligent, savvy, discerning, and loyal. It’s metropolitan in feel, but local in size.

“I don’t think you get audiences like that in New York,” he concluded. “New York audiences include a lot of tourists. We don’t. In fact, we know many of our audience members personally. We often hang out in the lobby and talk to them after the shows.”

Like most of us, Carpenter is worried about the decline in government funding. However, he’s hopeful about private support.

“We’ve seen an increase in individual donations ever since the pandemic. And that,” he grinned, “is very encouraging!”

Running Time: Approximately 90 minutes, including one 10-minute intermission. 

The One Good Thing – or “Are Ya’ Patrick Swayze?” opens in previews on September 25 and runs through October 19, 2025, presented by Washington Stage Guild, performing at The Undercroft Theatre at Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church, 900 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, DC. All tickets are general admission and $60. Students and groups of 10 or more pay $30 each, and seniors pay $50. To purchase tickets, click online.

Post-show discussions: September 27 and October 18, both following the Saturday matinee performance.

COVID Safety: Masks are recommended (not required). Washington Stage Guild’s complete Health and Safety Policy is here.

The One Good Thing – or “Are Ya’ Patrick Swayze?”
By Joe Bravaco

CAST
Jamie: Ryan Michael Neely
Tommy: Chris Stinson 

CREATIVE TEAM
Director: Steven Carpenter
Scenic Design: Brandon Roak 
Resident Lighting Design: Marianne Meadows 
Costume Design: Lily Komorow 
Sound Design: David Bryan Jackson 
Dramaturg: Bill Largess
Production Stage Manager: David Elias
Assistant Stage Manage: Luca Maggs 

SEE ALSO:
Washington Stage Guild announces 2025/26 season (news story, April 22, 2025)

The post Steven Carpenter on rehearsing the U.S. premiere of ‘The One Good Thing’ at Washington Stage Guild appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

If there ever was an actor meant to seize the stage in a role of authority, it is Virginia’s own Brandon Carter. Having established himself as a classical actor of considerable talents at Staunton’s American Shakespeare Center, he was the first Black actor to perform the entire three-play “Henriad” cycle (as Prince Hal in Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, and then in the title role as Henry V). His return to the Folger Theatre, after a turn as Friar Lawrence in Raymond O. Caldwell’s recent production of Romeo and Juliet, is auspicious, especially in times darkly tinged by politically motivated violence. He comes to our stage in a vitally important cautionary tale, one that Washington desperately needs at this historical moment.

Carter’s upcoming turn in the title role of Al Letson’s Julius X offers a bold re-imagining of Shakespeare’s Roman classic, from a distinctly American perspective. Inspired in equal parts by the Bard’s take on Julius Caesar and by the legacy of Malcolm X (himself the victim of an insider assassination plot), the play emphasizes the humanity of a semi-fictional African American leader whose journey from the lower depths to public prominence is by turns inspiring and cautionary.

The play’s opening words summarize the unique combination of history and fiction that lies at the heart of the drama: “This is not a story you know, but somewhere in between.” As Carter himself stresses, “This is not a story of Malcolm X in particular; it has elements from it, but it also has elements from Al Letson’s mind, and elements from Julius Caesar.”

What theater does best, always does best, is to bring seemingly familiar figures to life, and give them a depth well beyond the confines of the two-dimensional legend we have come to know. “What I love about plays like this,” says Carter, “I love seeing plays where there’s a possibility that this person was human. I think we don’t have many accounts of that in history where we see figures as human. We might think we know about figures like Malcolm or Julius Caesar, but Shakespeare wants to show us another aspect, and Al Letson wants to show us even more.”

Growing up in what Carter characterizes as “more of a Dr. King family,” he never realized the challenges Malcolm faced as he grew up. Carter recommends that audiences dive into Malcolm X’s autobiography (co-authored with Alex Haley), because it is there that we can appreciate the challenges Malcolm faced from a very early age. His father, part of Marcus Garvey’s Pan-African movement, was murdered when Malcolm was just a boy, and that loss led directly to the devastating loss of his mother to mental illness. After years in Boston and then as a hustler in Harlem, Malcolm ended up in prison — where, newly driven, he devoted himself to self-education, self-reconstruction, and conversion to Elijah Muhammad’s brand of Islam. It is during this time that he rejects his birth name, Little, and adopts the famous “X” as a reminder that, as a man descended from enslaved Africans, his true name and ancestry were stolen from him.

As Carter says, “I didn’t know how Malcolm X was at the bottom of the bottom. I knew that he went to prison, but I didn’t know about his full experience: that he went through all of that to become the man that we know, the icon that is as much known as the face. The ‘X’ is known just as much as James Dean and Marilyn Monroe, but we actually don’t know the person, and in the depictions of him, we have a version of him, and that’s not truly him.”

