As we collectively take the first few tentative steps into 2025 – a year that promises to be filled with challenges and change – this month’s column examines intentionality. It’s a buzzword that’s recently found new popularity, but the of Theater Alliance are living it.
Theater Alliance has been making groundbreaking work in DC over 20 years. At the end of October, Shanara Gabrielle – Theater Alliance’s Producing Artistic Director – opened the 2024-25 season at the Alliance’s new temporary pop-up space in SW and christened it with a production of York Walker’s Covenant, the first iteration of this acclaimed Southern Gothic horror to be produced since its successful off-Broadway run.
340 Maple Drive SW is owned by Hoffman & Associates, a mixed-use real estate developer that builds out community-oriented urban spaces designed to foster diversity and inclusion. It’s one of the city’s arts-focused PUDs (Planned Unit Developments), so Gabrielle says it makes sense that Theater Alliance has found a temporary home here through Mayor Muriel Bowser’s Pop-Up Permit Program. “We have a really good story. We’ve been around for 25 years and we’ve activated neighborhoods over and over again. We were early adopters of H Street and Anacostia. Every decade we’ve reignited in a new neighborhood.” The vast, double-volume hall is envisioned as an incubator for the artists and makers that fertilize neighborhoods through intentional placemaking, economic and social empowerment and by writing stories that resonate with the people that come to listen to them.
Gabrielle took up the mantle of Producing Artistic Director for Theater Alliance last summer. On her eighth day at the office, she arrived at the Anacostia Playhouse in Southeast DC (where the company had previously been located) to find an eviction notice for unpaid rent pinned to a locked door. “Theater Alliance had consistently been paying rent in full.” she says. “Unbeknownst to us, that rent was not being ed to the owner of the building.” Gabrielle is philosophical about the incident that forced Theater Alliance to look for a new home. “Running a not-for-profit is hard. People trust us to be intentional about how we use our resources to make impact in the community. We have to prioritize that.” What to others might have been a death blow became an incentive for Gabrielle to pause and reflect on the founding ethos of Theater Alliance. “There was a blessing in that for me, as a new leader. I was given the opportunity to reevaluate what it is that we offer and what our service to the community is. Once you’ve answered those questions, you can make decisions about finance, location and style of art.” While Gabrielle and her team were searching for new space, they realized that not only was their core audience still following them, but it had grown. “We didn’t lose our immediate zip code patrons. There’s been an increase.”
Holly Bass is a self-confessed fan of Theater Alliance. She’s a multidisciplinary artist, curator, poet and director, and her play The Transatlantic Time Traveling Company opened as part of Theater Alliance’s 16th season last summer. “I consider myself a long-time audience member. I just love the work they do. They’re so generous and kind, and I think that shows in the productions you see on their stage but also in the ways they pull audiences into conversations after shows. As someone who’s also worked with them, that’s also present behind the scenes.” Like Bass, Gabrielle knows that the inherent value of Theater Alliance isn’t tied to location. She’s done the work to understand the Alliance’s core audience and ers and she knows that they come from all eight of DC’s wards. “The kind of work we make, the way we make the work, the consciousness with which we make those decisions. That’s the Theater Alliance legacy, no matter where we are.”
Their new temporary venue means the Alliance is now steps away from Arena Stage, The Wharf and a multitude of restaurants, bars and hangout spots. The possibilities are ripe for impact in a community that has a long and lauded history. Marvin Gaye was born in one of the low income neighborhoods that characterized this small patch of DC before it was transformed in the 1950s through the Federal Housing istration’s campaign of urban renewal. “There’s something about this particular location that puts us in proximity to neighborhood and community here.” Gabrielle says. She’s already met some of the legacy residents residing nearby and she plans to use the Alliance’s Radical Neighboring Initiative (where a limited number of tickets for each show are sponsored) to draw more of them to performances. “Radical Neighboring Initiative tickets mean you can come at any time for any price you wish. Our highest ticket price is $40. We make sure that all our communities know.”
Show Bill
The Garbologists
Showing Jan 30 – Feb 23
theateralliance.com
How often do you think about the men and women who take out your trash every week? The Garbologists by playwright and author Lindsay Joelle – part of Theater Alliance’s 22nd season – is a deep dumpster dive into the secret lives and hidden stories of the people that keep our cities clean and functional come rain, shine or blizzard.
Danny (Chris Genebach) and Marlowe (Yesenia Iglesias) are thrown together in the cab of a New York City garbage truck, and through a humor-filled journey of disposing, excavating and salvaging the trash of the Big Apple’s residents, they come to learn that they’re not so dissimilar after all. “I lived in New York City for 21 years. It’s an old city that doesn’t have back alleys, so all your trash is on the curb waiting to be picked up. I’d frequently take books out of the trash that I’d wanted to read, or I’d see something that I wanted to give a second life,” Joelle recalls as she explains how she brought The Garbologists to life back in 2016. “I’d also just finished my thesis play that was about two teenage boys that takes place in a truck, so my brain was already in the world of a truck on stage.”
It was on a subsequent long weekend with friends out in the country that Joelle met a sanitation worker who exploded all her assumptions about the job, giving her insight into what she calls the “micro community” of sanitation workers and their ‘invisible stories’. “He had a college degree. It’s a very coveted job in New York City. You take a test for it. He was very proud to be in sanitation.” After a few conversations and having spoken to his colleagues all over the country, Joelle knew this was a story that needed to be told. “I think we have an innate repugnance for what we view as disposable, whether it’s our literal trash or the way that we write people off. You can tell a lot about a person from what they throw out. It’s called ‘reading the bags.’ You read about the person from the trash. Trash lingers and tells stories long after we’re gone.”
Expect your journey into Marlowe and Danny’s world to start the moment you enter the theater. Director Shanara Gabrielle will transform Theater Alliance’s temporary space at 340 Maple Drive SW so that the audience is immersed in a universe of trash, treasure and humor before the show even starts. Don’t miss the opportunity to travel along with Danny and Marlowe and learn about the dignity, skill and respect required for one of our nation’s most critical – and perilous- jobs.
