Bob Bartlett, Maryland-based playwright and longtime professor of theater at Bowie State University, is no stranger to staging his work in unusual locations. A few years ago, he premiered his time-bending romantic comedy, The Accident Bear, which sold out its five- week run to critical acclaim, at a working coin-operated laundromat in historic downtown Annapolis, Maryland. During COVID, he staged his play Three Strangers Sitting Around a Backyard Firepit at Two in the Morning Listening to Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska in his central Maryland backyard, and last summer he premiered his latest play about browsing for love and vinyl in the digital age, Love and Vinyl, in a record store in Annapolis. (Having just completed runs in Austin and Dallas, Texas, Love and Vinyl is coming to Washington, DC, in January of 2025). The wildest of all of Bartlett’s recent theatrical adventures, Lýkos Ánthrōpos, was recently staged in the woods of central Maryland and required audiences to park at night in a field and walk into the woods to watch an interaction between a werewolf and his victim. Starting Halloween night, Lýkos Ánthrōpos now shifts to a fall run at Washington, DC’s historic Congressional Cemetery. Patrick Kilpatrick (the stranger) and Nicholas Gerwitz (young man) appearing in Bob Bartlett’s Lýkos Ánthrōpos,’ directed by Alex Levy. Photo by Teresa Castracane. The Helen Hayes Award-winning Bartlett says the idea to create site-specific theater, which he believes has the potential to engage audiences in more immediate ways than theater staged in traditional spaces, came while he was living in a downtown walk-up on Maryland Avenue in Annapolis over a decade ago. “I’ve always been drawn to theater produced in unique locations,” he notes. “And more than simply Shakespeare in the park.” Always on the lookout for compelling locations where acts of theater and storytelling can happen, Bartlett often writes with specific spaces in mind. “I’d long dreamed of inviting audiences to walk into the woods to see one of my plays happening in a clearing.” His dream happened in the fall of 2022 on a farm near his home in Davidsonville, MD, and now moves to the famed cemetery in the nation’s capital. Bartlett wrote and researched Lýkos Ánthrōpos while on a monthlong writing residency in Rhodes, Greece, in the summer of 2022. That trip afforded him the time to explore the origins of lycanthropy to ancient Greek mythology, which finds its way into his two-hander about an older and younger man who meet in the woods each full moon. “Hollywood,” he proclaims, “fails werewolves, other than fewer than a handful of fabulous films, including John Landis’ 1981 An American Werewolf in London and the Universal masterpiece, The Wolfman, starring Lon Chaney Jr.” He adds that he “set out to write an opaque and even poetic exploration of lycanthropy, and its attendant psychological horror and uncontrollable bestial violence.” When audiences come upon the performance location at the cemetery, they will sit around a circle of lights, an altar of sorts at its center, with death metal music pounding from the nearby woods. “The opportunity to share the play with audiences at Congressional Cemetery,” he adds, “is truly special and unexpected; opening the run of the play on Halloween is writ in the stars.” “At Congressional,” adds Anthony Orlikoff, the Cemetery’s Director of Programming, “we are always striving to engage our community with positive experiences while also supporting the arts in many ways, including with theater. With Soul Strolls an already successful immersive theater experience at the cemetery, we believe that Lýkos Ánthrōpos is a perfect fit for additional opportunities to enjoy and support the arts this fall.” About Congressional Cemetery With its first burial in 1807, Historic Congressional Cemetery is among the oldest institutions in Washington, DC, and is the final resting place of over 70,000 individuals. Their stories are American history in microcosm, all in 35 acres of the nation’s capital. Still an active burial ground, it is the only place in Washington where individuals can be buried at a site directly on Pierre L’Enfant’s 18th-century city plan. Historic Congressional Cemetery was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2011 and continues to