The language of Letson’s treatment of Malcolm/Julius X is planted firmly in the worlds of jazz and hip-hop; although this might require some attitude adjustment, we must remember that the iambic pentameter we associate with Shakespeare was the hip-hop of his generation. Elizabethan bards used pentameter as their beat-box, syncopating, rhyming, and singing their stories to spellbound audiences in London’s Globe and beyond. Music, and a dynamic relationship with the audience — which routinely talked back to the actors throughout the show — was the essence of the Globe Theatre experience, and it’s one that director Nicole Brewer is actively working to re-create at the Folger.

As for the rehearsal process, Carter can’t say enough about director Nicole Brewer’s generous spirit: “I love Nicole’s [rehearsal] room, I love rooms like that, and I think her experience in anti-racist theater, and her intention to re-mix the space, it’s just vital to making sure that Shakespeare adaptations like this are treated like a new play, because everyone’s bringing their different sides. We’re all strangers coming to this place and bringing our different experiences to tell a story. I think her room in particular needs this because of the improv nature of hip-hop and jazz.”

Given the tensions of Malcolm’s days, tensions we are all too familiar with today as shots continue to ring out against leaders of the right and the left, another anchor for Julius X is the need to take a deep breath and reflect on the central character’s humanity. As Carter puts it, “I think the main thing I got from Brewer from the beginning was this is a story of brotherhood and of love, and I think that he led the way to how we’re sharing this piece. I just want to honor the guy; I know it’s not Malcolm X precisely, but it is Malcolm X, and I want to give as much honor to him and the story as I can.”

He also hints at Shakespearean treatments he’d like to see in the not-too-distant future: “There aren’t many opportunities to play a legend, you know, unless Obama comes along, you know, hint-hint, you know, there’s not a lot of opportunities to play this, so it is important to me, there’s a responsibility to honor the guy. Malcolm is a little bit more of a humble leader. And I think we get that side of his humility, whereas Julius Caesar is more of the arrogant, self-righteous guy where you want this guy to go.”

Carter also understands the ways in which internal politics drive the plots and counter-plots for both of the stories that meet in this play. And the lessons of both times inform our extremely volatile present. “Rome fell from within. The [Black Muslim] brotherhood fell from within. That is something you can’t escape from; you’re layering this on the remix of this play. It becomes a cautionary tale; when people talk about shutting it down and taking people out, there are consequences. We don’t run from that in this production, and I think this is what makes the Folger a great place to be right now.”

This upcoming production also represents a culmination, of sorts, because of the invaluable contribution Brandon Carter made to Virginia theater after his recent turn as artistic director at the American Shakespeare Center. His leadership, through deeply troubling times at the Blackfriars Playhouse, helped to guarantee that it could survive and thrive, after crises that have crippled professional companies nationwide. That Carter rose to the challenge armed with not just performing arts chops but a minor in Strategic and Organizational Communications from his alma mater, Longwood University, seemed more than fortuitous; there was something about it that seemed destined to be a good fit.

Make no mistake: this production will be one that defines the 2025/26 season here in Washington, DC, and Brandon Carter is more than up to the challenge. Be there.

Folger Theatre’s production of Julius X plays from September 23 to October 26, 2025, at the Folger Shakespeare Library, 201 East Capitol Street, SE, Washington, DC. Accessible performances and related programming will be offered throughout the run of the production and are listed on the show page. Tickets ($20–$90) are available online at www.folger.edu/juliusx, by calling the Folger Box Office at (202) 544-7077, or through TodayTix.

SEE ALSO:
Folger Theatre announces cast and creative team for ‘Julius X’ (news story, August 26, 2025)

The post Brandon Carter on Malcolm X and playing ‘Julius X’ at Folger appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

DC audiences love a classic musical; there is no doubt. But someone always needs to steer the ship. One thing each of the musical revivals mentioned above had in common was their virtuosic leading man, Nicholas Rodriguez. After a brief hiatus in New York, Rodriguez returns to the DC stage this fall with The Sound of Music, now playing at the Kennedy Center through October 5.

Rodriguez played the role of Captain Georg von Trapp when O’Brien’s version of the musical premiered at the Kennedy Center in 2017. DC Theater Arts reported: “His heartfelt and teary singing of ‘Edelweiss’ as he is preparing to flee his beloved Austria will move you to tears.” The actor moves slightly out of the spotlight in this version of the tour, taking on the supporting role of Max Detweiler, or “Uncle Max,” a role made famous in the film version of the musical by actor Richard Haydn. However, in the musical version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s classic, the character of Max is significantly more fleshed out than in the film, and even sings two songs: “No Way to Stop It” and “How Can Love Survive.”

