Morgan Hurt and Gabriel Garcia have created a cult following for their Kitchenette sandwiches, including the Hot Wet Beef (above), which “started it all.” Staff photo.
“It was the Hot Wet Beef that started it all,” says Morgan Hurt.
Kitchenette, the lunchtime sandwich shop Hurt co-founded with her partner, Gabriel Garcia, boasts 22 different subs, hoagies, and rolls. But the Hot Wet Beef, a juicy roast beef hoagie with eggplant and pepper spread, is the OG. The inspiration came after a bite of a roast beef sandwich in Brooklyn, a sensory experience Hurt describes as beautiful. That’s when the couple realized Charlottesville needed a place that would “combine sandwiches with actual food.”
With 20 years of restaurant experience between them, Hurt and Garcia are well-prepared to take on a casual, gourmet concept. “Dealing with food is fun!” says Hurt, a Charlottesville native who met Mexico City native Garcia while working at an Asheville, North Carolina, restaurant. In 2006, they moved to C’ville and worked at Vivace and The Whiskey Jar before opening Kitchen Catering and Events, in 2013.
They hadn’t forgotten about that magical moment with the roast beef sandwich in Brooklyn, though. In their free time, they found themselves crafting subs for friends, and trying out new flavor combinations. Hurt gushes about the appeal of sandwiches. “They are just the perfect food! They’re portable and you can do anything with them,” she says. In 2017, the pair opened Kitchenette, intending the sandwich shop to be a side project to their catering business. But when the pandemic slowed the events business, Kitchenette became their focus.
In June 2020, Kitchenette moved from a warehouse to a cozy Victorian home, tucked off of East High Street. The space is bright and has a familial feel. There’s a jar of dog treats for pups, and kids love the tables’ novelty salt-and-pepper shakers, which range from dinosaurs to kiwi birds. The new location came with a vintage clawfoot tub in the bathroom, and Hurt jokes that “the sandwiches are so messy, we offer a bath!”
A restaurant space gives Hurt and Garcia the opportunity to flex their culinary creativity and have some fun. Their stuffed sandwiches boast bold flavors and fresh ingredients, with quirky names to match. “Honestly,” says Hurt, “we have to restrain ourselves because we get very dorky with it.” Some, like Penny and Oliver’s Dream, are named after their dogs. Others, like The Ramona, are named after soccer moves. Even AC/DC’s Angus Young gets a shout-out with the Angus Yum. The Squeal is a slappin’ pork and bacon sammie with apple-ginger chutney, while The Jive Turkey’s blend of turkey, cranberry mayo, and crunchy onions elevates your average day-after-Thanksgiving concoction. The flavorful sides include curried chickpea salad, tangy kale salad, and soup of the day.
It’s guided by one goal: “We like to make it for our palates,” says Hurt, “It’s always something that we would want to eat.” Customers agree, say Hurt and Garcia, who love how regulars are always down to try the daily specials. “A lot of people are like, ‘I’ve never had anything bad here, so sure!’” says Hurt. “That’s really cool because they trust us to make it right.”
If Kitchenette is new to you, that’s part of the plan. The eatery’s founders purposely kept advertising to a minimum. “It’s given us the opportunity to learn as we grow,” says Garcia. “We feel lucky that we’ve grown more organically.” Yet it’s hard to keep good food a secret in Charlottesville, and their reputation has spread, well, through word of mouth. “We used to have slow days. There are no more slow days,” laughs Garcia. They’ve also noticed more and more customers ask about parking. “We’re like, this is cool!” says Hurt. “It means they’re not from the neighborhood, we’re spidering out.”
But Hurt and Garcia won’t let the growth change a thing. Their goal for Kitchenette is simple: “We just want it to taste good,” Hurt says.
Senator Mark Warner returned to Charlottesville last week to update residents
on ongoing mail delivery delays. Photo: Courtesy subject
(More) mail woes
For years, mail delays have plagued the Charlottesville area, thanks to short staffing and poor management at the Charlottesville Post Office. Last week, Senator Mark Warner visited Charlottesville again to meet with frustrated residents and postal workers, and address the ongoing crisis.
“Our service has gotten better in the last month or maybe even two months, but it still comes infrequently,” said local resident Drew Trotter during the meeting, held at the University of Virginia. “We get 22 pieces one day and nothing for two more days.”
Warner attributed the staffing crisis to low wages, and said he would request pay raises for postal workers in Charlottesville and Albemarle County.
“If the post office doesn’t pay better than fast food, and being a postal carrier is a heck of a lot harder work outside in the weather, I’m not sure how we fill that gap—unless we can make it more competitive,” Warner said.
Warner hoped that the Postal Service Reform Act—which President Joe Biden signed into law earlier this month—would help the agency to boost pay. The bipartisan legislation repealed a 2006 mandate requiring the Postal Service to cover retiree health care costs in advance, saving the agency around $50 billion over the next decade. Warner met with Charlottesville Post Office management twice last year to try to resolve the mail delays. In November, he said the office had hired nearly two dozen new employees. Last week, Warner did not know how many new employees the office had hired since the fall, but said it is currently short 10 to 15 city and county mail carriers. To stay afloat, the office has postal workers from other offices across the state coming in every week.
