27 stories by "Jonathan L. Fischer"
About 10 years ago, Arlington's American Century Theater was facing a doomsday scenario. With a deficit of more than half of its operating budget, "We were technically bankrupt," says Art…
For D.C. actor Frank Britton, yesterday nearly ended the way most opening nights do. He and the cast of Forum Theatre's The Last Days of Judas Iscariot took theirs bows, gathered in Ro…
"Stupid FUCKING Bird!"
Anyone who got to announce the name of Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company's "sort-of" adaptation of Chekhov's The Seagull did so with devious relish last night at…
The city selected a new operator for the troubled Lincoln Theatre back in April, and now, finally, we know who it is. I.M.P. Productions, the company that owns the 9:30 Club and books Merriw…
At the close of last year's Capital Fringe festival, Executive Director Julianne Brienza was saying what had always seemed inevitable: Fringe's time in Mount Vernon Square was running out. A…
Folger Theatre's The Taming of the Shrew and Signature Theatre's Dreamgirls took home the big two prizes at last night's Helen Hayes Awards, winning statues for outstanding resident play and…
Trey Graham leads off this week's arts section with reviews of two slightly macabre musicals: The touring Addams Family at the Kennedy Center and the buzzy Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson at St…
On the cover of this week's Washington City Paper is Mark Andersen's very personal look into the fraught inner politics—and at the troubled, mercurial frontman—of D.C. hardcore p…
The Shakespeare Theatre Company is coming off one hell of a week. Last Sunday, it collected a Tony Award. Out of that glow came the news Friday that it had asked for an injunction against th…
Bob Mondello leads this week's arts section with a meditation on familiarity on D.C. stages: A pair of recognizable faces helps The Illusion at Forum Theatre work its spell, while Arena Stag…
The Eisenhower family still opposes the steel tapestries in Frank Gehry's design for the Eisenhower Memorial [Post]
President and CEO Neal Perle will exit the Washington Performing Arts Soci…
Theater J Artistic Director Ari Roth once told me he comes from the Anna Deavere Smith school of verisimilitude: He is a writer of fact-based plays. So I'm not quite sure what to make of …
New plays! We all agree they're important. They also require lots of close, collaborative, feedback-supplying work to develop—in other words, time, plus a greater-than-usual financi…
The Shakespeare Theatre Company will receive this year's Tony Award for Regional Theatre—the annual prize that the ceremony, which honors Broadway theater productions, hands to a compa…
Signature Theatre's Hairspray took home fives prizes at last night's 28th Helen Hayes Awards—including one of the biggest, the honor for outstanding resident musical.The other top awar…
The National Women's History Museum remains unbuilt—but its fundraising efforts and management look mighty suspicious. [HuffPo]
The next installment of National Harbor gallery Art Whin…
As is just about theatrical custom in this town, The Washington Post got the first pass at StudioTheatre's 2012-2013 season announcement, which begins Sept. 5 with an adaptation of Ralph …
Kwame Kwei-Armah, the new director of Baltimore's Centerstage, was disturbed by the treatment of race in Bruce Norris' Pulitzer-winning gentrification drama Clybourne Park, which had two …
Mayor Vince Gray's proposed budget for fiscal year 2013 dropped today, and on first glance, arts boosters might be pleased with what they see: an increase to the D.C. Commission on the Arts …
At this point, we might as well rename Arts Desk the Daily Daisey.
Today's bit of Mike Daisey news: In a statement today, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company says it still plans to stage a summer…
So: You probably heard about this weekend's Mike Daisey to-do. Wayyyyyyy more about that today on Arts Desk. [Poynter/AP/This American Life]
The National Gallery of Art has uploaded 20,000 i…
This is the time of year theaters like to puff up their feathers. But today's announcement from Theater of the First Amendant isn't the unveiling of the company's next season.
Instead, it's …
Threepeater: Dischord had added 25 more concert recordings—its third installment—to the Fugazi Live Archive, including a show from Glasgow in which a group of 15 or 20 women "too…
Arts Desk won't make a habit of reporting on season announcements this year—there are, after all, more than 70 professional theater companies in the D.C. area. But Arena's unveiling of…
For this week's Answers Issue, we took on some our readers' most pressing questions about life in the District.
When we put out the call for queries last October, we were immediately impr…