Author: Elizabeth Derby

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Arts

Organic storytelling: Building theater from the body up

Siân Richards and Kara McLane Burke play twins Pip and Twig on an epic sea adventure, a melding of physical theater, creative collaboration and collage-like organic storytelling. Publicity photo.

When you think of storytelling, you might imagine your animated girlfriend gesticulating over Sunday brunch or a kindly grandfather telling the kids to gather ’round.

But for Siân Richards and Kara McLane Burke, stories begin in the body.

“You just kind of start somewhere and give yourself rules, a series of assignments, even if you can’t see where you’re going,” Richards said.

Richards and Burke are the creators and performers of The Convolutions of Pip and Twig, developed with help from their theater collective Performers Exchange Project (PEP), and presented by The Hamner Theater.

“The idea [for Pip and Twig] came mostly from Kara and I wanting to work together,” Richards said. “It was less of a lightning bolt of inspiration than the impetus to make a piece of work.”

“Siân and I are similar in coloring but that’s about it,” Burke said. “We went with the idea that we look similar and had kind of a weird collection of things, images of twins and interesting stories about them. We were inspired by musical theater and vaudeville and learned to tap dance as best we could.”

Pip and Twig’s origin follows the tradition of corporeal mime, in which actors’ physicality inspires choreographed performances that give each theatrical element, from words to visuals to movement, equal importance.

The plot, Richards said, began with the development of a specific physical score onto which they layered text, music and eventually stage elements like lighting and scenery.

“I studied theater at VCU, but finding direction from the emotional and psychological perspective was always a stumbling block for me,” Richards said.

When she was invited to join the physical theater troupe Theater du Jour by fellow thespian Martha Mendenhall, she found “a logical direction for me to approach it from.”

Burke, a JMU grad, found similar freedom in the practice. “Many years ago, I was traveling and seeing European ensemble work at the Fringe Festival that blew my mind about what theater could be.”

Mendenhall, a member of the theater company Foolery and the director of Pip and Twig, founded PEP with Richards, Burke, and fellow thespians Jennifer Hoyt Tidwell and Doreen Bechtol Scheidler in 2005. Along with Live Arts, they hosted the Dah Theatre Research Centre of Belgrade Serbia in Charlottesville and Staunton for an exchange of workshops, performances and lectures.

They envisioned PEP as a touch point for exchanges between international visitors and community members. Eventually friends-of-friends and members of Foolery joined, and the collective organized Charlottesville arts carnivals Wunderkammer and Shentai, along with original works.

All PEP performances have been a product of place and local players. The Convolutions of Pip and Twig is no exception, with Jennifer Hoyt Tidwell contributing the text and Jim Waive writing the show’s music and lyrics.

The co-creators said their biggest surprises came from putting everything together. Practiced movements and layers of sense details have been filtered and sculpted through chance and many creative minds, a sort of living collage lifted from its community. And though the instigators have thoughts about exactly what plays out on stage, “people seeing it could have a very different perspective.”

Catch The Convolution of Pip and Twig on December 10-14 at Round Room Dance Studio in The Old Michie Building, and again at Live Arts in February.

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Arts

At the door: Daphne Maxwell Reid captures one side of wonder

“Flight of the Phoenix” is one of Daphne Maxwell Reid’s door photographs, taken while traveling the globe. Photo courtesy of the artist.

When you view a photography exhibit that focuses exclusively on doors, you can’t help but feel a tinge of desperation to know what on earth is behind them.

Artist Daphne Maxwell Reid makes no such offers in her current show at The Jefferson School African American Heritage Center.

“Everybody starts with the same curiosity. Every baby will go to the kitchen cabinets and want to open the doors. The sense of wonder, of childhood, is what keeps life interesting to me,” she said in a recent interview. “When things get to be well-known, they get boring. I’m a change artist, and I love change.”

If you watched NBC’s “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” between 1993 and 1996, you know Reid as Aunt Vivian Banks, but aside from a playful reference to the show on her website (titled “Daphne Maxwell Reid’s Fresh Prints”), she treats the role as one of many in a life of transformation.

