Artery

Michael Kearns’ Solo Take: Intimacies

Byron Woods · 13 Nov 2009, 6:33 PM · Comment

Note: The video clip from this performance features graphic language and adult situations. Viewer discretion advised.

“I’ve been an HIV nurse for 14 years, and I know all of those people.”

The endorsement came from a woman in the audience, after the opening night performance of intimacies kicked off the Solo Takes On Festival of one-person shows, Friday night at the ArtsCenter.

As one of the first television and film actors to come out as gay, Michael Kearns helped pave the way for generations to come. But when he announced that he was HIV-positive, his career evaporated before his eyes. Starved for work, he developed intimacies, a one-man show about six striking individuals affected by AIDS — and he toured the world with it.

Eventually, his career recovered as living with AIDS slowly became a reality, and not just a dream. The 20th Anniversary Tour of his now-historic solo performance continues Saturday night at 8 p.m. at the ArtsCenter in Carrboro. Tickets are $15 and $10.

Theater Michael Kearns, one-person show, Theater

Ashley Lucas: “Doin’ Time” at Solo Takes

Byron Woods · 13 Nov 2009, 3:31 PM · Comment

Playwright, ethnographer and performer Ashley Lucas

Some stories you live. Then you tell the tale.

Playwright, ethnographer and performer Ashley Lucas
began work on Doin’ Time, her one-person show in the Solo Takes On festival, when her father was denied parole by the Texas prison system in the summer of 2003.

In a 2008 interview, she said, “When I was brave enough to come out and say, ‘I am a child of a prisoner,’ I was overwhelmed by the number of people who came to me wanting to share their stories as they, too, were in similar situations.”

Lucas corresponded with over 400 prisoners from across the country, interviewing family members of prisoners, former prisoners, and workers in prisons and prison activism in California, Texas and New York. Out of those stories and her own experiences, she has created “a harshly realistic perspective of the desperation of the prisoners and of the families they leave behind — rendering the families of prisoners innocent refugees and forgotten victims of the prison system.”

Performances for Doin’ Time are this Sunday, Nov. 15, at 3 p.m., next Saturday, Nov. 21, at 5 p.m. and next Sunday, Nov. 22, at 3 p.m. All performances are in UNC’s Swain Hall. Tickets are $10 / $5.

Theater Ashley Lucas, one-person show, Theater

Picasso’s Closet: The Independent Interview with Ariel Dorfman

Byron Woods · 22 Oct 2009, 8:11 AM · Comment

I spoke with Ariel Dorfman about his play, Picasso’s Closet, for about 45 minutes in his office at the John Hope Franklin Institute at Duke, at midday on Oct. 13, 2009. Nasher Museum of Art will present a staged reading of the play in conjunction with its Picasso and the Allure of Language exhibit, Oct. 29-31, at 7 p.m. Tickets are available at the Duke Box Office website.

Independent: This must be a difficult script to produce.

Ariel Dorfman (Photo by D.L. Anderson)

Ariel Dorfman: This is an experimental play. Let’s say I’ve tried to do, modestly, in theater with time what Picasso does with space—which is to create many perspectives and break down the barriers of identity. Therefore it verges between the popular and the experimental.

As different characters place their viewpoints one after another, there are these interstitial planes of reality coming at each other…

Most biopics, say, tend to be rather linear. Or at least they go back and forth—childhood to adulthood to childhood to adulthood—

—the narrative of ping pong—

—and they’re very predictable in that sense.

I said to myself, “How can I possibly write a play about Picasso as if Picasso’s art had never existed?” It had to be influenced by Picasso; the greatest homage to him is really not the character on stage, but the art with which he’s being portrayed. It’s a post-Picasso play, whereas most plays about Picasso I’ve seen—most plays about artists I’ve seen—tend to act as if the artist had not influenced them at all.

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Interviews, Theater, Visual Art and Artists Add new tag, Ariel Dorfman, Byron Woods, Dorfman, Picasso, Picasso's Closet, Theater, theatre

A somewhat less than intimate interview with David Copperfield

Byron Woods · 20 Oct 2009, 10:03 AM · 1 Comment

From the printed record we surmised that magician David Copperfield wasn’t the easiest interview. The taciturn answers we’d read in most of the recent published pieces suggested a subject intent on his talking points—and, apparently, just not into most of the conversations.

But perhaps, I thought, that’s because no one poses the right questions. I mean, if everyone insisted on asking you the one thing you could never answer while still keeping your job—So, uhh, how’d you do that neat trick on stage?—you’d probably get a bit peevish yourself after a while.

So, in advance of “An Intimate Evening of Grand Illusion,” his performances Tuesday and Wednesday at DPAC, I started thinking about questions that might be useful—and even answerable—by a world-class magician.

Then we were informed that Copperfield would not be available for phone or personal conversation—a barrier seemingly lowered, almost like magic, for a stringer at one daily paper, but not a columnist at another.

We could, however, e-mail him.

And then wait a week for his answers.

So we did.

Ironically, for an artist interested in presenting something intimate and grand to the public, the experience was noticeably less than both.  

Below: the transcript of our e-mail exchange, and our conclusions at the end. I’d call it Exhibit A for the case against e-mail interviews, but you’ll be the judge. Nothing up our sleeves; the rest, after the jump.

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Durham Performing Arts Center (DPAC), Theater Byron Woods, Copperfield, David Copperfield, DPAC, interview, magic, Theater