Virginia-based pianists Harold Bailey and Brian Bratton team up for Expressions, a double-feature program of classical and contemporary works. An American classical pianist and composer, Bailey began his career at age 16, and has performed at Carnegie Hall and improvised with the late Chick Corea. Filipino-American composer-pianist Bratton found a new lease on life through music following an upbringing that included foster care and homelessness. The self-taught musicians showcase the versatility and individuality of the piano, and draw on their own life experiences for original compositions.
*EVENT CANCELLED* Saturday 10/21. $18–20, 7pm. The Front Porch, 221 E. Water St. frontporchcville.org
“Come to the Woods” calls for repeat viewing of Susan McAlister’s show “Canopy,” at Les Yeux du Monde through October 29. Supplied photo.
Susan McAlister uses a number of approaches to landscape, from direct physical representations to more nebulous suggestions of place, to riffs on the basic forms and patterns that are the building blocks of the natural world. “My process is essentially the same whether I’m working representationally or abstractly,” says McAlister, whose work is the subject of “Canopy,” now on view at Les Yeux du Monde. “I’m finding form, I’m pushing color, I’m layering materials, I’m thinking about the relation of all of these elements together.”
The plein air tradition of sketching and painting out of doors is central to McAlister’s practice. “When I take my walks in nature,” she says, “I think about the shapes that are happening and the way the light moves through those shapes and how a vine travels up a tree and continues over your head. I’m considering all of this and what it’s like being engulfed by nature and how that makes my heart feel.”
While outside, McAlister also forages for natural found objects, which she uses as inspiration, sometimes incorporating them into her assemblages, thus rooting them in a specific time and place. “Faunus I,” for example, features a feather, petal, and bee. Originally inspired by a visit to the Matisse room at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., McAlister took the concept of cut-outs and ran with it, adding three-dimensionality into the mix to produce her gorgeous explosions of layered cut paper.
Luminous vistas of the Blue Ridge cloaked in fuzzy haze are conjured up from a combination of McAlister’s observation and memory. “These wooded landscapes are about my childhood. I grew up where my playground was the uncut forest outside my door. That kind of tangled landscape, that’s orderly but also disorderly, is endlessly appealing to me.”
In “Near and Far,” the haze has been replaced with rain-washed crispness. McAlister uses extraordinary brushwork here, with bold expressive slashes, smears, and clumps of paint that describe the varied mountain terrain of woods, meadows, and streams.
“Meeting in the Woods” depicts the sort of tangled woodland that appeals to McAlister. In this rollicking work, the scene has shifted from the gently sloping hills of memory seen in “Wooded Way,” “The Engagement,” and “Evening,” to more rugged Montana. McAlister has amped up her brush work accordingly, with slashing strokes that describe the wind tossing the trees, and add points of visual interest to the work.
“Spring Shadows & the Forest Floor” seems to exist on the knife edge between abstraction and representation. McAlister has visually nailed the sense of wind, using large brushes to produce blurry contrails of paint along with quick daubs of green that suggest fluttering leaves.
The artist’s muted palette perfectly embodies the temporal and atmospheric conditions she wishes to convey. Light greens pinpoint the season as early spring. Dove gray represents the recesses of the forest interior. Elegant inky blotches describe roots, branches, and tree trunks, tiny flecks of cerulean blue and stark white brighten the sky with intense, pure pigment. In the upper left quadrant, the absence of green implies that we are at the edge of a clearing or body of water where the land opens up and the view of the sky is more expansive.
McAlister’s palette of sunny pastels is derived from Bonnard. It’s a challenging color scheme to make serious, particularly for an artist who states, “I don’t want to be cute, I don’t want to be sweet. I’m most pleased when my paintings read as bold and expressive.” So, she tempers her palette’s prettiness with the introduction of duller shades, gesture, and layering. You can see this in the rectilinear zones of “Edge of the Forest.”
“Come to the Woods” has a curious power that seems to build with each repeated viewing. The initial impression is of a work that is delicate and fragile, thanks to its pale colors and softly undulating shapes. But, the complex arrangement of pink, blue, green, and yellow and the interplay between painted surface and line, create interesting visual relationships. With its tessellated forms and passages that cascade down the picture plane, the work is really a deconstructed landscape.
