In addition to the shows that I see for fun, especially those with my friends in them, I’m an adjudicator for WATCH, also known by the backronym Washington Area Theatre Community Honors. (As I’ve posted elsewhere, generally I don’t comment on the merits of community theater productions that I see, for a number of reasons.) This means that I do a lot of driving around the extended metropolitan area, judging six or eight shows in the course of a calendar year. I see companies with a wide range of physical assets to work with, everything from the two well-appointed theaters in Fairfax County community centers (the Alden and the CenterStage), the modest but scrappy facility at Silver Spring Stage, high school auditoriums where some of the semi-nomadic groups work, and some spaces that are just modest.
And I see a wide range of material, about 40% of it musicals. And this is a good thing, because sometimes I’ll see a really great script (we don’t judge the script, just what you do with it) that I otherwise wouldn’t have gone out of my way to see. Sometimes I’ll notice something really interesting on a schedule and I will ask my adjudication coordinator, “Do you need an alternate to judge that?” I also see things that I am far too familiar with. By the end of this year there will be at least two plays for which I have adjudicated multiple productions. (One of the favorite war stories passed around WATCH is that of the judge who was assigned three productions of A Streetcar Named Desire in one year. We’ve tweaked the scheduling algorithm since then.)
Here’s what I’ve seen in the past few years, and what I expect to see this year. There’s some really chewy stuff here:
- The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, by Barbara Robinson
- All My Sons, by Arthur Miller
- The Sound of Music, Rodgers and Hammerstein
- Hotbed Hotel, by Michael Parker (hotel-room farce)
- The Memory of Water, by Shelagh Stephenson (family ties)
- The Piano Lesson, by August Wilson
- The Boys Next Door, by Tom Griffin (issue-driven comedy)
- A New Brain, William Finn and James Lapine (urban musical)
- Intimate Apparel, by Lynn Nottage (family history)
- Aida, Elton John and Tim Rice
- The Pajama Game, Adler and Ross
- Moon over Buffalo, by Ken Ludwig
- The Complete History of America (abridged), Long, Tichenor, and Martin
- A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams
- Arsenic and Old Lace, by Joseph Kesselring
- The Full Monty, David Yazbek and Terrence McNally (steelworker stripper musical)
- Stalag 17, Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski (WWII drama)
- Chapter Two, by Neil Simon
- Floyd Collins, Adam Guettel and Tina Landau (Baby Jessica as folk opera)
- The Last Five Years, by Jason Robert Brown (reverse-chronology relationship revue)
- Jesus Christ Superstar, Webber and Rice
- Catch Me If You Can, Jack Weinstock and Willie Gilbert
- Rumors, by Neil Simon
- A Christmas Carol, adapted by John Mortimer
- Becket, by Jean Anouilh
- A Grand Night for Singing, Rodgers and Hammerstein
- Run for Your Wife, by Ray Cooney (cab driver farce)
- The Vagina Monologues, by Eve Ensler
Oh, yeah, and WATCH is throwing a big party next Sunday night.