Washington Shakespeare Company
Company logo
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| Formation | 1990 |
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| Type | Theatre group |
| Purpose | raising the stakes, bridging the gaps, and breathing new life into the classics |
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Artistic director(s)
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Tom Prewitt |
| Website | wscavantbard.org |
WSC Avant Bard (commonly known as Avant Bard, and formerly known as Washington Shakespeare Company or simply WSC) is a small, primarily non-Equity theater based in Arlington, VA. The company was founded in 1990 under the name Washington Shakespeare Company; its name was changed to WSC Avant Bard in August 2011. Avant Bard focuses on producing "bold and experimental productions of classic and contemporary works".
WSC Avant Bard began as an Arlington (County) Arts Incubator project in 1990, along with Signature Theatre, New Works Theatre, and Goosebump Theatre. The company’s inaugural production, a sold-out run of Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit in September 1990, was also the inaugural production in the Gunston Arts Center, a former junior high school library which had just been renovated as a performing arts center by the Arlington Department of Parks, Recreation and Community Resources.
The company performed in the Clark Street Playhouse, an abandoned warehouse converted into a black box theater, from 1995 until the end of the 2009-2010 season, when the building was scheduled for demolition to make way for development on the north end of Crystal City. (The demolition of the theater had been "imminent" as early as the 2005-2006 season, but the closure of the building was postponed from year to year.) In the fall of 2010, WSC Avant Bard became the theater-in-residence in Arlington's Artisphere, the former site of the Newseum; however, the company was evicted in December, 2012, in the middle of the 2012-2013 season, when Artisphere decided to restructure the use of its facilities. Since then, the company has staged productions in a number of DC venues, including Theatre on the Run, managed by the Arlington (County) Cultural Affairs Division; the Callan Theatre on the campus of the Catholic University of America; and the Gilbert C. Eastman Studio Theatre on the campus of Gallaudet University.
WSC Avant Bard has had three Artistic Directors. The first, Brian Hemmingsen, was Artistic Director from 1990 until 1996. Christopher Henley, who was also one of the founding members of the company, was Artistic Director from 1996 until February, 2013. Tom Prewitt is the current Artistic Director. The first play which Prewitt directed as Artistic Director was Pinter's No Man's Land, with Hemmingsen and Henley in the lead roles (Hirst and Spooner, respectively).
Over the course of several months in 2005, the company presented Bard-37: Our Canon Cabaret as a celebration of the company's fifteenth season. Each of Shakespeare's plays was given a reading, in chronological order. Portions of Hamlet were read in Klingon, the first of WSC Avant Bard's forays into presenting Shakespeare "in the original language."
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