Almost a decade has passed since the then-lead theater critic of The Washington Post, Peter Marks, rightly referred to Rodriguez as “the nicest guy in show business.” But the sentiment is still true today. This gifted yet humble performer can certainly prove his talent on stage, but, as many know, it’s those behind-the-scenes interactions that matter most. Rodriguez spoke with DC Theater Artsabout his work on the national tour of The Sound of Music, stepping into this brand new role, and how valuable it can be for a young actor to find their footing in the theatrical communities of Washington, DC. Here’s what he said:

DC is proud to be the first stop on this national tour. What excites you most about bringing The Sound of Music home to Washington, DC?

Washington, DC, has always felt like a second home to me. Over the past 16 years, I’ve had the joy of performing here and building meaningful friendships and connections. The audiences are incredibly smart, loyal, and deeply passionate about theater. Being able to open The Sound of Music in DC — especially in this new role — is both exciting and daunting. There’s a special kind of energy and responsibility that comes with launching a new production at the Kennedy Center, but I can’t wait to share this story with DC and with the country, alongside this incredible cast.

For many younger audiences, this might be their first Broadway show. How does that make you feel?

It’s thrilling — and a little humbling! You always remember your first time. I vividly remember the shows that first sparked my love of theater, so the idea that The Sound of Music might be that moment for someone else is really special. This story is so full of heart, music, and meaning — it’s the perfect introduction to the magic of live theater for all generations of theatergoers.

What do you think makes The Sound of Music resonate with so many people? Do you have any early, or otherwise personal, memories of this musical?

It’s timeless. Beyond the beautiful music, it speaks to themes of love, faith, family, and courage in the face of political unrest — all of which still resonate deeply today. Growing up, my family watched the movie every year. But truthfully, I never imagined I’d be part of it — because I didn’t see anyone who looked like me in the cast, which is one of the reasons it means so much to be here now, telling this story in my own way.

From Billy Bigelow in Carousel to Captain von Trapp to Curly in Oklahoma! — playing a leading man comes with a lot of responsibility! How do you bring your own self into these classic musical theater roles, and what do you do to ensure the characters are truly your own?

I always try to start with authenticity — who I am, and what my experiences bring to the table.

That’s why playing Max now, after having played Captain von Trapp eight years ago at the Kennedy Center, is a totally different challenge. Jack O’Brien, our director, has encouraged me and challenged me to go deeper and find a Max who reflects my voice and experiences — someone who’s still true to the script, but also surprising and fresh. Max may be different from Curly, Billy, and Georg, but my hope is that he is authentically Nicholas.

What advice would you give to a young actor trying to break into the theater industry in DC or elsewhere?

Be authentic, be prepared, and be kind. Work on your craft constantly, but also invest in relationships. The theater world is built on collaboration, and being someone others want to work with is just as important as talent. And don’t be afraid to bring your full self to the table — even if you don’t see someone like you on the stage yet. Get involved!  There are so many theaters of all types in the DC area looking for talent on and off stage.

Finally, what are some of your “favorite things” about the DC theater community?

Oh, where do I start? This is one of the most inclusive communities I’ve ever been a part of.  It’s truly a family.  Some of the best friends in my life come from working in DC.  We look out for each other and lift each other up.  I can’t wait to see some of these other amazing actors at Arena, Signature, Round House, and other theaters while I’m here, and more importantly, getting together at night after our shows! There’s a genuine love for theater in this town — it’s not just entertainment; it’s part of the cultural fabric. I love how supportive the community is, both for local talent and those of us from out of town. It feels like coming home every time I perform here.

Rodriguez is joined on stage at the Kennedy Center by Cayleigh Capaldi as Maria Rainer, Kevin Early as Captain Georg von Trapp, Kate Loprest as the Baroness Elsa Schrader, and Christiane Noll as Mother Abbess. I would be remiss not to also mention the talented cast of young actors playing the seven von Trapp children: Ariana Ferch, Eli Vander Griend, Ava Davis, Benjamin Stasiek, Haddie Mac, Ruby Caramore, and Luciana Vandette.

Running time: Two hours and 45 minutes, including a 20-minute intermission.

The Sound of Music on national tour plays through October 5, 2025, in the Opera House at The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, 2700 F St NW, Washington, DC. Purchase tickets ($49–$225) online, through TodayTix, or by calling (202) 467-4600 or toll-free at (800) 444-1324. Box office hours are Monday-Saturday, 10 am-9 pm, and Sunday 12 pm-9 pm.

A limited number of Rush tickets will be available for every performance at the Kennedy Center Box Office the day of the performance. $39 for Sunday evening through Thursdays and $49 for Fridays through Sunday matinees. Rush tickets become available 2 hours prior to each performance, with the exception of availability starting at 12 p.m. for Sunday matinees. Tickets are subject to availability and have no guaranteed location.

The program for The Sound of Music is online here.

