American Dance Festival 2014: The Takeaway
AMERICAN DANCE FESTIVAL June 12-July 26 americandancefestival.org In a good year, the American Dance Festival changes at least some part of our thinking about modern and contemporary dance. That’s a tall—and standing—order, each season: to find and present artists whose works are exploring and redefining the boundaries of the art form, as well as the…
Design flaws bedevil Death by Design
DEATH BY DESIGN ★★ 1/2NCSU TheatreFest through June 29 Since frames and red herrings are par for the course in mystery novels, the genre’s aficionados were mostly unfazed when amateur detectives Jane Marple and Jessica Fletcher were recently arrested in a coordinated sting operation. (Miss Marple’s exploits have long been immortalized in the novels of…
Elizabeth Streb: the INDY interview
STREB Extreme Action’s company name is truth in advertising: a group of seven superbly-trained athletes who propel themselves into harm’s way, repeatedly—against walls and floors, off of trampolines and multi-story trapeze-like platforms, into and out of close encounters with a spinning industrial I-beam as it careens across stage, and much, much more. In our Feb…
Once is not enough: heartfelt musical opens at DPAC
ONCE ★★★★ DPAC Through Jan. 26www.oncemusical.com www.dpacnc.com If you don’t arrive early for ONCE, you’ve missed half the show. To be clear, that assessment shows no disrespect to the cast of this 2011 Broadway adaptation of John Carney’s hit 2007 film; they’ll already be on stage by the time you get there. For in this…
Hopeless? Perhaps. Illuminating? Funny? Yes. Mike Daisey’s The Story of the Gun at PRC2
The Story of the Gun ★★★★ Mike Daisey PRC2 through Jan. 12 “There’s no such thing as gun control in this country. There are 340 million guns in the country. And 330 million people.” It’s far from the first discouraging word monologist Mike Daisey utters in his solo show, The Story of the Gun, which…
What Every Girl Should Know to play NYC Fringe Festival; Indiegogo campaign begins
Monica Byrne Margaret Sanger, in the NYC Fringe program ad for WHAT EVERY GIRL SHOULD KNOW After its award-winning premiere in 2012, WHAT EVERY GIRL SHOULD KNOW, Durham playwright Monica Byrne’s speculative drama based on the history of birth control in the United States, is getting an extended life this summer. The work will be…
ADF Critical Remix: COLLECTIVE MEASURES shows LIMITED progress
COLLECTIVE MEASURES SHEN WEI DANCE ARTS AMERICAN DANCE FESTIVAL DURHAM PERFORMING ARTS CENTER As mentioned in our previous Critical Remix, Shen Wei regularly revises earlier works. Less regularly, however, does he change their titles while keeping much of their content the same. That gives us pause about the putative world premiere of COLLECTIVE MEASURES. By…
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Exclusive video preview: Shen Wei’s “Collective Measures” world premiere at 2013 ADF (NSFW)
Video clip contains partial nudity and is not safe for work. Viewer discretion is advised. Exclusive video footage from the world premiere of choreographer Shen Wei’s Collective Measures at the 2013 American Dance Festival. The company performs at the Durham Performing Arts Center, Thursday, June 13 and Friday, June 14, 2013. Video preview produced by…
Moving testimony from former slaves: Bare Theatre’s Let Them Be Heard
Jason Bailey Philip B. Smith and Justin Smith in LET THEM BE HEARD LET THEM BE HEARD Bare TheatreStagville State Historic Site7, 8 and 9 p.m., June 14 and 15 One of the closest experiences any of us will have to rival time travel is taking place these nights just after dark in Horton Grove,…
A loopy musical send-up with a heart: this Drowsy Chaperone’s no sleeper
Curtis Brown She doesn’t really want to show off: Paige Faure as unwilling Broadway bombshell Janet Van De Graaff, in THE DROWSY CHAPERONE THE DROWSY CHAPERONE North Carolina TheatreThrough May 12 Musical theater fans can be quite rigid in their tastes, and even more so once they’ve reached a certain age. Take this tart little…
(Far) too much of a good thing: Priscilla, Queen of the Desert at DPAC
(c) Joan Marcus Fashion risk? Wade McCollum, Scott Willis and Bryan West in PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT Durham Performing Arts CenterThrough May 5 Its characters may or may not be the kind of folks they used to warn some of us about back on the farm. But PRISCILLA, QUEEN…
Contrived horrors after fathers never come back home: Young Jean Lee’s LEAR at Duke Theater Studies
LEARDuke Theater StudiesSheafer Lab Theaterclosed April 14 Les Todd/Duke Theater Studies Faye Goodwin as Cordelia, in Young Jean Lee’s LEAR In the current PlayMakers Rep production of Cabaret, would-be American novelist Clifford Bradshaw says that 1932 Berlin is “like a bunch of kids playing in their room—getting wilder and wilder—and knowing any minute their parents…
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