Parallel Lives★★★½ Through Saturday, Jul. 7 Burning Coal Theatre, Raleigh If our culture has moved beyond the reductive view that feminism isn’t funny, Mo Gaffney and Kathy Najimy had something to do with it. A generation before the likes of Lena Dunham and Amy Schumer, the pair parlayed its brand of sharp sketch comedy, interwoven […]
Byron Woods
Bio: Byron Woods is the INDY's theater and dance critic.Email: [email protected]: http://twitter.com/byronwoods
Posted inArt
As Science Catches Up with Decades of Anecdotal Evidence that Dance Helps People with Parkinson’s Disease, Local Efforts Converge at ADF
It’s one thing to read an article in a medical journal about how dancing can assuage the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. But Susan Saenger, a dance and movement therapist with the American Dance Festival’s Parkinson’s Movement Initiative, was watching it happen right in front of her. She and occupational therapist Lindsay Voorhees were teaching their […]
Posted inArt
Why Doesn’t Homeland Security Want You to See Dana Ruttenberg Dance Group at ADF?
Dana Ruttenberg Dance Group is scheduled to perform at the North Carolina Museum of Art in the American Dance Festival’s mainstage season July 14–17, but last-minute Department of Homeland Security challenges to the Israeli dance company’s visa applications have put the show in jeopardy. According to ADF, a Homeland Security official at a U.S. Citizen […]
Posted inCulture
ADF Review: A Concert of Dance by Returning Alumni Reminds Us That Sometimes, You Can’t Go Home Again
Coming Home: ADF Alumni Return ★★ Saturday, Jun. 23 & Sunday, Jun. 24 Reynolds Industries Theater, Durham Homecomings can be bittersweet affairs, and ADF’s alumni showcase was a particularly dispiriting one. It’s hard to imagine that more than a hundred other submitted dance works were less accomplished than the mostly unfortunate quintet selected by a […]
Posted inArt
After Decades Spent Dancing the Visions of Others, Anne Plamondon Tells the Story of her Father’s Schizophrenia in Her Choreographic Debut
ANNE PLAMONDON: THE SAME EYES AS YOURS Saturday, June 30 (7 p.m.) & Sunday, July 1 (2 & 5 p.m.), $12–$27 Von der Heyden Studio Theater at the Rubenstein Arts Center, Durham www.americandancefestival.org Though Anne Plamondon’s American Dance Festival debut, The Same Eyes as Yours, is a solo show, we encounter several entities in it. […]
Posted inCulture
Theater Review: One of Theater’s Great Sacrificial Characters Strikes Back in Iphigenia in Splott
Iphigenia in Splott ★★★★½ Through Saturday, Jun. 23 Burning Coal Theatre, Raleigh Iphigenia is one of the greatest sacrificial characters in Greek mythology. Splott, however, is a rundown section of Cardiff, Wales, best known to locals as the place where a library, swimming pool, doctor’s office, and other amenities used to be—before government funding cuts. […]
Posted inCulture
ADF Review: Shen Wei, Samuel Beckett, and Morton Feldman Meet in the Bardo in Neither
Shen Wei Dance Arts: Neither★★★★½ Saturday, June 16 & Sunday, June 17 Durham Performing Arts Center, Durham In retrospect, it was obvious. If grim Samuel Beckett, indeterminate composer Morton Feldman, and choreographer Shen Wei were going to meet anywhere, it was going to be in the bardo, that liminal space between lives contemplated in the […]
Posted inArt
We Fear for Families Riven by Grief in the Deeply Poetic Crumble (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake)
Crumble (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake) Through Sunday, Jun. 24 Burning Coal Theatre, Raleigh www.womenstheatrefestival.com Grief breaks families. Research shows that after a child dies, parents are 60 percent more likely to divorce. When a parent dies, the surviving spouse and child can become similarly estranged. Since divorce is not an option, what happens then? […]
Posted inTheater
Theatre Raleigh’s Stellar Significant Other Puts the Perils of Being the “Gay Best Friend” on Blast
SIGNIFICANT OTHER Through Sunday, Jun. 24 Kennedy Theatre, Raleigh www.theatreraleigh.com Over the last fifty years, the marriage rate among American adults has dropped from 72 percent to 50 percent. That’s only one of the reasons Significant Other is probably going to come back to haunt us. In this crisp, incisive Theatre Raleigh production, Joshua Harmon’s […]
Posted inArt
Anyone Trying to Top TheatreFest’s Production of Hitchcock Adaptation The 39 Steps Has Their Work Cut Out for Them
The 39 Steps Through Sunday, Jun. 24 Kennedy-McIlwee Studio Theatre, Raleigh www.theatre.arts.ncsu.edu I don’t want to say we’ll never see a better iteration of Patrick Barlow’s loopy homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps than the one that closes this weekend at TheatreFest. But here’s what anyone trying to follow its act will have to […]