Author: Dan Goff

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Culture Living

Creative financing: Patti Pan’s RevArt deals with the serious business of art

“Awaiting” by Tomie Deng is an example of the work included in Patti Pan’s RevArt, a Darden 2020 VentureLab startup that connects artists with commerce for a mutually enriching experience.

Art and business aren’t the most compatible concepts—some might even consider them diametrically opposed. Connections exist, however, and Patti Pan is seeking to find and expand upon them with her startup RevArt, a “global platform connecting artists” with commercial brands and with each other.

Pan, a 2020 graduate of UVA’s Darden School of Business, was thinking about RevArt even before attending grad school. Prior to moving to Charlottesville, she worked in Hong Kong, where she helped develop plans for a large shopping mall. The team installed an art gallery within the space, so that “people could shop and enjoy the artwork together.” When Pan saw the enormous success of the mall, which she says brought in 120,000 customers daily, she started thinking about the common threads between art and commercialism.

Pan wants to give a home to the creatives who need it most, she says, and who might not know much about the business aspect of the industry. “I want to disrupt the industry and make the art world more like democracy,” Pan says. To serve this mission, RevArt’s clients tend to be emerging, rather than established artists.

“Business is a pain for [artists],” she says. “They like creation…but they also want to make a living.” That’s where RevArt comes in. The startup handles IP licensing for its clients and helps them make commercial connections. Really, Pan says, the goal is to expose inexperienced artists to a profitability they might not otherwise reach. “The whole IP licensing market grows 10 percent every year. People don’t know that.”

The business is still young enough that something as drastic as the pandemic could potentially cripple it—but Pan says that hasn’t been the case. In her words, COVID-19 creates “the perfect artist lifestyle. I don’t mean that COVID-19 is a good thing, but it’s just super comfortable for artists…they can focus on creation.”

While her clients might be producing at a greater rate than usual, Pan concedes that the pandemic has certainly slowed the growth of RevArt and made communication more difficult. Artists based both in Charlottesville and in Hong Kong (where the startup’s two office spaces are located) have asked Pan to come to their studios in person as opposed to virtual visits. “People hate Zoom!” she says.

She uses the necessary shift to technology to focus more on RevArt’s potential “digital assets. People…are social animals. We still want to see the artwork. How to leverage technology to accomplish that—that’s the new challenge for me.”

Pan hopes that making artwork more available online will also have the effect of broadening its audience, a goal that returns her to the idea of “democracy.” The art industry, she says, is “very far away” from day-to-day life. “It’s being controlled by a few groups of very wealthy people. We want to make it more accessible to ordinary people.”

All of these plans are for further down the line. For now, RevArt’s main goal is that of any small business during difficult times: “to survive.”

It’s hard enough for a startup to make it in a “normal” economy, Pan says. She mentions her Darden peers taking Wall Street or consulting jobs rather than striking out on their own, but stresses that the security isn’t worth it to her. “I’m spending my savings to do this. But I want to do this, and I see value.”

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Culture Living

Behind the masks: Jason McLeod Jewelry updates its inventory for 2020

Jeweler Jason McLeod likes to meld the past with the future in his unique designs. The Time Traveler Shamanic Mask is one example of taking technology and bling to a dramatic, pandemic-influenced level.

Jason McLeod’s artisan jewelry career path was informed by car crashes. Back in the early aughts, McLeod was living in Oakland, California, and running an advertising and graphic design business when a pair of back-to-back fender benders laid him up long-term in the hospital.

He needed something to fill the hours, and “I just started making jewelry as a way to keep my hands and my mind busy,” McLeod says. But when he saw the enthusiasm his uniquely designed rings and necklaces generated, he realized his hobby had the potential to become a business.

In the ensuing years, McLeod and his wife moved to Charlottesville and he displayed his metalwork at East Coast art shows, developing his brand and honing his craft, eventually setting up shop in an Allied Lane office space.

McLeod has established himself as a local artisan whose work has a unique, speculative twist. His online store is filled with Singularity pendants and Time Traveler rings, intricate creations as otherworldly as their names suggest. The goal, McLeod says, is to create products that “look like they’re from the past and the future.”

He’s succeeded with the newest product on his site: the Time Traveler Shamanic Mask. The fully functional mask is decked out with 18-karat gold and black silk, and comes with a leather strap. It’s a steampunk fantasy—but at $20,020, it might exceed the typical cosplay budget.

The price, of course, is a tongue-in-cheek reference to this year and its unprecedented events, without which this mask would never have been created. McLeod says he might be willing to negotiate on its cost, but hopes a wealthy someone will pay full price. “It’s part of the package,” he says.

McLeod also emphasizes that, should his mask find a buyer, the profits will go to a “coronavirus medical expense relief charity,” giving the project a “Robin Hood purpose.”

Whether or not the first mask sells, McLeod plans to create more—maybe even a series. Future design ideas include tear gas-resistant goggles, he says, to remain “applicable to 2020.” But if the Time Traveler Shamanic Mask is any indication, he won’t be abandoning his signature aesthetic. On the mask’s two respirators, McLeod inserted golden versions of the earth and the sun—specifically, its corona. (Get it?) Across the silver surface, he’s etched tiny stars and other celestial symbols.

