Byron Woods

At first, Sheafer Theater’s drawbacks seem more obvious than its benefits. The floor is rough concrete, not marley, the plastic covering designed to absorb some of the shock to a dancer’s knees and ankles from jumping and landing. Assorted nicks and jags jut out in places, leftovers from the building’s construction that must be taped […]

It’s almost–but not quite–enough to make me rethink Championship Wrestling. After all, a fighting match is where Rosalind first lays eyes upon sweetheart-to-be Orlando in Shakespeare’s As You Like It. Orlando’s on the card–and the endangered species list–since his fiendish brother Oliver has instructed Charles, the Duke’s favorite, to kill him in the ring. But […]

Modern dance being the large, diverse and interesting place it is, you would naturally expect there to be some disagreement on the merits of individual companies–even those at a prestigious festival like the American Dance Festival. Had you kept your ears open last week on Duke’s East or West Campus, in certain Ninth Street bistros, […]

“This didn’t start 20, 30 or 40 years ago,” Dorothy Clark observes. “Black folks have been writing for a long time. You’d be amazed at the number of people–even those I expected to–that don’t know the work of black playwrights.” This is the week she does something about that. Clark, a business manager at the […]

You have to hope they rested up before they got here. For the ADF’s idea of easing students–and their teachers–into six intensive weeks of modern dance instruction was with a particularly intensive endurance run of an opening weekend. Preview classes and marathon audition sessions for both the main stage and featured choreographers’ repertory classes stretched […]

Once upon a time not very long ago, I would have been writing these words right about now from Ocracoke–or not, if you get my drift. At the end of spring semester, theater would have already packed it in for the summer, save a spasm here or there around July. ADF? Brewing, but not yet […]

CHARLESTON, S.C.–Artistic director Jerome Davis leans over his seat in Physicians’ Auditorium to gently correct an illusion of mine, moments before Burning Coal Theater’s production of Travesties opens at Piccolo Spoleto. I’d just asked him about producing two major shows simultaneously, remounting the chewiest show of the fall as the company’s premiere at the prestigious […]

The Secret Garden–Pamela Sterling’s stage play adaptation of the beloved book by Frances Hodgson Burnett, not the Lucy Simon and Marsha Norman musical–is the third children’s theater production in the last four years at Raleigh Little Theater to actively incorporate deaf actors on stage. As in earlier productions of Mother Hicks and a particularly memorable […]