ALSO: Intro | Company profiles | “ADF at a glance” table (PDF, 410 KB) | The Indy‘s ADF blog MARTHA CLARKE The Garden of Earthly Delights (work in progress) June 7-9, Reynolds Theater What makes one of the classics of dance theater, a 23-year-old fusion of theater, dance and music based on Hieronymus Bosch’s famous […]
Byron Woods
Bio: Byron Woods is the INDY's theater and dance critic.Email: [email protected]: http://twitter.com/byronwoods
Posted inArt
The America Play
The America Play New Traditions Theatre Through June 9 Common Ground Theatre In the final analysis, could George Santayana have just possibly been an incurable optimist? Who says it’s only those unable to learn from history who are, in his vivid words, “doomed to repeat it”? For those unfamiliar with the term, “historicity” isn’t some […]
Posted inArt
ADF celebrates its 30th anniversary season in North Carolina
ALSO: Intro | Company profiles | “ADF at a glance” table (PDF, 410 KB) | The Indy‘s ADF blog Pseudopodia. Grain. Esplanade. The Rite of Spring. The Garden of Earthly Delights. If you’ve been to the American Dance Festival in recent years, the list of dance works above should sound nearly as familiar as the […]
Posted inArt
Secrets in a little room
Aunt Della’s house stood far out on Highway 68. The driveway of soft beige sand, something of a rarity for that part of the state, snaked through the short, stiff grass of the treeless yard before it curved around back of the small, square one-story farmhouse. Though the fake brick pattern of its old, rolled […]
Posted inArt
Universes Poetic Theater Ensemble’s compelling mash-ups sample urban poets and songwriters
Universes Kenan Theater UNC-CH Closed April 29 Urgent memo to both hands theater company and the public that first fell in love with themparticularly for the complex spoken, broken polyrhythms that made works like Imaginary Numbers and the first incarnation of Brooms (a play about saying yes) seem a cross between Gertrude Stein and early […]
Posted inArt
The artist as criminal in The Pillowman; The Parent Project says “Phone home”
The Pillowman Manbites Dog Theater Through April 28 Granted: Katurian, the author character at the center of Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman, freely plays the toady to a couple of apparatchik goons in some totalitarian country’s version of homeland security. Stipulate further: No, he’s really not that good a writer. Not when that “black, black gloom” […]
Posted inArt
The Justice Theater Project unveils its death penalty drama
Still…Life Justice Theater Project Cardinal Gibbons High School Closed April 15 It’s hard not to be fatalistic about the death penalty. Yes, that is a disgraceful pun. I only wish there were a lot less truth in it. Critics owe their readers candor concerning their biases. I am opposed to capital punishment, and my writings […]
Posted inArt
Shadow of Himself and The Drawer Boy
Shadow of Himself Duke Theater Studies Shaefer Theater Through April 15 The jagged, fissured and partially oxidized plates of Amir Ofek’s tectonic set suggest a map of a foreign continent, as they jut upward at an uneven angle from the floor of Duke’s Shaefer Theater. On it, two creatures sweat in the low light as […]
Posted inArt
Milestone shows leave questions about the future of two companies
A 20th anniversary dance concert and one last stage play in a shabby but venerable old theater before it closes for major renovations: If the victory lap was invented for anything, surely such occasions come near the top of the list. And certainly, there was no shortage of qualities to celebrate in UNC Modernextension’s annual […]
Posted inArt
The Bluest Eye & A Midsummer Night’s Dream
A Midsummer Night’s Dream Burning Coal Theatre Through March 18 It seems only fair to warn you: This critic is confronting a considerable degree of nostalgia in Burning Coal’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Truly long-lived theater-goers in the region will recall that the last time actor/director David Henderson’s name was associated with this […]
