Revada Arts Center, which opens on Friday, is a multidisciplinary arts hub that houses the theater company Theater Alliance, the opera company IN Series, and a new arthouse cinema, 4EYE Film Center. Located in Southwest DC not far from the Wharf, the new space is outfitted with a black box theater and a small movie theater, along with an artist co-working area (with a cafe by day and bar by night), rehearsal space, and more.
After losing its home of 13 years in Anacostia, the nonprofit Theater Alliance came to the new building—at 340 Maple Drive, SW—through Mayor Muriel Bowser’s Pop-Up Permitting pilot program, which allows organizations to more easily make use of vacant storefronts. The space was raw—the unbuilt ground floor of an apartment complex, with no bathrooms, no running water, and insufficient electricity. “It was truly just a big cement box,” says Shanara Gabrielle, executive artistic director of Theater Alliance.
Theater Alliance held a series of pop-up performances in the venue and started to consider whether it could become their long-term home. Gabrielle began speaking with Dan Logan, chairman of arts group the Revada Foundation, about how a new space for Theater Alliance might serve more than one organization, decreasing the financial burden by sharing resources with other nonprofit arts groups.
They ended up getting the funds (the Revada Foundation was the largest donor), and they enlisted the two other nonprofits to share the location. IN Series has been staging adventurous opera projects since 1982, while 4EYE is a new operation run by former Motion Picture Association executive Emily Lenzner.
Opening weekend will feature a multi-day launch festival, with a ribbon cutting, acting classes, movie singalongs, and other activities. Their fall offerings will include Theater Alliance’s staging of Cold War Choir Practice, a comedy (with music) about a Black girl grappling with the implications of the Cold War. 4EYE will open with their “Made in DC” series–films shot in DC or about DC, such as All the President’s Men. And IN Series will present THE MAKADO, a reimagining of the Victorian comic opera The Mikado, set in the “great golden gilded oval office.”
