Round House Theatre refuses to coddle its audience

In her 34 years at Bethesda’s Round House Theatre, Danisha Crosby has worked as an intern, teacher, stage manager, associate producer, production manager, public relations manager and — for the last decade — director of education.

She’s seen the theater through new leaders and building upgrades and community partnerships.

“Things have changed,” Crosby said. “And yet everything important has somehow stayed the same.”

Next month marks Round House’s 50th anniversary season, which opens with a production of August Wilson’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” in partnership with Olney Theatre. The season lineup includes 50 free events and classes for youth and adult performers. All of its programming, its leadership said, is crucial to Round House’s longtime mission to entertain and educate.

“This is the smartest audience in America, period,” said Artistic Director Ryan Rilette, who just celebrated his 14th year at Round House and previously worked at theaters in New York, the Bay Area and New Orleans.

Round House has developed a reputation for producing thought-provoking, complex yet entertaining shows, and it has thrived on this approach. It’s doubling down on it for the decades to come.

“If I did some of the work that is considered ‘staples’ at regional theaters across most of the country, my audience would scoff at it and turn away,” Rilette said. “If it’s not intellectually challenging in some way, if the play doesn’t provoke you into a larger discussion about something ... it doesn’t matter how good the production is. Those are the things that really keep people coming back. They want to have conversations.”

50 years of theater history

Over half a century ago, Round House founder June Allen “literally put out an ad and said, ‘If you want to take an acting class, come meet me under a tree,’” Rilette said.

She drummed up so much interest that Rockville leaders suggested making it part of the city’s programming before turning it into a countywide recreation program called Street ’70 the following year.

Its first production, “Godspell,” debuted in 1977. The “Round House” moniker stemmed from the company’s first location, the circular former Bushey Drive Elementary School in Silver Spring.

A quarter-century later Round House Theatre moved to its current location in Bethesda, but it retained offices, rehearsal and classroom spaces in Silver Spring. Renovations in 2019 brought the theater to its current 400-seat, curved thrust stage setup.

In recent years, Round House has earned respect nationally for its an annual commissioning program that hosts workshops and puts on full productions of new shows, such as last season’s one-man magic show and autobiographical play, “Nothing Up My Sleeve.”

“I have, like, 20 emails from different artistic directors around the country who are interested in us bringing the show to them,” Rilette said.

Round House has industry recognition to show for its first half century, collecting 253 Helen Hayes Awards nominations and 60 wins since 1984, the year the Greater Washington theater awards program was founded.

The theater is often pitted against another in Montgomery County, Olney Theatre Center, at the annual awards show. Though it might seem natural for two of the county’s theater powerhouses to be rivals, they have fostered a decade-long partnership in which they alternate hosting coproductions.

That allows them to tackle larger productions that they couldn’t do on their own, Rillete said.

“You essentially go from having two $10 million theaters to a $20 million theater producing the thing,” he said. “So it has been incredibly fruitful.”

As two of the most notable theater production companies in Montgomery County, they found that those who lived around Bethesda usually attended shows at Round House and D.C. venues. Those closer to Olney would visit Olney Theatre and D.C. venues.

Now the two have “cross-pollinated” and found major supporters and donors who previously frequented only one of the two theaters.

“Jason [Loewith, Olney Theatre’s artistic director] and I both come from the ethos that it doesn’t make sense to fight each other over a small piece of pie,” Rilette said. “We should work together to build a bigger pie so that we can both have a nice, big slice ourselves.”

Fostering the next theater generation

Since Allen’s first theater class under that tree, education has been at the forefront of Round House’s mission: to teach the next generation to make theater and love it.

The theater offers free play tickets to students 13 through college. As part of this year’s anniversary, it’s offering 50 free community events, from play readings to backstage tours

The education department also hosts summer camps, a teen improv and comedy group, Montgomery County Public Schools after-school programs and the Teen Performance Company, which welcomes a select number of local high school students not only to perform but to helm their own productions.

“I don’t know any other program in the country that does that level of mentorship and freedom and autonomy for high schoolers,” said Kari Barclay, a Richard Montgomery High School alum who spent three years performing, directing and working production in the TPC program. “It’s such a professional process.”

Barclay went on to study theater at Duke University and Stanford University. They now direct and write plays, and teach theater history at Oberlin College.

Not everyone from the teen company heads toward a theater career. But the goal of educational programs at Round House, Crosby said, is more broadly to teach students life skills: creativity, collaboration and confidence.

“We believe in creating theater for everyone,” Rilette said. “What that means is everything from lowering barriers to ticket prices to trying to make sure that anyone, regardless of their race, their gender, their ethnicity, their religious beliefs, whatever, that they can come in at some point over a three- to five-year period and see themselves and their family on our stage. We want to really feel like a theater for the community.”