The Charlottesville Players Guild continues its journey through August Wilson’s American Century Cycle with Two Trains Running. The Pulitzer Prize-winning play, set in 1960s Pittsburgh, follows restaurant owner Memphis Lee and his patrons and employees as they search for justice and love amidst a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. Leslie M. Scott-Jones directs a cast that includes […]
The Charlottesville Players Guild continues its journey through August Wilson’s American Century Cycle with Two Trains Running. The Pulitzer Prize-winning play, set in 1960s Pittsburgh, follows restaurant owner Memphis Lee and his patrons and employees as they search for justice and love amidst a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. Leslie M. Scott-Jones directs a cast that includes […]
Comedian, singer, and satirist Randy Rainbow hits the road for The Pink Glasses Tour, an evening filled with opulent costumes, stellar choreography, musical parody, and plenty of political spoofs. Rainbow’s memoir, Playing with Myself, landed him on The New York Times bestseller list, and his debut studio album, Hey Gurl, It’s Christmas!, debuted at number […]
Chances are you’ve heard American Authors’ anthemic hit single, “Best Day of My Life.” The 2013 release went triple-platinum, and has been featured in over 600 movie trailers, TV shows, and commercials. In 2020, the New York-based rock band released Counting Down, a condensed album that continues the group’s evolution to a sound that’s recognizable […]
The concert begins with a thunderous gong and booming timpani. As the intro song progresses, a guttural drone pulses, seemingly from beneath the audience’s feet, while the breathy undulation of a distant horn floats over the rumble. Audiences new to Bill Cole’s Untempered Ensemble may not immediately recognize what they’re hearing. That’s because they’re listening […]
It feels like Carnival time at Second Street Gallery. Megan Marlatt’s vibrant paintings and eye-popping big head sculptures are on view and the space sings with boisterous energy. Festival themes loom large in her show entitled “Mummers,” and though Carnival doesn’t officially begin for a couple of months, its fall equivalent is happening right now. […]
With a prime-time Virginia film fest screening at the Paramount Theater, the movie Stay Awake has made longtime Charlottesville resident Jamie Sisley an indie-festival darling again. Sisley first produced Stay Awake, which chronicles a family’s struggles with a mother’s addiction, in 2015 as an award-winning short. After securing Best Narrative Short honors at the Slamdance […]
The first use of a black panther in the Black power movement didn’t start in Oakland, California. The symbol came from one of the poorest counties in Alabama, where 80 percent of the population was Black and none were registered to vote, a place nicknamed “Bloody Lowndes.” Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power, […]
Joyce Chopra, known for her documentary, television, and filmmaking career, recounts her experiences in a new no-holds-barred memoir,Lady Director: Adventures in Hollywood, Television and Beyond. But it wasn’t until she read her book’s promo blurbs that Chopra says she understood she had completed “a history of how hard it was for women to ever get […]
Descendant The United States outlawed international slave trade in 1808, but more than a half century later a ship called the Cotilda smuggled a group of enslaved Africans into Mobile, Alabama. The expedition was illegally chartered by a plantation owner named Timothy Meaher, who ordered the Cotilda be burned and sunk to hide all evidence […]
Justin Black grew up on the James River and didn’t realize some people thought it was “disgusting,” including two friends he met at the University of Virginia. Years later, the three paddled 250 miles down the James—and made a documentary. Black, Will Gemma, and Dietrich Teschner had never made a film before. What they had […]