The celestial, global aspect is what initially inspired McLeod to make the mask. “Part of what’s really amazing about this quarantine pandemic thing is that it’s brought out the…global group organism,” he says. “The macro, not the micro.”

And yet McLeod’s own celestial path finds him in the business of sculpting those big ideas into a small, wearable piece of art.

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Coronavirus News

‘It could suck so much more’: A fourth-year’s attempt at positivity

PC: Dan Addison/UVA Communications

By Dan Goff

“Remember when I said I doubted the university would move classes online because it would be a logistical nightmare? Well, I was only half right. UVA will and has moved classes online. And it’s a logistical nightmare.”

This quote, from an email sent by one of my professors, nicely sums up the sentiment of UVA faculty and students. I’ve heard and read a lot of grumbling about the university-mandated switch to Zoom, and I’ve done a fair bit of it myself. We fourth-years are especially bummed, since it’s more than just a “logistical nightmare” for us. It looks like the rest of our time at UVA isn’t going to be at UVA at all.

The latest update from President Jim Ryan, letting us know that final exercises as we know them are officially canceled, was a particularly upsetting blow. Graduation ceremonies were the one school-related part of being a fourth-year I really didn’t want to miss. We’ve been told that UVA is “developing creative alternatives,” but I’m skeptical. I shudder to think of the Zoom call that would accommodate a crowd of 4,000.

Charlottesville is not unique here, of course. This is a trend happening at universities across the country and the world, and it’s a necessary one. We can whine all we want about how much the rest of this semester is going to suck (and admittedly, it’ll probably suck), but these are prudent precautions. 

What I’ve been trying to do these past few days is keep in mind how relatively fortunate I am. I’m still in Charlottesville (sorry, President Ryan) because of my job as delivery boy at New Dominion Bookshop. My parents live outside Richmond, an easy drive in case I need to return home. I’m an English major in the creative writing program whose thesis is being written in isolation anyways—my degree doesn’t depend on student teaching or hands-on lab work.

I’ve heard stories of other students faring worse—like my friend Aline Dolinh, a fellow fourth-year who recently returned from Germany. Her trip should’ve ended days earlier, but thanks to what she calls a “comedy of errors,” involving a stolen backpack that contained her laptop and passport, she was stranded. Things were looking grim as Germany continued to close its borders and restrict travel, but she (incredibly) got at least her passport returned to her and made it back to the States earlier this week, where she’s now hanging out in her parents’ basement “like a medieval plague victim.”

Aside from such ill-fated trips abroad, what about the students whose actual homes are overseas? According to recent data, UVA has nearly 2,500 nonresident alien students enrolled in undergraduate and graduate programs. What percentage of these students is trying but unable to return home? How long might they be stuck here? Questions like these make me remember how lucky I am to be an in-state student with a car, and my right to complain shrinks that much more. 

Of course, there’s the social side of this to consider too. We’ll find creative ways to graduate, but what about creative ways to remain in touch? When I chatted with Aline the other day, she agreed that “it’s the small things that are hitting the most. I won’t be able to do x or y with my friends, and I don’t know the next time I’ll get to see some of these people.”

Charlottesville—particularly the university side of Charlottesville—is starting to feel like a ghost town. Two of my three roommates are still here, but from what I’ve seen, this is pretty unusual. My Instagram and Facebook feeds are stuffed with fourth-years posting bittersweet photos of the Lawn with captions commemorating their “3.75 years” and giving an emotional goodbye to Charlottesville.  

As far as I know, the majority of my fourth- year friends have already packed up and headed back to their family homes. This includes Veronica Sirotic, who was the first friend I made at UVA—though I’m sure I wasn’t hers. Veronica is one of the most social people I’ve ever met. It seems like she can make friends with someone as effortlessly as shaking their hand—two activities which I guess are prohibited for the time being. 

When I FaceTimed Veronica to check in, she answered the call wearing her cap and gown—graduation photos, she explained. She had a mini ceremony with her roommates (from a socially safe distance, of course), after which she drove to her parents’ place in Arlington. 

She was understandably upset about the situation, but was also trying to keep a fair perspective. “I’m not dead, and my family is safe,” she said. “I have a lot to be grateful for.” 

We both acknowledged that while being a fourth-year sucked right now, “it could suck so much more.” I referenced a post I had seen her share on Facebook from Take Back the Night, UVA’s sexual assault prevention group that she co-chairs. The post said that “people currently experiencing sexual harm or survivors of that harm may be particularly affected” by the pandemic—for a variety of reasons, including lack of access to in-person counseling and an exacerbated sense of isolation. The post was a wake-up call, another reality of this that I hadn’t even considered. 

Talking with Veronica was a bit of a wake-up call, too, and it helped put things further into perspective. Sure, what’s ahead is concerning, and not just in the context of public health. This is a less-than-ideal time to be entering the job market—I have no idea what the economy will look like when I graduate in two months. 