“Before I was an actress, I was also a fashion designer for the McCall pattern company,” she said. At Northwestern University, where she received a degree in interior design and architecture, “I would knit sweaters while I was studying, and I handcrafted sewing patterns, knowing I could make a business out of it.”

Her experiences include acting in a number of movies and TV shows, including JT’s mother, Frances Hunter, on the UPN sitcom “Eve,” and Juanita Lawrence on the BET sitcom “Let’s Stay Together,” as well as modeling. (She was the first African-American woman to appear on the cover of Glamour magazine.)

These days, the Petersburg resident sits on the Board of Visitors at Virginia State University and the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. She runs New Millennium Studios, a full-service movie studio with her actor-director husband Tim and creates prints and calendars of photos she takes from her travels around the world.

“I woke up on my 60th birthday and declared myself a photographic artist,” she said.

While her emergence as a photographer may be new, Reid’s interest in the art is not. Though she was taught that art “was not something that one should pursue because you needed to make a good living,” her father helped set a different example.

“My father always took pictures. He was an army photographer. He always had a camera and I did too. Since I was 9 years old I can’t remember being without one.”

She also saw at-home examples of women creating “hand arts,” as she calls them. “My mother and aunt were sewers, knitters and crafters, which intrigued me,” said Reid. “I like the value inherent in something that is handmade or one of a kind. I like the personal touch.”

Her fascination with craftsmanship inspires her love of doors and door frames, particularly overseas. All of her door photos were taken in back alleys “and other interesting places” in countries like Italy, Morocco, Spain and Tuva.

“I don’t do anything domestic,” Reid said. “I try to capture the craftsmanship of the culture and the way the light is different in different places. They’re not into keeping up with Joneses over there.”

On her travels, she takes photographs to capture a sense of wonder and adventure. “The door is a metaphor for so many things in life. A decision to go in one direction or another, to have the curiosity that’s the basis for learning. I hope I’m inspiring a bunch of kids to dream and adults to remember how to dream. That’s what leads me to continue to do it.”

Daphne Maxwell Reid’s “Fresh Prints” are on view at The Jefferson School African American Heritage Center through January 11.

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Arts

New direction: Miller Murray Susen puts on the bossy pants

Miller Murray Susen (left) brings a lifetime of theater experience to her stage adaptation of Little Women, which is also her directorial debut. Photo: Martyn Kyle.

Less than a week before opening night, Miller Murray Susen, the director and author of Four County Players’ holiday adaptation of Little Women, has one priority: to keep things calm.

“I’ve never directed a full-length play and been in charge of adding in all the tech stuff,” said Susen. “I seriously don’t have a great benchmark to judge how we’re doing, but in terms of my anxiety level, it’s manageable.”

Though she’s new to the helm of tech week, Susen has worked as assistant director on a number of local shows, including her own adaptation of last year’s A Christmas Carol in which she also performed (alongside her theatrically inclined husband and their two likewise inclined children).

It was during that performance that Gary Warwick White, the production manager at Four County, asked Susen if she would be interested in revisiting a show they’d done in 2002 and giving it her own spin for the holiday season.

“Little Women is a book I read at least once a year until age 9,” Susen said with a laugh. “It was one of my seminal girlhood books, along with Little House on the Prairie, Emily of New Moon and others. Of course I was interested.”

Childhood obsession was the perfect entrée to the adaptation process. “The first thing I did was make a list of all the things that I would be sad [about] if they weren’t in the show,” she said, then rattled off a list of scenes including Amy burning Jo’s manuscript, “the Christmas play with the disaster at the end” and the failed dinner party. But her focus on a festive theme meant she needed to pare the story down significantly.

Written in 1868 by Louisa May Alcott, Little Women tells the story of the four March sisters—Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy—who wait for their father’s return from the Civil War, fall in and out of love, and grow from girls into women.

“I didn’t know until we did research that the book we buy in stores today is actually two books put together,” Susen said. “The nice part is [that in the first half], Beth gets sick but recovers. She dies in the second book. Not to spoil it but, you know, no teenagers were harmed in the making of this book. The other bonus is you don’t have to find a teen actor who is able to realistically die of a wasting disease.”

