Nora Achrati

The Audio Publishers Association has announced finalists for the 2023 Audie Awards®, the premier awards program recognizing distinction in audiobooks and spoken-word entertainment. Winners across 26 competitive categories will be revealed at the Audie Awards Gala on March 28. The ceremony will be streamed to the public from Chelsea Piers’ Pier Sixty in NYC. 

The city lights of Washington may typically obscure the night sky, but a portal to the cosmos has opened in downtown DC. Playwright Lauren Gunderson has gifted us a corner of the galaxy through the telescopic lens of astronomer Henrietta Leavitt's life and scientific discoveries. Leavitt's work may have been rooted in facts and figures, but SILENT SKY is bursting with imagination.

Ford's Theatre Society announced full casting and the design team for Silent Sky by Lauren Gunderson, a captivating play based on the life of trail-blazing astronomer Henrietta Leavitt. The Ford's Theatre production is directed by Seema Sueko and features Laura C. Harris (Arena Stage's The Heiress, Signature Theatre's The Flick) as Henrietta Leavitt, Nora Achrati as Annie Jump Cannon, Emily Kester as Margaret Leavitt, Jonathan David Martin as Peter Shaw and Holly Twyford as Williamina Fleming. Performances are January 24 to February 23, 2020. A media performance is scheduled for January 29, 2020 at 7:00 p.m.

The final production of Mosaic Theater Company of DC's third season will be the world premiere staging of The Vagrant Trilogy, written by Mona Mansour and directed by Mark Wing-Davey. The Vagrant Trilogy is comprised of three different one-act plays: The Hour of Feeling, The Vagrant, and Urge for Going. These three plays, combined for the first time in one epic performance, follows Palestinian scholar Adham and his family over multiple generations and in multiple continents.

THE HUB continues its 2017-2018 season in March with the return of Hub's inaugural play, THE PAVILION by Craig Wright. Hailed by critics as an 'an Our Town for our time,' this play is by turns poetic and comic, romantic and philosophical. Peter returns to his twenty-year high-school reunion with dreams of winning back Kari, the girl he left behind after an unexpected pregnancy ended their relationship. Standing in Peter's way is Kari's bitter-as-ever resentment, her husband and the fact that Peter still hasn't grown up. As the night progresses, both Peter and Kari are led, through their interactions with a host of characters all played by a virtuosic Narrator, to face the consequences of choices made long ago and start back into life with newfound strength and bittersweet resolve.

Imagination Stage's The Princess & the Pauper, written by Anu Yadav and directed by Janet Stanford, successfully captures the ambience and energy of Bollywood in a show which is excellent for both kids and adults alike.

The pint size dynamo known as Nora Achrati is one of the area's most dynamic actresses so a show where it's just her and the audience should make for a great night of theatre. Achrati portrays five different characters in Paul Selig's ethereal and spiritual script Mystery School.

Ford's Theatre Society announced full casting and the design team for Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman," directed by Stephen Rayne.

Ford's Theatre Society announced full casting and the design team for Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman," directed by Stephen Rayne.

The DC premiere of WHEN WE WERE YOUNG AND UNAFRAID directed by Marie Byrd Sproul in her Keegan Theatre directing debut is nothing if not timely. The play is set on Whidbey Island off the cost of Washington State in 1972, but the remote location and blaring seventies music only highlights the eerie resonance of playwright Sarah Treem's work. In a time before battered women's shelters and legal recourse against male abusers, Agnes (Sheri S. Herren) runs a Bed and Breakfast with a basement entrance for victims of domestic abuse. Her most recent runaway, Mary Anne (Jenna Berk), arrives with an angry gash on her forehead and begins to shape the mind of Agnes' daughter Penny (Kaylynn Creighton) with her acquiescent and yet militantly tactical approach to dating. WHEN WE WERE YOUNG AND UNAFRAID does not deal in black and white: Treem's arguments are nuanced and delicately fashioned. Violence against women is at times as loud as the gash on Mary Anne's forehead and as quiet as Agnes' cheerful suggestion that her industrious daughter Penny ask a boy to the prom.