I’ve been trying not to worry about hypotheticals like that, though, and take things day-by-day. It’s easy to feel helpless in a situation like this, but we still have some agency. Veronica’s photo shoot inspired me—come May 16, if President Ryan’s “creative alternatives” don’t pan out, I might have a personal graduation ceremony in the safety of my apartment. I can wear the honors of Honors in my bedroom and hand off a diploma to myself. I won’t have a Lawn to march across and my ceilings are a little low for cap-throwing, but it’s better than nothing.

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Arts

Local expression: The native network of singer-songwriter Nathan Colberg

Playing at The Jefferson Theater on February 28 is a dream come true for local musician Nathan Colberg. The UVA grad will be joined on the bill by fellow C’ville acts Spudnik and Grant Frazier. CRAMER PHOTO.

Since childhood, Nathan Colberg has nurtured the same, secret dream. It’s one shared by many born-and-bred Charlottesville musicians, but few ever see it realized. On February 28, Colberg, along with fellow local acts Grant Frazier and Spudnik, will take the stage at The Jefferson Theater.

“It’s going to be new territory for everyone on the bill,” Colberg says. “We’ve all got an excitement right now, and I think that excitement is going to carry into the show.”

Colberg has been traversing a lot of new territory since his 2017 graduation from UVA. A longtime member of a cappella group The Hullabahoos (you might remember their cameo in Pitch Perfect), he started putting out original music with the 2016 EP Barricade.

This five-song collection included the hometown love letter “Charlottesville”—his first hit, which cemented his status as a local musician. To foster a Charlottesville following, Colberg set up a studio in his parents’ basement. “I started writing a lot of songs with the intent of making a full-length album,” he says, adding that he launched a Kickstarter to support his project. The campaign was a success, and Silo was released in spring 2018.

The 11-track album is an expansion of the sounds and themes of Colberg’s first EP. Across all of his music, he sings—in clear, effortless vocals reminiscent of The Head and the Heart and Vance Joy—of universal ideas like wanting to find a lasting home and being disillusioned by misplaced ambitions. “Chasing money, chasing dreams / And chasing hearts and everything in between,” he laments on “Calm,” a single that strives toward the title emotion.

As a recent college grad in Charlottesville, Colberg has practiced what he preaches in his music—a simple, unassuming way of life. For him, that has meant part-time jobs at MarieBette Café & Bakery and Christ Episcopal Church. It’s also encompassed getting married, which he did last fall. “[Rachel and I] dated from the fall after our senior year,” he said, citing the life change as one of several major influences on his songwriting. “I’m kind of writing different styles of songs, and I think a lot of that has been because of romance.”

Colberg stresses that various post-grad experiences have shaped his music into something markedly different than his first two ventures. Whereas Silo feels like Barricade’s natural next step, “Could You Ever Find Another Word for Love” and “Sunset Eyes” foray into new territory. On both tracks, Colberg’s voice dips unexpectedly through octaves, and the instrumentation is more impressive too, with “Sunset Eyes” utilizing what sounds like a full string section.

Colberg says he has made enormous strides in the songwriting process in the past few years, a journey that started with the misaligned expectations and realities of his first album. “I think I was really naive,” he says. “I thought that opportunities would just open up.” When they didn’t, he says, “I had to kind of reset my expectations.”

Although he emphasizes how he has changed since Silo, he doesn’t scorn any of his thoughts and feelings from that period, saying that it was an opportunity to “start believing in myself a little more.”

Colberg cites the desire to take himself less seriously. Even though his music career is reaching new and fairly serious heights, he wants the music itself to give the listener less of a melancholy vibe. “There’s kind of been this change of tone,” he says. “It’s a little bit more light-hearted and whimsical. It’s fun, too, which is a change.”

He could be describing the music of opener Frazier, a fourth-year at UVA whose tunes, while peppier than Colberg’s, are created in the same earnest, acoustic vein. It’s worth noting, though, that both musicians have been hard at work on new material—Frazier dropped a single earlier this month, and an album is on the way—so the night promises to be full of sonic surprises.

And Spudnik, heroes of the local scene, will be there to hold everything together. As a band whose stated mission is to “create community-based music for our community,” they’re certain to fit in with the theme of the show.

It’s people like the five who make up Spudnik, a group devoted to supporting and collaborating with fellow locals, who give Colberg the conviction he needs to continue singing and songwriting in a town admittedly stuffed with singer-songwriters. “I’m not unaware of how awesome this opportunity is for me,” he says of the upcoming show. “I’m also not unaware that I couldn’t do this without the support of so many friends of mine.”

Spudnik will be his backing band onstage, but Colberg also has a backing band on a daily basis, one far greater than five people—a network of friends and family members, fellow churchgoers and coworkers, who want him to keep doing what he’s doing. He has become a local musician in the truest sense of the word, someone who actively participates in the community instead of just occasionally performing for it.

And the community is reciprocating. “I’m good friends with everyone on the bill, and I just love that,” he says. “I feel like the luckiest dude ever.”

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Arts

Alternative rock: WTJU and UVA Drama collaborate on a wacky new audio drama

Denise Stewart, Mark McLane, Randy Risher, and Jess Littman are some of the voices in “The Perfectly Circular Rock,” a podcast that sound designer Lewis Reining describes as “a zany, witty series that transforms the mundane into a riveting listen.” Photo courtesy Nathan Moore

Imagine that an enormous, totally round rock has suddenly appeared in Charlottesville. How would people react? Would the rock be considered a threat, a sign from God, or both?