Four paintings—“Vert,” “From the Open Window,” “Lost in the Forest,” and “Lush”—are hung together on the wall. McAlister did this to create a bigger expanse of painted surface. But the quartet’s juxtaposition, with two representational works and two abstract ones, hits at the crux of McAlister’s oeuvre, which is really about painting in and of itself, not one specific style. You see in these works, the ease with which the artist switches gears and her incredible facility, no matter how she’s painting. The “what” she’s painting remains a constant, however.
“Landscape is where my heart is,” she says. “It’s what I want to talk about.” As the works in the show reveal, McAlister uses various inventive means to “talk” about it, but one thing is clear, she is using a decidedly contemporary language to do so.
Chris D. Evans plays King Hedley II, a former prisoner who’s selling refrigerators to raise enough money to open a video store in his neighborhood. Photo by Eze Amos.
When the final showing of King Hedley II wraps at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, the Charlottesville Players Guild will have strode through the entire 20th century on one stage. Dozens of actors will have stepped into the lives of characters generations apart, some even reprising their roles across multiple plays. And audiences will have been swept up in a rich world of Black history, music, folklore, and drama from the pen of legendary playwright August Wilson.
King Hedley II runs Thursdays through Sundays until October 22, and is directed by Darnell Lamont Walker and Jessica Harris. Hedley, the story of a once-imprisoned man who will do anything to gather enough money to start a video store, is a difficult show which, like any Wilson play, demands a great deal from its cast as the story’s tension ratchets tighter and tighter until the end. Hedley marks not just the end of a season full of Wilson plays, including Seven Guitars and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, but seven years of productions that cover the entirety of Wilson’s 10-play American Century Cycle. The completion of the Cycle is an enormous achievement, not only for a Charlottesville cultural organization, but for any arts or theater institution—as Leslie Scott-Jones puts it, “as far as we know, no other Black history and culture organization, and only 12 professional institutions,” have finished Wilson’s famous cycle of plays.
“We need to celebrate this achievement,” says Scott-Jones, who is the Charlottesville Players Guild’s artistic director and the Jefferson School’s curator of public programs, learning and engagement. “We should recognize that as Black artists, what we do in theatrical practice has very real and important ties to Wilson. We need to talk about it.”
Following King Hedley II, the CPG will host a weeklong event, Wilsonian Soldiers: An August Wilson Symposium, from October 23 to 28, which will feature panel discussions and master classes by professionals with an intimate understanding of Wilson’s work. They’ll lead conversations about the men and women of his oeuvre, the cadence and lyricism of his dialogue, and his plays’ music and spirituality. The symposium will also include a performance of the playwright’s memoir, How I Learned What I Learned.
Leslie Scott-Jones. Photo by Sanjay Suchak.
Wilson’s Century Cycle, also known as the Pittsburgh Cycle in reference to the plays’ frequent setting in the city’s Hill District, explores and examines Black history and culture, spirituality, love, pain, and so much more through the lives of blues singers, cab drivers, former Negro League players, husbands, mothers, brothers and sisters, neighbors, and matriarchs. Wilson’s stories are as grounded as siblings arguing over a family heirloom, yet they can also entertain the fantastic, such as with the recurring character of Aunt Ester, who King Hedley II says is over 300 years old.
Scott-Jones has performed in three of the Cycle’s productions—as Rose in Fences, Louise in Seven Guitars, and Ma Rainey in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom—and says Wilson intended in every way for his plays to be exhausting, emotionally and physically, for the actors.
“In order to do Wilson, you have to have a strong constitution,” she says. “He was writing the Black lived experience, and through the 20th century, the times and the things he was writing about were not easy. Every single play has some sort of migration story. … Every single play has somebody that’s in trouble with the law. Every single play has a death. Every single play has some sort of relationship that is in turmoil. And all of those things are compounded by, you know, [being] Black and living in America.”
“It’s very real, it’s very nuanced,” says Aiyana Marcus, a Cycle actor and playwright. “He does not shy away from the complexity that is Black culture. There’s so many nuances and layers of spiritual meanings, economic and political, cultural layers, things that seem like dichotomies. … The secrets that we keep and the secrets that we want to tell.”
“Through August Wilson’s plays, he inadvertently established his community through other individuals,” says Nicholas Berkley, who plays Stool Pigeon in King Hedley II. “When you see these other people participate in plays, we grow close as a cast, and we become family.”
