An Interview with David Dower
Producing Artistic Associate, Arena Stage

Interview and photos by Rene Pedraza del Prado

David Dower, one of the freshest arrivals to the ensemble of dedicated colleagues and professionals at Arena stage who comprise the unseen forces behind the many varied and stylistically unique theatrical productions anyone could possibly hope to encounter in Washington, D.C., or indeed, anywhere.
The previous evening I had had the distinct pleasure of attending Arena’s latest theatrical confection; a moving and comical exploration of one of Music’s most tormented and contradictory geniuses, Ludwig Von Beethoven. 
Moisés Kaufman’s (Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, The Laramie Project) latest play,  “33 Variations” explores the parallels between Beethoven’s life and that of a terminally ill musicologist, Katherine Brandt,  who is consumed in seeking answers to the many remaining riddles and mysteries surrounding Beethoven’s bizarre compulsion and obsession during the long years of composition in what ultimately became known as the Diabelli Variations.
Gross Indecency draws us into the often tormented and marked obsessions (there’s that word again) that plague any creative artist who is driven by their own particular muses in the realization of their work of art.  If this diagnosis is readily recognized in its painful incarnation by an artist in the audience as a malady to which they have been subject, it must also be a relief and panacea to the theatergoer who has never been subjected to such arbitrary, whimsical and delirious demands in order to achieve a breakthrough in a martyring creative conundrum. ...More