Replace Charlottesville with the fictional Elkisbourne, and you’ve got “The Perfectly Circular Rock,” a new podcast produced by WTJU and UVA’s drama department. Early one morning, the title object materializes in the center of town. Within hours of its appearance, the residents of Elkisbourne start to project their own ideas onto the rock—using it as a metaphor for a failed marriage, constructing a religious cult around it, even attempting to grind it into an anti-aging cream.

Such an open-ended concept could go in countless directions, but director Doug Grissom says that he and his colleagues ultimately decided on an “all-out comedy.” This decision of tone was just one step in the creation of the podcast, a process that lasted more than a year.

Grissom, an associate professor in playwriting, wanted a reason to work with students in the MFA acting program. He submitted a proposal for a Faculty Research Grant for the Arts, only knowing that it would be an audio story co-produced with WTJU. Once funding was approved, Grissom and his students needed a big idea.

Brainstorming proved fruitful. “On Friday afternoons, we would meet and piece things together,” Grissom says, but their abundance of ideas made it hard to move forward. Winter had arrived by the time they decided on the rock idea, and the subsequent writing lasted through the spring semester. The past few months were spent recording and editing material at WTJU, with Grissom using local connections to fill spots in the cast left by any students who graduated last spring. On November 21, 10 full episodes of “The Perfectly Circular Rock” were released on RockDrama.org.

For the technical side, Grissom enlisted the help of WTJU’s national program producer Lewis Reining. Although Reining has worked in radio for around eight years and has wanted to create audio dramas since high school, “The Perfectly Circular Rock” is his first real chance to do so. In 2012, he co-directed and produced a modernized version of Orson Welles’s “War of the Worlds” broadcast, but the finished product was only about half an hour. “The Perfectly Circular Rock” episodes run roughly 20 minutes each.

The project brought some unique challenges. For one, most of its 25 voice actors were accustomed to the stage. “In some ways, there’s freedom—you only have to worry about your voice,” Reining says. “But at the same time, these mics are so sensitive that any sort of movement can come through.” He had to discourage the actors from gesticulating too violently or “pounding on the tables.”

His collaborators quickly learned the rules of radio, however, letting Reining focus on the details. Technically, the audio of “The Perfectly Circular Rock” is gorgeous. The podcast’s plot requires some pretty unusual stuff to be portrayed through sound—from a dog urinating on the rock to Slam Hammer, Elkisbourne’s Bogart-esque private eye, getting knocked out with a baseball bat—and in each of these circumstances, Reining delivered.

He loves the challenge of making bizarre sound effects seem realistic, and says he’s grateful for the freedom that modern sound editing technology grants him. Today’s audio dramas are heavily informed by their predecessors, he says, but adds that “you’re able to layer things with a granularity you couldn’t before.”

Even a perfectly edited podcast can fall flat if the content is lacking, though. In the case of “The Perfectly Circular Rock,” there’s no shortage of content—it just might not be what listeners are expecting. Both Grissom and Reining concede that “audio drama” is a misnomer, since the podcast is mainly composed of absurd vignettes created by Grissom and his students during brainstorming. Recurring characters are scarce. Aside from Slam Hammer, whose rambling, mock-noir monologues are some of the project’s funniest moments, the story is framed by competing radio personalities Moe DeLawn and Synnove Olander interviewing members of Elkisbourne about the rock.

Running jokes reappear more often than most characters, which provides a cohesion of its own. Listeners will want to pay close attention to learn if a perpetually unfulfilled request to hear “Stairway to Heaven” is ever granted, or if the rock is ever called “spherical” instead of “circular”—because, as several characters complain, “circular is two-dimensional…a rock cannot be circular.”

While this grant has ended, Grissom and Reining are open to another collaboration. “I loved doing it. I wasn’t sure I would,” Grissom admits. He cites the flexibility of creating an audio drama, as opposed to directing something onstage, as one of its greatest benefits.

“For the most part, it costs the same in an audio drama if you want to set it in space or you want to set it in an old-style Western,” Reining adds. “It’s so much easier to do. You have the freedom to go wherever.”

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Arts

World of difference: ‘A Quick and Tragic Thaw’ chronicles the implications of a hotter Earth

“Plastic Projections” is one of the works on view in the climate change-focused “A Quick and Tragic Thaw” at UVA’s Ruffin Gallery through October 18. Courtesy of the artist

Escapism or activism? Should a work provide respite from pertinent problems, or is it art’s duty to provide commentary on these political and social issues? More and more, this seems to be the debate among artists and patrons.

While it’s limiting to think that the two approaches are mutually exclusive, the conversation surrounding them seems to have grown louder in recent years. The problems of the world have grown louder, too, not least the ever-approaching specter of climate change. How is escapist art possible when its subject concerns something that none of us can escape?

“A Quick and Tragic Thaw,” the latest exhibit at UVA’s Ruffin Gallery, seeks to find some middle ground. Co-creator Gabrielle Russomagno says the climate- themed collection of artwork is intended to be a “meditation on something that might feel like loss…regardless of pedagogy and political paradigms.”

