Acting looks a bit different for Will Jones this summer. Instead of being onstage with the Charlottesville Players Guild, he’s sitting at home, in front of a microphone, wearing headphones so he can hear himself and his castmates as they read from their scripts for “Grounds…A Blackcast,” an original 10-episode audio drama. Some aspects of […]
Acting looks a bit different for Will Jones this summer. Instead of being onstage with the Charlottesville Players Guild, he’s sitting at home, in front of a microphone, wearing headphones so he can hear himself and his castmates as they read from their scripts for “Grounds…A Blackcast,” an original 10-episode audio drama. Some aspects of […]
A few years ago, Leslie Scott-Jones was wandering around the Aquarian Bookshop on West Main Street in Richmond, looking for lavender incense. Walking by a table of tarot card decks, she received a message from one of her maternal great-grandmothers: “That one.” Scott-Jones stopped—she’d learned to listen to these messages when she received them—looked at the […]
As we adjust to life amid the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ll likely turn to the arts—a favorite poem, a beloved album, a treasured painting—over and over in search of comfort and relief. Art, in all its forms, is a vital part not just of our personal lives but of our community. Social distancing measures and […]
Let’s pretend for a minute. It’s sometime in the not-too-distant future. Charlottesville is a thriving black kingdom, free of the white gaze and white corruption, and comprised of various hamlets, including Vinegar Hill, Starr Hill, and between them, Gospel Hill, the kingdom’s seat and center of spirituality. Such is the premise of Hambone, an original, […]
Ring true: Boxer Jack Johnson became the first African American world heavyweight champion, and at the height of the Jim Crow era he was “the most famous and the most notorious African American on Earth,” according to documentarian Ken Burns. Directed by multi-faceted artist and C-VILLE contributor Leslie Scott-Jones, The Royale, written by Marco Ramirez, […]
When Nina Simone died in 2003, Elton John sent flowers with the message, “You were the greatest and I love you.” That sentiment has been echoed by countless others, and tributes to Simone aim to capture her seductive, hypnotic genius. Richelle Claiborne and Leslie-Scott Jones rekindle the vocal magic during A Night With Nina, with […]
When the student-run UVA Studio Arts Board asked New York artist Ed Woodham to bring his Art in Odd Places to the university, he wanted local artists to take part in the public visual and performance art, and the centerpiece of the two-day April event featured local theater artists Leslie Scott-Jones and Brandon Lee. Two […]
She’d been here before. During a recent rehearsal of August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, a feeling of recollection overcame Brenda Brown-Grooms as she recited her lines. She was in character as Bertha Holly, wife of Seth Holly and a boarding house matron who likes to bake biscuits, make coffee and care for her […]
The next time you use the Water Street and Second Street crosswalk, look in the Live Arts window. There’s a light on in the lobby—the theater’s ghost light. It’s small and casts yellow light from a transparent glass shade, and, according to superstition, keeps ghosts from haunting the theater after everyone leaves. Ever concerned with […]
Lights go up on the wood-paneled stage in the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center auditorium to reveal the inside of a jitney cab station in Pittsburgh. It’s early fall 1977 and the Hill District, a group of neighborhoods that have long been the cultural center of black life in the city—full of black-owned homes, […]