Maria Pramaggiore

To Jess Kehler, David Chapman and Ken Keech–all students in UNC-Chapel Hill’s Department of Dramatic Art–it’s a point of pride that the student-run Lab! Theatre is all about taking risks. Their repeated assertions that the company nurtures fledgling student directors and supports experimentation were borne out by Lab!’s recent production of Sedakaville, which ran Sept. […]

There is a moment in Deep Dish Theater Company’s production of Cat’s-Paw–a two-act play written by William Mastrosimone and directed by Paul Frellick–that rings so true, it almost takes your breath away. Television news anchor Jessica Lyons questions Victor, the self-styled “urban guerrilla leader” of an eco-terrorist group, about the human consequences of their violent […]

With the country shifting even further to the right, it’s not surprising that theater, one of the most immediate of the arts, is taking up political themes once again. The 2001-2002 Triangle theater season promises to explore the connections between theatrical artifice and actuality, continuing a late-1990s sensibility that recalls the political bent and participatory […]

The most impressive thing about the 1993 March on Washington was the turnout. My friends and I had no trouble believing estimates circulating that afternoon that a million people marched for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender rights. I flaunted my rainbow bracelet, a stylish symbol indicating that I had waited patiently in line to be […]

After reading Donnalee Frega’s Women of Illusion: A Circus Family’s Story, I considered running away to join the circus. Visions of a nomadic life filled with death-defying acrobatic stunts never fueled my childhood fantasies. But Frega’s book, a hybrid biography/autobiography, compels me to reconsider my career choice. The distinctions that this book draws between its […]

Legendary modern dancer José Limón asserted, “We are never more truly and profoundly human than when we dance.” The equally legendary Betty Jones, a founding member of the José Limón Dance Company and an American Dance Festival faculty member for 40 years, uses more prosaic language. But if you listen closely as Jones counsels a […]

“It is not given to every man to take a bath of multitude,” wrote the poet Charles Baudelaire in 1869 in Paris Spleen, “enjoying a crowd is an art.” Baudelaire is well known for his description of the quintessential figure of the modern city: the flaneur, a man who strolls and saunters, possessing, as the […]