However, Charlottesville is “very close” to getting a new postmaster, said Warner. The city has not had a full-time postmaster since 2018.
Lloyd Cox, president of the Virginia chapter of the National Association of Postal Supervisors, echoed Warner’s concerns about carrier pay, and voiced his grievances with U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy.
“The wrong equipment was dismantled and taken out. The morale could be a lot better,” explained Cox. “[Carriers] are struggling to try to serve you with the parameters and changes that have been put in place.”
Warner urged area residents to be patient, but to expect mail delivery improvements by July.
Montpelier conflict escalates
The Montpelier Foundation Board’s late-March decision to reverse a power-sharing agreement with the Montpelier Descendants Committee prompted waves of public criticism from historic preservation groups and Montpelier staff. Now multiple high-level Montpelier employees have been fired, and the MDC is calling for the resignation of Montpelier CEO Roy Young and Montpelier Foundation Board Chair Gene Hickok.
The MDC has called for the resignations of Gene Hickok (right) and Roy Young. File photos.
“When Young fires everyone who thinks he is a failed leader, he’ll find Montpelier uninhabited,” said MDC attorney Greg Werkheiser in an April 18 press release announcing the firings.
Among the Montpelier staff terminated by Young are Elizabeth Chew, Montpelier’s executive vice president and chief curator; Matthew Reeves, director of archaeology and landscaping restoration; and Christy Moriarty, director of communications. Young has fired or suspended multiple other Montpelier employees in the past week.
“I have devoted my archaeological career to understanding the lives of the enslaved men, women, and children who lived at Montpelier in partnership with the Montpelier Descendants Committee,” Reeves says in a statement included in the MDC press release. “To be retaliated against by the Montpelier leadership for doing my job is a bitter irony.”
Nearly 7,000 donors and members of the public have signed a petition supporting MDC and Montpelier staff, according to the release, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which owns Montpelier, issued a statement condemning Young’s actions.
Neither Young nor Hickok responded to C-VILLE’s request for comment by press time.
The 10th Tom Tom Festival celebrates community
Two years ago, Tom Tom Festival Founder Paul Beyer was gearing up for a huge event. Hillary Clinton was set as a festival headliner, and Beyer had secured the necessary city permissions to hold the first-ever block party on the Downtown Mall with live music stages and open-air containers allowed to create a New Orleans-style vibe. On March 11, 2020, Beyer sent out a press release announcing the doomed event.
“Literally the next day was ‘never mind,’ you know, and it was the shutdown,” Beyer recalls.
Two years later, the global pandemic has ebbed and Tom Tom is celebrating its 10th anniversary from April 20-24. The big block party planned for 2020 is finally happening, but for this year’s event, there aren’t international celebrity headliners. The theme is Tomorrow’s Charlottesville, and Beyer says the focus is all local.
“People showing up and talking, that’s the win for me,” says the Fountain Fund’s Martize Tolbert, who planned the festival’s criminal justice reform event. Photo: Courtesy Martize Tolbert
“As we turn to the 10th year, I just have really been thinking about what is the most important thing Tom Tom could do with this milestone,” he says. “And it’s to uplift our community.”
Prompted by the festival’s April 20 kick-off date and the recent legalization of marijuana in Virginia, Beyer wanted to host a conversation on criminal justice reform. To plan that event, he tapped Martize Tolbert, client and community engagement director at the Fountain Fund, a nonprofit that provides low-interest loans to returning citizens.
“I know guys that are locked up still off things that are legal now,” Tolbert says of the changing marijuana laws. He hopes the criminal justice reform event will spark ideas and collaborations that might not otherwise happen.
“It’s just about getting these high-stakeholder individuals in a room and having a conversation about legislation and policy change,” says Tolbert, who was a Fountain Fund client before accepting the full-time position.
Participants in that event, taking place Wednesday afternoon at Common House, include Delegate Sally Hudson and Albemarle Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Hingeley, in addition to community activists and others who work in the criminal justice space. (This reporter will also be part of that event.)
“People showing up and talking, that’s the win for me,” Tolbert says.
Other Tom Tom events include a community building event on Thursday, the return of the popular crowd-funded pitch night, in which participants present business ideas and receive audience feedback and possible financial support, and a Thursday night silent disco. Friday and Saturday bring the two-day block party and evening dance parties at downtown locations. Tom Tom concludes on Sunday with the Porchella Belmont concerts, an afternoon event featuring acoustic musical performances on front porches throughout the downtown neighborhood.
Beyer says he’s looking forward to the multicultural aspects of this year’s festival.