SEE ALSO:
Timeless ‘Sound of Music’ on tour at Kennedy Center climbs every mountain (review by Isabella Artino, September 15, 2025)

The post Nicholas Rodriguez returns to DC stage in ‘Sound of Music’ at Kennedy Center appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

Actor Richard Thomas first rose to fame as John-Boy Walton in the Emmy-winning series The Waltons (1973–1981), a role that made him a household name and launched a career spanning decades across film, television, and theater.

Stage success, however, came even earlier. Born into show business — the son of the founders of the New York School of Ballet — Thomas made his Broadway debut at age seven in Sunrise at Campobello (1958) and has remained a Broadway mainstay ever since. His recent stage credits include Mr. Webb in the star-studded revival of Our Town, a Tony-nominated turn in The Little Foxes (2017), and a leading role as Atticus Finch in the 2022 national tour of Aaron Sorkin’s To Kill a Mockingbird.

Now, Thomas returns to Washington, DC, for a two-night engagement of Mark Twain Tonight!, the one-man show created by Hal Holbrook in 1954. Holbrook performed the piece — a dramatized evening with Twain, drawn entirely from the author’s own writings — for more than six decades until shortly before his death in 2021.

The production also marks a homecoming for Thomas: he last appeared at DC’s National Theatre as an 8-year-old in Sunrise at Campobello, when the show toured after its Broadway run.

DCTA spoke to Thomas about his playing Mark Twain, his love for the American theater, and the pros and cons of life on tour. This conversation has been condensed for clarity and brevity.

You are the first and only person that the Holbrook Estate has authorized to play this role since Hal Holbrook’s passing. How did you get involved in the production?

Hal Holbrook’s estate reached out to me during the tour of To Kill a Mockingbird. Hal was a collegial friend of mine, and his estate said he would have been happy for me to play the role based on my other work and on our mutual admiration.

What have you learned about Mark Twain in preparing to play this role?

Actors are avid researchers. Give us a historical character or something to investigate, and we will go down the rabbit hole. I am on my third Twain biography right now. I had read Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn both when I was doing the Mockingbird tour, and I fell in love with both of them all over again. The great thing about playing Mark Twain and reading his work on the road is that you feel like he’s right there traveling with you. He’s so forthcoming about himself as a person in his writing. He put his whole personality on display in his writings and in his lectures, and it makes it fun to embody him. You don’t have to invent much. He’s putting himself right there on the paper for you. 

Hal Holbrook played this role for over six decades, from the time he was in college until 2017, five years before his death. Those are also some big shoes to fill.

The longevity of this show is a testament to Hal Holbrook’s abilities as a performer and how he put this piece together. It’s not a play script; it’s a collection of materials that he curated from Twain’s writings. He would take a piece from this and add it to that and create a bridge from subject to subject. It’s like a deck of cards. You can reshuffle. And he did that over the years. He would learn new things, put new things in, take things out, depending on what was going on. I don’t have that luxury, so I based my work on his 1967 PBS televised performance as a starting point, and then I added and removed stuff and moved things around. My performance, I’m sure, will be quite different from Hal’s, which is unavoidable. But Mark Twain is a big tent, and there are lots of opportunities.

What gives this show its staying power?

It begins with Twain, of course. He is just a quintessentially American figure who stands right at the watershed of the beginning of American literature in the 19th century. Mark Twain was the first writer to begin writing and speaking in a language that Americans spoke, not just in their best efforts to write good European prose.

Also, as a character, he embodies us as Americans. The evolution of his social consciousness mirrors that of the country in so many ways. As he evolved and became more progressive and inclusive in his social ideas, so did the country. We see ourselves in him.

What is your favorite thing about Mark Twain?

His humor. He’s not a curmudgeon, but he’s definitely a provocateur. It’s a humor of inversion, taking what you would expect and turning it upside down. And in that sense, his ability to provoke is really rich.

I also like his humanity. I like his warts and his contradictions because they are the contradictions of America. For example, he could be a real Victorian about women, but he was also a really avid early feminist and suffragist. He was always going on the warpath against corporations, insurance companies, and oligarchies, but he spent his whole life trying to be a mogul. His feelings about religion and authority were very conflicted and complex. It’s amazing how salient his work is right now. People come up to me every night and ask if I added the part about “the monarchy of the rich and powerful sitting on the throne of the country.” They will say, “Did you add that?” And I say, “No, that’s all Twain.”

You have had a very successful screen career. What keeps you coming back to the American stage?

I have an affinity for the stage which goes way back to spending my whole infancy and toddlerhood backstage at the ballet where my parents were performing. I love the community coming together for a play, both the artists and the audience. If you do a TV show, you meet other actors at the wrap party that you’ve never met before, but when you’re doing a theater piece, the whole company comes together to tell the story together. There is nothing like it. It gives me a lot of pleasure.

The touring production of To Kill a Mockingbird that you recently headlined was very successful. What’s it like to be on the road with a show?

