We do plays. We make dances.
Washington College theatre and dance students play many different characters and many different roles behind-the-scenes, while learning about the theatrical and dance arts and about themselves. As a theatre major, you’ll learn the nuts and bolts of acting, directing, and production, explore the history of theatre, and learn to act and think imaginatively.
Whatever your interests, there is something for you in WC Theatre & Dance. Majors can write a script, perform, direct, stage manage, or design a show to complete their senior capstone experience. Courses in history, acting, directing, design and dramaturgy prepare our students for internships in cities such as Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., graduate work, and careers in the theatre and many other fields. Theatre and dance minors may also take advantage of the many artistic and academic opportunities available through the department. A THE or DAN minor offers students across campus an opportunity to enrich their college experience, to create interdisciplinary connections with their academic major, and to lay the foundation for lifelong participation in the arts.
In Fall 2009, the renovated Gibson Center for the Arts became the centerpiece of the department, providing a state-of-the-art environment for performers, choreographers, directors, technicians, and audiences.
2018-2019 Performances
All performances begin at 7:30 p.m. unless otherwise noted.
For ticket reservations, go to the eventbrite page. If you have any questions, send an email to theatre_tickets@washcoll.edu
Interested in becoming an Honorary Producer?
By Melanie Marnich
Directed by Rachel Treglia
November 2-3, Tawes Theatre
These Shining Lives chronicles the strength and determination of women considered expendable in their day, exploring their true story and its continued resonance. Catherine and her friends are dying, it’s true; but theirs is a story of survival in its most transcendent sense, as they refuse to allow the company that stole their health to kill their spirits—or endanger the lives of those who come after them.
by Joe Orton
Directed and produced by Colin Higgins
Nov 9-10th Tawes Theatre.
“Loot is a scathing attack on money, the police, the catholic church, and several other of our sacred institutions. In a front parlor, a young bank robber and his accomplice, an undertaker’s assistant are using a coffin as the hiding place for their stolen money. The wild adventures that occur among the thieves, a nurse who was with the dead woman at her death, the widowed husband, and a corrupt and brutal police inspector make for a spectacular dark comedy.”
By A. R. Gurney
Directed by Katie Peacock
November 16-17, Tawes Theatre
A comedy of manners, set in a single dining room where 18 scenes from different households overlap and intertwine. Presumably, each story is focused around a different family during different time periods throughout the 20th and leading into the 21st century. The stories are about White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) families. Some scenes are about the furniture itself and the emotional attachment to it, while other scenes simply flesh out the culture of the WASPs. Overall, it tells the story of the dying and relatively short-lived culture of upper- middle class Americans, and the transition into a much more efficient society with less emphasis on tradition and more emphasis on progress. Some characters are made fun of, as is the culture itself, but there is also a genuine longing for the sense of stability, comfort and togetherness that the culture provides.
By Moisés Kaufman
Directed by Jacqueline Glenn
March 22-23, Tawes Theatre
In April 1895, Oscar Wilde brought a libel suit against the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of his youthful lover, who had publicly maligned him as a sodomite. In doing so, England’s reigning man of letters set in motion a series of events that would culminate in his ruin and imprisonment. For within a year the bewildered Wilde himself was on trial for acts of “gross indecency” and, implicitly—for a vision of art that outraged Victorian propriety. Expertly interweaving courtroom testimony with excerpts from Wilde’s writings and the words of his contemporaries, Gross Indecency unveils its subject in all his genius and human frailty, his age in all its complacency and repression.
by Larry Shue
Directed by Megan Stagg
March 29-30 2019, Tawes Theatre
In The Foreigner, Charlie Baker is going through a crisis. As an attempt to forget about his marital problems he travels with his best friend Froggy to a fishing lodge in rural Georgia where Froggy tells the owner that Charlie does not understand or speak English. Everyone believes it and because of this, Charlie discovers who the characters truly are as people.
By Annie Baker
Directed by John Leslie
Featuring Patrick Huff
April 5 – 6, Norman James Theater
The Flick takes place in a seen-better-days movie theater, one of the last which continues to use a thirty-five-millimeter film projector. The story focuses on the employees whose job is to sweep up other people’s trash after the movie ends, and follows as they grapple to understand themselves and each other. Annie Baker’s play challenges the audience to consider how silence might say something more than absence; how cinema unites people through a solitary experience; and how theater can be discovered in the acts of everyday life.
by Michael Yates Crowley
Directed and produced by Elizabeth Clemens
April 12-13 or 19-20, Tawes Theatre
“When Grace B. Matthias is raped, her world spirals into chaos. Between navigating emotionally unstable guidance counselors, overbearing lawyers, an angry championship football team, and useless Wikipedia answers, Grace tries to make sense of her world anew. A complex collision of satire and dark comedy, The Rape of the Sabine Women, by Grace B. Matthias fearlessly explores rape culture in America.” –The Playwrights Realm
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The Elephant Man is based on the life of John Merrick, who lived in London during the latter part of the nineteenth century. Merrick, young and horribly deformed, has earned a living as... -
Mace is a professional wrestler. He’s a really good professional wrestler. He’s not the champion though – that’s the impossibly charismatic Chad Deity. When Mace discovers a young Indian-American Brooklyn kid whose charisma
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Kalidasa’s Shakuntala is an ancient Indian myth about found, lost and found love. When two lovers, King Dushyanta and Shakuntala, are torn away from each other after a series of encounters with bad... -
Callie is a New York City traffic reporter that has spent her entire life avoiding confrontation and limiting change. Sara is a courageous school teacher that chose to quit her job teaching at... -
Set on a remote island off the west coast of Ireland in 1934, The Cripple of Inishmaan is a strange comic tale in the great tradition of Irish storytelling. As word arrives on... -
Almost, Maine is comprised of nine short stories that explore the price of love in a remote, mythical almost-town called Almost, Maine.By John Cariani... -
Set in the heavily repressed world of 1892 Germany, Spring Awakening is the radical tale of a group of teenagers struggling to find their place as they grow into adults. The play was banned and... -
A Senior Directing Thesis from Connor Lugo-Harris, A Raisin in the Sun revolves around the divergent dreams and conflicts within three generations of the Younger family: son Walter Lee, his wife Ruth, his sister Beneatha,... -
David Henry Hwang’s play Yellow Face employs a broken, nonlinear narrative that blurs the line between fact and fiction. When the character DHH gets embroiled in a controversy regarding casting – in two...
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Dance minors Ali Zdrojewski ’19 and Kaitlynn Ecker ’18 traveled to New York City this summer to study tap at Broadway Dance Center.
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Rosie Alger ’18, a double major in theater and anthropology, interned this summer at the 2018 PlayPenn New Play Development Conference in Philadelphia.
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Kaitlyn Fowler ’17, who graduated with departmental honors in English and theater, is touring this summer with The Shakespeare Academy @ Stratford.
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