Teresa Castracane News

We never can seem to catch a break from the president, and a night out at Woolly Mammoth's American premiere of Anne Washburn's SHIPWRECK is no exception. A history play about 2017, SHIPWRECK follows a group of liberals who gather at a remodeled farmhouse, a young man adopted from Kenya reckoning with his connection to his family and his country, and the fallout from Trump's firing of FBI director James Comey. 

Playwright Marco Ramirez's The Royale at 1st Stage is a rare and thought-provoking theatre experience.

Everyman Theatre continues its 2019/2020 season with Deborah Zoe Laufer's intricately calibrated production Be Here Now. Laufer also directs the production, which runs January 21 through February 16, 2020.

There are some topics in which you hope plays conquer correctly. Topics that include dark parts of history such as the holocaust sit at the top of that list. Luckily, Alix Sobler's remarkable script and Theater J's impressive production of Sheltered, honors the topic, the people, and the story.

The Second City's 'She the People' is back at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. The jokes and social commentary have been updated to address current events, as well as keep some evergreen topics fresh and remind us how upsetting it is that some things are considered evergreen. But, above all, 'She the People' is a call to action. It's a reminder that women's experiences matter, and women's voices matter.

I​t's never the wrong time to do the right thing. ThisOctober,​EverymanTheatre's​next show is R​adio Golf, ​the final play in renowned playwright August Wilson's 10-play opus, THE AMERICAN CENTURY CYCLE. Radio Golf​​ highlights the challenges faced by modern-day African-Americans straddling the line between monetary success and cultural assimilation.

This production of Shakespeare's Othello has revelations galore, performed by an ensemble of actors whose comfort with the language and emotional power keep you riveted. Even if you've seen any number of Othello's beforea?'especially if you've seen a fewa?'the Riot Grrrls interpretation, as staged in the spartan Capitol Hill Arts Workshop space, gives vivid life to characters and speeches that usually get lost in the cavernous main stages across town.

In TRYING, Judge Biddle and Sarah do battle with the prejudices that stem from their 56-year age gap.

Jackie Sibblies Drury's play, Fairview, currently playing at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, is a show that desperately calls for conversation. It's no wonder, then, that each performance is immediately followed by community discussions led by Build With, a DC-based anti-racist training, facilitation, and consulting practice focused on people, power, and partnership. While I wasn't able to stay for this event following Saturday night's performance, it is an important step in ensuring this work's complicated themes are digested in a clear way. Fairview is one of the most conceptual shows in recent memory. Not every idea can be fully explored in this production, which has a tight 100-minute run time that director Stevie Walker-Webb keeps clipping at a good pace. Nevertheless, Fairview is a necessary piece for anyone looking to dive deeper into discussions of race and identity in America.

The Pulitzer Prize winning play, Fairview, recently opened at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. Find out what critics had to say!

In Theater J's fall opening, we are asked to consider: what really happens when love makes you sick? And yet, despite a strong cast and well-executed technical elements, 'Love Sick' suffers from a slight disconnect.

The central performance in Sarah Ruhl's The Oldest Boy, now playing at Spooky Action Theater through June 30, belongs to the ensemble as a whole. The title character, a reincarnated Tibetan Buddhist lama, is brought to life not by a single actor, but by the seven actors that create his world. Some are more directly responsible than others - the puppeteers, for example, move him from one place to another, help him to look where he needs to, help him to hold things - but all are crucial to helping us believe in him. When his mother looks into his eyes, we think we can catch him breathing. It's a leap of faith on our part, one that yields some of the richest results any show will bring this summer.

Taffety Punk, the insurrectionist yet classically trained company now in its 15th year does what it does best in a pair of striking Greek adaptations by Anne Carson, presented in one invigorating sitting.

Notable for being the final selection of Woolly's incomparable Founding Artistic Director Howard Shalwitz, Rajiv Joseph's 'Describe the Night' is a must-see for any serious DC area theatergoer

Carson McCullers' The Member of the Wedding centers around several steamy post-World War II Southern days as seen through the eyes of twelve-year-old Frankie Addams. Frankie, or F. Jasmine as she requests we call her, is on the cusp...of what she does not know.

Everyman Theatre's Founder and Artistic Director Vincent M. Lancisi recently exposed Baltimore theatergoers to the storytelling genius of Playwright Donald Margulies in their rendition of Dinner with Friends. Armed with an intelligent script that explores the nuances of romance and friendship, Everyman hit its mark of seeking connection through emotional storytelling in a way that left the audience pondering their own relationships.

The first words that come to mind when thinking about The Peculiar Patriot at Woolly Mammoth Theatre are: riveting, eye-opening, and deeply personal.

To mark the 20th anniversary of the deadly shooting at Columbine High School, 1st Stage brings us a columbinus that, tragically, is as frightening, significant, and topical today as ever before. In the two decades since the massacre at Columbine High-the deadliest school shooting at the time-we have now experienced tragedies at Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Parkland, and more. columbinus mixes documentary fact with fiction to delve into the alienation, social pressure, intimidation, and rage of adolescent life in high school.

Coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the tragic 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, this docudrama combines fact and fiction to illuminate the dark realities of adolescence. Weaving together excerpts of real interviews with parents, survivors, and community leaders and powerful characterizations of contemporary teens, columbinus thoughtfully explores the Columbine shooting and the conversations that continue to this day. The New York Post hailed columbinus as 'a powerful and important piece about the churning rage that's all too likely to bubble over again.'