Touring has been a big part of my life, and unlike a lot of people, I like the road a lot. There is a primal feeling when you pull up stakes and move to the next town, like a circus. You aren’t playing for tourists when you tour. You are playing for people in their own home theater. In many cases across the country, local audience members have saved their historic theaters from destruction. So there is a particular municipal pride that people feel when they go to their home theater and that is a very rewarding thing. And when you are traveling with a company, touring creates an incredible bond. This one is a little different; it’s me and my wife and my stage manager, but that just means it’s fresh again.

Mark Twain also famously traveled the country on his lecture tours. Will you be visiting any of the places he visited?

I’m basically doing what Hal did, and Hal did what Twain did. We are all doing the same thing. Twain called them lectures and he would put them together and take them all over the country. He played in all kinds of venues, just like Hal did. Hal did stuff in high school gymnasiums and community centers, as well as theaters. So many of the cities where we are playing are places that Twain performed back in the day. We are really retracing his steps in a lot of ways.

Mark Twain Tonight! plays September 20, 2025, at 7:30 pm and September 21, 2025, at 2:00 pm at The National Theatre, 1321 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC. Tickets start at $29 and are available at the National Theatre box office or online at BroadwayAtTheNational.com. Box Office hours are Monday through Friday 12:00-6:00pm with extended evening and weekend hours during performance days.

Richard Thomas in
Mark Twain Tonight!
By Hal Holbrook

SEE ALSO:
Richard Thomas to star in ‘Mark Twain Tonight!’ at National Theatre (news story, August 13, 2025)

The post Richard Thomas on his return to DC in ‘Mark Twain Tonight!’ appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

When Rayanne Gonzales first auditioned for Arena Stage 20 years ago, she didn’t even know what “sides” were. By the time she stepped into the role of Sister in Damn Yankees in 2005, she was still figuring out where she belonged. “I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s a speaking role. This is new. Wow,’” she recalls. That leap into unfamiliar territory would transform her career and eventually bring her full circle — back to Sister, two decades later, older and wiser.

At the time, Gonzales was fresh back in the DMV after 12 years in Boston. She was a classically trained opera singer with a master’s from the Longy School of Music, a résumé that included the Boston Lyric Opera Chorus, and dreams of building a career in Europe’s subsidized opera houses. Instead, opportunity found her at Arena Stage in 2004 with Señor Discretion Himself. It wasn’t opera, but it earned her an Equity card. A year later, Arena called her back for Sister in Damn Yankees.

That role shifted her path entirely. One of her castmates was leaving acting to become an agent. “He called me and said, ‘Hey, I want to send you out on your next audition. Follow these instructions.’” She followed them but had learned the wrong notes — studying from the vocal selections book instead of the score. But the music director liked Gonzales’ version better and changed the music to match. That so-called mistake won her the role of Bloody Mary in South Pacific in North Carolina and at Casa Mañana in Texas.

From there, musical theater claimed her. She turned down an opera apprenticeship, realizing, “musical theater found me.” Soon she was on the train to New York constantly. “I would wake up before dawn in Woodbridge, get on the earliest train, make it to Union Station, and by noon I’d be in New York auditioning. Then I’d catch the 4 p.m. train back home and be in my own bed that night. And I did that all the time. It became second nature.”

Momentum built quickly. In 2008, as a nursing mom with a six-month-old, she auditioned for The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway — and booked it. “I went from being a single mom at home, piecing together gigs, to making my Broadway debut. One day I was nursing my baby, the next day I was signing a pink contract. A Broadway chorus contract is basically the equivalent of a government job. You’re set as long as the show is running. Phantom saved me. It changed the trajectory of our lives.”

But the hustle came with hard lessons. After finishing back-to-back tours, Gonzales collapsed with vertigo, sidelining her for a year. “My instinct wasn’t to call 9-1-1. It was to call my agent and tell them I couldn’t make the audition.” That scare taught her to resist overcommitting. “If it’s always a scarcity mindset, then you hustle for everything. But trust that the work will still come. Might it take longer? Sure. Might it get desperate? Absolutely. But trust and have faith that the universe will provide.”

Now, two decades later, Gonzales returns to Sister with new tools. “What feels different is that I understand comedy better now. Comedy is a strategy. It’s timing, it’s listening, it’s landing the joke so the audience responds. I didn’t know that 20 years ago. Being able to revisit a character with that knowledge is a gift. Back then, I don’t think I had the intelligence or the skill set to really set things up. Now I do.”

She also knows exactly who she is. “Twenty years ago, I doubted myself. I let intrusive thoughts about my talent get the best of me. Now I know who I am. I know my skill set. I don’t need validation of it. What I can do now is bring that confidence into the room, bring positive energy, and make sure the younger actors feel supported. Because I’ve gone from being the rookie to being the elder.”

Her advice to younger performers comes from lived experience. “In this career, you will miss things — birthdays, weddings, family events. But make sure you prioritize the people who matter most to you. Because at the end of the day, the work will come and go. But those relationships? That’s what you keep.”

