Let’s be honest with each other for a moment.
The last few weeks have been hard. The Kennedy Center, one of the most storied performing arts institutions in the world, sitting on the banks of our river, in our city, went dark almost overnight. And then, before we could catch our breath, The Washington Post dismantled its arts and culture team, including its full-time theater critic.
For those of us who have built our lives around this art form, who have given years, late nights, and a good portion of our sanity to making, supporting, and writing about theater, this stings in a specific way. These aren’t abstract institutional losses. These are colleagues. Friends. People who showed up, who cared, who poured themselves into this community the same way we do.
We are allowed to grieve that.
And then we have to decide who we’re going to be.
I came to this work the way a lot of us did, through the transformative, slightly irrational experience of falling in love with what happens when human beings tell each other the truth in a room together. I have been fortunate to learn from and work alongside extraordinary artists in this region. People who are, behind every credential and accolade, just people. Piecing life together. Navigating a world that has never made it easy to be an artist. But never, not once, letting that fire go out.
What this community has taught me, and keeps teaching me, is that we pour into each other. That is not a metaphor. That is the actual mechanism by which this art form survives. A director who mentors a young designer. A critic who gives a small theater the thoughtful review that changes everything for their season. A writer who sees something in a production that the artist didn’t even know they’d put there.
That is who we are. And that is precisely what is at stake right now.
DC Theater Arts was built for this moment, even if none of us knew it when we started.
If you believe in what DC Theater Arts is doing, and in our ability to meet this moment, please consider making a contribution to DCTA. We are a small but mighty nonprofit publication. Bringing on more writers, expanding our coverage, and building the platform this community deserves takes resources. Your support, at any level, makes a direct difference.
DCTA is the most comprehensive source of quality theater criticism and coverage in the DMV. Not just the big houses, though we cover those too, but the small and mid-sized companies doing world-class work that doesn’t always make the front page. The university productions that give a young designer their first mention in print. The community theater staging something that will change someone’s life. The new play that hasn’t found its audience yet but needs a witness.
We also invest in the next generation of critics, young writers in our community who are learning to articulate what they see, to argue for the value of what artists make, and to add their voice to this ongoing conversation about who we are as a city and as a culture.
That work doesn’t stop. It accelerates.
So here is where we stand, and I want to be direct about it.
DC Theater Arts is doubling down. On the DMV. On local artists and playwrights. On the stories being told on stages across this region, from the grandest to the most intimate. If anything, the events of the last few weeks have sharpened our sense of purpose.
We are opening our doors. To artists who want a platform to discuss their work and their process. To theater companies navigating a moment that is, frankly, hostile to the arts, who need a space to speak honestly about what they’re facing. And to the writers and critics who’ve been displaced by other publications: we see you, we value what you do, and we want to find ways to collaborate and bring more voices onto our site this year.
Later this year, we are launching a new website built to support all of this and to make our corner of the internet a true hub for this community and the audiences who love it.
I know it can feel like too much right now. The weight of what’s happening to artists and cultural workers in this city, and in this country, is real, and I would never ask anyone to simply wish it away. What is happening is wrong. We don’t have to pretend otherwise.
But we cannot give in to despair. Because despair is the one thing that actually stops the work.
We are a community that knows how to find each other in the dark. We know how to hold the door open. We know that the story doesn’t end here. It just takes a turn we didn’t see coming, and we figure out together what the next scene is.
Washington, DC, has long been one of the most vital theater cities in America, a place where stories don’t just entertain but challenge, provoke, and shape the national conversation. That legacy belongs to all of us. And it is ours to protect.
That is what we do. Let’s do it together.
Here’s how you can help right now:
- Make a contribution to DCTA.
- Follow us on Facebook or Instagram.
- Sign up for our free newsletter, where we promote theaters, artists, and our community. It is one of the best ways to stay connected to everything happening across DMV stages and everything we are building.
We are not going anywhere. In fact, we’re just getting started.
