We hope you enjoy these lyrics and lines on love. To share simply copy and email them, or let us do it for you. Just click the radial button to choose any card and click the ‘Next’ button below the cards fill out the form. Wishing you love, health and happiness. Select a Card* Your Name Your Email Recipient's Name Recipient's Email Custom Message More Love Line Valentines ..read more

DC Theatre Scene ends its 15 year run today. But we won’t be disappearing any time soon. Thanks to a generous donation, we will be able to remain online for the next 3 years. I know many of you have found our coverage useful, so without us, I ask – what’s your plan? Lorraine Treanor in her office, June 2020 How will you stay in the receiving line for all that theatres are offering, online and eventually with live performances? For news, insights and reviews of our local scene:  DCMetroTheaterArts and BroadwayWorld DC For listings, the tireless work of theatreWashington, At Home with Wash ..read more

Were there magical moments on New York stages in 2020? The question is debatable – just like the definition of “theater” is being debated – since nobody has been performing on any actual stages on Broadway, or Off-Broadway, or (with rare exception) Off-Off Broadway, for the last nine months. It was clearer the first year I began contributing to DC Theatre Scene, in 2015. That was the year of Hamilton, and I was struck by the moment in the musical when Leslie Odom Jr. as Aaron Burr realizes he’s been outsmarted and betrayed, and he sings “I wanna be in the room where it happens,” a spectacula ..read more

No, this isn’t just A Christmas Carol with an accent; it is a riff on the familiar Dickens structure, transported to the equally familiar stage world of an old Irish bar. The ghosts and visitations are traded for recriminations and memories; the supreme miser Scrooge for the grumpy old owner David; the near-penniless Cratchit for working-class Polish immigrant Bartek. This is the fairy tale-scope and primary colors of the classic tale brought down and in to a more subtle and sepia-toned mood. In other words – an ideal Carol for the end of this year of our quarantine 2020. Screen shot of the c ..read more

Theater is at its best when it teaches us something. When it makes us think, and reconsider our stance on an issue, or when it carries us away into another land and time, where characters, fantastical though they may be, are essentially human and essentially ourselves. The mirror held up, as it were. Sometimes a critic gets invited into the act: Jill Kyle-Keith (r) with Allyson Harkey in Tarot Reading III (Photo: Ryan Maxwell Photography) This is true also of writing, particularly critiquing theatre, where the goal is to experience the production, to illuminate the story for folks who have no ..read more

Aimed at young audiences, but appropriate for children of all ages, The Snow Queen is a magical first for Imagination Stage – the theatre’s first foray into online production. Billed as an “at-home theatre experience,” The Snow Queen offers a rich and engaging tale, told by four energetic actors, who breathe life into this Han Christian Andersen classic. The entire family will want to gather round the computer screen or smart TV for this experience. I kind of wish I had younger kids at home so I could watch it again with them, but as a gentleman who has seen 50, I still found myself on the ed ..read more

Puppet theater has long enjoyed popularity in Washington.  The region has often generated a vibrant children’s theater scene offering a multiplicity of styles for a variety of audiences.  One particularly effervescent strand in the tapestry of Washington puppetry began to be woven in 1967 when Bob and Judy Brown arrived from New York. Master puppeteers Bob and Judy Brown (family photo) Bob Braunschweiger, the son of a German immigrant baker, had grown up in New Jersey where he discovered puppetry at an early age.  By his teen years, Bob began seeking out master puppeteers in ne ..read more

Congress has included a $15 billion grant package for performance and related arts, including theaters, in the $900 billion coronavirus relief package it passed on Monday. The program, called “Grants for Shuttered Venue Operators” in the new bill, will provide up to $10 million in grant money to beleaguered cultural institutions. Senator Amy Klobuchar Official Portrait (Photo: By United States Senate – http://klobuchar.senate.gov/, Public Domain)  Under the provisions of the legislation, live venue operators or promoters, theatrical producers, live performing arts organization operators ..read more

“Being Alive”and “Losing My Mind” – are there any better Sondheim songs to sing at the close of a year full of loss, unrequited yearning and obsession? That they are sung by performers who have moved me for years– Telly Leung and Natalie Douglas – makes me happy that Sondheim Unplugged is back. Sondheim Unplugged, 2020: (l-r) Telly LeungTelly Leung, Natalie Douglas, T Oliver Reid, Nicholas Rodriguez, Lucia Spina and Darius de Haas. After shutting down after February because of the pandemic, the long-running monthly concert series has gone virtual.  Or, to put it more positively: For the ..read more

An old-fashioned black-draped dressing mirror is the only prop in the moody, elemental, but by no means elementary “Fuego Flamenco XVI: Intimo,” presented by GALA Hispanic Theatre. The mirror’s undraping and re-draping bracket the hour-long dance-theater piece by two superb dancers and four accomplished, passionate musicians. Edwin Aparicio and Omayra Amaya performing “Intimo” at GALA Hispanic Theatre (Photo courtesy of GALA Hispanic Theatre) The overall emotional sense of the work is one of life at once defined by death and subverting it. A secondary theme is passion in friction with isolati ..read more