What role can Avant Bard play in resisting the nihilism, intolerance, and authoritarianism plaguing the world? As part of Season 36, we offer The Resistance Readings, staged readings and other acts every 3rd Sunday of the month at The Filling Station in Arlington, VA. Select “Buy Tickets” to reserve your seat!
Sunday, March 15, 2026, 5:00 p.m.
Avant Bard Theatre presents Singing Resistance. Singing Resistance with Katelyn Kyser* and a screening of Red Flag of the Future.
*Katelyn Kyser is a performer, music teacher, and song leader from Arlington. She began her career as an professional oboist – receiving a master’s degree and artist diploma from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and then moving to Bosnia and Herzegovina to play principal oboe in the Sarajevo Philharmonic Orchestra. She’s traveled the world to learn from song leaders in Bosnia and Herzegovina, South Africa, and the country of Georgia. Seeing the ways people use music for peacebuilding and reconciliation has inspired her to bring these traditions back to the United States. She now works as an Arlington public school music teacher and as a community song leader. She sings and leads songs in an effort to build community and share the message of love, joy, connection, and resistance.
Food & drink will be available for purchase.
Past Resistance Readings
FEBRUARY 2026
New Works & Music Inspired by The Two Gentlemen of Verona
A Collaboration with DC Bushwick Book Club
The DC Bushwick Book Club collaborated with Avant Bard to present new works and music inspired by The Two Gentlemen of Verona. The evening included a sneak peak of two original songs of resistance from Avant Bard’s March production of The Two Gentlemen of Killarney, adapted and directed by Seamus Miller.
JANUARY 2026
Ionesco’s Rhinoceros
Adapted by Tyler Herman
Rhinoceros follows an ordinary person watching, one by one, as everyone around them transforms into rhinoceroses—a comic and unsettling metaphor rooted in the rise of fascism in 1930s Romania. This adaptation stages the many forms of ideological conformity that continue to threaten democracy and the rule of law.
DECEMBER 2025
The Deplorable
By Séamus Miller
The Deplorable is a history play for the present. Episodes (both real and imagined) from the American Revolution and Civil War collide with actual congressional testimony from four police officers in the aftermath of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.