Annual conference:
Washington, DC, June 17 - 22, 2008

Host hotel: Crystal City Marriott 1999 Jefferson Davis Highway, Arlington VA 22202
Conference Organizer: Brad Hathaway: brad@PotomacStages.com
Read the following description, then click here for a conference brochure and registration form.

With over 70 professional theatres and two million tickets sold annually, the Washington DC Metropolitan Area has emerged as one of the Nation's hottest theatre towns. We will sample the wealth with up to TEN PRODUCTIONS as part of the conference. Every evening, DC area theatre companies will open their doors to ACTA. One highlight among many: we'll enjoy an exclusive session with luminaries John Kander, George Hearn and the legendary Chita Rivera.

This is no 'hotel-bound' conference experience. The BUS & TRUCK TOUR will transport us to the shows, business meetings, panels and presentations held in theaters throughout Washington, DC and the surrounding Virginia and Maryland counties. We will do more than meet the leading lights of DC Area theatre; we will dine with them at affairs held in the venues of Michael Kahn (Shakespeare Theatre), Joy Zinoman (Studio Theatre) and Eric Schaeffer (Signature Theatre), and with Arena Stage's Molly Smith at one of the Washington area's most notable restaurants.

The Washington area boasts some of the newest, most venerable, and most intriguing theaters in the nation. We'll see the architecturally-acclaimed new home of Michael Kahn's Shakespeare Theatre Company, Sidney Harman Hall -- where the louvered African cherry panels allow acoustical tuning of the adaptable stage -- the industrial aesthetic of the recently-built multiple-venue home of Eric Schaeffer's Signature Theatre in Arlington and the recently expanded multi-theater facility of Joy Zinoman's Studio Theatre on DC's revitalized 14th Street corridor. We'll also see the ingeniously reconfigured temporary hall that Molly Smith's Arena Stage occupies in Arlington, while their Mead Center for the American Theatre undergoes renovation and expansion.

Every afternoon there will be special matinees at such locations as the historic Olney Theatre Center and the Round House Theatre in Maryland, the Rosslyn Spectrum in Virginia and the Woolly Mammoth in downtown DC. To give us the chance to see even more of Washington's theaters, there will be meetings and tours at such theaters as the historic National Theatre and The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

The conference hotel will be the Crystal City Marriott in Arlington, Virginia, but we won't be spending a lot of time at the inn -- there's just too much theater to be seen throughout the metro area. Make plans now to join us. Come early and/or stay late: the hotel will honor our special rate so you can take in the monuments. But don't miss June 17-22, an eye opening theatrical experience.

For information, contact Brad Hathaway: brad@PotomacStages.com.