CiPa’s Best of DC Names Aaron & Cecile Goldman Theater as “Best Theater for a View”

Okay, so you know how in the last post I said lists are stupid? I misspoke. What I meant to say was that lists are stupid unless you happen to be on the list.

The first Washington City Paper Best of DC list in nearly twenty-one years has named the 16th Street J’s Aaron and Cecile Goldman Theater as the venue with the best view. This is no small honor when you consider the building boom of theaters in the past couple of years–Wooly Mammoth, Studio, Shakespeare, Atlas and Signature all have newer spaces. They all have their merits, but our 236-seat theater which begins on the second floor of the building and ends on the third has a rake that guarantees every seat is a good one.

And while the view in the Goldman is great, what it really provides is the perfect balance of intimacy and fourth wall during performances of Theater J or for that matter during concerts, readings and films. Above and beyond that however, is the superb quality of the art that appears on the stage–the best view in the world is worthless if the art isn’t up to scratch.

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.

16th Street J Wins Awards

We’re hardly one to toot our own horn, but we got a nice notice in the mail this week that the Washington DCJCC will receive three awards at the JCC’s of North America’s Biennial Conference. Our Development Department was recognized both for its million dollar annual campaign, and the special January 12, 2007 Celebration of Anniversaries which recognized Arna Meyer Mickelson’s 20 years of service as Executive Director and the celebration of 10 years of the Washington DCJCC at 16th and Q.

We’ve also been recognized for Innovation and Excellence in Programs and Services for our J On Demand series. The series is targeted at young adults, aged 18-35 and programmed by a committee of 16th Street J staff members in that age range. Past events have included an evening with Judah Friedlander and a sneak-preview of The State comedy troupe film The Ten. This month J On Demand presents March Monster Madness, featuring a staged reading of The Playdoh Golem on March 22 featuring Shuligans–the worlds first and worst post-punk Bar Mitzvah band; and An Evening with Max Brooks, author of the Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead and World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War on Monday, March 24.