My friends: It seems like only eight months ago that I last peered into the near to mid-term future of the region’s performing arts. Look! There it is in black and white, on page 45 of the September 11, 2002 issue across from the Kroger ad: “Future Facts, by Byron Woods.” Reread the sheet, and […]
Byron Woods
Bio: Byron Woods is the INDY's theater and dance critic.Email: [email protected]: http://twitter.com/byronwoods
Posted inArt
Decrypting war and dreams
If I use the term dreamlike, I’m afraid you’re going to get the wrong idea about the latest works from the N.C. State Dance Company. By now it’s become one of the hoariest cliches in dance writing: a convenient–if unimaginative–term usually used to describe a flock of anorectic sylphs, gauzily swathed in pastel purple and […]
Posted inArt
Mystery ending
One thing about Thyestes: I can’t tell you the ending. It’s not because I have to preserve the mystery of the plot. It’s because the ending of Thyestes isn’t there, at least in part. Perhaps we can say it’s not been written yet. Possibly, that’s a mercy in the end. We tend to forget that, […]
Posted inArt
Tick…Tick…Tick…
It’s early Sunday morning as I begin these words–very early, actually, for reasons I’ll get around to in a few moments. As a result I’ll assume, as usual, that anywhere from three to six days will pass before you actually read them. So I’ll verbally play with time, using rhetoric to throw my voice just […]
Posted inArt
Innocence Meets Experience
Some call it “the bottom,” others call it the “Black Settlement.” Its inhabitants call it the “West End,” a historically black neighborhood bordering the Mebane city limits. Its two-room houses were built by factory owners before the dawn of the last century to house the laborers of White’s Furniture Company and other regional concerns. Of […]
Posted inNews
Philosopher clown
Imagine being a circus clown. Then imagine having to go on the day after Sept. 11. Now add another tough house to the tour: March 19, the night the U.S. invaded Iraq. Gonzalo Munoz Ferrer, a Chilean actor who plays Vincenzo, the addled maitre’d in Cirque du Soleil’s Dralion, did both. The show went on […]
Posted inArt
Stillness and Slam Segues
I hadn’t been in a theater that still in months. Two young lovers-to-be drew near each other for the very first time–awkwardly, and fundamentally uncertain about the strange new thing their bodies were suddenly doing in the presence of each other. It was more than just acting. We were in the presence of a life […]
Posted inArt
Everybody Dance Now
From ballet to performance art, covering a dizzying array of topics ranging from Sept. 11 to matrimony to plain bad acting: Brave souls in search of imagination–not to mention diversity–will be well rewarded if they venture out in any Triangle town on any night this weekend. A quartet of concerts in Durham, Raleigh and Chapel […]
Posted inArt
Women’s Witness
Most would agree it’s the most disturbing, most poignant section of The Vagina Monologues. In simple, poetic and chilling language, a refugee tells of her violation at the hands of soldiers. Of what was once “a live wet water village,” the woman says, “I dream there’s a dead animal sewn in down there with thick […]
Posted inNews
Typing for peace
It was a scene lifted whole from the 1940s: A quartet of quiet, dignified young women, smartly dressed in vintage clothes, occupied the window seats at the Chapel Hill Starbucks. On the table before each, a manual typewriter of roughly the same vintage: a Remington, a Royal, two Smith-Coronas–one in turquoise. When a typist finished […]