Man of La Mancha N.C. Theatre Through Oct. 14 Sure, we like to think of the theater as a place of continuous innovation. But sometimes, to quote an old Holiday Inn tagline, the best surprise is no surprise at all. That’s the case in this season-closing production, one which could be called a marriage of […]
Byron Woods
Bio: Byron Woods is the INDY's theater and dance critic.Email: [email protected]: http://twitter.com/byronwoods
Posted inArt
The soul cages
We ask what cages the soul as if we didn’t already know the answer. They’re the simple (and, at least at first glance, inescapable) things: Gender. Economics. Race. Class. Insidiously, they morph from adjectives to identities, hierarchies based on the myth that individuals can be appropriately reduced to one all-important dimension or another. They tend […]
Posted inArt
Deconstructing Burning Coal’s Hamlet
Hamlet Burning Coal Theatre Pittman Auditorium St. Mary’s School, Raleigh Through Sept. 30 Whenever directors truly intend to make their own mark on a classic of the theater, we should expect them to do several things. Peel off the yellowed varnish of iconography for starters, layer by impacted layer, and get the characters and their […]
Posted inGuides
Theater and dance
September Things kicked off on the UNC campus last week with the opening program of “Criminal / Justice,” UNC-Chapel Hill’s yearlong examination of the death penalty, a staged reading of The Death of Innocents, a memoir by renowned activist/author Sister Helen Prejean (Dead Man Walking) of witnessing two men who were wrongfully executed. This week, […]
Posted inArt
Playmakers’ new season opens…
When the Bulbul Stopped Singing Playmakers Repertory Co. Kenan Theatre, UNC-CH Sept. 12-16 Its 2004 world premiere at Scotland’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival won accolades: four- and five-star reviews and best-of-festival designations from the critical press, topped by the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Awarda superlative that would honor The Exonerated the following year. In New […]
Posted inArt
Ain’t Misbehavin’; Speed-the-Plow; Performance Art Night
Ain’t Misbehavin’ Hot Summer Nights at the Kennedy Through Sept. 2 Bassist Daemon Brown fingers a sinister riff as the lights go low, and Matthew-Jason Willis’ choreography is about as tight as that white T-shirt actor Jason Dolby wears as he leisurely prowls the Kennedy Center stage. He leers at the audience, just now his […]
Posted inArt
ADF kept looking back through the 2007 season
It’s tempting to call 2007 the year the American Dance Festival glanced forwardand then kept looking back. The first clues came from a March press release boasting that ADF was “once again […] ahead of the pack”as it disclosed that the festival was cutting the number of commissioned new works from the previous year by […]
Posted inCulture
The Independent Review:ADF Mainstage Season 2007:A Year in Reverse?
Four world premieres. Pretty impressive. Until, that is, you look at it this way: The ADF sponsored almost twice as many world premieres last year. And the last time the festival put so small a number of new commissions on stage as they did this summer, a Democrat was in the White House. No, not […]
Posted inCulture
The Independent Review:What does “How Long Brethren” represent now?
You hate to say it of a dance legend. But if Helen Tamiris’ How Long Brethren? represented the bleeding edge of modern dance in 1937, it looks very different 70 years later. Critic Byron Woods ponders the changing face of representation in Tamiris, Mark Morris, and works by international choreographers Konstantin Grouss and Elena Saizafarova. […]
Posted inTheater
A reconstruction of a 1937 Helen Tamiris classic helps close the 2007 ADF season
How Long Brethren? Helen Tamiris American Dance Festival The tension built as Joe Bowie and Dallas McMurray stared at the audience, apparently frozen stiff for a long moment on the Page Auditorium stage last Thursday night. Then it broke, when McMurray abruptly flashed the audience the black power salute; his right arm raised 90 degrees […]
