Kurt Elftmann's Contact Details

Kurt Elftmann's Company Details

Tonic Theater Company

Washington, District of Columbia, United States • 5 Employees
Performing Arts

Tonic Theater Company, a Washington, DC-based registered 501c3, is dedicated to increasing public knowledge and understanding of history and science around the world through the power of theater. We tell the stories that have shaped our world. There has never been a more important time to support science. It is equally important that we look unflinchingly at our history, no matter how hard, and learn the lessons that it teaches us. Tonic's proximity and access to the diplomatic, scientific, and policy-making communities makes it uniquely qualified to carry out its mission. By accomplishing a series of short-term goals we're moving steadily toward realizing our ultimate mission.First, our free public readings in casual settings, providing both audiences and artists a live experience of the scripts under consideration. Our readings lead to partnerships, including with the Cultural Projects of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Physical Society, the Alliance Francaise of DC, the American Institute of Physics, and the Carnegie Institute for Science. Tonic will again participate in the Kennedy Center's Page-to-Stage in 2019.In 2018, Tonic launched The Makers: Reykjavik, in advance of our upcoming production of Reykjavik, by Pulitzer Prize-winner Richard Rhodes. The Makers brings artists, writers, actors, and directors together with the policymakers and diplomats who have shaped history. The evening featured Richard Rhodes, senior U.S. arms control negotiator Ambassador Thomas Graham, Jr. (Ret.), and actors Edward Gero and David Bryan Jackson (Gorbachev & Reagan in Reykjavik), hosted by Tonic artistic director Kurt Elftmann. Rhodes' taut, often poignant two-character play tells the behind the scenes story at the historic 1986 Reagan-Gorbachev meeting in Iceland. Amb. Graham has joined Tonic as we plan more The Makers events for 2019. View the first The Makers: Reykjavik in its entirety at https://youtu.be/oXwvTXKYfE8