Russomagno and her artistic partner Yvonne Love, have been concerned with climate change since their first collaboration over a decade ago, when the two created an exhibition on global warming. “A Quick and Tragic Thaw” certainly feels like the culmination of many years of work and thinking—their art was informed by the research of Howard Epstein, a UVA environmental science professor who studies the effects of climate change.

This added scholarly element compounds the sense of collaboration. Liza Pittard, visiting artist coordinator for the UVA Arts department, calls it “bridging the arts and sciences in an almost poetic way.” “UVA is a research institution,” she says. “How can we get other people involved?”

If the crowd present on the exhibit’s opening night is any indication, then “A Quick and Tragic Thaw” has already left a considerable impression. The single, cubelike room it occupies was overflowing with spectators.

The largest portion of the exhibition is a re-creation of Greenland’s shifting, shrinking glaciers done in black sand and porcelain—a stark dark and light that comprises much of the room’s color scheme. Love and Russomagno have given it the fitting label “Patterned Ground.” The porcelain analogues for ice contain intricate valleys and divots, and the black sand holds a network of delicate grooves. It’s eerily soothing to look at, hypnotic almost to the point that the viewer forgets the dire subject matter.

On the far wall, “Plastic Projections” provides a burst of color to the muted room. Present and future predicted maps of the Arctic are arrayed in an oblong shape, each of them on plastic that has been warped by heat into new forms. Close inspection is required to realize that they are maps at all—from a distance, they resemble flowers in the process of opening and closing.

This uneasy balance of extremes—finding beautiful ways to represent terrible things, almost to the point of obfuscation—is present in all of the exhibition’s artwork, and it brings to mind the ongoing debate of escapism versus engagement. Which is being practiced here? After all, Love and Russomagno’s work is not explicitly giving a call to action.

The abstract explaining “A Quick and Tragic Thaw,” says that the artworks are meant to “emphasize connections…between indisputable data and the conceit of how we choose to live.” The result is plainly gorgeous but only quietly upsetting, what Pittard calls a “passive political statement.”

Another juxtaposition here is the artists’ differing reasons for creating a series of works about climate change. Love, whose father was a naturalist, approaches it from a scientific view. “Observation was a huge part of my upbringing…I was hearing about the negative human impact on the environment from a very early age.”

Love’s observational skills have given her an intimate understanding of how humans can affect their surroundings. “I’m seeing the effects in my own backyard, and it’s been really scary.”

Russomagno, by her own admission, is “totally urban.” She contrasts her upbringing to Love’s, saying that although she wasn’t surrounded by the natural world, she could still “notice if people were in despair, because I was surrounded by a bajillion of them.”

The result of these distinct points of view is a representation of climate change that not only connects the personal and political but also the universal. On the wall labeled “Transfer and Pierce,” a collection of drawings on carbon paper, the sketch of a single Arctic individual feels perfectly in place next to large-scale renderings of his home.

Love and Russomagno recognize that this is a problem that affects all of us. They wanted to avoid the “screaming, politicized voices,” as Russomagno puts it, and reach something more transcendent. “There’s something about loss and beauty combined that I think stirs everyone’s soul,” she says. “Maybe if the conversation through art activates that in someone, then we’ve done our work.”

“Plastic Projections” is one of the works on view in the climate change-focused “A Quick and Tragic Thaw” at UVA’s Ruffin Gallery through October 18.

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Arts

Shaking up Shakespeare: Ethan McSweeny plays with tradition at Blackfriars Playhouse

American Shakespeare Center’s Ethan McSweeny looks to enhance the Blackfriars Playhouse experience with his inaugural season of programming. He’s put together aRoman trio for the 2019 Summer Festival, uniting the Bard’s Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra with George Bernard Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra. Courtesy of American Shakespeare Center

Ethan McSweeny is fond of automotive idioms. “I’m firing on all cylinders,” he says when asked about his work with the American Shakespeare Center, where he has been the artistic director for close to a year. It’s like “trying to tinker on the engine of your car while you’re driving—this thing never gets up on blocks,” he says, adding that joining the company was like “trying to jump onboard a moving train.”

The schedule of the 2019/2020 season, which starts June 25, is just as daunting as he depicts it. It launches with three summer productions, which together mark the start of McSweeny’s first official season.

McSweeny describes the cycle of Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Caesar and Cleopatra as “three plays, two authors”—Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw—“one story.” A fourth production, the world premiere of The Willard Suitcases, will be added in the fall. Written by New York–based composer/lyricist Julianne Wick Davis, the musical is based on the intriguing contents of luggage found in the abandoned Willard Psychiatric Center. The suitcases belonged to the patients, and, McSweeny says, “they didn’t put sensible things, necessarily, in them.”

In his 20-year career, McSweeny has been involved in productions around the world, and he insists that the ASC is “very unique….I can tell you that there are very few places like this.” He cites the company’s unusual adoption of “universal lighting and Shakespearean performance conditions” as one reason why the center stands out, but adds that it’s not a “museum recreation”; rather, “It really combines the intensity of intellect that these plays require with the infectious joy of performing them.”

