Tom Prewitt

W. Thompson Prewitt, Avant Bard’s Executive and Artistic Director since February of 2013, had previously served as Associate Artistic Director for Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, where he led its outreach and education program. In addition to serving as Avant Bard’s Artistic Director, Prewitt was also Managing Director of City of Peace DC, and had been since 2008.

A 1979 graduate of Harvard University, Prewitt led Avant Bard through a challenging time. The company had just lost its lease on the now-defunct Artisphere and was forced to stage its productions in Arlington’s tiny Theatre on the Run before moving to Gunston Arts Center. But Prewitt proved himself to be a shrewd manipulator of physical place in the company’s first production after he took over – Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land (which featured Avant Bard’s two previous Artistic Directors, Christopher Henley and Brian Hemmingsen), and he never looked back.

Under Prewitt’s tenure the company produced twenty-one plays, paying sharp attention to the classics, including Shakespeare (the “Bard” in the company’s name refers to – well, to the Bard; originally, the company was called the “Washington Shakespeare Company.”). But under Prewitt, Avant Bard always had its own take on these plays; its 2013 King John was framed in a 1962 fallout shelter where a young child, burrowed on the eve of a nuclear holocaust, plays with toy soldiers; charmingly, the boy later becomes John’s son, the future Henry III. In 2015, Avant Bard staged an Othello set in the present, where the military leaders struggle with wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.