Funny not funny: Contemporary playwright Alan Ayckbourn weaves themes of domestic strife, family dysfunction, and a longing for lost love through the perspectives of three different couples in Time of Your Life. After a birthday toast to happy times, Gerry Stratton and his two sons split the narrative in a play that uses time travel—backward […]
Funny not funny: Contemporary playwright Alan Ayckbourn weaves themes of domestic strife, family dysfunction, and a longing for lost love through the perspectives of three different couples in Time of Your Life. After a birthday toast to happy times, Gerry Stratton and his two sons split the narrative in a play that uses time travel—backward […]
Our voices bounce back at us as we speak. I’m one street over from the Downtown Mall in Megan Read’s studio, and it, like her paintings, has an uncluttered spaciousness about it. Older finished works line part of a wall, and paintings in progress are set up at various heights on another. But the rest […]
Calloway calling: The Bohemian Caverns Jazz Orchestra is named for the famous jazz club, founded in 1926, where Washington, D.C.’s elite once gathered to see artists such as Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway. When the club closed in 2016, it left the big band orchestra without a home, so the large ensemble hit the road […]
Over the past few weeks, Charlottesville artists have been mourning the loss and celebrating the life and work of one of their own. Local sculptor Gabriel Allan, whose larger-than-life bronze sculpture of a fire-winged man, “The Messenger,” is at IX Art Park, died March 15. Gabe, who grew up mostly in Crozet and Charlottesville, lived […]
Over the course of her six years teaching dance in UVA’s drama department, lecturer and faculty member Katie Schetlick has noticed a shift in her students. More and more, she’s seeing students connect with the influential work of choreographer Merce Cunningham. “A large body of his work is from the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s. But […]
Brilliant moves: In the mid-’90s, Solas found stateside success crafting an accessible blend of modern and traditional Celtic folk. The band’s founder, Seamus Egan, has spent decades nurturing the evolution of Irish music from his groundbreaking 1996 album, When Juniper Sleeps, through a 20-year recording career with Solas, and now on his first solo tour […]
Soft morning light filters in through the window of Andy Faith’s studio in the basement of McGuffey Art Center, and try as it might, the light can’t possibly illuminate every object on every shelf in the place. There’s an old Monticello Dairy ice cream carton, yellowed and full of rusty nails; tea bags; rough slabs […]
The broadcast to WTJU listeners on the afternoon of Saturday, March 23, began with one DJ announcing to a sea of others, “Here’s Ol’ Blue Eyes, spreading the news that we’re leaving today—Lambeth, that is,” followed by a snippet of Sinatra’s iconic “New York, New York.” It was the first day of operations in its […]
Early stages: At 21 years old, Dee White is enjoying the accolades and opportunities of a music veteran. Just a few years ago, a teenage White was spending his afternoons as a competitive fisherman, cueing up popular country songs to play on his boat.Today, thanks to being discovered by a music mogul friend, the Alabama […]
The hollow shell where human joy ought to be is a fantastically creepy thing. It’s what Tim Burton spent his early years satirizing—the self-satisfied stability (read: stagnation) of suburbia through the eyes of an outsider who finds no satisfaction in it. The smiling husks felt like prison guards enforcing order in a void of lawns […]