History
[LeRoi Jones’ “Dutchman” produced at the Back Alley Theater, 1970.]
The Back Alley Theater was born in 1967 in the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Naomi Eftis started the theater in the garage in the alley behind her house at 1929 Lamont St., NW. She started it because she wanted to give kids in the neighborhood the experience of theater.
The theater’s first production was a play Eftis wrote, “The End of the Rainbow,” that starred her daughter and two other neighborhood children. Soon after that, a group of neighborhood boys who called themselves the Skulls starting coming around the garage. “The boys began to help paint and do odd jobs, but weren’t really enticed into the group until Mrs. Eftis hit upon the idea of casting their ringleader, Fishyface, into a lead part,” wrote a reporter in 1968. “The problem then was what kind of a play could they do. ‘The kids simply couldn’t read, so we couldn’t give them a formal script,’ [Eftis explained]. They improvised and let the boys work out their own play which they called, ‘A Life of Crime.’ ‘It was a reenactment of everything they knew,’ said Mrs. Eftis.”
In 1968, the theater moved into St. Stephen’s Church, at 16th and Newton Streets, NW. They then moved briefly into the Church of the Reformation on East Capitol Street on Capitol Hill, before settling in 1969 into permanent quarters in the basement of an apartment building at 1365 Kennedy Street, NW.
The theater operated out of 1365 Kennedy Street for about twenty years. Over the course of that time, it staged dozens of productions, including both original shows and works written by acclaimed playwrights like Lorraine Hansberry, LeRoi Jones, and Miguel Piñero. It staged shows in D.C. public schools, and eventually opened up a second, downtown theater space at 617 F St. NW. The theater strove to eliminate racial barriers in its casting, and worked to push social boundaries. Teatro Doble, a bilingual children’s theater that had its start as part of the Back Alley Theater, later gave birth to GALA Hispanic Theater, now housed in the Tivoli Theater in Columbia Heights.
In 1981, the tenants who lived in the apartment building that housed the Back Alley Theater joined forces to collectively purchase their building from their landlord, forming the Madison Terrace Cooperative. Thirty years later, in 2011, Madison Terrace Cooperative members began to resurrect the Back Alley Theater for musical performances and community events.
History
[LeRoi Jones’ “Dutchman” produced at the Back Alley Theater, 1970.]
The Back Alley Theater was born in 1967 in the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Naomi Eftis started the theater in the garage in the alley behind her house at 1929 Lamont St., NW. She started it because she wanted to give kids in the neighborhood the experience of theater.
The theater’s first production was a play Eftis wrote, “The End of the Rainbow,” that starred her daughter and two other neighborhood children. Soon after that, a group of neighborhood boys who called themselves the Skulls starting coming around the garage. “The boys began to help paint and do odd jobs, but weren’t really enticed into the group until Mrs. Eftis hit upon the idea of casting their ringleader, Fishyface, into a lead part,” wrote a reporter in 1968. “The problem then was what kind of a play could they do. ‘The kids simply couldn’t read, so we couldn’t give them a formal script,’ [Eftis explained]. They improvised and let the boys work out their own play which they called, ‘A Life of Crime.’ ‘It was a reenactment of everything they knew,’ said Mrs. Eftis.”
In 1968, the theater moved into St. Stephen’s Church, at 16th and Newton Streets, NW. They then moved briefly into the Church of the Reformation on East Capitol Street on Capitol Hill, before settling in 1969 into permanent quarters in the basement of an apartment building at 1365 Kennedy Street, NW.
The theater operated out of 1365 Kennedy Street for about twenty years. Over the course of that time, it staged dozens of productions, including both original shows and works written by acclaimed playwrights like Lorraine Hansberry, LeRoi Jones, and Miguel Piñero. It staged shows in D.C. public schools, and eventually opened up a second, downtown theater space at 617 F St. NW. The theater strove to eliminate racial barriers in its casting, and worked to push social boundaries. Teatro Doble, a bilingual children’s theater that had its start as part of the Back Alley Theater, later gave birth to GALA Hispanic Theater, now housed in the Tivoli Theater in Columbia Heights.
In 1981, the tenants who lived in the apartment building that housed the Back Alley Theater joined forces to collectively purchase their building from their landlord, forming the Madison Terrace Cooperative. Thirty years later, in 2011, Madison Terrace Cooperative members began to resurrect the Back Alley Theater for musical performances and community events.