Berkley began performing with the CPG as Hedley (King’s father) in Seven Guitars, and considers Wilson a storyteller whose writing is a form of archiving. “Wilson’s work is an excellent chronicle that should remind those of African American descent to remember where they came from, look at where they are, and appreciate that space.”
One of the most distinctive elements of a Wilson play is his dialogue, crafted to roll off the tongue in an effortless, almost musical pattern. Wilson was as much a playwright as he was a social historian. The two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Tony winner, and posthumous Oscar contender spent his life listening to the people around him—on the streets, in bars, in cigar shops—recording their unique phrasings and the patterns of their speech, and using that language to weave his distinctive scripts.
“It is an honor to do Wilson’s work—it is not easy,” says Marcus. “Just the complexity of the work, and the cadence of language. … There is something about getting my mouth around the rhythms of Wilson that is a whole other process in and of itself.”
From left to right: Jordan Sykes as Mister, King Hedley II’s friend, Cadessa Davis as Tonya, King’s wife, and Denise Folley as Ruby, King’s mother.
Marcus, who wrote She Echoes on the Vine, which was also performed at Jefferson School by the CPG, studied theater as an undergrad, and first met Scott-Jones while auditioning for a play that she was directing at Live Arts. That led to Marcus being cast as Bernice in the fall 2019 production of The Piano Lesson, and later as Black Mary in Gem of the Ocean.
“You can feel the weight of the historical context,” says Marcus about Wilson’s women. “Women did have a certain place that you can feel. A certain level of subservience, but also there is a magnetic presence that they have. They are still very highly valued and respected by the men and other folks in their community. But the way that they can use wisdom in the way that they want to get their point across, it’s not always in the loudest way or the most obvious way.”
King Hedley II, written in 1999 and set in the Reagan ’80s, speaks directly to the weight of history, the value of learning the past, and changing one’s circumstances for the better. Each character seeks something new in their lives, but are struck in painful ways by the legacies of people they love or the city they live in.
“[Tonya] is a woman who is looking for the confidence in her relationship, and trying to, a lot of times, reel her husband back in from making certain—probably not the best—choices in life,” says Cadessa Davis, who plays the title character’s wife in King Hedley II.
In her second play with the Jefferson School, Davis performs her role with range. Tonya’s restraint gives way to incredulity and eventually an explosive monologue that exposes both a vulnerability and fear as well as a frustration and determination to be heard.
“She can say what she wants to say to [King],” says Davis, “but that doesn’t mean he’s going to follow through with listening to her.”
Davis didn’t start acting until 2018; before performing in the Century Cycle, she had stuck to musicals. For King Hedley II, she specifically auditioned for Tonya, in whom she saw a certain defiance and an effort by the character to put her foot down.
“She is truly fighting for her marriage and for her husband to love her. She’s a total 180 from the other character that I played, Risa in Two Trains [Running],” she says. “Two different characters, but totally a lot of fun to play both, and explore my range.”
August Wilson. Photo by Rich Sugg/TNS/zumapress.org
A safe, predominantly Black rehearsal space to explore that range, via the work of a celebrated Black playwright, has been a powerful gift for the actors who have performed the Cycle at the Jefferson School.
“When you, as a person, feel fully seen, feel completely able to be who you are … absolutely, you’re going to be more willing to be vulnerable in front of people,” says Scott-Jones. “And that’s what acting is all about: being vulnerable.”
“There is a freedom there,” says Marcus. “Especially for a number of us, our experience in theater has been in predominantly white spaces, not even necessarily in predominantly diverse spaces. And understanding the context of what it’s like to live in Charlottesville, it was very, very freeing.”
As Scott-Jones and Andrea Douglas, executive director of the Jefferson School, shepherd their joint project to its conclusion, they hope the public will attend the accompanying symposium to learn more about the power of Wilson’s work.
“The classes and the conversations that we’re having apply to not just theater, they apply to literature, they apply to music, they apply to history and social studies,” says Scott-Jones. “Anybody who is involved in the arts at all should absolutely be present for some of these conversations. It’s not just talking about what we’ve done, it’s talking about the work of being a theatrical artist, being an artist, on a global level.”
“Just like Shakespeare,” she says, Wilson’s “work is absolutely transferable to anybody who watches it.”
BRHD’s new Outreach Network will assist community health workers with networking, collaborating, and learning about other area resources. File photo.
