Quarantine creativity begins to show

David Wax Museum Euphoric Ouroboric, Mark of the Leopard As David Wax Museum, the husband/wife duo of David Wax and Suz Slezak have churned out studio albums brimming with their unique blend of Mexo-Americana whimsy for 14 years. In 2019, their debut label release, Line of Light, garnered the Charlottesville pair a performance on “CBS […]

Lightening up

Of all the changes COVID has brought to the arts world, one of the most significant has been to big-screen entertainment. Charlottesville theaters and moviemakers have done their best to adapt, whether it’s drive-in film festivals or rent-a-theater evenings, but the pandemic has undeniably sped up the trend of people consuming entertainment alone and on […]

PICK: The Wandering

Break out: Part visual album, part queer drama, and part live experience, The Wandering is a new way of experiencing theatrical art. Created by Charlottesville native and Albemarle High School alum Jeremy Weiss, the production is inspired by the music of Franz Schubert, and uses a queer lens to examine the love and pain that […]

PICK: Like Water For Chocolate

Hot chocolate: Food nourishes the magical realism in the 1992 international sensation Like Water For Chocolate. When Tita is forbidden from marrying her true love Pedro due to her place in the family lineage, he marries her older sister. Tita becomes a cook, and channels her undying passion for her brother-in-law into meals with special […]

Baby bonding

The world is always changing, and the stories we tell need to change with it. While the circumstances in Together Together might feel like a modern phenomenon, the emotions and connections within it are timeless. The film begins with Anna (Patti Harrison) meeting Matt (Ed Helms) for the first time. This is not your typical […]

Home stage

By Haines Eason Working from home. Telehealth. Online shopping. Which pandemic trends will remain, and which will fade? Charlottesville native Kate Lambert, a comedian whose resume includes The Second City and Chicago Improv act The Katydids (which sold the hit “Teachers” to TV Land), is part of something that producer Jill Paiz-Bourque of the livestream […]

PICK: And the VIII Journeyed

Journey by foot: Keith Lee now calls central Virginia home, but his teaching and choreography work began at New York’s storied High School of Performing Arts, and was followed by decades of dance artistry everywhere from the American Ballet Theatre to Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. As artist laureate, resident choreographer, and director of diversity […]

PICK: New Works Festival

Take a listen: With a pivot to podcasts, UVA Drama’s New Works Festival is all ears this year. The fifth annual student-run fest offers five short audio pieces (including one musical), which will be streamed on WTJU. Faculty mentors Dave Dalton and Doug Grissom realized audio dramas were a creative solution to replace the currently […]

PICK: Festy

Fest in place: With the announcement of its 2021 season, Festy takes a big leap forward by staying seated. Instead of the multi-day jam-out camp-out that’s fueled past Festys, this year’s event sticks with its COVID-inspired model of single shows (in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina) and VIP-style pod seating. Well suited to the […]

PICK: See About the Girls

Bringing down the house : Amiri Baraka’s 1964 play The Slave takes place during a race war and ends with a deadly house collapse. As final as that sounds, local playwright and vocalist Ti Ames (right) continues the story: See About the Girls is set 14 years later, and imagines that Walker Vessel’s biracial daughters […]