“I’ve really just tried to like, look at my friends, look at organizations, look at the people in the community that are doing interesting things and say, ‘Look, this is your stage. Like, help us. You put on the show,” he says. “That’s been my intention as I’ve tried to plan. It is really trying to create a platform where a lot of people feel welcomed to tell their story.”—Courteney Stuart
In brief
Off the ballot
Josh Throneburg, an ordained minister and small business owner, has claimed the 5th Congressional District’s Democratic nomination, after opponents Andy Parker and Warren McClellan failed to submit enough signatures to get on the ballot for the Democratic primary. Current Representative Republican Bob Good will face off against Charlottesville attorney Dan Moy during a Republican congressional convention in May.
(Don’t) melt ’em
A Charlottesville judge is weighing whether a lawsuit seeking the return of the Robert E. Lee statue to the city for a rebidding process can proceed. In December, Charlottesville City Council unanimously voted to donate the infamous statue to the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, which wants to melt it down and use the bronze to create a new public artwork. The plaintiffs in the case, the Trevilian Station Battlefield Foundation and the Ratcliffe Foundation, claim the city violated multiple laws in awarding the statue to the Jefferson School. At a hearing in Charlottesville Circuit Court last week, the defendants’ attorneys argued that the city did not break any laws and that the suit should be dismissed. Judge Paul M. Peatross said he would rule on whether the case can proceed “very soon.”
Grab a seat
For the first time in over two years, Charlottesville’s city councilors returned to the dais on Monday. Up to 23 members of the public are now allowed to attend council meetings in-person at City Hall, but must reserve a seat in advance. Meetings will continue to be streamed online for those—like us!—who would rather tune in from home.
Tax hike
During a special meeting last week, Charlottesville City Council unanimously passed a $214 million budget for the next fiscal year—including a 1 cent real estate tax hike to help pay for long-awaited renovations to Buford Middle School. Homeowners will now pay 96 cents per $100 of the assessed value of their property. On Monday, councilors voted to increase the city’s meals tax from 6 to 6.5 percent, which will also help fund the costly school reconfiguration project.
Sharon Van Etten performs at the Jefferson Theater on April 21. Photo: Michael Schmelling
There must be a clone: Sharon Van Etten does it all. The singer-songwriter found time to write her fifth studio album, Remind Me Tomorrow, while she was studying psychology, pregnant, creating scores and soundtracks, and acting on Netflix’s “The OA.” It’s no surprise that the new album is an energetic, expansive record about pursuing your passions. “I want to be a mom, a singer, an actress, go to school, but yeah, I have a stain on my shirt, oatmeal in my hair, and I feel like a mess, but I’m here. Doing it,” says Van Etten. And get this: Her next album, We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong, is slated for release in May.
Thursday 4/21. $28-30, 8pm. The Jefferson Theater, 110 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. jeffersontheater.com
Dr. Andrea Douglas, executive director of the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, is co-leading this summer’s civil rights tour, which will include stops at former plantations, museums, memorials, and sites of slave revolts in the Deep South. Photo: Eze Amos
In 1808, the trans-Atlantic slave trade was abolished in the United States, but the horrors of slavery raged on for nearly six more decades. Between 1810 and 1860, approximately 1 million enslaved people in the Upper South were forcibly relocated to newly established plantations in the Deep South, fueled by the booming cotton industry.
This summer, the Charlottesville Civil Rights Tour will take participants along the route of this lesser-known domestic slave trade, stopping at an array of former plantations, historic civil rights sites, museums, memorials, and locations of slave revolts in the Deep South. The eight-day trip—hosted by the UVA Democracy Initiative’s Memory Project and the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center—will examine how Southern communities are reshaping the narrative surrounding slavery and white supremacy, and elevating the voices and stories of enslaved people and their descendants.
“There are people from here who were trafficked down there, [and] members of the community who hold the torch of the Lost Cause narrative whose families made money off of [the slave trade],” explains tour co-leader Jalane Schmidt, director of the Memory Project. “We’re connected in every way. We’re not special—we’re part of this narrative.”
On June 19, a 100-person delegation—including high school students, teachers, activists, descendants of enslaved people, and other community members—will fly to Alabama, where Charlottesville’s 2018 civil rights tour culminated. Following the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally, Jefferson School Executive Director Dr. Andrea Douglas and Schmidt led a pilgrimage to Montgomery to commemorate the 1898 lynching of John Henry James in Albemarle County. On the 120th anniversary of James’ murder, the group delivered soil from the site of his lynching, land now owned by Farmington Country Club, to the Equal Justice Initiative’s National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which features jars of dirt from over 4,000 documented lynching locations.
“When [participants] came back, they talked at public forums, like the public library, or their Sunday school group, or at work, and in classrooms. There was a ripple effect from that as people talked to their friends, neighbors, co-workers about what they’ve learned,” says Schmidt of the pilgrimage.
“That is the goal of these tours, and why we want to do it again this summer—to keep that ripple effect going,” she says.
In Alabama, the delegation will visit Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church, where four Black girls were killed when it was bombed by the Ku Klux Klan in 1963. They will also walk across Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge, where over 600 civil rights marchers—led by then 25-year-old activist John Lewis—were brutally attacked by police in 1965.
The trip also includes a stop in Africatown, home to the descendants of the enslaved people smuggled on the Clotilda, the last last-known slave ship to arrive in the United States in 1860.
