Comments on An Open Letter to Washington Ensemble Theatre

For the past few years a lot of fringe theatres have been including at least one Monday "Industry Night" slot to their runs (in professional theatre, Monday is traditionally the one day off per week for performers), so this is not a completely new idea, although adding Mondays throughout the run definitely is.

Annex Theatre will also be bucking the trend with their next three shows, all of which will be performing on Tuesday & Wednesday evenings, rather than the more traditional (Thursday)Friday/Saturday theatre scheduling.

A lot of theatres that run holiday shows run the whole month of December, including Mondays. Speaking as a performer, I hated that. For a working person who does theatre as a hobby or an avocation, it's a colossal pain to have a show after work, for a lot of reasons, not least of which is that an emergency at work all of a sudden becomes the end of the fricking world - because you can't stay late to fix it and miss a show. Most community theatres don't have understudies, and almost none of them pay the performers anything except a couple of comp tickets.

Capitol Hill Arts Center frequently has theatre events on Monday nights. Every first Monday of the month, CHAC presents'On the Table',a live play reading. Balagan Theatre also had an Industry Night this past Monday 11/27 for 'A Dangerous Age'