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stage preview NC STAGE PRESENTS Melissa James Gibson’s
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North Carolina Stage Company presents its final Mainstage Series production of their 2012–2013 season, THIS by Melissa James Gibson. Directed by Angie FlynnMcIver, one of NC Stage’s co-founders, the comedy explores the various dimensions of grief, the challenges of navigating adult friendships, and the responsibilities of family, and where those overlap and conflict. Jane is a mom and a recent and unexpected widow. Her closest friends all agree: she is definitely not fine. But they disagree about the best remedy (game nights? red wine? blind dates?). Playwright Melissa James Gibson has won acclaim for her finely drawn characters and scintillatingly funny dialogue in this wonderfully rich and poignant play about old friends and the pitfalls of looming middle age. Flynn-McIver, who has been praised by The Asheville Citizen-Times for her “razor sharp direction,” says she chose the play in great part because of the writing style Gibson uses in THIS. “What I especially love about THIS is that when you read it or see it, it feels like a real conversation. She writes with a rhythm and cadence that ring true to life—the characters interrupt one another and finish each other’s sentences. She makes whole, flawed people. Everyone’s really developed, even if the play’s messy and has loose ends. That’s a brave choice for a playwright to make.” Gibson was awarded the Steinberg Playwright Award in 2011 for THIS, which
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Society singers will be raised to new heights with this concert,” noted Dr. Galloway, “as both Stravinsky and Boulanger are brilliant composers of very challenging music that is both Impressionistic and Expressionistic in style and sound.” The 100-voice chorus will be accompanied by an ensemble of brass, percussion, and reeds, along with two pianos on the Stravinsky piece. Stravinsky composed the Symphony of Psalms in 1929 as a commission for the Boston Symphony Orchestra in celebration of its 50th anniversary. It was named by Time magazine as the century’s best classical piece and lauded by music critics, including Terry Teachout, who remarked,” For all the anxiety in ‘Symphony of Psalms,’ there are also moments of surprising tenderness . . . coming out of absolutely nowhere at the beginning of the third movement, the hallelujahs from the choir are like a shaft of sunlight suddenly breaking through the
This BY LAUREN
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premiered at New York’s Playwrights Horizons. Gibson is currently a writer on the acclaimed new TV show The Americans. THIS stars both new and familiar faces to NC Stage audiences. Anne Thibault, who has been heralded for her “powerhouse performances,” was last seen in NC Stage’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane and stars here as the protagonist Jane; Damian Duke Domingue, part of the comedic trio in NC Stage’s recent production of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), plays Alan; and Catori Swann, part of last season’s In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play, plays Jean-Pierre. Play Making their NC Stage debuts are Candace Taylor, a theatre faculty member at Warren Wilson College, as Marrell and Mondy Carter, local actor and comedian, as Tom. IF YOU THIS opens May 15 and runs GO through June 9. Performances
are at 7:30 p.m. WednesdaysSaturdays, and at 2 p.m. on Sunday afternoons. Pay What You Can Night is Wednesday, May 15 at 7:30 p.m., with tickets as low as $6. NC Stage, 15 Stage Lane in downtown Asheville. For more information and a full calendar of events, visit www.ncstage.org or call (828) 239-0263.
stained-glass windows of a great cathedral.” While Nadia Boulanger is well known as a composer and teacher of staggering influence on 20th century composers, her younger sister Lili Boulanger is an equally fascinating figure. Though in frail health, Lili had a precocious and highly acclaimed musical career. In 1913, at the age of 19, she became the first woman to win the First Prize in the Prix de Rome and she continued to compose haunting vocal and choral works until her death at age 24. IF YOU A Spirit to Remember. Two GO performances will be held; Friday,
May 10, at 7:30 p.m., and Saturday, May 11 at 4 p.m. at Diana Wortham Theatre, 2 South Pack Square in downtown Asheville. Tickets available by phone at (828) 2322060, at www.ashevillechoralsociety.org, and at the door. Tickets are $20 for adults and $10 for students; discounted tickets for groups of 10 or more are also available. Vol. 16, No. 9 — RAPID RIVER ARTS & CULTURE MAGAZINE — May 2013 7