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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Ionesco's Rhinoceros adapted by Tyler Herman Jan. 18, 2025, 2pm at The Filling Station
In Rhinoceros, Ionesco depicts a human being witnessing everyone around them turning into rhinoceroses one by one—a representation of the ideological conformism Ionesco witnessed during the rise of the fascist Iron Guard in Romania in the 1930s. Tyler Herman's adaptation vividly and humorously brings to the stage the various forms of the fascistic conformity of our own time that threaten the future of democracy and rule of law.
Resistance Readings are Free! Food & drink available for purchase!
Resistance Cabaret: New Works Inspired by Shakespeare
Feb. 22, 2pm, The Filling Station, Arlington, VA
Avant Bard, in partnership with the DC Bushwick Book Club, presents new works of resistance inspired by Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona, including a sneak peak of songs from Avant Bard's March production of Two Gentlemen of Killarney.
Resistance Readings are Free! Food and Drink is available for purchase.
Two Gentlemen of Killarney adapted & directed by Seamus Miller
March 5 - 28, 2026 I Gunston Arts Center
A timely immigrant love-comedy with music. Adapted from Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona, the story follows friends turned-rivals from Ireland to America during the Great Famine, blending Shakespeare's wit with traditional Irish tunes and delivering a dynamic celebration of love, immigration, and humanity.
Ghost Limb by Marisela Trevino Orta and directed by Elena Velasco
April 30 - May 23, 2026 I Gunston Arts Center
A timely and haunting examination of authoritarianism set during Argentina's Dirty War that draws poetic inspiration from the Persephone and Demeter myth. When Consuelo's son is "disappeared" by the military, she discovers a psychic link between her injured arm and her tortured child-and races to find him before it's too late.