Are you watching?

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.