Theater Alliance Announces 20th Anniversary Season

In celebration of its 20th Anniversary Season, Theater Alliance has programmed a lineup of innovative, family-friendly, thought-provoking productions that bring the company's values to audiences of all ages.

With an eye toward the past, present, and future, Theater Alliance kicks off its season in February 2023 with This Girl Laughs, This Girl Cries, This Girl Does Nothing - a modern-day fairytale by Finnegan Kruckemeyer, exploring the choices young women make, and the consequences of those choices.

Next, Theater Alliance revisits a show first performed by the company in 2006 - Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, which will take the stage in May. Eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove, a Black girl in 1940s Ohio, wants nothing more than to be loved by her family and schoolmates. Blaming her dark skin for the ridicule she endures, she prays for blue eyes, sure that love will follow.

To complete the season in late summer, Theater Alliance and The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts are collaborating on a co-production of the World Premiere of Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks, adapted from Jason Reynolds' young adult novel by El Chelito and Raymond O. Caldwell. The adaptation, developed through Theater Alliance's Hothouse New Play Development program, will perform first at The Anacostia Playhouse, then move to the Kennedy Center for a tour later in the year.

While productions begin later in the season than usual for Theater Alliance, the company has already been busy - in October, Theater Alliance artists, in partnership with the Department of State and India-based NGO Contact Base, traveled to Kolkata to lead an international Arts Envoy. Working with 21 artists from India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and the United States, the group collaborated to develop and devise a new play that engages communities in celebrating diversity and fostering equity, inclusion, and accessibility on the global stage. The play, A Global I.D.E.A., will be available in digital format in the spring.

Through its Radical Neighboring initiative, Theater Alliance strives to create a community where everyone feels welcome at the theater. Name Your Own Price tickets are available for every performance, ensuring that anyone who wants to experience the work can do so.

Theater Alliance's commitment to new plays continues through its Hothouse New Play Development Series - which gives local playwrights a chance to respond to the company's season with short works, and fosters the growth and development of new plays over longer periods of time.

Theater Alliance's work has been regularly recognized for its artistic excellence, including four Helen Hayes Awards for Outstanding Production in recent years (Black Nativity in 2015, The Wonderful World of Dissocia in 2015, Word Becomes Flesh in 2017, Still Life with Rocket in 2018, Blood at the Root in 2019). During 2020 and 2021, Theater Alliance was one of the first DC companies to pioneer digital productions, and continues innovating in digital formats alongside its live productions.