In December 1999, Susan Lynskey took to the stage of The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in her first starring role.

The musical, she said, was by comedic playwright Wendy MacLeod, and all of Lynskey’s neighbors from her hometown traveled down the coast to catch her performance.

“It was truly amazing,” she said, “to walk through the Kennedy Center doors and look up at all the flags and out over the city of Washington and to think ‘I’m performing here.’”

Eleven years later, the Kennedy Center remains one of the District’s main cultural hubs. This living memorial to President John F. Kennedy opened in September 1971 and boasts about 2 million audience members each year. Holding a combination of nine theaters and stages, the country’s busiest performing arts venue is within walking distance of the Hilltop. While many students take advantage of the opera outings sponsored by the Italian department or the free ballroom dancing under the stars on the center’s terrace level, some members of the Georgetown community are involved with the Kennedy Center in more direct ways.

Miranda Hall (COL ’11), an avid participant in the Georgetown theater community, participated in a Kennedy Center endeavor just last year. Her one-act play, “Witness,” was produced as part of the Kennedy Center’s annual Page-to-Stage Festival in September 2009. Written during the spring of Hall’s freshman year, the play focused on a father and daughter coping with the death of their wife and mother, respectively.

“It’s inspired by the notion that the word stanza not only denotes a unit of lines in a poem, but is also the Italian word for room,” Hall explained.

Later selected to be the headline performance in Mask & Bauble’s Donn B. Murphy One Acts Festival in February 2009, the play was also the focus of several public workshops Hall conducted.

“I worked on it a little more this past summer before its Kennedy Center debut, but I think I need to take a year or two away from it before I can take up work on it again,” Hall said.

Page-to-Stage assembles plays written by artists from around the country and presents them as a series of readings and open rehearsals. As each work is still a work in progress, the festival features staged readings, which require nothing but the scripts, the actors and some music stands.
Despite the more casual format, Hall savored the opportunity.

“It was a tremendous gift — though also a little nerve-wracking to be able to share my work in such an esteemed and public forum.”

“We at the Kennedy Center love the festival,” said Garth Ross, director of the Performing Arts for Everybody program. “We like to open the door to the D.C. arts community at large. … It’s also nice to take a pause in our development process and share our work.”

“It’s an incredible opportunity to bring new work and new artists in focus,” Lynskey said.

Lynskey, now a professor in the theater and performance studies department, is also a longtime collaborator with the Kennedy Center. Over the past 15 years she has appeared in five world-premiere productions, and has also contributed to initiatives aimed at fostering and promoting new talents in the theater world.

She says one of her favorite accomplishments was directing “Witness” in the Page-to-Stage Festival.

“Exhilarating on so many levels, was the moment when Miranda’s own parents and family, who had traveled from far and wide, walked in to see their daughter’s first performance at the Kennedy Center,” she said. “Well, as you can imagine I was so incredibly thrilled for her.”

The Kennedy Center has also connected with Georgetown on an institutional level, through high-profile events such as the Let Freedom Ring concert. This past January marked the eighth year of the collaboration.

“It began as a public program of Georgetown’s initiative,” Ross said. The inaugural concert choir featured members of the entire Georgetown community, as well as members of the greater Washington, D.C. community.
“It’s what makes it so unique,” Ross said. The 2002 concert featured singer Roberta Flack, a former D.C. Public Schools teacher. “It set the tone for what the program can and should be,” Ross added.

Georgetown students and faculty have played integral roles in the annual celebration, with the Chapel Choir and other selected Georgetown students singing alongside headline artists such as Yolanda Adams, Brian McKnight and Aretha Franklin. Leaders among the undergraduate community have also been recognized and have stood on stage beside some prominent Americans. Ryan Wilson (COL ’12) was invited to give a speech at the event in January 2010, where he shared the Kennedy Center stage with President Obama, as well as University President John J. DeGioia and former NBA star Dikembe Mutombo.

“I think the event was a tremendous opportunity for the Georgetown and D.C. communities to honor such an important leader [Martin Luther King Jr.],” Wilson said.

Wilson shared the stage with Obama for much of the event and remembered his unforgettable experience speaking with the president, “especially when talking about the importance of the King legacy.”

“Being in such an historic and prestigious venue was also very exciting,” he added. “It was appropriate that Georgetown chose the Kennedy Center as the location for the event.”

Beyond Georgetown, the Kennedy Center has sought to serve the greater D.C. community. According to Ross, the relationship between the Kennedy Center and the city has grown steadily over the years.

“We strive to give full expression to all facets of our role,” he said.
The Performing Arts for Everyone Program is one of the primary ways the Kennedy Center reaches out to the community. Each year the program is responsible for staging at least 400 acts open to the public, featuring dance, music and theater performances by acclaimed artists from around the world on the center’s premier Millennium Stage.

“We want to connect and support the community in Washington,” Ross said.
Pricier programs offered at the center include opera, ballet, national tours of plays and musicals, and the National Symphony Orchestra.

“With its international reputation for excellence and achievement … it brings global attention to the D.C. theater scene and the arts’ role in culture and education,” Lynskey said.

“Our job gets deeper as the years go on,” Ross said, referring to the center’s pledge to continuing arts education and community outreach.
This engagement with all corners of D.C. includes working with some local public schools on arts education, advocating for an arts presence in the community and providing professional development opportunities for teachers.

And, of course, the center strives to maintain its close relationship with Georgetown students, helping to give them some of the best learning experience in their young professional life as well as cultivate their potential in the performance world as they share the stage with some of the world’s theater greats.

“There’s always good work to be done,” Ross added, “whether it’s the community, nation or the world.”