About Elizabeth Bruce

Elizabeth Bruce, co-founder of Sanctuary Theatre, is an educator, theatre artist, and novelist who has worked with children and artists for over 30 years. She has long led the Multidisciplinary Arts Program at CentroNía, and now serves as Community Arts Producer. She has received grants from the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities and Poets & Writers, Inc., and founded the Women Artists/Women Healing series. Her debut novel, And Silent Left the Place—published by Washington Writers’ Publishing House—received distinctions from the Texas Institute of Letters, ForeWord Magazine, Small Press Distributors, and The Montserrat Review. She has studied with novelists Richard Bausch, John McNally, Lee K. Abbott and Janet Peery; her publishing credits include Paycock Press’ Gravity Dancers, Washington Post, Lines + Stars and others. A member of Playwrights Forum, her scripts have been staged at Adventure Theatre, Washington Ethical Society, Howard University and Sanctuary Theatre, as well as Carpetbag Theatre as the Lucas Award winner. She performed most recently with Solas Nua and Sanctuary at Capital Fringe Festivals, and holds a BA in English from Colorado College.

Theatre Review: ‘Bird in Magic Rain with Tears’ presented by winter guests as part of Nordic Cool 2013 at the Kennedy Center

Huy Le Vo. Photo by Marit Anna Evanger.

“When you lose your parents, you lose your past. When you lose your child, you lose your future.” Such is the devastating truth piercing the lives of the three lost souls in Alan Lucien Øyen and Andrew Wale’s Bird in Magic Rain with Tears by winter guests theatre company, which received its US premiere at [...]

Theatre Review: ‘Race’ at Theatre J

Michael Anthony Williams, Leo Erickson.  Photo by C Stanley Photography.

In Theatre J’s production of David Mamet’s blistering play, Race, the known and the unknown ricochet around the stage faster than a speeding arbitrage. The firm of attorneys Jack Lawson (who is white) and Henry Brown (who is black) has just been approached by a prospective client, the wealthy, white Charles Strickland (played by Leo Erickson), [...]

Theatre Review: ‘The House of the Spirits’ at Gala Hispanic Theatre

Nelson Landrieu, Monica Steuer, Anabel Marcano, Antonio Vargas, and Manolo Santalla (Left to Right). Photo by Lonnie Tague.

Memory as presence. Narrative as place. Pain as protagonist. In Gala Theatre’s visually chimerac production of the play based on Isabelle Allende’s La Casa de los Espiritus/The House of the Spirits, we enter the consciousness of memory. Grey images flicker across seven translucent screens. A staircase beckons. A mantelpiece awaits. A garden with pink flowers [...]

Concert Review: Ladysmith Black Mambazo at the Strathmore Music Center

Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Photo courtesy of The Music Center at Strathmore.

More than fifty years after Joseph Shabalala—then a young farm boy turned factory worker–founded Ladysmith Black Mambazo, this renowned South African a cappella ensemble continues to transport audiences worldwide with its signature brand of soft, sung eloquence.  A blend of two South African musical forms, isicathamiya and its precursor mbube, with Christian gospel music, Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s music [...]

Theatre Review: ‘Tryst’ at Washington Stage Guild

Felipe Cabezas.  Photos by C. Stanley Photography.

On a staged draped in ornate frames, lone objects fill empty spaces, still lifes of what’s to come—here a peacock feather adorns a lady’s hat, there a kettle catches the light, here a majestic Victrola awaits, there a china teapot rests atop a satin cloth.  In Tryst, by Britain’s Karoline Leach, the steady hand of Washington [...]