Synetic Theater Announces Season 23: The Exiles
After recently closing the final season of performances at the Crystal City venue where it has presented award-winning theater since 2010, Synetic Theater is pleased to announce a new season of physical theater productions to take place in multiple locations throughout DC, MD, and VA. It is a year of transition for the company, and thanks to partnerships with fellow theater companies and the support of Arlington County, Synetic can continue to provide world-class physical theater to audiences around the Washington Metro Area.
Synetic opens the season with a remount of its inaugural production, the 2001 award-winning Hamlet…the Rest is Silence. This first “wordless Shakespeare” offering put Synetic on the map, as The Washington Post called it “Hamlet as you know it in your bones.” The production won Helen Hayes Awards for Outstanding Production, Outstanding Director, and Outstanding Choreography in 2003, as well as Outstanding Ensemble for the 2007 remount. Vato Tsikurishvili steps into the role of Hamlet as the great story unfolds once more, promising a visceral and unforgettable theatrical experience. Hamlet…the Rest is Silence opens in Arlington at the stunning 750-seat Thomas Jefferson Community Theater on September 28th and runs for 10 performances through October 13th.
The season will continue in Arlington with The Little Comedies, a 45-minute romp running from December 19th-January 5th at Theatre-on-the-Run next door to Shirlington Village. Expressed through body and facial masks, pantomime, and dazzling choreography, this reinvention of a Synetic classic, “The Music Box,” treats audiences of all ages to a series of enchanting, wordless vignettes set to mesmerizing music. Watch as a janitor and businessman discover a magical mask that transforms their lives and two cowboys in the Wild West who hilariously attempt to tame a loose bull. The Little Comedies has also entered our touring and outreach catalog for 2024-25.
In March 2025, Synetic premieres The Immigrant, a new project from Paata and Irina Tsikurishvili based on the 1918 silent cinema classic, which recently entered into the public domain, originally directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin. It is a simple, comedic story about the arrival of a new immigrant in turn of the 20th-century New York, with all the trials, adventure, mishaps, and high hopes of the American immigrant journey. As a theater founded, led, and populated by immigrant artists, Synetic considers this the perfect time and opportunity to adapt, expand, and develop its own version of the story, bringing its adept physical comedy, innovative style, and great heart to the legacy of this cinema classic. The work is being produced in association with Theater J, enabling Synetic to bring its work back into the District of Columbia for the first time since 2013. The Immigrant opens in Arlington at the Thomas Jefferson Community Theater on March 14th, where it will run until March 23rd. The show then moves to Theater J, where it runs from April 11th to April 27th.
A fourth show, Synetic’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is being presented as part of Olney Theatre Center’s 2024-25 season, bringing this flagship wordless Shakespeare production to Maryland audiences at one of the DC Metro Area’s most renowned institutions. Since its debut in 2009 at the Kennedy Center Family Theater, A Midsummer Night’s Dreamhas been Synetic’s most popular work. Full of magic, romance, silent comedy, and romantic mishaps, Trey Graham wrote in the Washington City Paper of its inaugural production “It’s audacious, it’s presumptuous…and as executed on the sunny Sunday afternoon of the show’s opening weekend, it worked so exquisitely it left me in tears.” The show opens at Olney’s Roberts Main Stage Theater on July 17th, 2025 and closes August 10th.
Synetic will also continue its much-loved and respected Teen Ensemble program, which provides promising teens the opportunity to follow in the footsteps of the professional troupe and train, rehearse, and perform its own version of Hamlet…the Rest is Silence. Synetic’s Teen Program begins in September 2024 and presents Hamlet at Gunston Arts Center, April 3rd-5th, 2025.
Synetic continues to explore additional opportunities to bring its work to audiences throughout the region in 2024-25, and is in talks with several other area theaters and performing arts centers about collaborations over the next several years. The company is hard at work securing a new “headquarters” space, “The Factory,” where it will rehearse, train, educate, and showcase the future of physical theatre in conjunction with wider partnerships and touring both regionally and beyond.
Synetic is also announcing a $20,000 matching grant from Amazon, providing a 1-to-1 match to donors who give in support of Synetic’s new season and journey to a new home. Despite the tremendous challenges to American theater as a whole and Synetic specifically, the company believes that in this age of distraction and polarization, the effort to bring together audiences with living, breathing artists to tell great stories in great spaces is more important than it ever has been.