But, she added, “I cast a Beth that not only has 10 years of piano experience but also has an amazing ability to look legitimately extremely ill. It’s worrisome, really.”

In addition to specific scenes, Susen wanted to include certain lines she knew from memory. She based the structure on a year, from Christmas to Christmas, so the novel’s emphasis on seasonality and nature could be reflected in the set.

The transition from writer to director was an easy one, she said. “I think about stuff like where the beats would be when I write, so I think it’s a huge advantage to direct something you’ve written. Rehearsals were wonderful, so enjoyable, because I went in totally confident. I am the expert on this play.”

In fact, she said, this project has helped shift her perspective of her own role in theater. “I spent a lot of time [in childhood] bolstering my vision of myself as a professional actor. I took voice lessons and three dance classes a week and went to theater camp,” she said.

But in high school, things went a little sour. “No doubt I was sensitive and overwrought—I was a drama teen—but I had bad experiences with directors,” she said.

Susen elected not to apply to a conservatory but to do theater as a hobby in college and gave the dream one last shot with summer stock. “It was a terrible experience,” she said. “I felt like there were a lot of neurotic unhappy people working in theater, and I felt like I was too sensitive.”

After traveling for a year, Susen moved to California, where she got a job in book publishing, got married, moved again and got another job as a website project manager and copywriter for brands like Keebler. “It was a long and lonely period of professional confusion,” she said. “I was being realistic and making money, but I realized people are crazy everywhere.”

She took a crack at writing the great American novel and began freelancing as a copywriter before having babies. After moving back to Charlottesville, she started blogging about parenting and writing articles for C-VILLE, among others. She also auditioned for Rent at PlayOn! Theater. “I had always wanted to do the show, and I got cast,” she said.

Susen went on to perform with Live Arts and Four County Players, and found herself back in the theater world. During Little Women she realized that her historical issues with directors occurred “because I’m a director,” she said. “I didn’t realize how bossy I am and how satisfied I am as a boss. Those years when I wasn’t being creative—I wasn’t happy,” she said. “Making things with other people makes me really happy.”

That philosophy informs her approach as a director. Especially in local volunteer theater, she said, “you want the end product to be good, but in the meantime you want to have fun. Everyone is doing it for the love, not the money. I think artists get caught up in making art with a capital A, but I’d rather create an experience where people feel relaxed and engaged and invited in, and they can walk away saying that made me think but I also had some laughs. I prefer to define success differently.”

Little Women runs through December 14 at Four County Players in Barboursville.

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Magazines Village

Ahead of the game: Sixteen-year-old snowboarder Ward Saunders is already making his way

Sixteen-year-old Ward Saunders goes to a special boarding school (no pun intended) in Bethel, Maine, where he and his peers spend four hours a day on the snow. Photos: Courtesy family

Earlier this year, then-15-year-old snowboarder and Charlottesville native Ward Saunders traveled to Copper Mountain, Colorado, to compete in the U.S.A. Snowboard Association’s national championships. Described by the event website as “the largest snowboard and free skiing event on earth,” the national championships invite top regional winter sport athletes from around the country to compete by age bracket for a shot at a spot in the U.S.A. snowboard team development camp, a training ground for future Olympic hopefuls.

Saunders excels at boardercross, an untimed elimination heat in which a group of four snowboarders race down a narrow, serpentine incline, around and over jumps, drops, and speed bump-like “rollers.”

“Each event has several races. On average I have three or four, but they can get up to seven or eight, and it’s exhausting,” Saunders said. “You take one run at the beginning, then they put you in brackets based on your time. You have to get top two to advance, and then you’re against the top two from another bracket. You’re racing for the top eight. ”

He placed first or second in his first five races on Copper Mountain, which gave him the edge to move on to the championship’s single heat consolation run—his last chance to make the top eight. Saunders described that final race as one of his best moments in his career on the slopes.

His invitation to the U.S.A. snowboard team camp followed. “The day after school ended, I flew out to Oregon to ride with the U.S. snowboard team at Mount Hood for 10 days,” he said. “That was really surreal. I was racing for fun against guys I’ve only seen on TV. I was able to ride the chairlift with Nick Baumgartner [a member of the 2014 Winter Olympic team], who I’ve looked up to since I’ve done boardercross.”

