Avant Bard | theatre on the edge
Our 36th season launches in October 2025 with the 10th annual Scripts in Play festival—a free, gallery-based series of readings that weave contemporary playwrights into dialogue with classic themes. In spring 2026, Two Gentlemen of Killarney charms with live music and an immigrant love-comedy set during the Great Famine, and Ghost Limb delivers a powerful, poetic confrontation of authoritarianism through mythic resonance set in Argentina’s Dirty War.
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Resistance Reading: Tom Stoppard's Every Good Boy Deserves Favour
As part of Avant Bard’s Resistance Readings, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour by Tom Stoppard delivers a sharp, darkly comic indictment of authoritarian power and the manipulation of truth. Set in a Soviet psychiatric institution, the play follows political dissident Alexander Ivanov, who is imprisoned for refusing to confess to crimes he did not commit, alongside a genuinely delusional patient who imagines himself conducting a full symphony orchestra. Blending absurd humor with unsettling realism, the play exposes the cruelty of enforced conformity while celebrating the resilience of conscience, art, and individual freedom in the face of repression.
Sunday, June 21st, 5pm at the Filling Station, 4201 Wilson Blvd Suite 150-160, Arlington, VA
FREE
Food and drink available for purchase