There must have been something in D.C.’s water in 1976.
Fifty years ago in the District, go-go dropped its first beat, Round House Theatre was born, the Folger Consort started singing, and the Washington Ballet performed its first pirouette. Five decades of art-making in a world that continually undervalues it speaks to the endurance of music, theater, dance—art—and all that it offers.
Art can fuel a revolution, build community, and introduce us to worlds far from our own. But it’s also the fastest ticket out of here. For the length of a film, the pages of a book, or however long it takes to wander the halls of a museum, art gives us the means to escape the trials and tribulations of everyday life—especially when everyday life feels increasingly like an Onion article or a dystopian novel.
For the 2026 Fall Arts Guide, we wanted to offer readers a moment to breathe, a place to unplug, a space to pause and just be.
“We live in the age of the infinite scroll, where the algorithm feeds us what we already believe, where everything can be refreshed, swiped away, interrupted by the next notification. A book refuses all of that,” PBS NewsHour’s Geoff Bennett said at the National Book Festival in August. “It asks you to live inside someone else’s mind for 300 pages … and to stay with an idea long enough to understand.”
He was talking about the power of reading that night, but isn’t that what all art asks? And while the reward might always look different, there is always a reward (that movie you hated so much you can’t stop talking about it still got you talking about it).
Aside from the 70 events spotlighted below, this year’s fall guide features stories on how local comedians and rabble-rousers are laughing in the face of an administration that hates to be laughed at—in which co-writers Bryce Taylor Rudow and Hil Horvath remind us of comedy’s enduring power. Taylor Ruckle tells us how a group of artists are taking over the Mall Sept. 26 for the first local punk show at the base of the Washington Monument since Fugazi played there in 1995. And Melissa Lin Sturges looks into the growing interest in theater education. It turns out, in a world being slowly smothered by AI, theater kids are building community, life skills, and “a sense of self.”
Before you dig in, and I hope you treat this like the dessert it is, a couple of thanks: to our readers who make this happen, to the contributors who fill these “pages,” and most importantly to Jane Martinache, Sam Ostwald, Gail O’Hara, Lizzy Iseler, and Darrow Montgomery—this guide simply would not exist without you.
With that, we offer you a thousand ways to escape this fall. And at the end, when your cup is full and your eyes are glistening, we hope you walk out of the venue with something like hope. —Sarah Marloff
