Tom Prewitt
 |

Latest News on Tom Prewitt
 |
![]() Bio:
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 ...
(read complete bio)
|
Latest News on Tom Prewitt
Photos
Tom Prewitt Biography
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.
Tom Prewitt News

by Roger Catlin - Dec 5, 2021
August Wilson was always a font of stories. In addition to the 10 plays of his lauded Pittsburgh Cycle, there were books, essays and poems largely about the African-American experience.

by Chloe Rabinowitz - May 4, 2021
The Washington Area Performing Arts Video Archive has announced the appointment of two new members to its Board of Directors. Newly elected members Felicia Curry and Rick Foucheux are both esteemed figures in the DMV Theatre Community, selected to serve alongside WAPAVA’s already impressive list of artistic, educational, and civic leaders.

by A.A. Cristi - Sep 12, 2019
WSC Avant Bard, celebrating 30 years of thoughtful, provocative work, announces three mainstage productions including a spring repertory, as well as an upcoming benefit featuring comic poetry readings from local acting icons Holly Twyford and Rick Foucheux.

by Jack Read - May 21, 2019
WSC Avant Bard's Script in Play Festival, started in 2016, has been an opportunity to test out shows for full production treatment through the guise of a series of staged readings and post-play discussions. Written and performed by rising professional talent, these readings have led to some memorable productions, including new versions of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew and Twelfth Night and Lauren Gunderson's hit Emilie: La Marquise Du Chatelet Defends Her Life Tonight. In 2017, a reading of playwright Matt Minnicino's 'distillation' - not 'adaptation,' as we get into below - of Moliere's The Misanthrope was performed. Written entirely in rhyming couplets, it follows a professional cynic who falls in love with an ingenue, and finds his devotion to insincerity tested. Now, it's the capper of Avant Bard's 29th season. I spoke to Minnicino about his career thus far, the adaptation process, and why audiences should be excited for this show.

by Stephi Wild - May 4, 2019
Avant Bard Theatre announces the full cast and creative team for its season finale, A MISANTHROPE, a world premiere adaptation of Moliere's The Misanthrope by Manhattan-based playwright Matt Minnicino, directed by Megan Behm in her Avant Bard debut.

by Stephi Wild - Mar 9, 2019
Avant Bard has announced that Khalil Kain has had to withdraw from the cast of TOPDOG/UNDERDOG due to unforeseen personal circumstances. But Avant Bard is happy to announce that Jeremy Keith Hunter has joined the production. Jeremy will play opposite Louis E. Davis in the Pulitzer Prize-winning dark comedy by Suzan-Lori Parks about two African American brothers grappling for destiny. The production runs from March 14 to April 14, 2019, at Gunston Arts Center Theatre Two in Arlington.

by Stephi Wild - Jan 10, 2019
Avant Bard theatre is proud to announce the 2019 edition of Scripts in Play Festival, its signature play-reading series, February 8 to 24, 2019. This year's selection features seven plays over two weekends followed by a weekend-long encore presentation of the 2018 Capital Fringe hit A Two Woman Hamlet in full production.

by Stephi Wild - Jan 10, 2019
Avant Bard theatre is proud to announce the 2019 edition of Scripts in Play Festival, its signature play-reading series, February 8 to 24, 2019. This year's selection features seven plays over two weekends followed by a weekend-long encore presentation of the 2018 Capital Fringe hit A Two Woman Hamlet in full production.

by Julie Musbach - Oct 23, 2018
Avant Bard presents the world premiere of ILLYRIA, or What You Will, freely adapted from Twelfth Night by Jonelle Walker and Mitchell Hebert, and directed by Mitchell Hebert.

by Julie Musbach - Sep 10, 2018
Avant Bard theatre announces the full cast and creative team for its 2018/2019 season opener, Illyria, or What You Will, freely adapted from Twelfth Night by Jonelle Walker and Mitchell Hebert and directed by Mitchell Hebert. Illyria reimagines Shakespeare's comedy of mixed-signal love as a bohemian cabaret set in a Manhattan dive bar in the early 1980s, where identity, sex, and gender are what you will-and habitues find freedom to be who they truly are.