Talents unite as playwrights, directors, and actors team up for a series of epic performances at Charlottesville Players Guild’s 24/7 fundraiser. Seven playwrights—Ti Ames, Zaharra Colla, Richelle Claiborne, Derick Williams, David Vaughn Straughn, Edward Warwick White, and Davey White—write a play overnight, then pass it on to seven directors—Ike Anderson, Chris Evans, Mercedes Herrero, Edwina […]
Talents unite as playwrights, directors, and actors team up for a series of epic performances at Charlottesville Players Guild’s 24/7 fundraiser. Seven playwrights—Ti Ames, Zaharra Colla, Richelle Claiborne, Derick Williams, David Vaughn Straughn, Edward Warwick White, and Davey White—write a play overnight, then pass it on to seven directors—Ike Anderson, Chris Evans, Mercedes Herrero, Edwina […]
Poet Kaveh Akbar’s debut novel, Martyr!, explores themes of addiction and sobriety, grief and grace, trauma and love. Rich with Daedalian prose, this semi-autobiographical bildungsroman tells the story of Cyrus Shams, a young Iranian American poet and recovering alcoholic. Born in Iran but currently living in an Indiana college town, Cyrus is drifting, purposeless, and […]
Plastic bags, candy wrappers, puzzle pieces, and leaves don’t usually top the list of materials used to create the fancy frocks we see on catwalks and red carpets. Except, that is, at the annual St. Anne’s-Belfield Wearable Arts Runway Show, where upper-school students like Annie Yuan (left) repurposed and recycled existing materials to create the […]
Alicia Walsh-Noel met Wilson Richey under difficult circumstances. She was part of the team opening Brasserie Saison in 2017, and it was a cutthroat crew. “Upper management was a toxic boys’ club,” Walsh-Noel says. “The restaurant industry can be a very cruel place, and Wilson was someone that really stood up for just the smallest […]
Charlottesville is full of smarty-pants who love to work their brains at trivia night. And you’re guaranteed to find a gathering nearly every night of the week, like Random Row’s Sunday evening battle of wits, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema’s Thursday night get-together for “Jeopardy!” wannabes, and Starr Hill Downtown’s Wednesday evening extravaganza, where host Olivia Brown […]
Landscape photographer Karen Duncan Pape turns her lens to the page in “De-Circulated,” an exhibition of reconstructed covers of banned books on display at McGuffey Art Center through January 28. “Growing up in Southwest Virginia, books were extremely important to me, as they exposed me to other worlds and broadened my perspective,” says Pape. “I […]
Take a deep dive into the culture and legacy of African American violinists in director Eduardo Montes-Bradley’s Black Fiddlers. The 60-minute documentary shares the stories and sounds of Black men and women throughout American history, like the late old-time fiddler Joe Thompson (pictured) and 18th-century Richmond virtuoso Sy Gilliat, an enslaved man whose opera melodies […]
Boston-based fiddler Maura Shawn Scanlin is putting her own inventive twist on traditional Celtic tunes. An award-winning musician, Scanlin incorporates classical chamber music and traditional sounds from the American South, along with Irish and Scottish fiddle playing into her fluid compositions. Scanlin is touring her new self-titled record with Conor Hearn on guitar, Adam Hendey […]
Funny guy Trae Crowder sounds off to live audiences during his Just Me and Y’all Tour. The comedian first went viral in 2016 for his porch rant-style “Liberal Redneck” videos. He’s since co-written two books, The Liberal Redneck Manifesto and Round Here and Over Yonder: A Front Porch Travel Guide by Two Progressive Hillbillies, hosted […]
Director-co-screenwriter J.A. Bayona’s Society of the Snow is a well-made, engrossing story of survival told straightforwardly and conventionally. The film deftly depicts a horrifying, real-life tragedy and, although it is vivid, it avoids being sordid. In October 1972, Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 to Chile, carrying a rugby team of young men and some of […]