BOOK REVIEWMaking the Scene: Theater on 14th Street in the 1980s by Amy SchmidtWashington, DC: SCENA Press, 2026By Blair A. Ruble During the 1980s, a vibrant community of seven independent theaters took shape along Washington, DC’s 14th Street NW between P and V Streets — known as “Theater Alley.” Author Amy Schmidt tracks the rise and fall of these emerging theaters in a new book entitled Making the Scene: Theater on 14th Street in the 1980s. It is an important cautionary tale about the arts in a time of unbridled gentrification. Schmidt, the co-founder and managing director emeritus of DC’s SCENA Theatre, compiles histories, reminiscences, interviews, and personal accounts, all tied together by her own astute writing, to take us back to a seminal era that was a major milestone in the development of DC theater. As Schmidt puts it, “The 14th Street theater scene left in its wake a generation of well-trained professionals who would help boost Washington into one of the nation’s leading theater towns.”  What it did not leave were theater companies. Of the seven theaters along the corridor during the 1980s, only one — Studio Theatre — remains on 14th Street in a more establishmentarian form. Woolly Mammoth continues, but in the Penn Quarter neighborhood, far away from the world of 1980s 14th Street. Source Theatre lasted — Schmidt details its evolution in the book — until recently. The other four theaters closed long ago as Theater Alley, like much of the original L’Enfant Plan for the city, became gentrified beyond recognition. Book jacket courtesy of Amy Schmidt The story begins with rats, as detailed in Pittsburgh artist Brian McCall’s wonderful drawings throughout the book. The 14th Street corridor recovered excruciatingly slowly after the 1968 assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the ensuing civil uprising. More rats than passersby inhabited the vacant, often barely usable buildings. The street remained a toxic cocktail of abandoned storefronts, empty warehouses, and, interestingly, long-shuttered auto dealerships that offered just the right kind of space for theaters. Like the earlier London Fringe and New York Off-Broadway scenes, this dilapidated atmosphere made it hip for baby boomers coming of age with just enough money to spend on the arts. Cheap, broken-down, with the added frisson of criminal threat, 14th Street was ready to be claimed.  The story of how these theaters came into being and then disappeared is replete with larger-than-life characters and theater companies worth remembering. Schmidt conducted interviews and drew on rich archival material, including previously published interviews with nearly two dozen key figures, including actress Nancy Robinette, director Verna Kerans, Source Theatre founder Bart Whiteman, scenic designer Joe Antone, Theatre du Jour founding director B. Stanley, Studio Theatre founder Joy Zinoman, Woolly Mammoth founder Howard Shalwitz, and SCENA Theatre producing manager Marilyn Berry.  Throughout the book, Schmidt offers her own recollections and perspectives on the scene, bringing the era to life with interesting anecdotes. Her account of Source Theatre’s adventures with then-Yugoslav theater-makers is especially compelling. The story begins with “a meeting that almost didn’t happen” at the Smithsonian Museum of American History. Source Theatre leaders met with “a bunch of excitable Yugoslavs” who were in town promoting the Zagreb Theatre Company’s traveling production of The Liberation of Skopje. Collaborative exchanges and joint productions then followed in DC and across the Balkans as that region’s political regimes fell apart, leading to experimentation on and off stage.  Schmidt indulged her pet peeves in an entertaining chapter titled “Critiquing the Critics.” Beyond personal venting, the chapter identifies one of the DC theater scene’s most enduring problems: The Washington Post. She explains that “the preeminence of the Post invested its chief drama critic with enormous influence over the general well-being and development of Washington theaters.” (Readers will appreciate the irony in Schmidt’s complaint, given the fact that the Post now covers relatively little local theater.) Throughout the 1980s, the Post’s lead theater critic was David Richards. Then, as now, the Post favored powerful local and national institutions, guaranteeing fulsome exposure for shows at Arena Stage, the National, and the Kennedy Center. Richards also appreciated Woolly Mammoth’s quirkiness. However, as Schmidt writes, “Dave Richards did not get 14th Street.” He eventually labeled the scene as “marginal,” hardly a moniker of praise. The 14th Street scene, however, came to an end because of economics rather than a lack of critical acclaim. Real estate developers realized that a potential bonanza lay in an area full of historic charm that was easily accessible to major employment centers downtown. The resulting rent increases — at times combined with mismanagement — brought the curtain down on Theater Alley. Schmidt’s work casts light on another critical failure of the scene’s originators: white theater leaders’ exclusion of the predominantly Black residents of the 14th Street NW neighborhood. Readers unfamiliar with Washington in the 1980s will have scant way of knowing that both the city and the immediate 14th Street neighborhood were well over a majority African American. Black Washington appears here and there in passing historical references. That past relates to the emergence of Theater Alley, it seems, only insofar as the civil unrest of 1968 left behind an area shattered by communal violence and official neglect. Two white-led theaters, Arena Stage, through its community engagement outlet Living Theater, and Woolly Mammoth stand apart in their sustained efforts to engage their immediate neighbors.  The absence of African Americans from this story is not an aberration. DC’s cultural scene appears less than the sum of its parts due to the lingering historical presence of Jim Crow customs. Many of Washington, DC’s most profound contributions to American and international culture emerged from the work of Black residents, as historian Constance McLaughlin Green outlined in the 1967 book The Secret City. But even as late as the 1980s, the achievements of Black Washingtonians remained of little interest to their white theater-producing neighbors, no matter how “hip” those neighbors may have been. Schmidt situates the 14th Street scene within the broader historical context of Washington, DC’s development as a major theatrical hub. She outlines the rise of DC theaters throughout the 1960s, with small companies coming and going. This churning produced a creative wetland that generated nutrients, enabling an increasingly robust theater community to take root. The rise and fall of 14th Street’s Theater Alley contributed to the dynamic growth that followed and remains a vital part of Washington, DC’s current standing among the nation’s leading theater towns. The history of Washington’s theater scene deserves attention so that the past can empower the future. Fortunately, new writing is emerging that tells the story. Just this year, Julianne Brienza’s Book of Fringe chronicled the rise and fall of DC’s Capital Fringe Festival. Schmidt’s Making the Scene adds another valuable work to a growing literature on the history of Washington, DC, theater. As Schmidt’s book makes clear, theater is important to Washington, DC, and Washington, DC, has become important to theater. ___ Blair A. Ruble is the author of Washington’s U Street: A Biography (2010) and Proclaiming Presence from the Washington Stage (2021). ___ Making the Scene: Theater on 14th Street in the 1980s is available in a signed limited edition of 500 books by mail order ($50 plus $7 for packing and shipping, payment by check, cash, or money order only) from Amy Schmidt, SCENA Press, PO Box 1212, Columbus, NC 28722. A book launch will take place on May 11, 2026, from 7 to 9 pm at the Arts Club of Washington, 2017 I Street NW, Washington, DC. RSVP to [email protected] is appreciated. Everyone is welcome! ___ SEE ALSO:OK, now I’m going to extol ‘Book of Fringe’ by Julianne Brienza(review by John Stoltenberg, January 5, 2026)How 20th-century DC theater helped African Americans take center stage(review of Blair A. Ruble’s Proclaiming Presence from the Washington Stage by Robert Michael Oliver, February 5, 2022) ...read more read less