ART Pick: Will and Whit

Laura Lee Gulledge wrote her young adult graphic novel Will and Whit as a show of gratitude to Charlottesville, a place that helped her pursue her ambitions. Four years later, the story is coming to life in the form of a musical in the very town where it began. Using live drawing and shadow puppetry, […]

ARTS Pick: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)

Three actors, 37 plays and an hour and a half to perform The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged). Andy Davis, Jack Rakes and Kendall Stewart rip through plots and costumes at a blistering pace, navigating shortcuts with tactics such as turning Othello into a rap and replacing the comedies with an improv Mad Libs […]

Paige Naylor leads a journey of awareness

Sit down, find a comfortable position—lay down, if that’s more relaxing. Close your eyes. Can you find the quiet place in your mind where there are no thoughts, no words, no images? Can you remain in the quiet mind place by listening to all the sounds you can possibly hear, including the most distant sounds […]

Movie review: Marshall succeeds on multiple levels

A civil rights superhero movie? Why not? For a country so enamored with our national mythology, we are remarkably inconsistent when it comes to cinematic depictions of our historical figures. After all, many of our founding fathers owned slaves, and many more recent icons emerged at a time when personal shortcomings could not be as easily […]

Lisa Beane uses “Karma” to address atrocities

Nine years ago I reviewed an exhibition at the Fralin Art Museum featuring the work of William Christenberry. Included in the show was his “Klan Room Tableau,” a peculiar installation of dolls dressed in KKK robes. According to Christenberry, the highly personal work was his means of exposing and exorcising the hatred and violence of […]

ARTS Pick: Liz Carrnage

The laughs arrive via I-64 as Liz Carrnage hosts her funny mates from RVA for a night of clean comedy that’s adult in nature, but not explicit. The former Charlottesville resident returns with a lineup that includes Keith Marcell, Brandon Beswick, Richard Woody and Paige Campbell. Thursday, October 12. $5, 6pm. C’ville Coffee, 1301 Harris […]

Erin & The Wildfire releases first full-length album

While playing a 30-minute set at Lockn’ in 2014, Erin & The Wildfire guitarist Ryan Lipps broke a string on every guitar he brought, so to cover the lag in the “squeeze-in-as-much-you-can-set,” drummer Nick Quillen told a long, drawn-out joke. “It wasn’t exactly the best thing we’ve ever done, but it was certainly memorable,” Quillen […]

Emerging voices fill a DIY bill at the Jefferson

There’s no disputing that digital music and online platforms have radically changed how we listen to and discover music. The DIY scene has aced this technological inroad, benefiting from the access and control it gives to up-and-coming artists. Today’s unsigned musicians release their own music, book their own shows, eschew mainstream media and feel a […]

Live Arts weighs love and dysfunction in season opener

This week Live Arts opens its season by inviting the public into an intimate theater in the round to observe the interior lives of family and friends in Edward Albee’s 1967 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, A Delicate Balance. Director Fran Smith says it is an eloquent work that “centers around family dysfunction.” The setting is Westchester […]