Returning to Sister now, Gonzales finds joy in the character’s boundless enthusiasm. “Sister is an enthusiastic fan of baseball with a particular devotion to the players — especially the good-looking ones,” she laughs. “She’s effusive in her enthusiasm for the game, and Doris [her sister] and she are peas in a pod.”

What feels different in 2025, she says, is her ability to harness that enthusiasm with precision. “Being able to revisit a character and think, How am I going to set this up? Whereas 20 years ago, I don’t even know that I had the intelligence or the skill set to actually do that. That’s the gift of being able to revisit this.”

And in true theater fashion, the audience remains her scene partner. “The audience is as much of a player in this as I am. There is energy we receive from them. Some days, if they’re not giving it, they’re not giving it. But when they are, it’s magic.”

For Gonzales, Sister in 2025 is no longer just a role she once took on nervously — it’s a role that mirrors her growth as an artist and a person. From rookie to veteran, from opera singer to Broadway actor, from self-doubt to self-assurance, Gonzales’ return to Damn Yankees is proof of how much can change in 20 years — and how much joy can come from stepping back into the same shoes, this time with confidence and grace.

Running Time: Approximately two hours and 10 minutes, including one 15-minute intermission.

Damn Yankees plays through November 9, 2025, in the Fichandler Stage at Arena Stage,1101 Sixth Street SW, Washington, DC. Tickets start at $49 (fees included) and are available online or through TodayTix. Tickets may also be purchased through the Sales Office by phone at 202-488-3300, Tuesday through Sunday, 12-8 pm, or in person at 1101 Sixth Street, SW, D.C., Tuesday through Sunday, two hours before the show begins on performance days.

Arena Stage’s many savings programs include “pay your age” tickets for those aged 35 and under; military, first responder, and educator discounts; student discounts; and “Southwest Nights” for those living and working in the District’s Southwest neighborhood. To learn more, visit arenastage.org/savings-programs.

 The Damn Yankees program is here.

The post Rayanne Gonzales returns to ‘Damn Yankees,’ 20 years wiser appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

By Bob Bartlett

“Whereas the tourist generally hurries back home at the end of a few weeks or months, the traveler belonging no more to one place than to the next, moves slowly over periods of years, from one part of the earth to another.” ―Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky

Late this summer, I returned from Italy with a new play, Mary Shelley’s Monsters, which I wrote while with the good folks at La MaMa Umbria International, a nonprofit cultural center and artist residence in Spoleto founded in 1990 by La MaMa founder and legendary theater pioneer, Ellen Stewart, and a program of NYC’s La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club. Upon my return to my little farmhouse in central Maryland, I pitched an article to DC Theater Arts, mostly a travelogue but also a preview of the play, an adaptation of Frankenstein, which opens next week at the historic chapel at Congressional Cemetery in Washington, DC. And they said, yes!

I’d never travelled much until a few years ago, when I started solo travelling to write — and quickly fell in love with the adventure of it all. In recent years, I’ve spent two to four weeks each in Reykjavik, Iceland; Rhodes, Greece; a redwood forest outside of Eureka, California; an eco-farm in the Green Mountains of New Hampshire; a shack on a tree farm in the panhandle of Florida; and, most recently, Spoleto, Italy, in La MaMa’s restored 700-year-old monastery. Some of these travels were residencies and others were inexpensive Airbnbs far from the trappings of tourism.

I’m always curious about the habits of writers, their inspirations and work routines. I generally need noise, white, brown, or gray, which often presents as trance-inducing songs and music, a movie I’ve seen thousands of times playing in the background, or strangers milling around bookstores or chatting with friends in cafés. I’m not a writer who can work in silence or without focus-inducing distraction or low-level external stimuli. And I’ve learned that getting away from home plunges me into story in unexpected ways, and gets me to places and spaces unfamiliar and exciting.

I’d heard of La MaMa from playwright and director friends who had attended one of its residencies in Spoleto, and I’d never been to Italy, so with a grant from Bowie State University, where I am retiring professor of theater, I was on a plane from DC to Italia in early August.

I can’t say enough about the positive experience of being in Spoleto. The converted monastery/villa is everything I’d dreamed. For ten or so days, I worked and studied with 20 other writers and La MaMa’s staff and interns. This residency was led by Dael Orlandersmith, writer of Pulitzer Prize finalist Yellowman and Spiritus/Virgil’s Dance, which recently premiered at the Contemporary American Theatre Festival. Almost each morning, Dael led a three-hour workshop/session, which often drifted into the spiritual, and had writers spread about the floor of a lovely movement studio built into a hillside. I learned much about the play I was writing from hearing the work of peers and Dael’s compelling responses to our work.