McSweeny still intends to tinker with the engine, “enhancing what’s already there.” One of his first decisions on the job was to put two of the longest-serving company members on year-round, full-time contracts, giving them the title of Actor Managers, to follow a tradition established by Shakespeare’s own King’s Men.

Rather than institute large-scale changes, McSweeny seems to be most interested in experimentation with the existing model. “It’s such a gift to not have to make the same choices over and over again,” he says. “I’m trying to find ways to do what we do, but even better.”

He’s also committed to getting more people into the Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton, a town that McSweeny professes to love. “It’s a rich buffet of culture and arts,” he says, encouraging his Charlottesville neighbors to visit. “It’s a four-lane highway. Get used to it.”

Late in the interview, McSweeny compares the appeal of theater to that of a “live sporting event.” It’s a simile that, for a theater geek, seems even further removed than his vehicle imagery—but the new artistic director has made it clear that he’s unconcerned with preserving stereotypes or favoring tradition over innovation. He sums it up by saying, “I’m a profound Shakespeare believer, but also a real agnostic when it comes to ways to do Shakespeare.”

More information at americanshakespearecenter.com

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Arts

Healing artistry: Electro-pop project The Near Misses finds beauty in pain

The Near Misses’ Kara McLane Burke, Paige Naylor, Katie Schetlick, and Catherine Monnes perform stories about people impacted by traumatic events. Ariana Miklowitz Photography

The Pie Chest is a strange place to talk about trauma. Its abundant natural light and mom-and-pop feel don’t lend themselves to discussing the details of near-death experiences—stories that include a failed suicide attempt and a catastrophic German blitz, dating from World War II. But this was the location chosen by Jennifer Tidwell and Paige Naylor to chat about The Near Misses, a name for both the “electropop opera” band they have assembled and the death-adjacent tales the band will perform onstage.

Maybe the cheery choice of restaurant can be explained by what both Tidwell and Naylor continually emphasize throughout the conversation: The women who comprise The Near Misses don’t intend to wallow in the trauma they depict. Rather, says Naylor, “it’s about healing.”

“And reclaiming,” Tidwell adds.

The two are co-producers of The Near Misses, but the project was Tidwell’s brainchild back in 2012. She says she was inspired by the “notion of grace.” Tidwell’s not talking about everyday elegance—she evokes the word’s divine definition. She found herself drawn to survivor stories. There was enormous artistic potential in these stories, she knew. But in 2012, she wasn’t quite ready to harness it.

She also didn’t have the time to try—The Near Misses is just the latest of many artistic projects with Tidwell’s name attached. She’s best known for founding Charlottesville Lady Arm Wrestlers (CLAW), adapted to Collective of Lady Arm Wrestlers when it caught on in other states, but she’s also a co-founder of the all-female theater collective PEP and a constant collaborator with local artists and organizations.

Being an icon among Charlottesville creatives requires considerable energy, and Tidwell delivers. It’s visible in her hand movements as she speaks, fingers tracing shapes in the air and gesturing excitedly at Naylor, who is a bit more reserved but no less passionate. Aside from co-producing, Naylor is also the show’s composer and one of the performers. She glows with quiet anticipation when describing the music she has created for The Near Misses—“minimalist, medieval pop.”

Much of the conversation focuses around explaining what, exactly, The Near Misses will be. The band’s planned performance is as complex and intersectional as the trauma it seeks to represent, and while this is a testament to Tidwell and Naylor’s creative abilities, it’s not easily summed up.

The group is composed of four women—Naylor, multi-instrumentalist Catherine Monnes, theatre artist Kara McLane Burke, and dance artist and UVA lecturer Katie Baer Shetlick. (Tidwell, also directing, will remain offstage.) Their two-night debut will be the same show in different spaces—first The Southern on May 31, then Live Arts on June 1. Tidwell says this is because they want to prepare for different types of venues, with an East Coast tour planned in the fall.

These four performers will act out six songs of varying lengths, each relating a woman’s near-death experience. The songs will be accompanied by Naylor on keytar, along with three set instruments in the forms of dry leaves, an oven, and a doorway—“which is actually a ladder,” Tidwell confides. The song cycle lasts about 40 minutes, followed by the show’s finale: a sound collage compiled of other recorded near-death experiences.

Along with the WWII Blitz and the unsuccessful suicide, which Tidwell says was attempted in a “mock-Sylvia Plath” style, a depiction of sexual assault is the subject of another song, along with a piece about those who were injured on the Downtown Mall on August 12, 2017.

Despite the upsetting subject matter, Tidwell says the performance will address both “trauma and all the fruit that it bears”—what she calls a “really rich combination.” Tidwell also says that early reactions have been overwhelmingly positive. “I talked to friends of mine who have experienced profound trauma, and they’re happy to know that this is being represented in a way that’s not just pitying. …These people who have been hurt, they want to be heard.”

Naylor, who’s been relatively quiet next to Tidwell, finds her own burst of energy when she has to leave The Pie Chest early. She talks quickly, with excitement, about the project even as she stands to go. “It’s been such a privilege to hear all these stories and to make something out of them,” she says. “Now that I’ve heard their stories, I feel like there’s a connection there. There’s an understanding that is really incredible.”