Since the pandemic, the health care industry has been rapidly evolving to address new challenges, staffing shortages, and high rates of burnout. As part of its effort to support local health care workers, the Blue Ridge Health District is launching the Outreach Network on October 18 to boost some of its most vital members: outreach professionals.
Encompassing a broad swath of roles, outreach professionals are health care workers who work closely with the community to improve outcomes and help people access resources. “There are many types of outreach professionals that play important roles in our local health care system,” says Jennifer Reilly, BRHD’s outreach network coordinator. “Here at BRHD, for example, we have an amazing team of community health workers who do a wide range of work.”
From immunization clinics to STI testing to free car seat and crib distribution events, CHWs work to connect community members with resources and promote public health efforts. “Community health workers are the embodiment of public health. When people cannot get to health services, CHWs make sure the health services get to them,” says Reilly. “[They] know the community in and out and really represent the bridge to becoming healthier and more able to access care and services.”
Though burnout levels are high among all health care workers post-pandemic, outreach professionals have experienced especially high levels of physical and emotional exhaustion, according to research published in the National Institute for Health’s Library of Medicine. In addition to hiring additional community health workers, the BRHD hopes to support its outreach professionals by connecting them with resources through the Outreach Network.
“We are very fortunate that we have so many organizations in the area doing wonderful things, but it can be challenging to keep abreast of all of these great resources. One goal of the BRHD Outreach Network is to help outreach workers become more familiar with all of these fantastic community assets,” says Reilly. “The more we know about what is happening, the better we can be sure those services, events, and organizations are more readily accessible to the communities who need them.”
Beyond fostering connections with community resources, the BRHD’s new network will connect outreach professionals with career resources.
“The BRHD Outreach Network will support current and future outreach workers by offering opportunities for numerous trainings at no cost, networking and collaborating with outreach workers from other organizations, and exploring invaluable resources within our communities that can be utilized to support those we serve,” says Reilly. “We will look closer at the needs assessment that was completed, giving us an even better lens as to how the BRHD Outreach Network can help community health workers and similar positions in the weeks, months, and years to come.”
About 100 people showed up for the Students for Justice in Palestine teach-in on the steps of the UVA Rotunda. Photo by Eze Amos.
Tensions are high across the United States over the conflict between Israel and Hamas. The complex and rapidly developing situation has resulted in accusations of atrocities by both sides, and steadily worsening conditions for those in Gaza. Locally, controversy erupted when the University of Virginia chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine put out a statement following widespread attacks by Hamas on Israeli civilians.
“Students for Justice in Palestine at UVA unequivocally supports Palestinian liberation and the right of colonized people everywhere to resist the occupation of their land by whatever means they deem necessary,” said a UVA SJP Instagram post. “We mourn the loss of human life and hope for long-lasting peace, which cannot be achieved without the firm establishment of equality and justice. In an unprecedented feat for the 21st century, resistance fighters in Gaza broke through the illegitimate border fence, took occupation soldiers hostage, and seized control of several Israeli settlements that are illegal under international law.”
Though a majority of Americans support Israel, according to recent polling, UVA SJP’s stance reflects increased support for Palestine among younger Americans and college students. Some proponents of aid to Israel argue that opponents are antisemitic and the state has a right to defend itself against terrorist attacks, but pro-Palestinian groups have largely argued that Hamas’ actions do not excuse Israel’s attacks on civilians in Gaza and the blockade of basic resources to the region.
The United States government considers Hamas to be a terrorist organization, officially designating the group as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 1997.
Reacting to the SJP statement on Twitter/X, Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates and UVA alum Todd Gilbert called on the university to take action against the group. “Some students at my alma mater @UVA fully endorse the rape, murder, and kidnapping of innocent people, which we now know includes the beheading of babies,” he posted. “I implore the University @presjimryan to condemn this vile statement in the strongest possible terms and take action.”
UVA SJP held a teach-in about Gaza and Palestinian resistance on the steps of the Rotunda on October 12.
The event started with SJP members giving safety reminders and asking attendees to not speak with the media, before leading a chant of “Free free Palestine!” A significant portion of the crowd wore face masks and glasses, with concerns about safety and post-graduation opportunities arising from public condemnation of pro-Palestine events and statements by political officials. Locally, state Senate candidate Philip Hamilton called on his supporters to counterprotest the teach-in, with a small group showing up with signs listing atrocities allegedly committed by Hamas.
