When proselytizing for Georgetown, one of GM’s primary arguments is that what makes Georgetown great is how incredibly diverse its offerings are. In approximately one square mile, Georgetown has over 500 stores and restaurants, with an incredible variety of offerings, four fantastic city parks, perhaps the most beautiful gardens in the country, and a world class university. But today, GM wanted to focus on a less known facet of Georgetown: its theater scene.
Georgetown is hardly the White Way, and it’s not like DC’s downtown “theater district” either, but it’s got several solid theatrical resources right here.
Georgetown University
One thing that GM greatly laments about the endless town-gown conflicts between GU and its neighbors is that Georgetown’s non-students take so little advantage of what a great resource GU is. And GU’s theater offerings are among those great resources.
Georgetown has five different theater troupes: the Mask and Bauble (one of the country’s oldest college theater companies), the Black Theater Ensemble, Nomadic Theater, the Georgetown Improv Association, and (perhaps a future favorite of GM’s) the Georgetown University Children’s Theater.
Sure, GU isn’t Julliard or Tisch, but these troupes produce quality live entertainment throughout the year. And hey, Bradley Cooper and Carl Reiner went to GU, so you never know…
Georgetown Theater Company
This was a new discovery for GM, although it’s been around since 1986. The Georgetown Theater Company is run out of Grace Episcopal on Wisconsin Ave. The company was founded “to bring great literature to Washington, D.C. audiences as live theatrical entertainment.”
To get sense of the serious level of work the Georgetown Theater Company does, check out their current season. They’re performing four works of literature that delve deeply into the issues of race and class that drove the social conflicts of the Civil War age. In fact, tonight they perform “The Escape (or A Leap to Freedom)” by William Wells Brown, an autobiographical telling of an escaped slave.
The performance is at 7:30 pm tonight at Grace Episcopal.
The National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts
Most people don’t realize there’s a full blown acting school right here in Georgetown. The National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts has been training professional actors since 1975. It’s located in the basement of the Lutheran Church at Volta and Wisconsin. While the school’s focus is obviously on training actors, it also puts on shows free and open to the public. For instance, it periodically holds a cabaret and the next one in March 24th at 8 pm.
So that makes seven different acting troupes in Georgetown. So if you’re looking for some theater, you don’t have to go that far from home.
The Georgetown Metropolitan 
For the record, Mask & Bauble is the “longest continuously running college theatre group” but only on a technicality dating to the Civil War. Other alums of M&B include Antonin Scalia and John Wilkes Booth, who went on to their own fame or infamy. There is also of course John Guare (House of Blue Leaves, and Six Degrees of Separation), John Barrymore (grandfather of Drew for you kids out there) and Eileen Brennan. Oh, and Norah O’Donnell from CBS news. I think M&B is in their 159th or 160th season. But most importantly it was in the bowels of Poulton Hall working on a show where I first met my lovely partner so many years ago.
On a small tangent, is http://leteliertheater.com/ on most people’s radar? I discovered it only while Googling for research for http://www.mvjantzen.com/blog/?p=1348 (my map project)