Hunt and Wimer race to document an exploding sport

Ever since Dave Matthews struck it big, locals have been wondering what’s our Next Big Thing. While that discussion has often veered towards bands, what stands perhaps the best chance of keeping Charlottesville on the national cultural map is something else entirely: scantily clad women arm wrestling for charity.

As CLAW—Charlottesville Lady Arm Wrestlers, invented after an impromptu arm wrestling bout between local performers Jennifer Tidwell and Jodie Plaisance—infects the nation like a bad case of jock itch, filmmaker Brian Wimer and photographer Billy Hunt find themselves in the unique position of having documented the events almost from the beginning. Today, CLAW has grown from a fun Charlottesville fundraiser into a bona fide national organization with chapters from Brooklyn to Chicago, and D.C. to Taos, New Mexico. “It’s exploding,” says Wimer. “Six months from now, there will probably be six more.”

With the pair’s ongoing documentary project, dubbed CLAW: The Movie, they have appointed themselves the sport’s official chroniclers, a task that is part sports photography, part war photography, part anthropology. (Wimer and Hunt are trying to raise $5,000 to fund their travel and other expenses through Kickstarter.com.)

As new chapters spring up in different cities across the nation, says Hunt, “Each organization has its own way of doing things.” In Chicago, a longtime destination for aspiring improv comics, he says the emphasis is on performance; the referee can make wrestlers do anything he wants—Hokey Pokey included. In careerist D.C., CLAW is super-competitive, with wrestlers at each other’s throats to raise the most money for charity. And in the small, working-class city of Kingston, in New York’s Hudson Valley, matches emphasize the spirit of public service, with wrestlers campaigning for charities they themselves benefited from.
But as the sport has spread, so have injuries associated with it. One wrestler aggravated a previous back injury after a brutal bout; another had to bow out because of tendonitis. All this in addition to the now-infamous incident at Blue Moon Diner in February, where the sound of a wrestler’s arm breaking echoed throughout the audience. “Like a regular sport, they’re fighting through their injuries,” says Hunt. “It’s a serious thing.”

Though painful, it makes for rich documentary material. Hunt and Wimer say they’re planning to tag along with the CLAW roadshow next spring, when representatives will hand-deliver the gospel of sexy women arm wrestling for charity to smaller communities across the nation. Easier to document for the local filmmakers will be a potential CLAW national championship, to be held in town next year.

As for the competitive spirit that makes CLAW a fun night out, Hunt and Wimer have plenty, too. “We are the best lady arm wrestling documentarians that have ever lived—ever, in the history of the world,” says Hunt. 

Play it forward

By the time you read this Live Arts will have announced its 2011-2012 season. This year’s committee was led by Sara Holdren, a production assistant and regular theater presence around town. Holdren writes in the announcement that the season’s selections try to “distill and maintain the spirit of Live Arts, while branching out into ever new and exciting territory.” (Expect a permanent replacement for Satch Huizenga, the producing artistic director who resigned in December, in the coming months.)

So how’d they do? The season opens with Superior Donuts in October, Tracy Letts’ comedy about a Chicago sweet shop and its former radical owner. Later, Live Arts mines the early 20th century with the French playwright Georges Feydeau’s 1907 work, A Flea in Her Ear (March 2012) and the Russian playwright Leonid Andreyev’s He Who Gets Slapped (May 2012).

And then there are the surefire blockbusters: Mel Brooks’ film classic-turned-Broadway classic The Producers opens in December. The much-loved musical Hairspray, based on the movie by John Waters, opens in July 2012.

Lest we forget the fare that will receive short runs, the local comedy writer Denise Stewart will reprise her recent autobiographical one-woman show Dirty Barbie & Other Girlhood Tales in late November. A new theater ensemble called Melanin will also premiere; the group, run by Leslie Baskfield, Clinton Johnston, Ray Smith and Jared Ivory, is dedicated to “exploring works of African-American artists and interpreting works through an African-American perspective” and will put on three one-night-onlys: Tennessee Williams’ Night of the Iguana, Pearl Cleage’s A Song for Coretta and Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s Oak and Ivy.

See the complete announcement on the Feedback blog at c-ville.com.