At Anacostia Playhouse, we are dedicated to being an artistic center in the Anacostia neighborhood of Washington DC. Our organization is unique in that it is both a rental facility and a producing theater company, and we pride ourselves in bringing artists and companies to Anacostia and working with artists living here as well. Our programming is also unique in that we produce work that spans from working with youth to producing older favorites such as Driving Miss Daisy and Black Nativity, and producing new works series to develop writers’ new works.

In late summer 2013 Playhouse reopened as The Anacostia Playhouse. The theater at 2020 Shannon Place, SE, is located in a place of both rich history and great promise. We have set a goal of providing performance space to new and emerging artists and theater companies at below-market rates, with a special focus on those who are based east of the Anacostia River.

Throughout all our programming we seek to connect with the community, facilitate conversations, and bring artists together. We have been many artists’ first professional jobs, and we are very proud of those who worked with us who then decided they wanted to do theater full time. In our youth programming, we both produced a musical The Rainbow Fish, and did a youth acting camp that taught students from nearby neighborhoods about acting, writing, hip hop, and poetry among other topics. Since our opening in Anacostia in 2013, we are proud of the work we have done and the friends we have made along the way.

With this progress, we hope to do even more work within this community. We hope to produce another youth acting camp this summer. We hope to do an interview project to address gun violence in DC. We hope to bolster new development and improvements in our staff to support even more hours of operation. We hope to produce more plays. Our goal is $5,000. $5,000 funds tuition for 20 students, allows us to bring a playwright to take mothers’ stories and bring them to the stage, and funds one designer’s work for our next production.

The holiday season is just around the corner, and we invite you to kick it off with us on Giving Tuesday! Giving Tuesday is a global day of giving back. On the Tuesday following Thanksgiving, people around the world will come together to celebrate generosity and make an impact. We are honored to be part of this larger community day. This year, we want to hit our goal to ensure we can continue to be a resource and change maker in this community.

That’s why this Giving Tuesday, we’re inviting you to join us in supporting our local community. You can donate right now, or create a personal fundraising page and ask your network to donate as well.

Your support makes a big impact.

To give, click HERE.

Playwrights! Anacostia Playhouse is seeking new and non-produced 10-minute and one-act plays for the 2018 New Works Festival: Visions/Revisions. Selected playwrights will have the opportunity to work with a professional director and actors to prepare for the final staged reading or performance.

Play submissions should address the themes of deterioration and renovation, both physically and socially, over the course of Anacostia’s long history. Consider the many physical and social changes Anacostia has survived; from the time of the Nacochtank Native American settlement along the Anacostia River, to the founding of Union Town, to today. Your submission should address the impact of revisionist history on Anacostia and its residents.
This New Works Festival will be held November 15 – 19 at the Anacostia Playhouse located in historic Anacostia in Washington DC. The festival, featuring both ten-minute staged readings and one-act productions, is an opportunity to introduce new playwrights to Washington’s theater community and establish relationships between writers, producers and directors. All plays will be read by the Anacostia Playhouse. 10-minute plays will receive a staged reading and one-act plays will receive a full production.

Please note that, due to the high volume of submissions we receive, we are unable to respond individually to each submission or to offer feedback. You will hear from us by September 21, 2018 if your work has been accepted into the festival.

The Rules:
Submissions will be accepted June 5 – September 15. Submissions and payment must be submitted through the Anacostia Playhouse website using the form and payment button below. Please submit only new non-produced works. All plays must utilize a maximum of four actors (actors can play multiple parts).

Submission/Reading Fee:
One-Act plays: $20.
Ten-minute plays: $10.

There is no submission fee for high school students. If the submission fee causes a financial hardship please contact Adele Robey at arobey@fusemail.com for financial aid.

Happy Ending

By Douglas Turner Ward

“This ‘Happy Ending’ is fresh, funny, and bursting with song-and-dance pizzazz. Yes, song and dance! It’s hard to imagine ‘Happy Ending’ ever ending with more upbeat joy” – DC Metro Theater Arts Review by John Stoltenberg.

A long-running Off-Broadway hit, Happy Ending was written by Douglas Turner Ward, founder of The Negro Ensemble Company.

It tells of two sisters, Ellie and Vi, who work as maid and laundress for the wealthy Harrisons.  As the play begins they are sitting at the kitchen table in a tenement apartment in Harlem, lamenting the end of their good times.  Mr. Harrison has discovered his wife in an act of infidelity.

The sisters fear that if the marriage breaks up they will be both out of a job.  Their nephew, Junie, chides them for their sentiments at a time when Blacks are on the march towards liberation.

But what Vi and Ellie really fear is that the divorce threatens a cutoff in the household graft the sisters have engaged in and which has brought considerable luxury to their lives.

Happy Ending is directed by Ella Davis Artistic Director of All About the Drama Theater Group and Board Chair, Anacostia Playhouse.

About the playwright:

Douglas Turner Ward, dramatist, actor, director, and producer was born in 1930.  Guided by a burning desire to continue the legacy of W. E. B. Du Bois, Ward was determined to create theater that was primarily written by, performed for, and representative of African American people. In his plays, Ward examines a mixed bag of attitudes and stereotypes that permeate our environment both within and outside the African American community. He uses various comic conventions such as satire, farce, absurdism, and irony to attack widely divergent cultural philosophies, politics, and ethics as well as social, moral, and racial biases. Since the 1960s, the African American dramatic literature and aesthetic philosophy of Douglas Turner Ward have been highly influential.

For more information on the Negro Ensemble Company click here.

Happy Ending Performance dates and times:

Previews

August 9th, 2018 -August 10th, 2018 8PM

Shows

August 11th, 2018-August 25th, 2018

Thurs-Sat at 8PM, Sat and Sun at 3PM

For tickets, click below:

Preview show tickets

Show tickets

Review from DC Theatre Scene: https://dctheatrescene.com/2018/08/14/review-douglas-turner-wards-happy-ending-at-anacostia-playhouse/

Review from DC Metro Theater Arts: https://dcmetrotheaterarts.com/2018/08/12/review-happy-ending-at-anacostia-playhouse/