Even after an hour-long conversation with its creators, it’s difficult to predict what to expect from The Near Misses. Certain aspects of the show feel inevitably grim, but as Naylor and Tidwell repeatedly stress, the goal is not to depress. The progression of the show mirrors the mental progression of someone who experiencing and recovering from trauma. It may be a difficult journey, but as Tidwell says, “some real strength emerges at the end.”

The Near Misses / The Southern Café & Music Hall  May 31/ Live Arts June 1

Categories
Arts

Hemings as heroine: Experimental opera explores the life of Jefferson’s mistress

Soprano Alyson Cambridge prepares to tell the story of Sally Hemings’ brief time living on West Main Street in Victory Hall Opera’s Sally on West Main. Photo by Eze Amos

The word “opera” sometimes comes with some preconceived notions attached. It might bring to mind complex stories fraught with drama and murder, created by long-dead composers. Unless you’re intimately familiar with the art form, it may also seem less than relevant to modern society, a type of entertainment that belongs to previous generations.

Such an assumption, however, would overlook Victory Hall Opera. Now in its fourth season, the Charlottesville-based company produces startlingly modern and experimental work, and productions that are locally resonant, as exemplified by the upcoming Sally on West Main, named for Sally Hemings, who was enslaved by—and likely mistress to—Thomas Jefferson.

VHO’s artistic director, Miriam Gordon- Stewart, says opera is generally “a very international industry,” but Victory Hall is determined to make it local. “All of our productions have some kind of tie to Charlottesville, and to some degree, to Charlottesville history.” Sally on West Main, which focuses on an “underexplored moment in Sally Hemings’ story, in which she left Monticello and moved downtown to West Main Street,” is no exception.

Gordon-Stewart says the work is told “through the lens of the people who have experienced its legacy—mainly black women in this country, and in this case, African American artists.” Although Hemings has recently come into the limelight, most of her story was not recorded. Historians are left to fill in the gaps, while artists are left to imagine what sort of person Hemings might have been. Gordon-Stewart says the African American artists in question “have, in some ways, the best chance of illuminating this character.”

One such artist is librettist and playwright Sandra Seaton, whose song cycle From the Diary of Sally Hemings—created nearly 20 years ago with composer William Bolcom—is a piece of the collage that is Sally on West Main.

The original libretto, essentially a musical exploration of Hemings’ life, was supposed to be no longer than 12 minutes, but it grew into a 45-minute song cycle—and that was just the start of Seaton’s unforeseen preoccupation with Hemings. After From the Diary of Sally Hemings was put to music by Bolcom and premiered in 2001, Seaton continued to research the enslaved woman’s largely forgotten life. “I just had a problem letting her go once I started thinking about her,” she says.

Two plays also resulted from Seaton’s research—Sally and A Bed Made in Heaven—both focusing on Hemings and both addressing the emergence of Jefferson and his mistress into public consideration and debate. Seaton says this relationship is largely what continues to draw her to Hemings, although she stresses that her work is as historically accurate as possible. “One thing I did not want to write was a bodice-ripper.”

Considering the renown Seaton’s work has received, it’s safe to say she’s avoided bodice-ripping status. Alyson Cambridge, a soprano opera singer and the star of Sally on West Main, would certainly agree. She first assumed the musical role of Hemings in 2009, when she recorded a performance of Seaton’s song cycle. After the album premiered in 2010, Cambridge reprised her role eight years later in Victory Hall’s pastiche opera Monticello Overheard. During this show, Gordon-Stewart approached Cambridge with the idea that would become Sally on West Main.

Assuming Hemings’ persona is no easy feat, but Cambridge says she feels such a performance is vital. “Race relations are still very much an issue…and I think that looking back at our history, examining it, having healthy and insightful dialogue about it, is really the only way to get to a way forward,” she says. “I think that’s a really wonderful thing to do, and I think doing it through music and a presentation of this nature is a great thing for Charlottesville.”

While Cambridge dives into the history of her role, Sally on West Main’s multimedia components provide a modern twist. Portions of Chris Farina’s locally renowned documentary West Main Street will be screened along with various projects by Marisa Williamson, another artist whose creations have been heavily influenced by what she calls the “spectral figure” of Hemings.

Williamson works largely with film, both behind the scenes and as an actor. Like Cambridge, she has also taken on the persona of Hemings—in 2013, Williamson visited Monticello dressed as Hemings and staged a “mock reenactment,” in which Hemings sang karaoke and dashed through the grounds. “I was doing unusual things and trying to raise the question of what it means to reclaim the space as someone who used to live there,” she says.

Some of these “reenactments” will be among her video contributions, but Williamson also plans to include unseen material—she says she has a wealth of unreleased footage. As she’s been for Seaton, Hemings has proven a continually fascinating and troubling artistic subject for the filmmaker. “I’m trying to make visible a past that has been suppressed,” Williamson says.

Although it’s difficult to imagine what exactly Sally on West Main will resemble, it’s seems certain that every artist involved shares Williamson’s mission statement. “I’m trying to make sense of what it means for Sally Hemings to live on in the present,” she says. “In the same way that Jefferson is so powerfully evoked or embodied everywhere you look in Charlottesville, I want to figure out what that looks like for Sally Hemings.”

