With a tilt of her head and a cascade of red curls, Kate Hardcastle considered her suitor across stage. “You’re so great a favorite there, you say?” “Yes, my dear,” Young Charles Marlow grinned, determined to prove to this beautiful barmaid his popularity at the Ladies Club. Swaggering toward the stage right audience, he looked […]
When Tom Stoppard wrote Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, an absurdist comedy about two minor characters from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, he was only 27 years old. Trapped in a nebulous otherworld, courtiers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern debate the nature of freedom and fate from lives pre-scripted to death. Comic dialogue coupled with philosophical themes, including the use […]
“There’s a point in Peter Pan when Peter and Wendy are pretending to be parents to the Lost Boys. Peter says, ‘Are we playing or is this real?’ Wendy says, ‘Oh it’s a game, but it’s real.’ Eventually Peter says, ‘I’m tired of playing this game, let’s play a different one.’ But that’s the reality […]
Contact I found out later that I had made every mistake in the book. I didn’t know it at the time, but the recorder picked up every sound in that house: laughter in adjacent rooms, conversations three flights downstairs, even the buzz of the Trail of Terror chainsaw. On the occasions I stuffed my phone […]
When Stephen Adly Guirgis wrote The Motherfucker with the Hat, he didn’t overthink the f-bomb. “It just felt like the right title,” he told me in a recent interview. “I also thought the play was going to be performed in my company’s 99-seat theater.” Not quite. While Guirgis prepared the show at LABrynth, the West […]
London trio The xx performs its signature chill-out electro pop on the final leg of a U.S. tour that followed the 2012 launch of its latest album Coexist. Fresh from a festival circuit that included Coachella and Bonnaroo, the band blends gentle rock with metaphysical themes and electronic elements resulting in evocative, intriguing trance ballads […]
A reader’s world is fast and bright these days, an infinite scroll through limitless content. To slake our thirst for information, we swallow so many words we can’t taste them. Even books are designed for disposal: laser-printed for mass consumption and for cheap resale. Once upon a time, however, the written word was a work […]
In a world of exploding tuitions, shaky job markets, and ubiquitous unpaid internships, the notion of an apprenticeship sounds like an antiquated luxury. In the Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Program, however, the system of master and apprentice is alive and well, not only offering hands-on education but the cultivation of inter-generational connections and preservation of Virginia […]
Fill up on sword swallowing, fire eating, and other illusions at the Carnival of Wonders, an evening of fantastic performances led by career magicians Peter Monticup and Steve Pittella, assisted by Miss Electra and The Rubber Girl. Their big city stunts and sleights of hand will kick off PVCC’s 15th season of fine and performing […]
When you ask Brooklyn-based artist and graphic novelist Laura Lee Gulledge about Charlottesville, her upbeat voice turns nostalgic. “Places like the IX building were full of my people. People who cared more about what you did than where you went to art school. People who helped me make art.” Creative community is the crux of […]