Month: May 2011

 It’s obvious that we’re currently suffering through some sort of nationwide spike in lunacy. And while the most obvious manifestation of America’s recent detour into dementia was a laughably incorrect end-of-the-world prediction (unless the Rapture actually occurred on May 21, and this column is—as we’ve long suspected—the sole reading material in Hell), a corresponding increase in local loonies has also invaded our once-commonsensical commonwealth.

Don’t believe us? Well, just take a gander at these completely random acts of insanity that have occurred in Virginia in just the past few weeks:

First we have 31-year-old Michael Creath Jones, a Hanover-area hellion who has a slight problem with authority, to say the least. The trouble began when Mr. Jones drove his car, sporting a nifty handwritten license plate with the words “Virginia” and “private use” scrawled on it, past a state trooper. Needless to say, the officer’s curiosity was piqued, and he promptly pulled Jones over to discuss the man’s unique vehicle registration strategy. It should come as no surprise that Jones’ traffic stop etiquette—which involved locking his doors, providing multiple fake names, and declaring himself a “free citizen on a free highway”—was as unorthodox as his “sovereign citizen” vanity plate, and he soon found himself subdued and packed off to Verona’s Middle River Regional Jail on charges of resisting arrest and driving without a license, among many others.

Our second cracked character is Virginia Beach businessman Henry Allen Fitzsimmons, a prominent restaurant owner and all-around deviant whose philanthropic impulses apparently got all mixed up with his twisted libido. According to three women whom he allegedly “mentored,” Fitzsimmons lured young ladies into his “Spencer Scholarship Program” with promises of free college tuition and lodging, but soon began applying idiosyncratic conditions that gave new meaning to the phrase “academic discipline.” Chief among them? Vigorous bouts of bare-bottom spanking for alleged missteps and infractions. In retrospect, the women probably should have become suspicious when they saw that the program paperwork was actually a Fulbright Scholarship application with the first word altered to read “Full Moon.”

Finally, we come to the most dangerous and demented oddball of all: U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Sure, his recent erratic behavior isn’t clinically anti-social or sexually deviant, but that doesn’t make it any less deranged. We’re referring, of course, to Cantor’s repeated and specific threats to blow up the entire U.S. economy.

As you may have heard, the United States recently reached its official spending limit, necessitating the implementation of extraordinary measures to prevent America from defaulting on its outstanding bonds. Now, while most credible economists believe that a debt default would be absolutely catastrophic, Cantor has repeatedly insisted that failing to raise the debt ceiling wouldn’t be a big deal. (He even claimed at a recent press conference that business leaders have told him “Don’t give in.”) To underscore his point, Cantor is even planning to bring a “clean” debt limit bill to the House floor, specifically so that he and his fellow Republicans can vote against it, thereby proving that the gun they’ve got pressed to the economy’s head is fully loaded.

Like we said: pure lunacy. In fact, if you ask us, it seems like someone could use a good spanking.

 The latest results of the annual “Point-in-Time” census of the local homeless population show a decrease in both the total number of homeless individuals and the number of unsheltered individuals.

On January 27, volunteers for the Thomas Jefferson Area Coalition for the Homeless (TJACH) visited local shelters and counted beds that were in use. They also went to places where homeless men and women congregate and conducted a 28-question survey about the circumstances that led them to their current state. Ultimately, volunteers counted 253 homeless, down from 274 last year.

The census also found 201 adults and 34 children in emergency shelters or transitional housing. According to TJACH’s count, the most pronounced decrease came in the number of unsheltered homeless folks: 18, compared to 27 last year.

Seventy percent of those individuals surveyed were males, and 35 percent of respondents had been homeless for less than six months.

“A bias people have about homelessness is that it’s permanent,” says Kaki Dimock, executive director of TJACH. Dimock is also executive director of The Haven, the Downtown day shelter that opened in January 2010.

“Nationally, 80 percent of people are homeless less than two years, so they transition out,” says Dimock, who says that Charlottesville data reflects the same dynamic. “Forty percent [are homeless] less than six months. It’s transitional for most people.”