The ship was immediately burned and sunk on the Mobile River to hide the illegal activity, and its remains were not found until 2019. After the Civil War, the Clotilda’s survivors wanted to return to Africa, but didn’t have enough money to do so. Instead, they pooled their wages to purchase land they called Africatown.
Activist Myra Anderson, whose ancestors were enslaved at the University of Virginia, says she is most looking forward to meeting fellow descendants at Africatown, and visiting the wreckage site of Clotilda this summer. From participating in the 2018 pilgrimage, she learned that engaging with such violent, brutal history first-hand is “not easy”—she was often brought to tears—but incredibly eye-opening and life-changing.
“I saw so many parallels between what happened back then and what happened in Charlottesville [in 2017],” says Anderson, reflecting on the 2018 pilgrimage. “There was nothing more powerful than to just have the opportunity to be able to interpret history in the exact places where it happened.”
“As an activist, it inspired me in so many ways to not take my foot off the gas and stay the course, and understand that all of those who were there before me and the things that they did, they laid the framework,” she says.
Other notable stops on this summer’s trip include the Whitney Plantation in Wallace, Louisiana, one of the few former plantations in the country focused solely on educating visitors about slavery; the Emmett Till Interpretive Center in Sumner, Mississippi, where the 1955 murder trial of 14-year-old Till took place; and the Lorraine Motel National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee, where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. The group will also participate in a variety of cultural activities, like a jazz tour of New Orleans, before returning home on June 26.
Thanks to a large number of donors, over two dozen participants have received scholarships that cover the $2,750 price tag. Most of the trip spots have been reserved, but a few remain for people who can pay full price.
As Charlottesville continues to grapple with its own racist history, Schmidt hopes the trip will help the city reimagine public spaces with ties to slavery and white supremacy—most notably the former sites of the Lee and Jackson statues—and make them welcoming and inclusive of the entire community.
“It’s about learning together as a community, [and] how we fit in with this larger narrative,” she says. “And being able to come back to teach others.”
For more information, or to book a ticket for the tour, go to insiderexpeditions.com/charlottesville-civil-rights-tour.
The former VP said he received an “almost completely warm welcome” on Grounds. Photo: Eze Amos
By Kristin O’Donoghue
News that former Vice President Mike Pence would be appearing at UVA last week to deliver a speech titled “How to Save America from the Woke Left” sparked controversy. Competing editorials in The Cavalier Daily defended Pence’s visit as an expression of free speech while others called for the university to deplatform a politician widely viewed as anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ+.
Once on Grounds, however, Pence himself didn’t need protection from the woke left or anyone else. On stage, he described an “almost completely warm welcome” as he strolled the campus greeting students before the event. He sailed through his controversial appearance without ever mentioning or being asked about the January 6 insurrection or the congressional hearings that are currently underway.
The Young Americans for Freedom at UVA invited the former vice president, whom they describe as a “fighter for individual freedom,” and nearly 900 members of the university and Charlottesville communities filled Old Cabell Hall to capacity to hear Pence speak. There was no heckling, and he received multiple standing ovations.
YAF chair Nick Cabrera introduced the event by calling out the editorial board of The Cavalier Daily, which recently published an op-ed calling on university leadership to deplatform Pence, decrying the vice president’s rhetoric as “dangerous.”
“For anyone from The Cavalier Daily here tonight, I encourage you to grab a pocket edition of the Constitution on your way out,” Cabrera announced.
Students held signs in protest of Pence’s speech at UVA. Photo: Eze Amos
Taking the stage, Pence introduced himself as a “Christian, conservative, and a Republican in that order,” and described his origins as a Democrat, inspired as a young person by JFK and Reverend Martin Luther King. It was President Ronald Reagan, he said, who inspired his shift to the right.
“He was not always universally admired—before he was the Great Communicator, he was the Great Disruptor…who challenged his party…and eventually changed the course of the world,” Pence said of Reagan.
“President Trump was also one-of-a-kind,” he continued. “Then, as now, there is no turning back.”
Pence launched into a highlight reel of what he viewed as achievements of the Trump administration, including appointment of conservatives to the courts, crackdown on illegal immigration, and jobs added to the economy. He railed against critical race theory—the academic concept that racism is embedded in legal systems and policies—as “state-sanctioned racism” and warned about America’s adversaries on the world stage, questioning the current administration’s ability to counter them.
“As vice president, I stood toe-to-toe with Putin and told him things he didn’t want to hear,” Pence said. “Putin only understands strength…. We need to meet this moment with American strength.”
The former vice president emphasized the university’s special connection to the founding of this nation and its documents.
“That’s your heritage,” he said. “Let the Declaration and Constitution be your guide.”
Though no large-scale demonstrations were held, groups of students gathered on the Lawn with signs protesting the former vice-president. Another student group, dressed in colorful costumes, stood outside the venue passing out fliers citing disparaging statements the former VP has made about the transgender and LGBTQ+ communities, and listing other grievances, including Pence’s support for state funding of queer conversion therapy and his signing of Indiana’s so-called “Right to Discriminate” bill in 2015.
