Astronomer Carl Sagan once opined that you have to understand the past in order to understand the present. That’s one of the central themes of Present, from local filmmaker Joe Chang. The film premieres at the Fine Arts Theatre on Wednesday, April 17, at 7 p.m.
Recently I went to see a movie at the Fine Arts Theatre. Right before the movie began, an old black-and-white photo of the theater flashed up on the screen. The marquee on the building posted the two features of the time: Sassy Sue and Three in a Waterbed. You see, as I have come to […]
The Fine Arts Theatre, in its current incarnation, was opened as a first-run art- and independent-film theater in 1996 by John Cram as an extension of his decades-long venture in the arts in Asheville. He opened the fine art gallery Blue Spiral 1 next door in 1991, and saw opportunity in the old theater to […]
Everyone is good. It is all very professional. And that is precisely the problem.
Football-themed play “Between the Tackles,” which opened last weekend at Burnsville’s Parkway Playhouse, is clearly a pick six, both in terms of fast paced acting and of gut wrenching humor.
The plot is ignited by the sheer star power of its two main actors. Tracey Johnston-Crum is luminous. James Meador’s delivery is precise and pointed.
Don’t believe all that can be accomplished by one actor, some able directing and a sensational set? Then what you must do is come see this R. Buckminster Fuller, early, so there is time to come back and see it again.
The Grammy-nominated fiddler plays a hometown show (with live looping and special guests) on Saturday, Aug. 11. Xpress will give away a pair of tickets to the show.
It’s a one-hour, one-man show that pays tribute to the great folk singer Woody Guthrie, at the same time as endearing his story, music and motivation to a contemporary audience.
It’s all a frothy dessert for a summer evening, with more substance than you thought when you were spooning it in.
I remember seeing the great Josh White perform in a showcase room called The Gaslight in Miami in the late '60s. Not only was the sound superb, the lighting was so skillfully done that it added another magical dimension to the experience — the pin spot on Josh's face would die away into darkness with […]
A play about preparing for a play must have seemed a good idea when playwright Annie Baker sat down at the keyboard — it seems like a good idea now, when I look at the words — but something didn’t gel. I left the theater grateful to skilled actors for making a limp script stand as long and as firmly as it did.
Onstage now at UNCA’s Carol Belk Theater, the all-student production of Tartuffe, or The Imposter, packs in everything a good play must: sex, betrayal, religion, humility, delusion, and demise.
Plays about life in the theater can feel a little cliché — the easy image of the play-within-the-play dating back to Shakespeare, and beyond. For an audience of non-actors, such storylines can be a little too self-absorbed to be relatable. Fortunately that’s not the case with Love Child, now at N.C. Stage.
The Feral Chihuahuas fortel the end of the world in “The Chihuacolypse,” running two weekend at BeBe Theatre.
Solstice is funny. It is tragic without somberness, moving without sentimentality. It’s squalid, but without a trace of self-pity. … It allows its characters to be fatally screwed up and sublime at once, and the list of playwrights who can do that is short indeed.
