Doubt: A Parable Theatre in the Park Through April 18 Since at least the fourth century B.C., it’s been one of the theater’s highest callings: to present a culture’s most pressing dilemmas in productions that diagnose, evaluate and seek remedies for those quandaries. It’s not the easiest of tasks, yet, over the past week, two […]
Byron Woods
Bio: Byron Woods is the INDY's theater and dance critic.Email: [email protected]: http://twitter.com/byronwoods
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Home is Far Too Many Stories: Hidden Voices at ArtsCenter
Home is Not One Story2 StarsHidden VoicesClosed Apr. 10 Byron [email protected]: @byronwoods Facebook: arts.byron.woods In a recent review I decried a production that, like humanity in the famous T.S. Eliot quote, could not “bear very much reality.” Unfortunately, Home is Not One Story, the latest stage production by Hidden Voices at The ArtsCenter, is its […]
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Director’s double duty blurs “Sty of the Blind Pig”
The Sty of the Blind Pig2 stars Shaw Players and CompanyMeymandi Theater, Murphey School, Polk Street.Through Closed Apr. 4, 2010 Byron [email protected] Twitter: @byronwoods Facebook: arts.byron.woods There’s just one problem with that second scene in Act II of Sty of the Blind Pig, Phillip Dean’s 1971 Chicago domestic tenement drama which closed with an Easter […]
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Choreo Collective’s Current Collection
Choreo Collective’s Current Collection Chapel Hill High School Closed March 28 Several years have passed since we last looked in on independent dance group Choreo Collective. I regret to report seeing little development, during the course of their annual Current Collection concert, in some of the difficulties diagnosed in our previous visits. A community of […]
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Rwandan genocide in a stirring, uneven show
I Have Before Me a Remarkable Document Given to Me by a Young Lady from Rwanda PRC2 At Elizabeth Kenan Theater, UNC Campus Closed March 28 It’s not always enough to ask what is a play about. Sometimes you feel you ought to ask what should it be about as well. Such is the case […]
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American Dance Festival’s 2010 lineup
American Dance Festival DPAC and Reynolds Industries Theater June 17–July 24 It usually begins around the vernal equinox: One by one, the tender green press releases emerge, each carrying the promise of concerts to come from the region’s major modern dance companies and presenters. Upcoming shows include N.C. State’s Afrocentric Panoramic Dance Project concert on […]
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One-man “Gospel of John” show plays Chapel Hill Friday. Too bad its playbill and Web site bear false witness…
Brad Sherrill in “The Gospel of John” The Gospel of JohnUniversity United Methodist ChurchApril 2, 7 p.m.www.chapelhilluumc.org/uumc/tickets It happens every so often in this business: A company just a little too desperate for praise distorts a critical review in its publicity for a show, by cherry-picking a positive word or phrase out of an article […]
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Is “A Remarkable Document” Remarkable Enough?
Actor Joy Jones I Have Before Me A Remarkable Document Given to Me by a Young Lady from Rwanda3 1/2 starsPRC 2Kenan Theater, UNC Through Mar. 28 Usually, determining a play’s subject is something of a preliminary task: one that leads us, more or less directly, into deeper critical waters. But within the past week, […]
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Strong musicianship lifts Savoyards’ Mikado
The Mikado 3 1/2 stars Durham Savoyards Carolina Theatre (closed March 21) Call the Durham Savoyards a theatrical anachronismif you dare. For the truth is this: At this writing, over 50 such companies in the United States (and another 100 or so, back in Britain) exist to do one thing onlycart the lot of us […]
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MoLoRa: The Independent Interview with Yael Farber
After creating a series of “testimonial plays” based on South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the 1990s, playwright Yael Farber approached a group of women from the Xhosa people in 2008, and told them the story of The Oresteia. The Greek tragic trilogy still confronts us with dilemmas our civilization hasn’t fully solved. How […]