The results, however, may indicate only a portion of the local homeless population.

“We are not capturing a 30,000-foot view of homelessness in our community,” she says. “Because it happens in January, [the census] counts a group of people as sheltered in our community that, six months out of the year, are not sheltered,” she says. PACEM, the area’s major emergency shelter, is seasonal and only operates from October to April.

“The data that we report to the federal government has a tendency to skew towards a more chronically homeless population,” says Dimock. “It appears as though we have a group that is homeless longer with a greater need than we may actually have, if we counted everybody who is truly homeless,” says Dimock. She adds that TJACH’s census also doesn’t account for homeless Latinos who may not access traditional shelters and care systems.

“We don’t know where they are, so we can’t go gather the data, so the data doesn’t reflect their needs,” says Dimock.

TJACH will submit census data to the federally funded Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) as part of a grant request that could bring $350,000 for three consecutive years. The SAMHSA grant, called Cooperative Agreements to Benefit Homeless Individuals, supports the creation of programs to address mental health issues and substance abuse, problems among the chronic homeless population.

The grant request is a collaboration between TJACH, the City of Charlottesville and Region Ten, a local mental health service provider. Grant money would fund a benefits worker staff position with the City of Charlottesville, two clinicians with Region Ten (one for outreach and one for assessment and programming) and a case manager at The Haven.

While Dimock says the likelihood of receiving the grant is slim, the application has helped clarify the needs for the area homeless population. “We might be in a position to take this sort of programming and try to market it to another funder,” she says.

When Paul first shows up at Flan and Ouisa Kittredge’s posh Central Park apartment, he says that he’s been stabbed, and that the only copy of his Harvard thesis has been stolen. But after Paul charms the couple by claiming to be the son of Sidney Poitier—who Paul claims is planning a live-action adaptation of Cats—the Kittredges forget their discomfort, and insist that this stranger, who seems to know the couple’s children, spend the night recovering in their home.

By morning, we get the inkling that Paul is not who he said he was. John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation, which plays at Live Arts through June 12, examines the art of the swindle, which is itself a kind of acting. The story, based on the actual exploits of David Hampton, a con man who managed to infiltrate Guare’s clique of New York art elites, is not really about the mechanics of Paul’s hustle. It’s about being played for a fool.

Performance relies on a mutual agreement to misdirect and to be misdirected. For Paul, played well by a wispy Lance Lemon, the only mode seems to be misdirection. Even after his deception takes the life of a dupe, he doesn’t appear to be remorseful, doesn’t change. He’s not even a very good thief. But he gets under the skin of the Kittredges.

Through Paul, Kay Leigh Ferguson’s Ouisa seems to take a kind of quiet joy in experiencing victimhood. Ferguson gives Ouisa of subtle, matter-of-fact quality that downplays the character’s epiphanies and even her possible attraction to Paul. She plays the flake, only to find that she can stretch out her wings a bit, even be defiant. Unfortunately, the plotting gives Ouisa a somewhat ham-fisted closing; fortunately, Ferguson’s decision to remain on a lower key helps smooth the strangeness of the final scene.

Doug Schneider, known locally as a singer, is one of the best character actors in the area. His Flan lacks transcendence, but it’s hardly a distraction. (The on-stage nudity is, however.) Elsewhere, the bulk of the players are prescribed a scene or two at most, which is a glitch of the scripting. Nonetheless, these thinly-sketched characters are generally given a good go by the cast. I think of Edwina Herring, Alex Davis and Michael Goldstein, who should be given more than a dollop of stage time in future productions.

Six Degrees is fitting material for director Betsy Tucker, who is attracted to multi-layered scripts. (Her Beard of Avon, previously at Live Arts, was not as much about anti-Stratfordianism as it was about gender.) She hurdles the bumpy script with relish. I wondered what this story would have been like had it been penned by David Mamet or Sarah Ruhl or Caryl Churchill, playwrights with a clearer grasp on the notion that chaos and trickery can be redemptive. But even with an elusive and rocky script, Live Arts offers a solid, workhorse production full of compelling performances and ideas.