La MaMa’s website accurately notes that writers are “immersed in the creative, natural and regenerative” while living and working at the historic villa, which is nestled in the Italian hills and surrounded by olive trees and offers breathtaking views of distant villages and valleys. Generally when I travel for writing, my routine includes exploring historic downtowns and regional must-sees, but my time in Spoleto was spent primarily on the grounds of the villa, which provides all a writer could need: so many stirring spaces to write, read, and wander; a café with morning cappuccino made by one of the remarkable interns; and locally-sourced meals including pastas made in the kitchen, pizza in the outdoor wood-fired, stone oven, and veggies culled from the garden.

I never quite adjusted to the time change, so I was often working throughout the night. I went to Italy with two pages of a play and came home with a messy 125 or so, which I’ve trimmed to a 65-page production draft.

Last fall, I was fortunate to present my horror play, Lýkos Ánthrōpos, which asked audiences over a chilly month to bring fold-up chairs or blankets and sit among the graves at Congressional Cemetery to witness a ghostly interaction between a werewolf and his victim. As that production ended, I pitched a new horror play to Cemetery leadership, an adaptation of Frankenstein, which would run in their chapel the following Halloween, and here we are. I knew only the title, Mary Shelley’s Monsters, and that the play would in some way bring Shelley face-to-face with her creations. The three-hander, directed by friend and collaborator Alex Levy, artistic and executive director at 1st Stage in Tysons, features Katrina Clark as Mary Shelley, Jon Beal as the Creature, and JC Payne as Victor Frankenstein. As with my other site-specific projects with Alex, this is a speedy affair with only a couple of weeks of rehearsal. I am a writer inspired by geography, so I was thrilled to spend a recent week alone and editing in the chapel, which was built in 1903 and has hosted countless interments, serving as a conduit, if you will, from one world to another, which my Mary Shelley spookily addresses in her opening monologue.

I couldn’t be happier with the play, although I admit to many sleepless nights this late summer, crushed by the immensity of the task of retelling a story (in only 85 minutes!) for audiences who revere the novel — and for those who know only Boris Karloff’s brilliant wordless monster and not the poetic and philosophical creature of Shelley’s cautionary and too relevant tale. My experiences in Italy, of course, have found their way into the play, including at least one significant panic attack, a late-night lost-in-the-hills walk in the rain, and many chats about story (and monsters!) with Dael and peers, as well as a half-day and 30,000 steps on a bum ankle, which took me to Rome’s Basilica, Forum, and Coliseum.

I hope you can make it out to Congressional Cemetery this fall to experience the horror of Mary Shelley’s imagination, as filtered through my lifelong obsession with her frightful fable. And if you’re considering solo travelling in support of your writing or attending La MaMa Umbria International, I’m always happy to share my experiences and methods.

Mary Shelley’s Monsters plays September 18 to October 12, 2025 (Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8:00 PM and Saturdays and Sundays at 2:00 PM), at Congressional Cemetery, 1801 E St SE, Washington, DC. Tickets are $35 and available online. Some content may not be appropriate for children.

The program for Mary Shelley’s Monsters is online here.

Bob Bartlett’s plays include Love and Vinyl (Kitchen Dog); Swimming With Whales (1st Stage); E2 (Rep Stage); Happiness (and Other Reasons to Die) (The Welders); The Accident Bear (Avenue Laundromat); Lýkos Ánthrōpos (Congressional Cemetery); and new full-lengths Writing In Diners, Mediocre White Men, A Boy on a Bed, and The Regular. MFA, Playwriting (Catholic University) (bob-bartlett.com)

The post Playwright Bob Bartlett on adapting ‘Frankenstein’ in Italy appeared first on DC Theater Arts.

By John Becker

Standing in the darkness of a field at 1 a.m. — my key light dead, a bug in my eye — I asked the questions we all ask in times of darkness: Why are we here? How did we get here?

In the 1950s, Arthur Miller answered those questions by writing The Crucible, transforming the fears of his time into art that still resonates today. Watching the absurdities of my own era, I started writing Deep End.

The narrative TV series follows strangers in a campground who discover they’re surrounded by a mysterious group of conspiracy theorists in the woods. Despite this, it’s mostly a comedy to reflect the absurdity of our age. As one of our cast, Vince Eisenson, put it: “Wearing a non-functioning headlamp in scenes of near total darkness gave me a feeling of delusional optimism.”

(Note to self: Contact manufacturers about merch — hats, T-shirts, car magnets — saying “Deep End: Delusional Optimists Only.”)

But Deep End isn’t just about what happens on screen; it’s about how we’re making it.

We’ve built a creative space that brings together some of the DC area’s most talented actors, who I maintain are as skilled as any in the country. Part of the fun of the series is finding your favorite DC actors in any given episode. We’ve partnered with local businesses like DC Pretzels, Honey Acres Farm, and Rockland Winery. Thanks to a grant from the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County, we were even able to support a young woman in crisis — someone who lost both parents as a teen, cares for her younger brother with Down syndrome, and is living with PTSD.