“We’re here to spread information if he’s going to spread his,” one said.
During the Q&A portion of the event, a student asked Pence about how we might restore the “presumption of good intent” that seems to be missing from our current political discourse.
“People in this country actually get along pretty well,” Pence said. “You need heavy doses of civility for democracy to thrive.”
“If one of your children came out to you as gay, how would you respond?” another student asked during the Q&A.
“First, I would look them in the eye and tell them, ‘I love you,’” Pence responded. “I believe in traditional marriage, but we live in a pluralistic society. The way we go forward is by respecting your right to believe and my right to believe what I believe.”
Pence reflected on the late John Lewis, the iconic congressman and civil rights activist, with whom he claimed to have one of his “most meaningful relationships.”
This reflection resonated with some of the students who disagreed with Pence’s politics, but appreciated the nod to bipartisanship.
“I feel that…it is both possible, and sometimes necessary to set aside political differences and connect with someone as a person,” said first-year student Andreas Masiakos.
Former congressman L.F. Payne, a Democrat who represented Virginia’s 5th District in the 1990s and was a close friend of Lewis, attended the event.
“This is the kind of forum we benefit from,” Payne said. “Mike Pence as a former vice president has had a lot of experiences, and offered a lot of insight in terms of what has motivated him.”
One student asked Pence if he might be planning a presidential run in 2024.
“I’ll keep you posted,” he said with a grin.
The Q&A ended before John, a fourth-year student, got the chance to pose his question to the former VP.
“I would have liked to ask Pence: Given the fact that President Trump and members of his administration—your administration—attempted to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election, do you feel like the American right poses any danger to American democracy?” he said.
Following the event, organizer Cabrera judged it a success.
“This is what college is all about,” he said. “Being able to learn from one another in a respectful manner.”
Live Arts' The Children runs through May 7. Photo: Will Kerner
In a fix: Do we owe future generations a better world than we’re leaving them? The Children, Live Arts’ latest production, explores this real-world question through the lens of three retired nuclear scientists. In a post-nuclear world, Hazel and Robin are trying to live a normal life despite radiation pollution and rationed electricity and water. Their shaky peace is rocked when Rose, a former colleague they haven’t seen in 38 years, reappears, ready to fix what they have created. Tragic yet humorous, The Children is full of surprises and twists that will stay with you.
Through 5/7. $20-25, various times. Live Arts, 123 E. Water St. livearts.org
Charlottesville Players Guild performs Gem of the Ocean at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center through April 24. Photo: Eze Amos
The Charlottesville Players Guild will perform its 2022-23 season entirely in the round, with the stage completely surrounded by audience members who are not considered observers, but rather part of the production. That’s the aesthetic Leslie M. Scott-Jones, associate curator of education and public programs at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center and artistic director of the Charlottesville Players Guild, has helped curate. “Within the Black aesthetic, the audience is part of the show,” Scott-Jones says. “They are a witness. They are integral to how the story unfolds. And depending on who’s in the audience, it may unfold a little differently.”
The plays unfolding at the JSAAHC this season are part of a dream that Scott-Jones and Executive Director Dr. Andrea Douglas shared when founding the CPG: performing all 10 works in August Wilson’s Century Cycle, which spans the entirety of the 20th century and explores what it means to be Black in America.
The cycle, and CPG’s season, launched April 14 with Gem of the Ocean. Set in 1904, the play follows ancient matriarch Aunt Ester as she guides Southern newcomer Citizen Barlow through a spiritual journey while a theft at a local mill causes an uproar.
Chris D. Evans plays Caesar Wilks, a policeman fighting for control over both the community and his own family. His sister “Black” Mary Wilks, played by Aiyana Marcus, rejects Caesar’s authority and instead becomes Aunt Ester’s protégée.
“[Aunt Ester] demands the respect that he calls for, and she doesn’t have to call for it. She just gets it,” Evans says. “He has a badge and a gun. He’s the authority, so people should respect him, but they don’t. Whereas she’s just an elderly woman, and they’re not respecting her for her age. They’re respecting her for everything else that she is and what she gives to the people in the community.”
Marcus sees “Black” Mary’s respect for Aunt Ester in her own desire to learn from her elders, including mentor Scott-Jones.
“Thinking about the spiritual aspects of this play, I do think that it’s very timely,” Marcus says. “I can just speak for myself as a Black person, as a theater goer, as an artist: to be able to encounter a play that really harnesses the themes of binding, healing, and cleansing, and what that means for legacy and intergenerational relationships…I find it nourishing to be a part of.”
With Scott-Jones directing, Evans and Marcus are joined by cast members Richelle Claiborne, Hyison Payne, Derick Javon Williams, Jamahl Garrison-Lowe and Christopher Baumer.
Following the Gem of the Ocean run, William Shakespeare makes his second appearance in the CPG lineup with Titus Andronicus. Like CPG’s 2018 rendition of Macbeth, which was retitled Black Mac, Scott-Jones says the production will be “Black as fuck.”