See Sally on West Main at the LeRoi Moore Performance Hall at the Music Resource Center May 25.

Categories
Arts

Creative connections: Arts organizations bridge the divide between students and locals

Julia Kudravetz is making a focused effort to attract UVA students, as well as recent graduates, like assistant manager Sarah Valencia, to New Dominion Bookshop’s events. Image: Eze Amos

For a university with such a dominant sports culture, it’s easy to forget that the arts community is thriving, too. UVA boasts over 100 visual and performing arts organizations, from aerial dance clubs to filmmakers’ societies.

The vast majority of these groups are Contracted Independent Organizations. This lack of a direct university connection can spell difficulty when finding spaces on Grounds to rehearse or congregate. Between the infamous “concrete box” of the Student Activities Building and the still hypothetical arts building to fill the lot where the Cavalier Inn once stood, it can sometimes feel as though the necessary space for university creatives doesn’t exist.

That’s where the community steps in. Many Charlottesville arts organizations make an effort to welcome UVA students.

Just ask Julia Kudravetz, owner of New Dominion Bookshop. Since taking over operations in November 2017, Kudravetz has set her sights on ensuring that the bookstore’s capacity for hosting community events is preserved, and even amplified. Selling books is only part of her mission statement, she says. Just as important is for members of the community, “a nice mix of humans,” to attend New Dominion’s events and engage with each other.

Aside from the Thursday night MFA readings, New Dominion hosts student-focused open mics. Kudravetz is branching out to more performative groups as well—one of the most recent events at the bookstore was a staged reading of Much Ado About Nothing, co-hosted by UVA drama group Shakespeare on the Lawn. She’s also expressed interest in a cappella groups performing in the store, and says she’s waiting for a student to pitch her “an avant-garde puppet show.”

Rather than see a divide between the university and the rest of the city, a tendency both students and locals can fall prey to, Kudravetz considers the two communities inextricably linked. “The fate of the town is tied to the fate of UVA, and we need to be more aware of each other’s communities,” she says.

Kudravetz also admires “the energy that college students bring to projects”—in fact, her staff is partially composed of current UVA students and recent grads. New Dominion’s assistant manager, Sarah Valencia, graduated from the creative prose writing program last May.

Valencia has an intimate understanding of why UVA creatives might not see eye-to-eye with their Charlottesville counterparts. “There’s definitely a divide,” she acknowledges, “but we’re working on that.”

Valencia is less concerned with whether students know about New Dominion and more so with whether they feel like they belong. “I wish more students would come out,” she says, describing some of the readings she went to while attending the university in the comparatively “dreary” UVA Bookstore. “We just have to make sure…they feel welcome.”

Gorilla Theater Productions is less centralized than New Dominion, but just as committed to student involvement. Artistic Director Anna Lien describes it as a “counterculture, offbeat organization…just now kinda getting in the limelight.”

Located in a tiny black building tucked into Allied Street, Gorilla Theater is easy to overlook but impossible to forget. The organization’s programming tends towards the violent, absurd, or otherwise controversial—but its intent is not to shock, Lien explains. Rather, Gorilla wants to foster conversation.

“We have a big focus on LGBTQ issues and transition,” she says, explaining her plans to partner with a transition support group at the university in order to bring visibility to these students in creative fashion. Gorilla Theater’s current student- based project is its annual Summer Shorts, which consist of short plays typically directed by and starring high school or university students. “It’s young people being able to rise to an occasion that they wouldn’t otherwise have.”

Lien also acknowledges that a barrier exists between UVA arts and the Charlottesville equivalent, but she doesn’t think it’s a mental one. “The biggest challenge we have is transportation,” she says. “That’s something that I’m working towards figuring out. How can I bring theater to UVA? How can I build that bridge?”

Alan Goffinski seems to have found an answer. As executive director of The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative, he has poured his organizational efforts into a partnership with the UVA music department to create the Telemetry Music Series, a monthly event that features both student and local performers.

When he took on the role a couple years ago, Goffinski says he “wanted to build on the assets that Charlottesville already has.” He recognized the enormous resources possessed by the music department and, with the help of its technical director Travis Thatcher, created Telemetry. The goal was to foster a “cross-pollination of ideas,” he explains. Based on the typical crowds at the events, which he judges to be half Charlottesville residents and half UVA students, the two have succeeded.

“Some students are less inclined to explore the quirkiness of their community,” Goffinski admits. “There’s oftentimes not a perceived reason to venture out…we like to try to provide that reason—to show students what they might be missing.”

Even if you’re not artistically minded, he urges students to better appreciate their city. “I would ultimately just recommend that students look around every now and then at what might be happening in the community in general…Charlottesville is less than five miles wide. There’s no excuse.”

Julia Kudravetz is making a focused effort to attract UVA students, as well as recent graduates, like assistant manager Sarah Valencia, to New Dominion Bookshop’s events.

Eze Amos

Julia Kudravetz
considers the two
communities
inextricably linked. “The fate of the town
is tied to the fate of UVA, and we need to be more aware of each other’s communities.”

Rather than see a divide between the university and the rest of the city, a tendency both students and locals can fall prey to,