After unexpectedly losing its longtime Anacostia home last year, a local theater company found what it thought would be a temporary respite on the desolate ground floor of an apartment complex near the Wharf.
Now one year, five shows and over 5,000 patrons later, Theater Alliance is making the move permanent.
The company signed a 15-year lease, with optional extensions for a total of up to 29 years, to use and renovate more than 9,000 square feet of space in the Westerly, a mixed-use development owned by Hoffman & Associates. Plans for the $4.5 million project include two fully equipped theaters totaling a 200-seat capacity, along with a rehearsal hall, reception space, scene shop and civic engagement center. As of last Friday, the company has raised 80 percent of the needed funding.
Construction will start in March and is expected to finish in the fall for what Theater Alliance’s executive artistic director, Shanara Gabrielle, called a multidisciplinary arts hub.
“Over the last year, we’ve started to really stretch into having a much wider reach without losing our hyperlocal audience. That’s kind of a sweet spot for the Theater Alliance,” Gabrielle said. “People are longing to come into a space with other humans.”
The alliance was founded in 1993 as a community theater and transitioned to a professional company in 2001. Gabrielle said the company puts on socially conscious, thought-provoking work rooted in community and storytelling.
Theater Alliance moved into the Westerly a few months after being shut out of the Anacostia Playhouse, which was facing eviction, in April 2024.
The Westerly was an empty shell with limited electricity and no running water. For the past year, patrons have been using the bathroom at a preschool next door. Theater Alliance dropped in its own stage, lighting and seats at the site to make due with the temporary set up.
Coming off of a “scrappy year,” Gabrielle said, Theater Alliance owes some of its success to strong community partnerships.
Hoffman & Associates President Maria Thompson said Theater Alliance has cemented the Westerly as a cultural anchor of Southwest Washington where there’s a shared vision of an inclusive, creative and community-driven neighborhood that brings people together.
Theater Alliance’s expansion comes just weeks after CulturalDC, another midsize arts organization, announced it would sunset operations after 27 years in business, citing financial challenges. In the midst of money problems, many small theaters have turned to the government for support. The D.C. government spends more on the arts per capita than any state, according to the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies. But it isn’t just small companies asking for help, which makes the race for resources that much tighter.
Gabrielle said D.C. needs a strong small-business arts economy to keep the overall scene thriving. That’s why, she said, Theater Alliance is bringing in other local arts nonprofits to cohabitate in the building. The company is in final negotiations with IN Series, an opera theater, and 4Eye Film, a community cinema group.
“We need to create real solidarity between organizations — make sure that we’re sustainable, make sure that we’re sharing resources,” Gabrielle said.
Gabrielle praised D.C.’s pop-up permit program, which fast-tracks the process for organizations to occupy empty development spaces for up to one year, and credited the program with securing Theater Alliance’s new permanent home. Since the program launched in April 2024, the D.C. Department of Buildings has received over 100 inquiries and approved 15 permits, with several more pending, according to the department.
D.C. Department of Buildings Director Brian Hanlon said that Theater Alliance is a great example of the pop-up permit program working as it should to remove barriers and support long-term economic growth.
“As the Theater Alliance has shown, [pop-up permits] can help the creative community find the right space to house theater and other performances. And as we see, what initially may be a temporary space may become a permanent home,” he said in a statement.
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