“A lot of people have trouble relating to Shakespeare because of the language,” Scott-Jones says. “But 20 minutes in, you kind of get a Shakespeare ear, like okay, I get what they’re saying now. When you pair that with a Black aesthetic, it doesn’t take those 20 minutes.”
The CPG production will transport Shakespeare’s ancient Roman characters to 1835, when a group of enslaved African Muslims successfully rebelled against the Empire of Brazil in what is now known as the Malê revolt.
“That’s the beauty of Shakespeare, is that you change it to fit the time, and a different place, and a completely different background configuration, because his writing is so universal,” Scott-Jones says.
Putting Shakespeare between two plays by Wilson, who is sometimes referred to as the “Black Shakespeare,” is deliberate. Both playwrights’ works ponder universal concepts in an almost musical cadence, thanks to Shakespeare’s love of poetry and Wilson’s muse, the blues.
In Two Trains Running, that lyricism is evident: “There are always and only two trains running. There is life and there is death. Each of us rides them both.” The play, an account of the urban renewal movement uprooting Black neighborhoods in 1960s Pittsburgh, is the CPG season finale and the sixth installment in the Century Cycle.
Next season, Scott-Jones plans to complete the cycle with Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, a play about Chicago blues singers in the 1920s; Seven Guitars, a 1940s study of seven characters; and King Hedley II, where those characters are revisited 40 years later.
Finishing Wilson’s cycle will be possible, Scott-Jones says, because of the season subscriptions that funded half of CPG’s locally written lineup in 2021.
“That is amazing support,” she says. “It shows everyone that works here, that does a show with us, that there is support, that this is wanted, that people are going to come. They are committed and want to see us do well.”
Scott-Jones believes CPG has gained community support by providing Charlottesville with a uniquely communal product that draws on the lived experiences of the cast, the crew, and even the audience.
“You’re not just watching it here, you are witnessing it, which requires you to be present in the moment,” Scott-Jones says. “I think that is why the audience we have built keeps coming back.”
IX Art Park Executive Director Alex Bryant says Saturday’s High Arts Cannabis Festival is “leaning more educational than recreational.” Photo: Eze Amos
It’s a pot potluck.
Yes, home growers coming to the High Arts Cannabis Festival at Ix Art Park are invited to bring one ounce of their own supply—state law says no more, but honestly, that’s kind of a lot—to exchange among themselves.
The April 23 High Arts Cannabis Festival will take place right next to The Looking Glass immersive art experience. (Cue Jon Stewart in Half Baked: Have you ever been to The Looking Glass…on weed?)
But no, organizers say the High Arts Cannabis Festival, with its dual focus on trippy art and wacky tobacky cultivation, will not be hazier than a Wiz Khalifa concert.
“We are leaning more educational than recreational,” says Alex Bryant, who in late January succeeded Susan Krischel as IX Art Park’s executive director. “It’s not like a beer festival, where you come and try all these beers.”
Smoking marijuana at the High Arts Cannabis Festival is in fact strictly prohibited, just as it is in any public place by Virginia law.
But as they’re exchanging indica, Bryant says home growers at the festival will also be in a position to exchange ideas. In addition to hosting live music, artists, and cannabis-adjacent vendors, the High Arts festival features information sessions and panels designed to heighten growers’ awareness and abilities.
The cannabis-themed gathering and exchange is the type of event that’s been going on in progressive states for years. But marijuana reform has moved at a roach’s pace in Virginia. The state legislature didn’t pass a bill allowing farmers to grow hemp until 2018. That same year, a federal mandate made cannabidiol, or CBD, a low-potency cannabis derivative, legal across the country, and CBD retail proliferated in Virginia in 2019. Former Virginia governor Ralph Northam was a vocal supporter of legalizing marijuana, but the current administration is less stoked on the matter.
Skooma owner David Treccariche says marijuana’s increased presence in mainstream American Life is why he decided to “jump feet first” into the market for legal weed. Photo: Eze Amos
By early 2019, Virginia legalized THCA, another non-psychoactive cannabinoid, and licensed dispensaries slowly began opening around the state. The commonwealth was behind 45 states to move on medical mary jane—at a time when nine states had already gone all in on recreational use and retail.
Today, Virginia home growers are allowed by law to cultivate up to four cannabis plants, given that they are not publicly visible and only for personal use. And while full-blown retail may still be several years away, local green thumbs have plenty of knowledge and experience to share, according to The Original Farmacy’s Alexander Respeto, who’s consulting on the High Arts Cannabis Festival.
So, when the Virginia legislature finally pushes recreational retail across the floor, will that horticultural know-how benefit the sativa-savoring crowd?
“I don’t know that the festival is really for the home grower to be more ready to go into commercial growing down the road, but I do think the point is to create a community among the small growers,” said Albemarle Cannabis Company’s Joe Kuhn, who’s also consulting with IX leading up to High Arts.
