It seems nearly as premature to write off fledgling playwright Jerome Oster as it does to greet him with a hearty “mission accomplished.” His 90 in 90, produced by Burning Coal Theatre, closed last weekend at Kennedy Theatre; at this point in its life cycle, his story about an alcoholic’s trajectory through the lives of […]
Byron Woods
Bio: Byron Woods is the INDY's theater and dance critic.Email: [email protected]: http://twitter.com/byronwoods
Posted inNews
Playtime is over
If the timing was coincidental, it could have hardly been more fortuitous: One week after the close of Hapgood at Duke, Burning Coal premiered Safe House at Kennedy Theater. In the earlier work, Tom Stoppard claimed to critique the cold war–in what ultimately proved an ostentatious celebration of the spy thriller. Which left it to […]
Posted inNews
Open(ing) house
Maybe he’s doing something right: That could explain the excited crowd of over 250 people who packed the main room of Carrboro’s Century Center on Saturday night for photographer Steve Clarke’s curated dance showcase, Focused Fluidity. They stood, squatted and sat on ledges, chairs and the floor, surrounding the performance area from all sides. And […]
Posted inNews
Cross-pollination
“After the book I wished I had something more. I wanted to provide a channel for the dancers that went beyond what the camera could offer.” With these words, renowned dance photographer Steve Clarke embarks on a new enterprise this week. It’s designed to put a group of deserving young dancers and choreographers he’s worked […]
Posted inNews
Analyze this
Sure, arts criticism can reveal as much about the critic as about the works considered. But if you really want to force a critic’s hand, give him insufficient space to put it in. Some psychometrists still believe a forced choice gives the sharpest sense of a subject’s true views and values. My forced choices this […]
Posted inNews
Dear world…
For those still feeling sad or alienated about the election, this Web site is a must: www.sorryeverybody.com. It’s a gallery of photographed apologies–some hilarious, some thoughtful, some poignant–about the election from American voters to the rest of the world. A typical picture features a young bearded man with a cigarette hanging from his lip holding […]
Posted inNews
What’s brought forward–and left behind
Legacy was the central concept on the minds of the planners of both the N.C. Dance Alliance and Duke Dance’s fall concert during the weekend of Nov. 5-6. Amid rep classes devoted to Ted Shawn’s Olympiad and Balanchine’s Four Temperaments, one festival panel focused on “the Limon Legacy,” and a blue-ribbon panel of present-day “legacy […]
Posted inNews
in interrogations
William Furtwangler was the man who stayed behind: the enigmatic, renowned–and fundamentally inarticulate–Berlin Philharmonic conductor whose career was permanently tainted for having remained in Germany under Hitler. He was publicly embraced by Nazi party officials, and his concerts were broadcast to German troops. But was he actually there of his own volition? And what precisely […]
Posted inNews
The price
Justice Theater Project’s production of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America opens this weekend–in Cary, interestingly enough. Barbara Ehrenreich’s 2001 bestseller chronicled her undercover exploits through a series of minimum-wage jobs to see how low-end laborers were treated, and if she could make ends meet on what they earned. Joan Holden’s stage […]
Posted inArt
How I’ve helped kill modern dance
To the Annual Gathering of the North Carolina Dance Alliance: Welcome to the Triangle–a region where modern dance has been in decline in the previous year. Though a number of people share the responsibility for this, permit me to be the only one to greet you, openly and warmly, as one of the guiltiest parties […]