Bethesda’s Round House Theatre
The art of the literary adaptation is one that is fortunately not lost. It’s rather troubling at times to hear about the news that print is dead, and the book as we know it may be gone in another generation. There also seems to be a growing sense that the news of of its death is somewhat exaggerated, and places like the Round House Theatre are there to speak the dreams on the page into three dimensional space. They began over three decades ago in Montgomery County and is one of the illustrious theatres to grace the DC area.
It holds two performance spaces, a 400-seat theatre in Bethesda , and a 150-seat black box in Silver Spring. This gives the residents ample opportunity to see the fruits of the labors of local and international actors perform provocative new work. It’s also quite a boon to the tourists, who can set foot outside of their Bethesda hotels and enjoy an evening of some of the most acclaimed live performance in the area. Their emphases lie in community outreach, and contemporary works of live theatre, and literary adaptation is certainly the thing that keeps its heart beating.
It’s fascinating to see these forms come together, especially here and now. Literary adaptations have always been a ripe form for playwrights, who can simultaneously show their own skill and dexterity, while also giving a story from another form a new re-telling fro the stage. They’re also very exciting for audiences, who enjoy seeing how a familiar idea can be reconstructed before their very eyes. The live element of performance is also crucial here, if not the central event. In a time when it’s becoming more difficult to find places to see great works performed before our very eyes, there are sometimes great treasures to be found right underneath the nose.
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