Theater J Wins Mayor’s Arts Award for Excellence in an Artistic Discipline

(clockwise from top: Catherine Frels, Ari Roth, Hannah Hessel, Simone Zvi, Delia Taylor, Patricia Jenson, Rebecca Ende)

Congratulations to Ari Roth, Artistic Director of Theater J along with the entire staff for receiving the Mayor’s Arts Award for Excellence in an Artistic Discipline last night in a ceremony at the Kennedy Center’s Millenium Stage. The entire ceremony should be available for online viewing by clicking here.

Recounting the evening, Ari Roth writes on the Theater J Blog:

As had been the custom at other events at the Kennedy Center, we were happy to be included but not planning on making any speeches. So we were delighted, thrilled, taken aback, and absolutely breathless in bounding up to the stage to make a 60 second thank you. Our award was immediately followed by the presentation of a 7 minutes scene from our production of THE PRICE with Robert Prosky receiving a rousing ovation after being called “a living legend” by the wonderful Emcee, Jim Vance, 40 years on the job as anchor of the local NBC news broadcast. The first half hour of the Awards ceremony amounted to an extended commercial for Theater J, as the the excellent house band, headed up by Glenn Pearson, a longtime DC institution himself, also got a shout out since our production of DAVID IN SHADOW AND LIGHT, our upcoming world premiere musical, will feature Glenn’s son, the rising star Matt Pearson, as our young King David.

You can read the rest of his post here. And you can help Theater J win its next award by voting it Best Theater in the Washington City Paper’s Best of DC Awards.