Date: August 18, 2022
Media Contact: Curtis Prather
Tel:(703) 461-1782
Email: cprather@vts.edu
[Alexandria, Va.] Virginia Theological Seminary (VTS) is proud to announce the World Premiere of the play Dust, October 13-16, 2022. Commissioned by VTS to observe the Seminary’s historic bicentenary, Dust is a powerful, humorous, and moving 200-year journey through the eyes and voices of those who lived that history.
Written by acclaimed London’s West End stage playwright Non Vaughan-O’Hagan and directed by the award-winning Ryan Rilette of the Round House Theatre, with a professional cast filled with many familiar faces within the DC theatre scene, Dust will be performed outdoors at 7:00 p.m. every evening in the VTS Chapel Garden. In the event of poor weather elements, the performance will be held in the Lettie Pate Auditorium on the Seminary campus.
“I think we are on the cusp of a new genre,” said the Very Rev. Ian S. Markham, Ph.D., dean and president of VTS. “I think this institution is showing a way to tell the story of the past. Telling the story of the past is one of the hardest things for American institutions to do, because how do you tell the story of the past that’s full, where everything is acknowledged. So, we are making our bicentenary by telling the story of the past in its completeness. “
A magical mystery tour through the history of Virginia Theological Seminary, Dust celebrates and explores 200 years of forming seminarians. With visits from some of the important characters who helped to establish and shape this institution, we see how faith, American history, blindness, hypocrisy, vocation and God come together in an incendiary mix. With Non Vaughan-O’Hagan as our pithy playwright, we are invited to “Seek the truth, Come whence it May, Cost What it Will.” One wonders what the next 200 years at VTS will bring.
“What we are able to provide is a truly, truly professional production, as good as you can see at any major theatre in D.C., in probably one of the coolest spaces in D.C. that you don’t know,” said Rilette, the director of the show. “We get to laugh, get to learn, get to cry a little. I think it’s going to be a very moving experience for the audience.”
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Virginia Theological Seminary was founded in 1823 by St. Paul’s Church in Alexandria, Virginia. It is the strongest seminary in the Anglican Communion and has a long tradition of shaping faithful women and men, lay and ordained, for leadership in The Episcopal Church and beyond. Visited by three Presidents, the seminary provides over 25% of the clergy of the Episcopal Church. The seminary’s campus, a few miles from Washington, DC, reflects the creative genius of Andrew Jackson Downing, the 19th century founder of American landscape architecture; and Robert A.M. Stern and Associates who designed Immanuel Chapel which was consecrated in 2015. The historic campus is also home to a 21st century imagination about ways to follow Jesus Christ in an ever-changing Church and world.