‘Ma Rainey’ to Open Round House’s 50th Anniversary Season
By • August 13, 2026 0 448
States Ryan Rilette, artistic director of Bethesda’s Round House Theatre: “One of the things I love most about Round House is that, even as we’ve changed dramatically over 50 years, what drives our work is still the same — a deep commitment to theater, education and our community.”
Toledo’s words in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” which will open Round House’s 50th anniversary season on Sept. 9, come to mind: “Everybody got style. Style ain’t nothing but keeping the same idea from beginning to end.”
Round House’s beginning dates to 1977, when a touring group called Street 70 got a new name and settled into the former Bushey Drive Elementary School. In 2002, when Round House’s current home opened at 4545 East-West Highway, Nelson Pressley gave Washington Post readers a sense of the transformation: “For years the company was a program of the Montgomery County recreation department, performing in a hard-to-find county building in suburban Silver Spring. The only after-theater dining option was a lonely McDonald’s.”
The new building opened with a production of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town,” starring Pat Carroll as the Stage Manager and directed by longtime artistic director Jerry Whiddon, who died last October at age 77.
“We’ve continually evolved to reflect the people we serve, and our programming reflects those changes,” says Rilette, who succeeded Blake Robison in 2012. Executive Director Ed Zakreski came on board four years later. “In that sense, the evolution of Round House and the evolution of our community are deeply intertwined. We’ve grown together, and I think that is one of the greatest accomplishments of our first 50 years.”
The Bethesda auditorium seats up to 350, versus 218 in the one-time school. Round House also operates an education center on Wayne Avenue in Silver Spring. Both are owned by Montgomery County, though the company “privatized” decades ago, gradually shrinking a substantial county budget appropriation.
Round House is one of a remarkable six LORT (League of Resident Theatres) companies in the DMV — the only one in Maryland outside of Baltimore. The others: Arena Stage, Ford’s Theatre, Shakespeare Theatre Company and Studio Theatre in D.C.; and Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virginia.
One way that Round House is marking its golden anniversary is by launching “a new visual identity that beautifully reflects who Round House is now, and that will grow with us as we enter our next 50 years,” says Hannah Grove-DeJarnett, director of marketing and communications. Devised by the prominent design firm Pentagram, the bold logo frames the company’s robin’s-egg-blue name with two vertical lines that, animated, “open and close” like stage curtains.
In addition to “Ma Rainey,” the 2026-27 season includes: Leslye Headland’s “Cult of Love,” directed by Rilette (Nov. 18 to Dec. 27); Alex Lin’s “Chinese Republicans” (Jan. 27 to Feb. 21); the co-world premiere — with Primary Stages in New York — of Beth Hyland’s “Baby Shower Katie,” directed by Jessica Fisch (April 14 to May 9); and Sean Daniels’s “The White Chip” (June 2 to July 3). “Baby Shower Katie” will be presented as part of Round House’s sixth annual Bonnie Hammerschlag National Capital New Play Festival.
Set in a Chicago recording studio in 1927, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” is one of the 10 plays in August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle, two of which, “Fences” and “The Piano Lesson,” won the Pulitzer Prize. Round House’s co-production with Olney Theatre Center, starring Nicole Michelle Haskins as the “Mother of the Blues,” runs through Oct. 11.
Originally directed by Lloyd Richards, the play had its first staged reading at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Connecticut in 1982, opened at the Yale Repertory Theater in April of 1984 and moved to Broadway that October, receiving a 1985 Tony nomination for Best Play. In that production, Charles S. Dutton played Levee the trumpet player and Theresa Merritt played Ma, roles taken in Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s 2020 film adaptation, directed by George C. Wolfe, by Chadwick Boseman and Viola Davis.
The show’s director at Round House is Lili-Anne Brown, former artistic director of Bailiwick Chicago, who is tackling her third play of the cycle after “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” and “Two Trains Running.” In the D.C. area, she directed the Round House-Olney co-production “Fela!” at Olney in 2023, “Fremont Ave” at Arena last fall and “Please Underestimate Me” at Olney last spring.
Besides the five regular-season shows and the Teen Performance Company production of “The Camp Silver Lake Jamboree Massacre” by Naysan Mojgani (March 5 to 7), Round House will present 50 community events. Explains Rilette: “Through 50 for 50, we’re creating as many free opportunities as possible for people to experience Round House in new ways, from classes and backstage experiences to readings of plays from our history that are still relevant and timely.”
He adds: “Our 50th anniversary is really about celebrating our history and opening the doors even wider to our community and inviting people who may never have been to Round House to be part of the celebration.”