WardSaunders1
Ward Saunders

Now 16, Saunders began skiing when he was about 5 years old, but at age 8, he discovered the snowboard during a family trip to Telluride, Colorado.

Since then, he’s honed his snowboarding skills at Wintergreen Resort, which “was really small after going to a bunch of different mountains, but it was a great place to learn,” Saunders said. “At first it was just about balance and keeping the fundamentals of your board flat on the snow and learning how to stop.”

Saunders entered his first competition, a boardercross and skiercross event held at Wintergreen, at age 12. He eventually joined the resort’s snowboarding team, where he heard about Gould Academy, a small private prep school in the ski resort town of Bethel, Maine, that focuses on training its students to become better winter sport athletes.

“My family members have gone to boarding school, so that was an option for me,” Saunders said. “The ski program at Wintergreen was started by the ski coach at Gould, so we checked it out.”

Now he lives in Bethel, where the majority of students spend six days a week on the snow. Classes alternate in length throughout the year to maximize training time, and Saunders and his peers spend about four hours a day “riding around, carving drills, messing around in the terrain park, and going off jumps,” he said. The school offers competitive snowboarding and skiing, and students who don’t join the competition program can spend time alpine skiing, working ski patrol, or teaching local middle school students how to ski.

It’s a major change from Charlottesville. “Up here, it’s normal for kids to be skiing and snowboarding,” Saunders said. “I’m around kids who have the same interests I have and do the same sports that I do. We usually talk about professional snowboarders or which competitions we’re doing and how last year went.”

Since his time with the U.S. snowboard team, Saunders has been invited to train with more Olympic hopefuls at a U.S. gold conditioning camp in Utah. At school, he focuses specifically on boardercross, an idea encouraged during his time with Baumgartner. “Nick told me that he was 15 when he started snowboarding and that he worked his ass off to get where he is today. He realized strength and condition were a big factor to getting him there, so I thought about that and now I go to the gym much more.”

That routine includes weight lifting and high-intensity cardio with a coach five days a week, as well as agility training to improve balance and coordination. “You have to have a lot of intensity to compete with kids your age,” he said. “I had a huge growth spurt the summer between freshman and soph-
omore year. I came in a lot taller and had a good season. This year I’ll be travelling a lot, going out West five or six times. In the higher end competitions like in California and Canada, you have to get in the top 10 or top five a few times to be able to qualify.”

He hopes to achieve just that at Owl’s Head, a ski resort near Quebec, where he’ll compete for a spot at the U.S. Snowboarding Junior World Champi-
onships in China. “That’s like the best riders my age competing against riders from different countries,” he said.

Beyond the snow, Saunders has two long-term goals: to get into a college where he can compete during the winter and still go to class, and find a way to play baseball, too. “I played in the McIntire Little League in Charlottesville, then at Lane Babe Ruth, and now I’m playing center field at Gould,” he said. “Baseball and snowboarding don’t compare. Snowboarding is hurry up and wait, and baseball is a pretty slow sport. But,” he added, “it’s much more relaxing.”

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Arts

Artistic bond: Father and daughter combine paintings for New City Arts

Tom West and his daughter Cate West Zahl are both talented painters who chose business career paths. They compiled a show of the work they love at The WVTF and Radio IQ Gallery. Photo credit: Maggie Stein

For many artists the act of creation is inspired not by the need for intellectual exercise or profound exploration as much as the need to scratch an itch that simply won’t quit.

Cate West Zahl, whose work appears alongside her father’s in the “Father/Daughter Art Show” presented by New City Arts, explained self-expression this way: “I’ve been avoiding calling myself a painter for a while, but that’s what I am. I try to run away from it, but I wind up painting no matter what. My dad has always painted, and I always have as well.”

She said that if Tom West, her father, who graduated with a degree in art and architecture from Princeton University in 1979, had been able to support the family as a painter he would have. Instead “he works in finance and never stops painting. He does commissions here and there, but mostly his work is just piling up in the basement [of the family home in Washington, D.C.].”

