Key players: When relaunching the Charlottesville Players Guild at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, Executive Director Andrea Douglas told C-VILLE: “If you’re going to announce yourself as an institution that addresses the 20th-century African American experience in the most interdisciplinary way, there is no other artist that does it as completely and thoroughly as August Wilson does.” Set in the 1930s, The Piano Lesson is part of Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle, and his second play to win a Pulitzer Prize. Directed by David Vaughn Straughn and produced by Edwina Herring, it centers around a piano that’s entangled in a family’s history of slavery. As relatives quarrel over whether to keep the piano, they reflect on their own cultural heritage, and are challenged to embrace where they’ve come from in order to truly move forward.
Related stories
Poetic unity
Rita Dove was on sabbatical from the University of Virginia English department when Richard Danielpour emailed the U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner. The Grammy Award-winning composer wanted to discuss collaborating on A Standing Witness, a cycle of songs that covers 50 years of American history, with original music set to poems as lyrics. […]
Taking flight
Originating from a 1765 commedia dell’arte by Carlo Gozzi, The Green Bird gets a modern staging that is “40 percent improvised,” says Director Dave Dalton of UVA Drama’s update. Gozzi’s version had serious undertones that were meant to expose what he considered dangerous ideas of Enlightenment thinkers. At UVA, the play is a hilarious ride […]
Keeping it short
Three days of screenings, competitions, and talks take place across Charlottesville as filmmakers from around the globe present their work at the Indie Short Film Festival. The fest grew out of the Indie Short Film Series, established locally by writer, director, and event marketing guru Ty Cooper in 2019. After touring to other markets, Cooper […]