build upon the legacy of over 200 years of American history. The cemetery is administered by the nonprofit Association for the Preservation of Historic Congressional Cemetery and owned by Christ Church and Washington Parish. The association is constantly striving to maintain the historic, cultural, and aesthetic qualities of this natural landscape along the Anacostia River. Hundreds of volunteers each year help preserve the cemetery and further its nonprofit mission. About Lýkos Ánthrōpos at Congressional Cemetery “Be warned, this is not a Halloween haunted house or a family-friendly ghost tour. The 75- minute, two-man drama is a psychological horror with strong language and vivid descriptions of violence.” – Susan Nolan, Bay Weekly Lýkos Ánthrōpos features regional actors Patrick Kilpatrick and Nicholas Gerwitz from the original production and is directed once again by Alex Levy, Artistic and Managing Director at 1st Stage in Tysons, VA. Because of the uniqueness of the venue/performance space, the production seats only twenty-five guests per performance. The audience is encouraged to bring a fold-up chair or blanket and a lantern to their chosen performance; they will meet as a group and walk together, with a guide, to the performance site at the Cemetery. Running time: 75 minutes, without intermission. Lýkos Ánthrōpos will run Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays at 8:00 PM from October 31 – November 24, 2024, at Congressional Cemetery, 1801 E St SE, Washington, DC. Tickets are $35 and available online. About the playwright Bob Bartlett’s (writer/producer) plays include three new full-lengths, Love And Vinyl (Kitchen Dog Theatre), Mediocre White Men, and A Boy On A Bed; Union, a sometimes fiction chronicling Walt Whitman’s years living and loving in Washington, DC during the Civil War; E2, a contemporary reimagining of Marlowe’s Edward II, which premiered last season at Maryland’s Rep Stage; Swimming With Whales (1st Stage – six Helen Hayes Awards Nominations; 2016 O’Neill Finalist); Happiness (And Other Reasons To Die) (The Welders); The Accident Bear (The Avenue Laundromat); The Regular (2020 O’Neill Finalist; 2020 Seven Devils Playwrights Conference); The Orbit Of Mercury (2017 O’Neill Finalist); Bareback Ink, a queer reimagining of the Ganymede myth, which recently had runs at the Capital and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals and NYC’s Hard Sparks. Recently, Bartlett has been producing his own site-specific work. His play The Accident Bear had a successful run in the Avenue Laundromat in Downtown Annapolis. During the first year of Covid, he staged his play Three Strangers Sitting Around A Backyard Firepit At Two In The Morning Listening To Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska in his backyard. He recently staged his horror play, Lýkos Ánthrōpos, in a wooded clearing in the middle of the woods on a farm in Maryland; his romcom Love And Vinyl premiered in the summer of 2023 at KA-CHUNK!! Records in downtown Annapolis; and he wrote the Covid-inspired, twelve-episode Duck Harbor with EM Lewis for 1st Stage in Tysons which aired in 2021. Lýkos Ánthrōpos runs for six weeks this fall at Historic Congressional Cemetery in Washington, DC, and Love And Vinyl runs this winter at Byrdland Records, also in the nation’s capital. Bartlett is an affiliated artist with the National New Play Network and a member of The Dramatists Guild of America. He lives in Central Maryland in an old farmhouse and is a founding member of The Welders, a Washington, DC-based, producing playwrights collective who were recognized with the 2016 John Aniello Award for Emerging Theater Company by Theatre Washington’s Helen Hayes Awards. He earned his MFA in Playwriting at Catholic University of America, and he is a soon-retiring member of the theater faculty at Bowie State University in Maryland, where he teaches dramatic literature, playwriting, and screenwriting. He is the recipient of the 2022 University System of Maryland Board of Regents Award for Excellence in Research, Scholarship, or Creative Activity. SEE ALSO: Playwright Bob Bartlett on his scary new play in the woods, ‘Lýkos Ánthrōpos’ (interview by Charles Green, October 17, 2022) See Bob Bartlett’s ‘Lýkos Ánthrōpos’ if you dare (review by Andrew Walker White, October 22, 2022)