A Murder Shocks D.C.’s Theater Community — and Many Others

Every day in Washington, D.C., you can discover almost by accident just how small a city this town is, and how large and tightly knit is its theater community — artists, actors, performers, designers and creators — and how easily it is wounded.

When Tricia Lynn McCauley, 46, for years a popular member of that community as an actor, failed to arrive at a Christmas gathering hosted by Bill Largess, artistic director of the Washington Stage Guild, where McCauley had appeared frequently, her friends began to worry.

They had, as it turned out, good reason. Her car was spotted by another member of the theater community, Jonathan Padgett, who knew McCauley. He saw the car near Dupont Circle around midnight, while walking his dog, and encountered a man in the driver’s seat.

The man turned out to be Adrian Duane Johnson, whom police found later with the car, which contained the slain body of McCauley. Johnson was arrested and arraigned on murder charges.

The D.C. theater community, alerted by her brother, Brian, reacted with shock and horror as details emerged later. “Tricia is gone, they have found her body,” Brian McCauley announced. “Thank you for all your work, support and love. To all of her DC family, I know she truly thought of you that way, thank you for being there for all these years. Hang on to each other.”

Almost immediately, there were notices of vigils for Tricia McCauley, who was also an herbalist, who taught yoga and gardened, in addition to her acting work. Stunned and angry friends appeared at Johnson’s court appearance.

The story appeared all over the internet, social media and major news outlets, including TMZ, the Washington Post and local television stations. McCauley, if you look at her resume, accumulated a record of diverse roles in Washington and elsewhere. But judging by the response on social media — where tributes to her life and career popped up like sad, touching songs and odes to her life from other actors (Dawn Ursula), media members (Joel Markowitz of DC Metro Theater Arts) and longtime friends like Michael Dove, artistic director of Forum Theatre, and Ari Roth, artistic director of Mosaic Theater — she also accumulated an uncommonly large number of friends who were admirers and appreciators of a spirited woman who did not lack in empathy, courage or talent.

Her resume includes a nutshell description of a professional life: Tricia McCauley, AEA-SAG-AFTRA, DC resident, 5’ 2 1/4”, size 4. But if you look at pictures from her stage roles, or her portraits, you can pick up some of that almost breathless spirit and impact she had on others. Roth, quoted in the Washington Post, said, “she radiated light and fierce determination.” McCauley appeared in “The Last Seder” when he was artistic director at Theater J.

In Washington, she shone especially at Washington Stage Guild, a longtime fixture of D.C’s large and still expanding theater world, specializing in plays by the likes of George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde, presenting not so much an urban face but plays that that have a certain — often comic — urbanity about them.

She occupied the stage as people named Ursula, Maria Wislak, Barbara Undershaft (from “Major Barbara”), Ellie Dunn, Julia Craven, Lucasta Angel, Tovah, Edward/Victoria, Indra’s Daughter, Cassandra and Mrs. Primm, appearing in, among others: “Anna Karenina,” “Elling,” “Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime,” “The Memory of Water,” “Heartbreak House,” “The Philanderer,” “Cloud 9,” “The Last Seder,” “Hay Fever,” “Play It Again, Sam,” “Lyle the Crocodile,” “Women of Troy” and “Oleanna.” Mamet, the Greeks, Coward, Woody and Shaw, good company all.

She did all the work (including a part as stand-in for Jenna Dewan Tatum in the film “Step Up”) that actors do: industrial films, television series, voiceovers, advertising and such. But a big part of her life was the nurturing role of making, creating and teaching in the world of natural food, yoga and herbalism.

The theater community is all about memory. Even in the midst of the horror of a brutal murder — sure to become a cautionary tale about safety and crime in the city and how tragedies often occur in the way people’s paths cross, unexpected, unplanned, leaving survivors and observers — it is insistent upon us that we remember McCauley, shining onstage, in person, in the garden, as a friend.