Limbo Wait ‘Til You See This Series Burning Coal Theater Company Meymandi Theatre at the Murphey School Through March 21 An unfinished portrait has an element of mystery to it. In this one, a thin, barefoot, waif-like girl, dressed in a cheap brown sweater, white cotton top and black leggings, stands alone. Her posture suggests […]
Byron Woods
Bio: Byron Woods is the INDY's theater and dance critic.Email: [email protected]: http://twitter.com/byronwoods
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The Farber Foundry reckons with apartheid through the lens of Greek tragedy
MoLoRa (Ash) Farber Foundry Duke Performances at Reynolds Industries Theater March 19–20 Trust the Greeks to show us just how far we haven’t come in 2,500 years. In depicting a series of homicides spanning three generations of a royal family, The Oresteia, a trilogy of classic Greek tragedies, confronts us with dilemmas we still haven’t […]
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Afric’s Muse world premiere at Barton College
Afric’s Muse Barton College Closed March 7 A biographical play about Phillis Wheatley is a daunting task in itself for a talented playwright and actor. The life of the first recorded African-American poetalso the first published African-American authorwas beset with historical ironies and contradictions. After arriving in Boston in 1761 as a frail, 8-year-old Gambian […]
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SunTrust Broadway Series’ Spring Awakening
Spring Awakening SunTrust Broadway Series Durham Performing Arts Center Through March 7 During its triumphant two-year run on Broadway, Spring Awakening made a fair sweep of the Tony and Drama Desk Awards in 2007, garnering accolades for best musical, best book, best score and best direction in both competitions. So it’s regrettableto say the leastthat […]
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Shifting shapes in Archipelago Theatre’s Out of the Blue
Out of the Blue Archipelago Theatre At Sheafer Theater, Duke University Through Feb. 28 Transformation is an irresistible subject for theater. Like last fall’s Raleigh Ensemble Players production of Metamorphoses, auteur director Ellen Hemphill’s accomplished new work, Out of the Blue, is concerned with human transfiguration. But where the former’s view of Ovid encompassed the […]
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Emerging technology in Neighborhood 3 and Virtual Performance Factory
Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom Manbites Dog Theater Through March 6 Virtual Performance Factory CHAT Festival/ UNC Communication Studies/ Icarus Studios Swain Hall, UNC Campus Through Feb. 27 Most of the presentations at last week’s CHAT Festival in Chapel Hill featured blue-sky scenarios of emergent digital gaming technologies enhancing the collaborations in humanities and the […]
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Justice Theater Project’s Fences
Fences The Justice Theater Project at Pittman Auditorium, St. Mary’s School Through Feb. 28 There’s a big man I want you to meet. His name’s Troy Maxson. As fully embodied by John Rogers Harris under the direction of Deb Royals (with an able assist from Herbert Eley) in the current Justice Theater Project production of […]
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Bare Theatre’s Boys and Girls
Boys and Girls Bare Theatre at Common Ground Theater Through Feb. 21 There’s more of a split decision when it comes to Boys and Girls, Bare Theatre’s omnibus of three contemporary one-acts at Durham’s Common Ground Theater. That description alone signals a potentially bracing departure from the company’s usual Shakespearean bill of fare. But anyone […]
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C.H.A.T. Festival ponders new mix of arts, technologies and humanities
C.H.A.T. Festival Feb. 16-20 UNC-CH Campus It’s science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke’s famous third law of scientific predictions: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” But magic takes many forms. In one version, expertly trained athletes dive above, below and conduct breathtaking close evasive maneuvers around a suspended one-ton I beam as it […]
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Little Green Pig’s 4.48 Psychosis
4.48 Psychosis Little Green Pig Theatrical Concern At Golden Belt Arts Through Feb. 13 Each playwright who treats madness as more than a mere plot device confronts a common dilemma: How do you make sense of sense’s absence? How do you meaningfully representor in short, give meaning tothe mental state where meaning has gone awry? […]
