Experience The Lived-In Authenticity of Jessica Abrams' The First to Know
First presented on June 8, 2025, at the Hudson Theatres during the Hollywood Fringe Festival, The First to Know arrives in Carrboro with a long creative journey behind it. Abrams began writing the play in 2011, refining it through workshops and readings over more than a decade. Toward the end of this process, she realized that she herself was meant to portray the lead character. Adjusting the script to reflect her own age and perspective ultimately elevated the work, giving it a lived-in authenticity that resonates deeply on stage…
PlayMakers' Production of Eboni Booth's Primary Trust Demonstrates Why It Won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Drama
If you are in need of a happy cry and, let's face it, we all are right now -- you must go see PlayMakers Repertory Company's production of Primary Trust, playing now through Sunday, Feb. 15th, in UNC-Chapel Hill at the landmark Paul Green Theatre. At the conclusion of the Saturday, Feb. 7th, performance, it seemed every member of the audience had tears in their eyes and a smile on their face…
Caitlin Gotimer Is Incredible as Cio-Cio-San in the North Carolina Opera's Madama Butterfly
You don't want to miss soprano Caitlin Gotimer's incredible manifestation of the tragic Cio-Cio-San in the North Carolina Opera's production of Giacomo Puccini'sMadama Butterfly, performed Jan. 30th and Feb. 1st in Raleigh Memorial Auditorium in the Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Raleigh. It is North Carolina Opera's first production in 2026 and the first time that they have presented Puccini's famous tragedy in more than 10 years…
Water for Elephants at DPAC Is Opulent and Visually Mesmerizing
Water for Elephants, playing now through Sunday at the Durham Performing Arts Center, delivers a big top of expectations. Adapted from Sara Gruen's bestselling 2006 novel, with a book by Rick Elice and music and lyrics by PigPen Theatre Co., the musical opened on Broadway in 2024, and earned seven 2024 Tony Award® nominations, including one for Best Musical…
Caroline Calouche & Co.'s Clara's Trip: A Cirque & Dance Nutcracker Story Is Undeniably a Trip
Caroline Calouche & Co.'s Clara's Trip: A Cirque & Dance Nutcracker Story, performed Dec. 22nd and 23rd in Raleigh's A.J. Fletcher Opera Theater, offers a refreshing antidote to the sugar-plum familiarity of the holiday season. Conceived by North Carolina choreographer Caroline Calouche as an "antiNutcracker," the work doesn't reject Tchaikovsky's beloved ballet so much as refract it through a contemporary lens -- one that replaces pointe shoes and strict classical form with cirque artistry, aerial daring, and a playful, modern sensibility…
PlayMakers Rep's You Can't Take It with You Is a Warm, Whimsical Triumph
Directed with verve and affectionate clarity by Nathaniel P. Claridad, this staging finds the joy, warmth, and screwball shimmer in a story that could easily collapse under its own chaos. PlayMakers offers a heartfelt, high-energy evening that revels in eccentricity while honoring the play's enduring message that happiness comes from living life on your own terms -- and loving the people who do the same…
Pony Cam's Burnout Paradise on Oct. 28th and 29th Is Theater Like You've Never Seen Before
Carolina Performing Arts welcomed the Australian experimental theater collective Pony Cam to Chapel Hill Tuesday and Wednesday, Oct. 28th and 29th, for Burnout Paradise, an hour-long collision of physical endurance, absurd humor, and existential commentary.…
Cruel Intentions: The '90s Musical at NRACT Is a Fun-Filled Trip Down Memory Lane
The North Raleigh Arts & Creative Theatre's current production of Cruel Intentions: The '90s Musical, directed by Mike McGee and choreographed by Molly Hamelin, with music direction by Mary Kathryn Walston, is a deliciously nostalgic, cheeky, and musically charged romp through the morally twisted world of the 1999 cult classic film…
The Wolves at PlayMakers Rep Is Fierce, Funny, and Utterly Human
A bright green expanse of AstroTurf stretches across the stage, as if the audience has stumbled into a Saturday morning scrimmage. The bleachers rise from the edge of this miniature arena, wrapping the spectators directly into the space of the players. Before a word is spoken, director Aubrey Snowden's staging of Sarah DeLappe's The Wolves announces its athletics-driven intent…
The Sound of Music at DPAC Is a Lavish, Heartfelt Revival of a Timeless Classic
…On opening night, the audience ranged from preschoolers to octogenarians, proving the show's enduring cross-generational appeal. This Sound of Music is more than a revival -- it's a reminder that joy, courage, and family perseveres even in the darkest times. It's well worth staying up past bedtime.…
Jenny Giering and Sean Barry's Ambitious, Autobiographical One-Woman Musical, What We Leave Behind, Still Has a Way to Go
What We Leave Behind, Theatre Raleigh's current offering, presented in partnership with the Capital Arts Theatre Guild, is an ambitious new musical written by Jenny Giering and Sean Barry.…
George Washington’s Warnings Materialize
This is an amazing article.
At the very least, it reminds us that, no matter how bad we think things are getting, they have always been this way.
Hilwa’s Gifts by Safa Suleiman and Anita Semirdzhyan: A Book Review
Hilwa’s Gifts by Safa Suleiman, illustrated by Anait Semirdzhyan, is a soulful, practical, and pertinent children’s book that masterfully blends culture, tradition, and family…
A Good Boy Is Not a Perfect Production, but it is an Important One
…This particular project emerged from an invitation by the lead psychologist at Central Prison in Raleigh after they saw an earlier Hidden Voices production about women in prison. The collaboration that followed -- with death row inmates and their families -- shaped the script of A Good Boy…
Freedom at Dawn: Robert Smalls’s Voyage Out of Slavery, by Leah Schanke and Oboh Moses
Freedom at Dawn: Robert Smalls’s Voyage Out of Slavery is a picture book that tells the remarkable story of Robert Smalls, an enslaved man who escaped captivity during the Civil War…
Scrap Paper Shakespeare's Love's Labor's Lost Is a Highly Entertaining Night Out
There is much to say about Scrap Paper Shakespeare's production of Love's Labor's Lost at Durham's Shadowbox Studio. First is that Scrap Paper Shakespeare, a nonprofit (501c3) local theater, founded less than three years ago, is moving right along…
Theatre Raleigh's Sold-Out Aug. 6-24 Production of Waitress Is Officially My Favorite Musical Ever
I was so excited when I got tickets to see Waitress: The Musical, directed by Eric Woodall, at Theatre Raleigh, right here in the Triangle, that I thought I couldn't help but be disappointed. Well, let me assure you: Theatre Raleigh did not disappoint…
The National Tour of The Wiz at DPAC Is Dazzling and Soulful, with Room to Grow
Fifty years after The Wiz first hit Broadway and swept the 1975 Tony Awards®, with its all-Black cast winning seven Tonys, including Best Musical, the iconic retelling of The Wizard of Oz is back -- revitalized, resplendent, and currently rocking the Durham Performing Arts Center through Sunday, Aug. 10th…
Captivity, Compassion, and Control Collide in Scapegoat Initiative's Bold Kelly and Du
…The play opens in a bare concrete basement, where Keely, a pregnant woman kidnapped outside an abortion clinic, wakes up shackled to a bed by members of an anti-abortion group known as "Operation Retrieval."
Short-Changing Babies
… I thought that women and doctors insisting on early births for nonmedical reasons lived only in cynical imaginations and television soap operas. Turns out that, in the last decade, the main stream has effectively reduced ‘full-term’ to 37 weeks…