It’s a vision out of a fairy tale, or a certain film from 1939–a tree that has somehow bloomed all over in Tootsie Pops. It stands alone at the right edge of the stage in the Patricia Nanon Theater, a rustic, barn-like structure that’s been converted into an intimate theater in the rural community of […]
Byron Woods
Bio: Byron Woods is the INDY's theater and dance critic.Email: [email protected]: http://twitter.com/byronwoods
Posted inTheater
Black theater summit
“It’s exciting. It’s fun. And you don’t go to bed at all.” Director’s assistant Carolyn Jones is describing the National Black Theatre Festival, a biennial gathering of international and African-American playwrights, actors, theater companies and scholars. For six days, artists and audiences both go ’round the clock, from early morning storytelling festivals to midnight new […]
Posted inArt
Domestic drama?
It’s not that big a room–just under 13 feet by 16 feet–in a rather small apartment in Chapel Hill’s University Gardens. Cheery blue walls with wooden trim surround a comfy beige sofa, an upholstered chair, bookshelves and an entertainment center. It is what it looks like: a modest living room for two people who, until […]
Posted inArt
Last dance, part two
During a June 28 Reynolds Theater tribute to Stephanie Reinhart, the ADF co-director who succumbed to leukemia last September, her daughter Ariane said on stage, “I don’t think she’s gotten where she’s going yet.” It was an easy feeling to get throughout the 2003 season. Though she herself was never one to grab a passing […]
Posted inArt
Last dance, part one
Had I only seen the opening night of the International Choreographers’ Commissioning Program concert, the story would have been a lot different. The changes seen the second time around provided a telling reminder that critics with the earliest view of a new work don’t always have the best or the final one. Sonia Rodriguez’s captivating […]
Posted inArt
A sense of wonder
I first learned that playwright David Lindsey-Abaire was sneaky when I met him in the summer of 2000 at the National Playwrights Conference in Waterford, Conn. He was working on Kimberly Akimbo then, an unlikely–but quite engaging–comedy that finally got its New York premiere this spring at the Manhattan Theater Club. That summer, a glorified–and […]
Posted inArt
Reading the Music?
Composer and instrumentalist Daniel Bernard Roumain, the first music director in the 20-year history of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, is on the phone from New York, talking about the music to Jones’ new work, Reading, Mercy and the Artificial Nigger, which makes its world’s premiere this week at the American Dance Festival. […]
Posted inArt
Hungry ghosts and audiences
By the time you read these words, the world will either have a new masterpiece in it, or something significantly less. Once I knew which one to pull for. Just now, I’m not so sure. More on that in a moment. For now, let’s say this is the week I’ve been working toward since the […]
Posted inArt
Crustacean in Congress?
Granted, it’s not particularly remarkable when a crayfish crawls to the shore of a majestic river. But when a blue one proceeds to read the riot act to a mustachioed water thief once he gets there, it can only mean one thing: The Paper Hand Puppet Intervention is back in town. Saturday’s audience at the […]
Posted inArt
Difficult Mission Under Way
At the start, we watch the watchers: five 20-somethings who form a passive semicircle around a television set, while a montage of war-era video images cascades on the wall behind them. Ari Fleischer pontificates briefly at a White House press conference, before Donald Rumsfeld reassures everyone that more bombs will fall after the initial wave […]