Students shared stories during the teach-in about their connections to Palestine and gave a brief summary of the history of Israel and Palestine. SJP members read letters on behalf of Palestinian students and family members. “This is not a religious conflict, this is a conflict over territory,” said one letter. “I pray for peace, but there can be no peace without justice.”
An SJP member and event leader, addressing accusations of antisemitism, spoke about his personal perspective as a Jewish American. “Israel is a settler colonial state,” he said, before asserting his distinction between Zionism and Judaism.
Beyond personal accounts and the historical recap, the teach-in also featured a poet and several chants. The SJP led attendees through several repetitions of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which has been connected to antisemitism by some Jewish groups. “There is of course nothing antisemitic about advocating for Palestinians to have their own state,” according to the American Jewish Committee, an advocacy group. “However, calling for the elimination of the Jewish state or praising Hamas or other entities who do or suggesting that the Jews alone do not have the right to self-determination, is antisemitic.”
Attendees largely refused to speak with the media after the event, but a few students spoke on the condition of anonymity. “I don’t support apartheid, and I don’t think the country that I pay taxes toward should support it as well,” said one UVA student about his decision to attend the teach-in. “I’m from Egypt, so growing up we were taught about how Israel invaded its neighboring countries, including Egypt, so I’ve known about it all my life.”
For now, U.S. aid to Israel is on hold until a speaker of the House is elected, but federal support for Israel has been made clear by President Joe Biden’s visit to the nation.
City Manager Sam Sanders presented a preliminary plan for addressing homelessness in Charlottesville at the October 2 City Council meeting. Supplied photo.
Change of PACE(M)
After weeks of debate and controversy, Charlottesville City Manager Sam Sanders said that Market Street Park will resume operating hours on October 21, when it will begin closing again at 11pm. This change comes with the announcement that PACEM (People and Congregations Engaged in Ministry) will open its cold-weather shelters early this year, starting the same day the downtown park’s hours go back into effect.
Announcing the reinstatement of a curfew at the park, Sanders said, “I have asked our staff to engage with various service providers to strategize ways we can support this process so that anyone in the park will receive the assistance that they need to ensure a smooth transition. This work has already begun and will continue through whatever period necessary.”
Sanders’ has faced criticism for his handling of the unhoused people who are camping out in tents in Market Street Park, with some residents concerned about safety and sanitation in and around the park. Charlottesville Police are currently seeking information about two violent crimes that occurred near the park, a non-fatal stabbing that took place on September 24 and a homicide on October 14. Neither incident has been linked to the unhoused population, according to CPD.
PACEM’s early opening is only a temporary bandage to the city’s larger homelessness crisis, but it provides increased access to overnight shelter for unhoused individuals while Sanders and city leaders work on more long-term solutions.
“This collaborative effort helps relieve encampment congestion in Market Street Park and address these neighbors’ need for a safe place to sleep at night,” said PACEM in a press release. “PACEM staff will be canvassing the park to help those individuals in need of shelter understand their options and resolve barriers to access.”
PACEM’s emergency cold-weather shelter will operate from October 21 to April 12, 2024. For more information, visit pacemshelter.org
Controversy on Grounds
A recent UVA appearance by controversial author Abigail Shrier prompted student protests. Supplied photo.
An October 11 visit to Grounds by independent journalist and “gender-critical” author Abigail Shrier sparked protests among University of Virginia students, and spurred the organization of opposing events.
An Evening with Abigail Shrier, hosted by the Jefferson Council and the Common Sense Society, focused on the author’s controversial viewpoints and research into transgender youth in her 2020 book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters. The book has received mixed reviews, with scholars questioning the scientific merit of Shrier’s work given its largely anecdotal nature.
Several student LGBTQ+ groups opposed Shrier’s appearance ahead of and during the event, noting the timing of her visit on National Coming Out Day. Alternate events were hosted by a few organizations, but a significant crowd protested outside Shrier’s event, chanting, “Say it loud, say it clear, transphobes are not welcome here.”
In brief
Car chase
After a car chase on Interstate 81, Virginia State Police arrested 30-year-old Jacob Falso of Freeville, New York, on October 11. Falso first encountered police when he attempted to carjack a tractor trailer, then fled in his own vehicle when a trooper arrived on the scene. During the chase, he struck a FedEx truck and rammed two police vehicles, before being taken into custody when he lost control of his car and crashed in Rockbridge County.