According to Kuhn, it’s big corporations that stand to benefit when Virginia begins licensing growers and retailers. While the relevant bills are constantly changing, fees and other regulations may keep marginalized businesses, such as hemp growers like Kuhn and the many small CBD shops that are already established in C’ville, like Skooma on the Downtown Mall, from being able to compete with big pharma in the legal weed trade.
“We understand what the government is trying to do. They want control,” Kuhn says. “But in my mind, and among like-minded people, we actually think they are moving too fast.”
According to Kuhn, some legislative provisions regarding cannabis seeds and allowed THC levels have flipped back and forth so frequently that they’re often in contradiction with themselves and federal law.
Bryant wants the High Arts Cannabis Festival to be a part of that larger regulatory conversation. While employed by the Tom Tom Foundation in 2020, he and his team worked with Virginia NORML to help pass cannabis equity legislation designed to keep small businesses from being shut out of the marijuana money conversation. “We had front-row access and could see that people that are marginalized, who could have life-changing economic boons, could be ignored [in favor of] big pharma,” he says.
Respeto joined the commercial kush biz after he finished high school. He went to southern California to visit his grandfather, whom he’d never heard much about growing up, and “lo and behold, he was the owner of the Farmacy.” Pop-pop’s smoke business was an early fixture on the Cali marijuana retail scene, Respeto says, and he knew he wanted to follow in his footsteps.
Respeto’s grandfather told him stories about going to jail for his cause and seeing countless others prosecuted in the early days of dope decriminalization. Now, 20 years later, Respeto’s own cause is what he calls “the fully integrated lifestyle.” For small growers, that means being involved with reefer on a regulatory level so they don’t get pushed out of the business—even after they’ve gained a foothold. “They come in and buy out everything,” Respeto says. “At a small level, home growers have this collective consciousness, and by building this community, we could put together a team that could fight against these big pharmacies.”
Respeto joined up with Bryant and Krischel for the High Arts Cannabis Festival after meeting through mutual acquaintances. He explained he and his California-based business partner had experience working for the Emerald Cup, the Super Bowl of pot cultivation. There, they’d learned the best ways to turn a festival otherwise focused on a recreational hallucinogen into an educational summit. The experience made Respeto a natural partner for the fest.
Dubbed by organizers a “celebration of the psychedelic arts and homegrown cannabis,” High Arts will host vendors—CBD dispensaries like Greener Things, hempers like Solar Roots Farms, seed slingers like Blue Ridge Seed, and activist groups like Grass Roots VA—as well as artists, including Emily Zampetti, Equilibrium Crystals, and Holy Mountain Glass. DJ Bristol, The Oversteppers, and Zuzu’s Hot 5 will provide live music.
“We want to highlight the role that cannabis and substances have played for artists and what that means,” Bryant says. “Some people that are coming may have only seen marijuana in D.A.R.E. It’s for people that have questions, and if they want to have a CBD gummy, we want to be a safe space for that.”
The festival has not been without its detractors. Some say prohibiting marijuana use at a festival encouraging its exchange is futile. But after his experience working on cannabis-related events with Tom Tom, Bryant says the backlash hasn’t been as heated as expected. “We’ve had nothing but a positive response,” he says. “We were anticipating some negative feedback—we got a little at Tom Tom—but I think people are coming around and saying, ‘it’s okay, you can do this safely and responsibly.”
Kuhn says he hopes the High Arts Cannabis Festival will help to continue breaking down the stigma that’s been associated with marijuana use for decades. That means he and the other festival organizers will do everything they can to make sure vendors are licensed, police officers know what to expect, events are serious-minded and truly educational, and no one smokes out.
“We’re trying to keep it more on the up and up,” Kuhn says. “There is so much misinformation. I live in these businesses, and I think all businesses involved in CBD—in order for us to get where we want and thrive—we just want to bring the conversation to curious folks to learn more about cannabis and get away from the negative connotation.”
Of course, there’s nothing in state legislation that says attendees can’t consume a reasonable amount of cannabis before they attend the High Arts Cannabis Festival.
“If I’m being honest, there is definitely a chance for people, especially at The Looking Glass, to step back and see how art combines with the collective consciousness we’re trying to build,” Respeto says.
Lucille Stout Smith discusses her book, Unforgettable: Jackson P. Burley High School, 1951-1967, at New Dominion Bookshop on April 23. Supplied photo.
History of learning: Lucille Stout Smith uncovers local history in her new book, Unforgettable: Jackson P. Burley High School, 1951–1967. In a segregated Virginia, the City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County came to an agreement to build and jointly operate Jackson P. Burley High as a “separate but equal” school for Black students living in both the city and county. Using raw reflections from students, faculty, and administrators, Smith shares the history of the school from its opening to closing, with stories of parents who fought hard for their children’s education, and journeys of the eager students as they grow from teenagers to successful adults.