The Keegan Theatre presents the Washington DC premiere of Sarah Treem's When We Were Young and Unafraid, opening on June 17, 2017. Directed by Marie Sproul, When We Were Young and Unafraid stars Keegan founding company member Sheri S. Herren as Agnes, the role originated by Cherry Jones on Broadway. Herren is joined by Kaylynn Creighton, Jenna Berk, Nora Achrati, and Theo Hadjimichael. The press opening is on Tuesday, June 20, at 8:00 pm.

Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book has seen no shortage of adaptations. In addition to its original print form, it's the source for two Disney movies, and a stage adaptation at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago a few years back. Would-be adaptors face as slight problem in that while there is lots of fun within Kipling's stories about a human child named Mowgli being raised by wolves, the story also has a dark side to it that might not work well for the youngest of theatregoers. Imagination Stage in Bethesda, Maryland is currently presenting a new adaptation by Greg Banks of Kipling's work, which will leave your little ones engaged from beginning to end without clawing you to go into the lobby. Older kids and adults are also likely to enjoy themselves, making it a theatergoing experience for the whole family.

Jacqueline E. Lawton's new political thriller Intelligence makes its world premiere at Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater. Under the direction of Daniella Topol (Round House's Ironbound), Intelligence explores the cost of deception and the consequences of speaking truth to power. Due to popular demand, the production has been extended for one week with eight additional performances and runs now through April 9, 2017 in the Arlene and Robert Kogod Cradle. BroadwayWorld has photos from the opening night festivities below!

All in all, I certainly commend Arena Stage, including Artistic Director Molly Smith, for taking a chance on this new work. Unfortunately, there's a ways to go to ready it for an audience, particularly here in DC where there is bound to be at least a handful of people with a pretty good understanding of the subject matter.

Jacqueline E. Lawton's new political thriller Intelligence makes its world premiere at Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater. Under the direction of Daniella Topol (Round House's Ironbound), Intelligence explores the cost of deception and the consequences of speaking truth to power. Due to popular demand, the production has been extended for one week with eight additional performances and runs now through April 9, 2017 in the Arlene and Robert Kogod Cradle. BroadwayWorld has a first look at the cast in action below!

Jacqueline E. Lawton's new political thriller Intelligence makes its world premiere at Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater. Under the direction of Daniella Topol (Round House's Ironbound), Intelligence explores the cost of deception and the consequences of speaking truth to power. Due to popular demand, the production has been extended for one week with eight additional performances and will run February 24-April 9, 2017 in the Arlene and Robert Kogod Cradle.

Jacqueline E. Lawton's new political thriller Intelligence makes its world premiere at Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater. Under the direction of Daniella Topol (Round House's Ironbound), Intelligence explores the cost of deception and the consequences of speaking truth to power. Due to popular demand, the production has been extended for one week with eight additional performances and will run February 24-April 9, 2017 in the Arlene and Robert Kogod Cradle.

Jacqueline E. Lawton's new political thriller Intelligence makes its world premiere at Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater. Under the direction of Daniella Topol (Round House's Ironbound), Intelligence explores the cost of deception and the consequences of speaking truth to power. Due to popular demand, the production has been extended for one week with eight additional performances and will run February 24-April 9, 2017 in the Arlene and Robert Kogod Cradle.

I can nearly always count on the small, but mighty Forum Theatre to conjure up selections each season that are a little out-of-the-box, and present them with an abundance of creativity. Season 13 is no exception, and it starts off with the area premiere of Jonas Hassen Khemiri's I CALL MY BROTHERS (translated from Swedish by Rachel Willson-Broyles). In the intimate Silver Spring Black Box Theatre, Director Michael Dove and his strong cast of four deal well with the challenges and potential inherent in Khemiri's script, and give the audience a relevant night of theatre that ends - appropriately - with more questions than answers.

Siri, the electronic personal assistant installed on every iPhone, can be helpful in very many areas, but has heretofore has yet to be recognized for theater criticism.