LEAVING EDEN Through Sunday, April 22 PlayMakers Repertory Company, Chapel Hill www.playmakersrep.org It’s not wise to travel on a river when the water’s deeply troubled by a storm and the night is far from over. But as the enigmatic, soulful griot Selah informed the audience on opening night of the new music-theater work Leaving Eden, […]
Byron Woods
Bio: Byron Woods is the INDY's theater and dance critic.Email: [email protected]: http://twitter.com/byronwoods
Posted inCulture
Mike Bartlett Rewrites Future History in King Charles III at Burning Coal
Thursday, April 12-Sunday, April 29 Burning Coal Theatre, Raleigh 7:30 p.m. Thu.–Sat./2 p.m. Sun., $15–$25 www.burningcoal.org Britons beware. Should the scenario in Mike Bartlett’s “future history” play, King Charles III, hold water, the political and civil upheaval awaiting the scepter’d isle after the death of its current leader could well place America’s current divisiveness in […]
Posted inCulture
600 Highwaymen Enlists the Audience to Perform in The Fever at Current
Wednesday, April 11-Sunday, April 15 Current Artspace + Studio, Chapel Hill Various times, $10–$20 www.currentunc.org It was an effective public service advertisement. I can still hear it now, some three decades later. Instead of demanding our money or time, Jimmy Stewart’s prairie voice, soliciting for the American Red Cross, simply asked a gentle but conscience-pricking […]
Posted inCulture
Nine Characters, One Performer—That’s the Challenge David Henderson Faces in The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey
Friday, April 6-Saturday, April 21 Peace University’s Leggett Theatre, Raleigh Various times, $15–$20, www.honestpinttheatre.org Nine characters, one performer. That’s the challenge actor David Henderson and director Susannah Hough face in James Lecesne’s one-act solo show. If you recognize the names of these regional theater veterans, the artistic principals of Raleigh’s Honest Pint Theatre Co., you’re […]
Posted inCulture
Immersive Theater Work Escape to Freedom Puts You in the Shoes of an Enslaved Person Fleeing a Raleigh Plantation
Saturday, April 7 & Sunday, April 8 Mordecai Historic Park, Raleigh Various times, $15, www.raleighnc.gov This interactive, harrowing historical performance is staged each year by MOJOAA Performing Arts on the grounds of one of North Carolina’s largest formerly slave-powered enterprises, the Mordecai Plantation, located less than a mile from the state capitol. Over the course […]
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Actors Settle Unfinished Business in NRACT’s Musical Comedy Miscast 2018: Warped Outcasts
Friday, April 6-Sunday, April 8 North Raleigh Arts and Creative Theatre, Raleigh 7:30 p.m. Fri. & Sat./3 p.m. Sun., $25 www.nract.org Though I was once typecast as Linus in a production of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, please take note: I could belt out “Sweet Transvestite” with the best of them. Still, I had […]
Posted inTheater
Lessons Unlearned in Mike Wiley’s Leaving Eden, a Tale of Immigrant Rights, Racial Strife, and Small-Town N.C. Politics
LEAVING EDEN Wednesday, April 4–Sunday, April 22, various times, $15+ PlayMakers Repertory Company, Chapel Hill www.playmakersrep.org It’s usually a good thing when a script reflects the current moment in a culture. But as director Vivienne Benesch, songwriter Laurelyn Dossett, and playwright Mike Wiley can now tell you, it can be positively unnerving when a new […]
Posted inCulture
Truth Against the World Captures Architect Frank Lloyd Wright at a Low Moment Before Great Success
Monday, April 2 & Tuesday, April 3 Kennedy-McIlwee Studio Theatre, Raleigh 7:30 p.m., $6–$23, theatre.arts.ncsu.edu In 1932, architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s career was on the ropes. His Prairie School of design had made his name and fortune, but Prairie was passé, and mismanaged affairsfinancial and romanticat his famous home studio, Taliesin, ruined him financially. Then […]
Posted inCulture
Nederlands Dans Theater’s The Statement Proves Business Is Warfare by Another Name
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 28 & THURSDAY, MARCH 29 UNC’S Memorial Hall, Chapel Hill 7:30 p.m., $15–$39, www.carolinaperformingarts.org Last summer, dance theater shocker Betroffenheit—choreographer Crystal Pite and playwright Jonathon Young’s dark, carnivalesque ride through the underworld of loss—left audiences at the American Dance Festival buzzing. Its show-biz protagonist kept unbearable grief at bay with cirque moves, ruthless […]
Posted inCulture
Marc Bamuthi Joseph Explores His Relationship with Soccer and Haitian-American Identity at N.C. State
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 28 NCSU’s Stewart Theatre, Raleigh 8 p.m., $7-$31 live.arts.ncsu.org By now, our region’s college sports fans are acutely aware—or at least, they should be—of the ethical complexities and complicities of rooting for their favorite team: the tinge of neocolonial exploitation that taints an endeavor in which everyone gets paid except the players, a […]