Our 1st AD, Kellie Scott Reed, put it best: “It’s been cathartic to work in a space where you can express the ridiculousness of the human experience when all seems deadly serious right now.”

That’s the mission of Deep End: to offer light in a time of darkness. We want audiences to laugh, to think, and to feel hope. Or, as cast member Veronica Del Cerro described, to simply “be together as a group in the dark and sing and just feel like teenagers again.”

Actress Beth Hylton said, “I had more fun working on this project than should be legal: it was one of the most joy-filled projects I have ever worked on! The only real challenge was trying to get through all the scenes with enough usable takes — because we kept breaking (or corpsing) to laugh!”

You can watch Deep End now on Fawesome TV and YouTube. By subscribing and sharing, you’re helping show that art — and its power to create joy and resilience — still matters.

Surrendering to fear brings greater fear. Confronting fear brings healing. Laughing at it brings not only joy, but change.

America may feel like one big dysfunctional family, where fear and blame dominate. But through comedy, community, and creativity, we’re proving there’s another way forward. Join us in the deep end. In Beth Hylton’s words: “I am so grateful and proud to be part of the Deep End cast and community and maybe help forge a path of resistance through laughter.”

Watch Deep End now on Fawesome TV. Subscribe on YouTube.

THE AWARD-WINNING WRITER, CAST, AND CREW

Writer/Director John Becker has won three Individual Artist Awards from the Maryland State Arts Council, was awarded 1st place in a play festival at the Kennedy Center, was recently awarded a grant for Deep End’s artistic excellence and social impact, and many more.

1st AD Kellie Scott Reed was Assistant Editor-in-Chief of Roi Faineant Press. Aside from her film work, she is also a short story writer, poet, songwriter, and former host of the interview show A Word. Kellie is an indispensible part of our Deep End team!

Beth Hylton (Beth) appeared in Law & Order, House of Cards, a Thanksgiving sketch on the Ellen DeGeneres Show, and many others. She has also appeared in many theater productions, including an Off-Broadway production of Handbagged by Moira Buffini.

Vince Eisenson (Vince) has appeared on New Amsterdam, The Good Lord Bird with Ethan Hawke, Billions, The Endgame, Wonder Woman 1984, What Would You Do, and many others. Vince also has extensive theater experience.

Gerrad Alex Taylor (Lamar) appeared in MacBeth at the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, Great Expectations at the Everyman Theatre, The Skin of Our Teeth at Constellation Theatre Company, Metamorphoses at the Folger Theatre, and many others.

Veronica Del Cerro (Ashley) appeared in Othello at Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, DC, Oedipus in Greece, Dead Tree Gives No Shelter in Denmark, We, MacBeth in England, My Children! My Africa! at Studio Theatre in DC, and many others.

Debora Crabbe (Gabrielle) featured in several productions at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. She also appeared in School Girls: Or the African Mean Girls Play at Round House Theatre and Gloria at Theatre J. She hosted the National Portrait Gallery’s Facing Our History show through Fresh TV.

Alyssa Sanders (Anne) is an Artistic Director at Avant Bard Theatre in Virginia. She appeared in King Lear, Pride and Prejudice, The Tempest, and many others.

Christopher C. Holbert (Tim) appeared in Hamlet, Coriolanus, and Julius Caesar at Avant Bard Theatre. He appeared in A Clockwork Orange at Studio Theatre in Washington, DC, and To Kill a Mockingbird at Theatre on the Run.

Karen Vincent (Jessie) appeared in Guys & Dolls, Ragtime, and Into the Woods at Ford’s Theatre. She has also appeared at Imagination Stage, Adventure Theatre, Olney Theatre, and many more. She is also a cabaret vocalist, appearing in many venues in the Washington, DC, area.

Jon Watkins (Harley) appeared in HBO Films’ Something the Lord Made with Alan Rickman, Kyra Sedgwick, and Mos Def. He has appeared in many theater productions, as well as many music venues in the DC area as a musician/vocalist .

Anna DiGiovanni (Jenny) appeared in Age of Innocence at Arena Stage, Leopoldstadt at Shakespeare Theatre Company, Through the Sunken Lands at the Kennedy Center, Benevolence at Mosaic Theatre, and many others.

Nick DePinto (Fred) appeared in productions at the Kennedy Center, Ford’s Theatre, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Constellation Theatre, and many others. He appeared in the film Meant to Be Broken. Nick is also a voiceover actor and musician.

Bradley Klotz (sound) is an essential piece of our Deep End family. He has worked on many films, including The Lonesome Trail and Water in a Broken Glass. Brad is the unsung hero of Deep End!

For more information, visit Jouska Productions.

The post New indie streaming series ‘Deep End’ offers light in dark times appeared first on DC Theater Arts.