Spooky Action Theater presents its 21st season with productions of two plays that are boldly theatrical, entertaining, and resonant. In her third season as Artistic Director, Elizabeth Dinkova directs a new adaptation of The Dragon by Evgeny Shvarts, a banned 1940s political fairytale. Dave Harris’ Tambo & Bones, a provocative and hilarious Off-Broadway hit, will be directed by 2020 Helen Hayes Award Winner Ashleigh King (Keegan Theatre’s Legally Blonde). In addition, Spooky Action’s season will include developmental readings and workshops through its New Works in Action program, and a return of its popular Cabaret Series featuring new acts by local talent.
“A story may not be able to change the world, but it shapes our perception of it. In our post-modern, post-fact moment, whoever controls our stories, controls our realities,” says Artistic Director Elizabeth Dinkova. “So it’s up to us to take that power back – to tell stories that challenge the dominant status quo, offer groundbreaking perspectives, and rehearse new futures. And to revel in the process. The exuberant counter-narratives that make up our season traffic in provocation, playfulness, and purpose to make resistance irresistible.”
2025-2026 SEASON: COUNTER-NARRATIVES
THE DRAGON by Evgeny Shvarts
Adapted by Jesse Rasmussen (Professor Woland’s Black Magic Rock Show) and Yura Kordonsky (Eisenstein; Yale School of Drama directing co-chair)Directed by Artistic Director Elizabeth Dinkova
September 25-October 19, 2025
Terrorized by a wicked dragon, a town gets a chance for freedom with the arrival of a confident and cocky Sir Lancelot (yes, distantly related). Sounds simple enough, right? On the surface a supernatural fairytale, this subversive play written (and banned) in Stalinist Russia offers a scorching satire of authoritarian regimes and the mechanisms they use to control people. In a sharp new adaptation centering immigrant actors, The Dragon is a witty allegory that exposes the dangers of tyranny – and would be even more fun if it were not so disturbingly relevant.
“AN IMPORTANT PLAY that can still speak to us today” – British Theatre Guide
“The Dragon has a great deal to say about propaganda and its construction of alternate reality” – CATO Institute
Evgeny Shvarts (1896–1958), alternately Yevgeny Schwartz, was primarily a children’s writer whose work, finely balancing drama and humor, often appealed to both young and adult audiences. His legacy includes brilliant stage and screen adaptations of Cinderella, Don Quixote, and Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen. He also wrote two extraordinary political plays that were promptly banned from the stage after the opening night: The Shadow (1940), another Andersen adaptation, and The Dragon (1944).
TAMBO & BONES
by Dave Harris
Directed by Helen Hayes Award Winner Ashleigh King
February 12-March 8, 2026
“You thought you was gonna sing a song about racism and change the world” – Bones
Tambo and Bones find themselves in a fix: they’re trapped in a minstrel show. And it’s damn hard to know what’s real and what’s not. The escape plan? Get famous…cash in…and get even. This time-traveling hip-hop fantasia from slam poet turned playwright Dave Harris dares to say the quiet part out loud, wrestling with America’s racist past and present and exploding its post-racial future.
“will make you second-guess everything you do in a theater…Tambo & Bones gets the highest possible marks” – TheaterMania
“…INVENTIVE AND IMMERSIVE, constantly shape-shifting to both unsettle and surprise us.” —Indulge Magazine
Dave Harris is a poet and playwright from West Philly. Selected plays include Tambo & Bones (LA Drama Critics Award “Best New Play”; Royal Stratford East, London Premiere, 2023; Playwrights Horizons; Center Theatre Group), Incendiary (Woolly Mammoth, 2023), Exception to the Rule (Roundabout Theatre Company, 2022 and Studio Theater, 2025), and Everybody Black (Humana Festival 2019). His first feature film, Summertime, premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and was released in 2021. Selected honors include: the 2019 Ollie Award, The Lorraine Hansberry Award and Mark Twain Award from The Kennedy Center, The International Commendation for The Bruntwood Prize, the Venturous Fellowship from The Lark, and a Cave Canem poetry fellowship amongst others. Dave is currently writing the feature adaptation of The Fortress of Solitude amongst several other features and television projects for AMC (Interview with the Vampire), ABC Signature, Goddard Textiles, and Amazon. His first full-length collection of poetry, “Patricide,” was published by Button Poetry.
Tickets for The Dragon will go on sale August 15. For tickets and information on Spooky Action’s 2025/26 season, visit https://spookyaction.org.
ABOUT SPOOKY ACTION THEATER
Spooky Action Theater (SAT) is an award-winning professional theater located near DC’s Dupont and Logan Circle neighborhoods. Founded in 2004, SAT takes its name from a phenomenon of quantum mechanics in which particles become entangled – so that a change in one is forever mirrored by change in the other. SAT recharges people’s intuitive and emotional core by linking artists and audiences in a shared act of imagination that leaves all parties transformed. SAT stages and develops groundbreaking plays by diverse writers across the globe, trains the next generation of artists, empowers students to express themselves, and partners with mission-aligned organizations to spotlight vital themes.
