Stage Banter: The Arena Stage Blog

Arena Stage nominated for 16 Helen Hayes Awards

Outstanding Director, Resident Musical
Molly Smith, The Women of Brewster Place

The Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding New Play or Musical
Moises Kaufman, 33 Variations

Outstanding Resident Musical
The Women of Brewster Place

Outstanding Non-Resident Production
Emergence-See!

Outstanding Lead Actor, Non-Resident Production
Daniel Beaty, Emergence-See!

Outstanding Lead Actress, Non-Resident Production
Karen Kandel, Mabou Mines' Peter and Wendy

Outstanding Lead Actress, Resident Musical
Tina Fabrique, Ella
Harriett D. Foy, The Women of Brewster Place
Marva Hicks, The Women of Brewster Place

Outstanding Lead Actress, Resident Play
Mary Beth Peil, 33 Variations

Outstanding Lighting Design, Resident Production
David Lander, 33 Variations

Outstanding Musical Direction, Resident Production
William Foster McDaniel, The Women of Brewster Place

Outstanding Set Design, Resident Production
Derek McLane, 33 Variations

Outstanding Supporting Actor, Resident Musical
Christopher Bloch, Christmas Carol 1941

Outstanding Supporting Actress, Resident Musical
Monique L. Midgette, The Women of Brewster Place

Outstanding Supporting Actress, Resident Play
Susan Kellermann, 33 Variations

Join Arena Stage in our celebration and enjoy the rare opportunity to schmooze with your favorite stars at the post-show gala by purchasing tickets to the Helen Hayes Awards.  Tickets to the ceremony and gala are on sale to the general public here.

Arena and the National Endowment for the Arts

by David Dower

Did you catch the announcement last week of Arena's selection to host the National Endowment for the Arts new Leadership Initiative for New Play Development? Pretty great news. Over the coming weeks and months, we'll be developing the selection criteria for the program, which will select two Outstanding New American Plays and five early-stage Distinguished New Play Development Projects. There are cash awards to the projects as well as $10,000 to each of the playwrights. The selections will be made by a panel of theater professionals from around the country, through a process managed by us here at Arena. It is our intention that Washington audiences will get a glimpse of all the selected projects in a festival where all seven plays will be presented in "works in progress" fashion. On our drive to fulfill the promise and potential of The Mead Center, this partnership with the NEA really "moves the chains" (tis the season to talk in football lingo—congratulations, Redskins!).

Stay tuned for more details and an announcement of the release of the guidelines for applying.

Race on Stage: A Conversation with the Actors

by David Dower

Emily Ackerman as Lisa Kron and Donnetta Lavinia Grays as Lori Jones in Well

On Thursday, October 11th, we'll host an interesting discussion following the performance of Well. Arena's Associate Executive Director Desirée Urquhart will moderate a conversation with Donnetta Lavinia Grays ("Lori Jones" in Well), Tracey Scott Wilson (author of the play The Good Negro which we'll be reading in our Downstairs Series on October 22nd), and Harriett D. Foy ("Lorraine" in The Women of Brewster Place). 

Our topic: Race on Stage

There are a couple of convergent events that make this a great moment to stop and discuss, with our audiences, where we are as a community around the issues of race as played out on the stage of Arena Stage, in the local, national, and global context of our Washington, D.C. location.

Vijay Mathew

As this season's Allen Lee Hughes Directing Fellow, I have the unique opportunity to witness very established directors at work in rehearsal on a daily basis. In addition to this time in rehearsal, I am also working with David Dower, the new Producing Artistic Associate. Work with David is especially exciting because it is functioning as an artistic producing apprenticeship for me. I'll be blogging here about each show from the inside view of the rehearsal hall and reporting about new developments on the producing end of things. Occasionally, I’ll comment from my perspective as an emerging director in contemporary American theater and as a producer-in-training.

Welcome to the 2007/2008 Season

Hey, great—you found us! Thanks for stopping by Arena’s blog.

We’ve got big plans for this season. We’ve pulled together a team of bloggers to give you a breadth and depth of insight on the goings-on here at Arena Stage that will make it worth your while to check in every day. We’re also going to pepper the blog with notice of events, open rehearsals and sneak previews. And I’m hoping you will become a regular part of the conversation.

OK, so this first entry is long. But, there’s a lot of ground to cover to catch you up and set you up for the rest of what’s coming. I promise that once we’re rolling, we’ll be a faster read…