Tip-off
The University of Virginia men’s and women’s basketball teams geared up for game day at the Pepsi Blue-White Scrimmage on October 14 at the John Paul Jones Arena. Off the court, the Cavs signed autographs and took pictures with fans, building excitement for the start of their seasons on November 6 (men) and 8 (women).
New CASPCA director
On October 16, the Charlottesville Albemarle SPCA appointed Libby Jones as its new executive director. Jones has years of experience working in animal welfare and related areas, most recently as the chief operations officer at Seattle Humane. “The input, thoughts and insight of our staff was of utmost importance to us while seeking a new Executive Director,” said CASPCA Board President Jenn Corbey in a press release announcing the appointment.
Laura Rikard (back center) leads boundary practice with performers Jordan Montemayor (left) and Marshall Branham (right). Supplied photo.
At some point, you’ve probably watched actors get hot and steamy in a movie or show and wondered, “How the heck do they do this? Isn’t that awkward?” Enter Laura Rikard, an intimacy coordinator for film and television and a choreographer for theater. Rikard works with actors to develop and choreograph any and all intimate scenes. The process empowers actors and ensures their boundaries are respected. Rikard, a UVA alum, has been part of numerous local productions like Four County Players’ Constellations and Live Arts’ upcoming Miss Bennet: Christmas At Pemberley, which opens December 1. She’s also worked with Jessica Chastain in Mother’s Instinct, and has coordinated on “Interview with a Vampire,” “Mayfair Witches,” and a forthcoming Ava DuVernay-produced show starring Joshua Jackson that she’s really proud of, but can’t say much about. theatricalintimacyed.com
Name: Laura Rikard.
Age: 46.
Pronouns: She/her.
Hometown: Asheville, North Carolina.
Jobs: Associate professor of theater at the University of South Carolina Upstate, co-founder of Theatrical Intimacy Education, director, actor, intimacy coordinator for film and TV, and an intimacy choreographer of theater. And a mom to 5-year-old twins.
What do you do as an intimacy coordinator/choreographer: We work with the production and the rehearsal process to help stage the physical moments of intimacy for live performance, and we may or may not be there to help in the moment. We think of setting the moves like choreography, and we can adjust them as the actors’ boundaries change. The actors are never caught by surprise, and are never figuring it out night after night. They know exactly what’s going to happen.
How long have you been doing this work: Choreography, I’ve been doing unofficially since 2010, officially since 2015. Coordination, since 2020. The work has been around for a while, but under a different name. It took the #MeToo movement for the industry to become interested in it.
What’s something about your job that people would be surprised to learn: That I’m not the sex police. Sometimes people think that our job limits what can be done, but actually what it’s really about is clear communication. It ends up opening more spaces for creativity, because nobody’s ever uncertain that they’re going to have their boundaries crossed.
What’s the strangest thing you’ve found yourself doing in your job: On a television show there was an intimate scene that happened out on the street, but it ended with two actors going through a door into this fake building. The production asked me to be there for liability and the actors wanted to know I was on the other side of the door for support when they came in, but I had to be hidden so I couldn’t be seen in the scene anywhere. So I had to hide in the corner under a table while they came in to make out and kiss.
Favorite local restaurant: Baggby’s.
Who is your hero: My mom.
Best advice you ever got: Live your life where you want to live your life. Your career will be what it’s going to be.
Proudest accomplishment: My children. I had a really scary pregnancy because the medical system failed me in every way and I shouldn’t be alive and they shouldn’t be alive, but we are. And so the fact that I got them here and got them through everything makes me particularly proud.
Describe a perfect day: Just a really happy day with my family.
If you could be reincarnated as a person or thing, what would you be: My dog Lilly.
Favorite play: Henry VI: Part 2, Shakespeare.
Favorite movie and/or show: Steel Magnolias and “Mayfair Witches.”
Favorite book: The Art of Acting by Stella Adler.
Go-to karaoke song: “Livin’ on a Prayer.”
Who’d play you in a movie: Rachel Weisz.
Celebrity crush: Yeah, Oscar Isaac.
Most used app on your phone: Email or messages.
Subject that causes you to rant: Asking people who work in the arts, “Are they comfortable?” Because there’s nothing comfortable about making art. It’s about boundaries, not comfort.