Saturday 4/23. Free, 2pm. New Dominion Bookshop, 404 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. ndbookshop.com
“Turn on the Light!” at Les Yeux du Monde honors gallery founder Lyn Bolen Warren with works by 57 artists, including Elizabeth Bradford’s “City Lights.” Image: Courtesy of the artist
“A few months before she passed, my mom told me she’d had a dream that she was supposed to have a show called ‘Turn on the Light!’ It would be in January of the new year, manifesting our emergence from COVID and hope for our brighter future, and she would ask each artist she represented to contribute a piece that was light-filled or light-inspired,” says Lyn Bolen Warren’s daughter Hagan Tampellini.
Instead, “Turn on the Light!” at Les Yeux du Monde honors the gallery’s late founder with a group show of Charlottesville artists, as well as artists Warren represented from farther afield. The exhibition brings together 57 artists, including Picasso, whose inclusion acknowledges Warren’s involvement with the Lydia Csato Gasman Archives for Picasso and Modernist Studies, which she helped found and co-directed.
“The show is a reflection of the magnitude of her career as a gallerist and breadth of artists whose work she fostered,” says Tampellini, who has taken over the gallery. “It’s come together in a very cohesive way despite the diverse mix of artists and styles represented.”
Millicent Young’s “An Origin Story from the Sixth Extinction,” a luminous column of horsehair that rises from the black void of a ceramic vessel, was created specifically for its spot in front of a long window, where it takes advantage of natural light. Young painstakingly sewed strands of dark horsehair onto white to express the transition from darkness into light that is the show’s theme.
A melding of minimalist design and delicate ornithological rendering, Cary Brown’s “Dove for LBW” speaks to the endurance of the soul. According to Tampellini, “My mom envisioned her father as a dove. After he died, she saw doves everywhere. She believed they were her father visiting her. She was spiritual in many different ways, and saw the divine in many things.” This particular dove grasps a four-leaf clover in its beak. Tampellini explains that her mother had the ability to look at the ground and find four-leaf clovers. It’s something she inherited from her grandmother, who reputedly could spot a four-leaf clover from astride a horse. And with Tampellini’s brother also blessed with the trait, four-leaf clovers have enormous significance for the family.
Susan McAlister’s charming bouquet of cut paper flowers, “Led by the Light I,” seems to burst forth from the picture plane. The work has a fresh, fun quality with its breezy palette and layering of differently shaped blooms that compose the arrangement. It was Warren who encouraged McAlister to explore cut paper forms in the tradition of Matisse, a fact the artist alludes to with her title.
Kurt Steger’s handsome “Magician” suggests both a human figure and a ritualistic object. Constructed of wood and paper, the piece evokes cubism with its dynamic rhythm of abutting three-dimensional planes that resemble stone. While “Magician’’ boasts a jute-covered handle and is filled with found objects from Nepal that rattle when it’s shaken, one may also interpret the figure as Warren, with the title alluding to the magic she created.
Trisha Orr infuses “Dutch”’s ordinary scene of quiet domesticity with unexpected power. Wielding her brush with utter confidence, she slashes yellow across the mirror to connote reflected light, dashes off strokes of gray, blue, lavender, and yellow to describe the Venetian blinds, and scrawls purple across a plate to create the effect of light and shadow on shiny ceramic. The thick fringe of eyelashes and the lips pressed against the child’s head, are small details that reveal authentic and arresting aspects of the sitter’s psychology and the deep bond between mother and child.
Russ Warren’s series of portraits of his late wife highlight different aspects of her spirit. These works are rendered with bold lines and strong color on newspaper. In “Lyn 2,” she stares resolutely out at the viewer while also looking off to the side, revealing her strength and depth of character. In “Lyn 3,” Warren arranges her encircling arms to create a heart that is both a testament to his love for his wife and a depiction of her as the embodiment of love.
Mysterious and evocative, Elizabeth Bradford’s dazzling nocturnal view in “City Lights, Algarve” feels both sophisticated and primitive. In the foreground, a series of deftly painted rocks front a rise where a shaggy tree is silhouetted against a vivid midnight-blue sky. Bradford ups the drama with pricks of white denoting stars and bright beads of yellow pigment representing the haloed glow of city lights.
Looking at “Last Light,” you can marvel at the gorgeous autumnal scene Karen Blair has created. Her juxtaposition of colors—here, primarily ochre, brown, green, and blue—is mouthwatering. Her inventive application of paint, with flat expanses, lively brushwork, messy streaks, and the scraping off of pigment, used variously to create depth, movement, and texture, is inspired.
Dorothy Robinson’s ravishing “Oscawana I,” depicts a real place, but does so with very little in the way of representational landmarks. We sense more than see a river, a waterfall, mountains, and trees. Rendered with washes, daubs and drips of paint, that are essentially abstract passages, the light-infused work evokes the romantic energy, atmospheric effect and idealized reality of a 19th-century landscape.
To achieve the blurry effect of “Frank (2),” Pam Black uses PanPastels (soft pastels), which are applied with sponges. A figure, positioned far off to the left within a wide expanse of empty space, is isolated and indistinct. Though he appears like an out-of-focus photograph, and his face is shadowed by a cowboy hat, we can intuit his weathered grit and, perhaps, his incorporeality. Whoever this man was, we know, like Warren, he cast a long shadow.
