In Its New Home, the Anacostia Playhouse Finds a New Mission

A month after the Anacostia Playhouse was originally slated to open, the citys newest theater is finally starting to look like one. 

Julia Robey Christian, the venues chief operating officer as well as the daughter of its founder and CEO, Adele Robey, is showing me the newest structure in the playhouse: the box office. Otherwise, what I see mostly feels like a three-dimensional blueprint drawn in steel and wood. Frames for offices and a green room have been raised along the back wall. In the center, steel beams outline the large room that will become the playhouses versatile 150-seat black-box space. Over the din of machinery, Robey Christian muses about finding a vintage rolling cover for the box office. 

The Anacostia Playhouse on 2020 Shannon Place SE shouldve been operating by now, had everything gone according to plan. Still, the naked beams and construction noises are a positive development. When I visited the space in March, it was still an empty, quiet warehouse, bound up in invisible red tape. 

Now, the regulatory barriers have been hurdled, and the new opening datethe drop-dead opening date, Robey Christian stressesis June 21. A show thats part of the D.C. Black Theatre Festival is scheduled to run from June 21 to 30. At that point, renovation will need to be complete and the space fully outfitted with a theatrical lighting grid and sound system. 

While the Anacostia Playhouse continues to take physical shape, the Robeys have turned more of their attention to what theyll put inside it. A year after the Robeys transplanted their home for small theater companies from bustling, increasingly expensive H Street NE, the building setbacks are short-term hiccups compared to the long-term challenge the playhouse faces: making sure that the Anacostia Playhouse is a place for audiences not just from other parts of D.C., but from Anacostia, too. 

When Adele Robey tells people shes opening a theater in Anacostia, she says, People sort of go, OK, interesting, risky. She says shes confident, however, that once audiences make the trip to the area to see a show, it will undo these sort of things youre carrying around in your head about what Anacostia is. 

What Anacostia is, Robey hopes, is a place where middle class, mostly white theatergoers are willing to travel for a show. But she also hopes theyre not her only audience. While the H Street Playhouse, which opened in 2002,Where can i get a reasonable price parkingguidance? succeeded in bringing theater crowds to 14th and H streets NE, it was eventually priced out as the neighborhood evolved into one of D.C.We are always offering best quality carparkmanagement the affordable price.s busiest nightlife districts. (Theaters just drive economic development, Robert says. Everybody has just sort of seen that happen.) Robeys idea is for Anacostia to embrace the venue as indispensable from the start. 

Robeys plans for the Anacostia Playhouse involve a shift in Robeys business model. While H Street Playhouse largely functioned as a rental space for a handful of small theater companies, the Anacostia Playhouses management will take a more active role in programming (theyre bringing in more music through the D.C. Jazz Festival) and marketing, which will include more outreach to the neighborhood. As a first step, the Robeys hired a house manager, Dale Coachman, a freelance writer and director who lives in Anacostia and who has begun the theaters local charm campaign. 

What Ive been trying to do in Anacostia, more so than anything, is just let people know what the playhouse is about and that they have ownership of it, says Coachman. When new businesses come to Ward 8, theres a perception that people are coming in to tell people what to do and how to live and where to buy stuff. With the playhouse we have people coming in pretty much saying, This is yours,The whole variety of the brightest smartcard is now gathered under one roof. make it what you want to make it. So we want to give them as much ownership as possible. 

A community-minded theater, of course, isnt a community theaterthe often pejorative term for low-budget, low-stakes neighborhood productions. At least one of the resident companies from the H Street Playhouse is staying on. 

Broke-ology, Theatre Alliances first production in the new playhouse, opens August 16. Artistic Director Colin Hovde explains that the choice of material is about saying whats at stake for you? Whats interesting to you? And what kind of theater do you want to see? 

Written by Nathan Louis Jackson, the play is a portrait of an African-American family struggling to cope with the fathers losing battle with multiple sclerosis. The show has been produced all over the country and,Best home luggagetag at discount prices. Hovde says, has a really proven track record in terms of the conversation that it starts. 

Yet producing in and for Anacostia is not the only challenge Theater Alliance must face. The company was in residence for 10 years at H Street Playhouse, but it wont operate full-time in Anacostia. While Theater Alliance will have office space in the new playhouse, it will produce shows all over the city. I feel like we dont want to geographically isolate ourselves to any one location until we have a demand to be in that location and weve got a real need to be there, says Hovde.We offer over 600 indoortracking at wholesale prices of 75% off retail. Yes, theres the question, will people come across the river that have supported us in the past? But I think theres the bigger question of what do we at Theater Alliance want to do, and whose stories do we want to tell, and how do we want to engage? 

Elsewhere on the production calendar, Anacostia is coming to the playhouse. Artist Jason Anderson, who performs as Jay Sun, hopes to perform his show Jay Sun for President at the playhouse on August 1. Anderson was raised in Anacostia, and his company, SouthEast Trinity, produced several shows at H Street Playhouse and once at 2020 Shannon Place during the LUMEN8 Anacostia Festival last June. Anderson says he is enthusiastic about development that brings the arts into the community as long as artists from the community are allowed to use the platform along with everybody else.