Best journey you ever went on: Only theater nerds will get this, but going to see Duse’s grave in Italy.
Next journey: California in November to train some folks.
Favorite curse word: I’m sure fuck is my favorite.
Hottest take: That some people don’t know how to sit in traffic.
What have you forgotten today: I forgot to pack a lunch.
John David Washington goes on the hunt for the Creator in Gareth Edwards’ layered sci-fi thriller. Image by 20th Century Studios.
Writer/director Gareth Edwards’ The Creator is more than a science fiction thriller about the hot-button topic of artificial intelligence—it’s a gripping story that delves deeply into many points, including loss, grief, PTSD, misinformation, and the human cost of war, particularly on children. And, ironically, this tale of sentient robots is the most touchingly human movie in recent memory.
An opening montage depicts how, in the near future, robots increasingly replace humans in countless jobs. But after A.I. nukes Los Angeles in the mid-21st century, America bans the technology, while the Republic of New Asia accepts Simulants as sentient beings.
America establishes an orbiting weapon platform, NOMAD, to seek out and bomb robotic colonies overseas, and U.S. Special Forces hunt for Nimrata, the creator of deadly advanced A.I. While working undercover to hunt down Nimrata, Special Forces agent Joshua (John David Washington) gets entangled in a raid gone wrong, which ends in the death of his pregnant wife Maya (Gemma Chan).
Years later, Special Forces enlists Joshua to help find the Creator and a superweapon he’s developing, enticing him with the promise of a reunion with Maya, who allegedly survived. They raid a hidden lab, where Joshua discovers this weapon of mass destruction is an outwardly benign android child (Madeleine Yuna Voyles), marked Alpha-Omega, that he nicknames Alphie. Disobeying orders to destroy Alphie, who knows Maya’s whereabouts, Joshua escapes with the android, and his commanding officer, Colonel Howell (Allison Janney), in hot pursuit. Gradually, he discovers that the Creator has wildly different intentions than he—and the Western world—understood or imagined.
The Creator is a somber, mature film, which makes it a rarity among current science fiction. It darkly observes humans’ innately warlike and xenophobic nature without becoming nihilistic or dreary. Surprisingly, it takes A.I.’s threat to humanity and flips the situation. It explores what would happen if this dehumanizing technology was benign: less like the murderous Skynet in the Terminator series and more inclined toward Isaac Asimov’s humane Three Laws of Robotics.
The Creator has been widely criticized for being derivative, which it undeniably is. It draws on, among other movies, Steven Spielberg’s A.I., Apocalypse Now, Akira, Terminator 2, and Blade Runner. The art of futurist Syd Mead is also an obvious influence. But Edwards’ worldbuilding remains impressive throughout, especially considering the film cost $80 million—a fraction of standard tentpole movies’ budgets. The visual effects are extraordinary, with Edwards fleshing out this future with memorable details and moments, like a briefly glimpsed android funeral pyre.
Edwards also imparts key information about this futuristic culture unobtrusively through dialogue, rather than halting the plot for clunky expository speeches—a common problem in science fiction cinema. It requires the audience’s attention—a sign of Edwards’ respect for his viewers.
If The Creator has any significant flaw, it’s Washington in the lead. Far less talented than his father, Denzel, he’s decent in this critical role, but a more nuanced actor could have delivered a superior performance. Otherwise, the cast is fine.
With its humanity, wit, and emotional potency, The Creator is a consistently intriguing, thoughtful, well-made film—the kind that even snobs that dismiss science fiction can appreciate.
Two short story collections, The Goth House Experiment by SJ Sindu, and Swing Bridge from Bronwyn Hughes, immerse readers in other worlds. Supplied photos.
As the weather turns cool, curling up with a short-story collection can plunge you deep into another world in mere minutes, with a few turns of the page between other commitments and concerns. This fall, two new short-story collections by Virginia authors offer ample opportunities for reflection and escapism.
Richmond-based author SJ Sindu’s new book, The Goth House Experiment, grapples with life in our contemporary reality through tales of wild imagination and speculative fiction. Largely unconnected in terms of overly specific themes or throughlines, these are stories that examine anti-Asian and anti-LGBTQ+ violence, TikTok and the dangers of going viral, and even the perils of a writer’s ego. The book also celebrates queer joy and embraces a wry sense of humor about the state of our collective reality. In many ways, these are stories about how we cope in the face of countless catastrophes, personal and societal, and where we find community and delight.
