Drama Learning Center

★★★★★Heather Blake

This theater is truly all about the children! The directors and counselors are kind and talented. Many were DLC students as kids. As a parent, it is especially heart warming to see my child thrive under their guidance.

★★Elizabeth Lucas

The summer 4-week production camp was very much a factory theatre model, all about getting the show up with little regard for students’ creativity or experience. I signed up four of my former students for DLC’s High School production camp, which I was told maxed out at 32 students. At the end of the first day when I picked up my students, I found out from them that DLC merged this camp with their middle school camp, creating a grade 6-12 program with over 70 students – entirely not what we signed up for. Anyone with a rising 9th grader knows that the last thing they want for their summer is to spend all day in a hoard of students helping 6th graders stay on task, which is exactly what my high school student in the ensemble who stayed ended up doing. My other student in the ensemble left the production. The ensemble were anonymous to the production team, with names confused and a lot of sitting around time. My two students who got leads had a great time, but the casting process, which needs to be handled with so much care at this age, was disorganized and educationally unsound. While the young theatre artists staffing the camp were lovely, as far as I could tell there wasn’t an educator or parent in the bunch and it showed. Ultimately, the lack of communication, opaque staffing and process, last minute information on scheduling, and disinterest in overall student development and experience made this program very frustrating, and the uncommunicated change in the nature of the program made it a little shady as well.

★Yingyan Zhao

We attended one of its program for young kids. Overall, this was the worst experience we had. It was WASTE of time and money. It was boring in all dimensions. I felt like they do not appropriate programs for little kids, and they did not bother to design one. But in sake of money, they still opened such programs. Here was our experience. First of all, the main complaints went to the center not the teacher. the center did not have a rigorous plan for programs of young kids. A lot of free dance without proper engagement made classes so boring. The content was not enough to engage little ones. I did doubt the competence of the teacher, but again the main blame went to the class design by the center. Among the total 6 classes, the first one is just for introduction and free dance (little interaction between kids and teachers, just music and let the kids do what they want. why not I played music at home by myself then?). One of my little one complained he was so boring for the first class. The second class was the worst! The leading teacher had an injury and she sat on a chair through almost the entire session. I do have sympathy on her injury and this was unfortunate event for her. But I was angry about the center for several reasons. First of all, DLC, as an organizer, should have someone else to step up and cover the class. Clearly, the assistant teacher does not have enough experience or qualification to step up properly. Second, even if the teacher taught class, she should be able to planned her class better. She had the children do coloring for 30 minutes!!! A lot kids (not only mine) just sat for the most of the class. This was just a wasted class, one out of six. For the rest of classes, I observed they usually did 10 min-15min free dance, 10min circle time with a game. What I observed is the teacher was talking to one or two kids. The rest of them were just sat there doing nothing. There were only 30min meaningful activities for kids!

★Sweetpea

We gave DLC another chance with Matilda this time but they keep disappointing us. (1) No opportunity to rotate lead roles, the same kids get the lead role on all productions. Also, same age group but one get better role than the other. This is inequality (2) I may be over react, but it seems like Asian kids get a fewer lines and "white" kids get a lot more this is consider race discrimination. (3) No learning or development, if the child always be an ensemble over and over again, how do they develop? The kids are there to learn, develop, be confidence, and enjoy, not to be disappointed and discourage. They spent hours and hours at the center and at the end, they only get to say 1 or 2 lines in the entire show, that's very discouraging. (4) We raised our concern to the director and he didn't even bother to response. This is rude and unprofessional in my opinion.

★★★★★Barb Giniger Cooper

DLC has been "home" to my daughter for the last 7 years. The training that she has received has been stellar and has given her the confidence AND competence to pursue her passion - musical theater. We've tried other programs in the DC metro area, and DLC is by far the best. Children begin by becoming a cast member in DLC's many popular shows, and then can proceed if there is interest, in DLC's Teaching Young Actors' Junior (JCo) and Senior companies (TYA) where they hone important auditioning skills, experience the importance of ensemble work, and achieve success outside of one's comfort zone. Also offered are voice lessons, which our daughter and I totally embraced. So if your child is interested in musical theater, DLC is the GO-TO Location:)!