Theatrein 2012. Arena Stage in DC helped revise the musical Next to Normal after it tanked in Off-Broadway venues; afterward, the show garnered several Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize. These success stories are not exceptions, but representative of the quality of theater being produced in DC.Musical theater is part of the vitality of US culture: after all, most people have seen or at least heard of Les Misérables, Wicked, and Phantom of the Opera to name a few.
Many successful Broadway shows have gotten their start in DC, being written and rewritten before making it to New York. Arena Stage in DC helped revise the musical Next to Normal after it tanked in Off-Broadway venues; afterward, the show garnered
Comment [ML5]: I’m not really sure how this fits in with this paragraph. I wonder if it would fit better in the introduction if you discuss why theater is important/why the reader should care that DC has a thriving theater scene in the first place. If people see these names from the beginning, that might remind them that theater is a part of US culture. Comment [CMB6]: I agree that this sentence does not seem to fit into the paragraph. The rest of the paragraph discusses small theaters’ successes, but this sentence focuses on musical theater (a different subset of theatre) and its importance. However, I disagree in part with the comment above because I don’t feel like it fits into the introduction as it is currently written. Comment [ML7]: Could we include a few examples of musicals that were originally written in DC. You include a rewritten example, but it might be interesting to see an original as well.
several Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize.
An Innovative CommunityTranscending BusinessForming Connections
dedication to creating art rather than profit.Even though the sheer community is smaller than New York , its membersthey more than make up for their small numbersit in innovationquality. Bigger theatres are often hesitant to houseHousing new plays and musicals are often risky because they have not previously been front of audiences and are considered risky business ventures. but somebody has to do it.
Comment [CMB4]: It seems odd that we introduce the idea of DC theatre and then backtrack in the first paragraph to discuss smaller theater communities in general only to focus specifically on DC in the next paragraph. I am concerned that this will break up the flow of the article. Perhaps we can rearrange the sections. I have included a suggested rearrangement as version “04_rearranged.”
they avoid Instead of sacrificing
innovation to produce shows strictly for ticket sales. By funding their operations through
Comment [CMB8]: I agree with this comment. I think more examples will help us flesh this paragraph out. At its current length, I am inclined to try to make it part of the previous paragraph. Comment [CMB9]: This heading doesn’t seem to match with this section, which only consists of the paragraph on innovation. I have changed it to one suggestion that I came up with. Comment [CMB10]: According to mw.com, “sheer” used as an adjective is “used to emphasize the large amount, size, or degree of something.” This contradicts the image we have painted so far of DC’s theatre being small. I suggest we delete it or find a different adjective to replace it. Comment [CMB11]: We should modify this pronoun to match the singular nature of its antecedent (community). Comment [CMB12]: The rest of this paragraph seems to discuss innovation rather than quality. One could argue that innovation leads to better quality, but that would require its own paragraph.