“Wild Ale,” one of the tightest stories in the collection, exemplifies Sindu’s skillful use of dialogue and tension over the course of an unexpected narrative arc. An on-the-nose exploration of a couple’s pandemic quarantine stresses, the story revolves around a core disagreement about homebrewing in a small apartment during lockdown. Despite this, the couple’s relationship serves as a buttress against the outside world that is largely seen from balconies and cautious walks in the park. Social media and MAGA anti-maskers show up as well, and the claustrophobic tension that infuses each page is so well-written, it’s lightly triggering in the ways it captures the earliest months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Sindu wraps it all up with a cheeky conclusion that provides a welcome reminder of some of the ways we came together to support our neighbors in the worst of times. It’s a story that suggests we can heal together, if only we choose to not forget.
Currently a professor at VCU, Sindu is a Tamil diaspora author who was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award with her latest novel, Blue-Skinned Gods. Her Marriage of a Thousand Lies won the Publishing Triangle Edmund White Award for debut novels by writers within the LGBTQ+ community.
For readers of Sindu’s other work, “Miracle Boy” is perhaps the story that aligns most strongly with her novels and their explorations of belief, family, and communities of faith. The concluding story in The Goth House Experiment, it is the most somber as well. Set in Sri Lanka, this magical realist tale is about a boy who grows wings and can perform miracles, whose community begins to worship him for his abilities, and who ultimately suffers as a result. We never learn the boy’s real name since everyone calls him Peter, “the most popular Christian name in a town full of Hindus who had never even seen a Bible,” Sindu writes. It is a visceral story, full of bodies that don’t work and those that work differently than one might expect. It is a story about the lengths we’ll go to in order to be healed and what it means to be saved.
Sindu will host a free launch party for The Goth House Experiment, in conversation with Geoff Bouvier, at Fountain Bookstore in Richmond on October 17.
For readers more in the mood for realism, Bronwyn Hughes’ debut collection of short stories, Swing Bridge: Stories from Tidewater Virginia, conjures the Tidewater region through multigenerational characters and places that represent decades of accreted memories. The collection balances an at-times peripatetic nature, drawing lines between the Tidewater and the cities where people move, with its more site-specific histories like a Beatles-infused story that visits Poplar Grove, John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s one-time country home in Mathews County.
Throughout, Hughes’ clear-eyed stories are accompanied by drawings by Kat Sharp, her “illustrator-spouse,” as she puts it. Sharp’s drawings are a highlight, offering detailed glimpses into the inner workings of this world that feels at once familiar and foreign to those who have not spent time in the Tidewater area. The featured art includes diagrams of the fig wasp life cycle and the creation of the Chesapeake Impact Crater, which eventually became the Chesapeake Bay.
Hughes herself is not a Tidewater native but has made her life there for the past two decades. After concluding a career in the foreign service, she completed her creative writing MFA during the pandemic and this is her debut book. Just as Sharp excels at depicting details in her drawings, Hughes is excellent at teasing out layers of reality, in the relationships between her characters and the places they inhabit, but also between past and present versions of themselves. The stories in Swing Bridge are imbued with the ache of coming to know oneself and the ups and downs that come with trying to share that self with others.
“Fig-girl” is one story where this is especially true, featuring two characters at points of transition in their lives, attempting to navigate queerness as well as both chosen and unchosen changes while being held to expectations of others. Resonating with Sindu’s collection, Hughes’ stories meditate on the opportunities presented by community, by choosing to care for each other.
Bronwyn Hughes will give a free talk about Swing Bridge at The Center on October 28.
Local filmmaker Jamie Sisley’s feature film Stay Awake is back on the big screen. The semi-autobiographical story draws on the UVA grad’s childhood in Chantilly and Leesburg, near the well-known drug trafficking corridor along Interstate 81, and follows two brothers (Wyatt Oleff and Fin Argus) as they desperately try to handle their mother’s (Chrissy Metz) struggle with addiction. A discussion with Sisley follows a viewing of the film, which was a spotlight screening at last year’s Virginia Film Festival.
Friday 10/13. $9, 6:30pm. Light House Studio at Vinegar Hill Theatre, 220 W. Market St. lighthousestudio.org
