4.48 Psychosis Little Green Pig Theatrical Concern At Golden Belt Arts Through Feb. 13 Each playwright who treats madness as more than a mere plot device confronts a common dilemma: How do you make sense of sense’s absence? How do you meaningfully representor in short, give meaning tothe mental state where meaning has gone awry? […]
Byron Woods
Bio: Byron Woods is the INDY's theater and dance critic.Email: [email protected]: http://twitter.com/byronwoods
Posted inArt
Arthur Miller’s WWII-era drama All My Sons at PlayMaker’s Rep
All My Sons PlayMaker’s Rep Through Feb. 14 Though it was written just over 60 years ago, there’s almost a feeling of cultural anthropology to Arthur Miller’s drama All My Sons: an eerie sense that’s hard to shake that we’re somehow looking in on premises, practices and beliefs that, with a pointed exception here and […]
Posted inArt
Hoof’n’Horn’s Reefer Madness
Reefer Madness Hoof’n’Horn Sheafer Theater, Bryan Center, Duke University Through Jan. 31 The tale of how Reefer Madness got to stage would fund a stage play in itself. The church group that purportedly funded a 1936 anti-drug film titled Tell Your Children must not have checked Dwain Esper’s references very closely when they made that […]
Posted inCulture
PlayMakers actor, UNC DDA teacher Kenneth P. Strong, dead at 52
Kenneth Strong, an actor and teacher with PlayMakers Repertory Company and the Department of Dramatic Art since 1979, died Tuesday afternoon, Jan. 12. Strong had fought glioblastoma brain cancer since 2007, a battle whose early rounds were documented by arts journalist Orla Swift in a Nov. 25, 2007 feature story in the Raleigh News and […]
Posted inCulture
Slamming for a Touch (and other prizes): Spoken word competition Friday night at PlayMakers
Word to the slammers and all of the other spoken word and poetry performance practitioners in the region: Following the Friday, Jan. 15 performance of The Big Bang by Universes, PlayMakers Rep will sponsor a spoken word performance competition in Kenan Theater. Prizes to be awarded include a 3rd-generation Apple Ipod Touch. The three-round competition […]
Posted inArt
Soul swapping in Ghost & Spice’s Prelude to a Kiss
Prelude to a Kiss Ghost & Spice Productions At Common Ground Theatre Through Jan. 23 People have been swapping souls and borrowing bodies forever, it seems; the origins of such beliefs trace through folk cultures the world over, several millennia before they ultimately found regular employment in horror fiction. In more recent decades, a few […]
Posted inArt
Best of Theater 2000-2009
Regional theater leaves the last decade stronger than when it started. Here’s a long look back before launching into the futurewhich, for our purposes, begins this weekend. Happy new decade! A Lesson Before Dying, Justice Theater Project, 2004. JTP proved exceptional theater can occur anywhere there are actors, a directorand vision. A Mouthfulla Sacco & […]
Posted inTheater
The best in local live theater in 2009
The reviews of Kate Dobbs Ariail, Belem Destefani, Sarah Ewald, Sylvia Pfeiffenberger, Adam Sobsey, Zack Smith, Megan Stein and Byron Woods were consulted for this article. It’s a question fit for the math part of some strange GRE test for the region’s performing arts: Unleash eight Indy critics on at least 130 theater productions over […]
Posted inArt
A Dylan Thomas Christmas in Carrboro
A Child’s Christmas in Wales ArtsCenter Stage / Youth Performing Arts Conservatory Through Dec. 20 As a rule, we don’t review children’s productionsholiday-themed shows performed by children for audiences filled with doting parents, extended families (whose dotage usually decreases the further they extend) and frenemies at school. The reason should be obvious: Self-preservation. I get […]
Posted inArt
A possible reprise of REP’s Patsy Cline show
Always … Patsy Cline Raleigh Ensemble Players at Theatre in the Park Closed Dec. 13; reopens in January Raleigh Ensemble Players has just announced that its production Always … Patsy Cline, which closed on Sunday, will be remounted at Cary Academy some time during Martin Luther King Jr. weekend in January. The exact dates will […]
