When Hana Met Edgar, and Other Stories of Arena Stage
Two things (and more) can be true at once...
You’ve seen the social-media buzz, the breaking-news story in The New York Times, maybe even the follow-ons at DC Theater Arts and NOTUS. Hard to have missed the news, in other words, but if by some chance you did: Hana S. Sharif departed Arena Stage on June 30, three years into a tenure as artistic director that was meant to last at least five.
My own take on the transition was published in Washingtonian this week, pulling together allegations and observations from roughly a dozen conversations with Arena insiders.
Backstage tales have continued to surface since I filed that piece, too.
Some of the questions I’d still like to ask are for people like Catherine Guttman-McCabe, who chaired both the Arena board and the search committee that hired Sharif, and Karen Zacarias, who served on that search committee and (presumably) worked closely with Sharif when she staged Zacarias’ adaptation of The Age of Innocence in 2025.
I’d also very much like to talk on the record to someone else who’s had their hands on Arena Stage’s books, because my very strong instinct is that the last shoe hasn’t dropped in that department.
For the moment, I’m sitting back to catch up with other stories. But y’all know how to reach me.