Zahl followed in her father’s footsteps, first studying art under Lee Newman at the Holton-Arms all-girls school in D.C. “Newman had a huge emphatic insistence on learning fundamental art,” she said. “After school, I’d do figure drawing as part of my fundamental learning. I was painting nudes in 6th and 7th grade.”

After evolving her study of studio art with landscapes and still lifes at Hamilton College, Zahl opted to pursue a more lucrative career. “I moved to New York and became an editor for a decorating magazine. I was always painting, but not in an official capacity.”

She wrote for The Scout Guide and C-VILLE’s Abode magazine after her move to Charlottesville, and if it weren’t for a trip to the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 2012, the West family paintings might still be languishing in their respective basements.

During her pregnancy, Zahl went to see “The Ocean Park Series” by Richard Diebenkorn, an American abstract painter whose large-scale canvases are filled with blocks of fluid color and gentle geometric shapes.

“I spent four hours at the exhibit and thought, ‘This is it. This is everything,’” she said. “I spent so much time with these paintings, and then I made a decision. I could do this. Why am I fighting what I’ve been trained to do?”

Zahl’s current paintings are entirely abstract, showing Diebenkorn’s influence more strongly than the literal figurative training of her youth. They also incorporate her years as an interior design writer. “I’m not painting feelings, I’m not painting life. I’m painting them in terms of what will look good in the space,” she said. “I edit my paintings in the same way I edit articles. I start with a lot of color, gesture and pattern. I use a ruler to help me make straight lines, and then I eliminate until whatever is left is completely necessary.”

Zahl’s shift to the abstract may also have genetic roots. Tom West worked closely with American abstract expressionist Sean Scully, and his 30-plus years of studio work followed this influence. His color-driven pieces have evolved from very large works on paper to painting on cigar boxes.

In his artist’s statement, West wrote that he adopted his new medium completely by chance. “I bought a small painting of a family friend’s daughter. When hanging the piece, I looked at the back and realized that it was on a cigar box.” West took up the challenge on his own boxes. “My goal is to use the shapes of the boxes as a compositional tool and the labels as subtle design elements,” he said.

“I thought his works were all so silly,” Zahl said. “It’s interesting that as I’ve grown in my taste for art, I can appreciate how ahead of his time my dad was.”

The “Father/Daughter Art Show,” is on display at The WVTF and Radio IQ Gallery through the middle of December. Make an appointment to view it through Maureen at newcityarts.org.

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Abode Magazines

Soot yourself: The cleaning, care, and keeping of your chimney

Wendell Worley of Mirkwood Chimney Sweep says regular cleanings can prevent chimney fires, but proper firestarters and safety precautions are important, too. Photo: Rammelkamp Foto

If you have a fireplace or a wood stove in your home, odds are good that you also have a chimney. And if you have a chimney, it needs to be cleaned—every 30 to 50 fires, according to Wendell Worley of Mirkwood Chimney Sweep. In addition to telling us why chimney cleaning is crucial, Worley spoke to us about chimney maintenance and fire prevention.

How does the chimney cleaning process work?

In fireplaces, the first thing we do is put down a drop cloth that our equipment sits on. We have a high-powered vacuum with a 4″ hose on the back that moves 2,800 cubic feet of air per minute. It creates a vacuum in the fireplace that gets all the dust. Next, we have a viper, a 75′ chimney rod that rolls up into a roll. You feed it up through the damper and into the flue and brush as you go up.

This time of the year is the worst to clean your chimney because most people calling today won’t get their chimney cleaned for a month. If they get it done in the spring, it’s done.

How do chimneys work and why do they need cleaning?

Fireplace chimneys exhaust the gases from the fire and take them to the outside while reflecting some heat into the house. People use them because they’re a tradition, but the fireplace itself is not efficient at all. They draw more heat out than in. A fireplace chimney will need to be cleaned every 30 to 50 fires.

Wood stoves and chimneys to wood stoves are much more prevalent in this area. A wood stove chimney is smaller, and the smoke is much more dense because most people fill their stoves up and cut the draft down so it burns real slow. Slow burning causes the chimney to get cold. The colder it gets, the more the condensation from the wood forms on the sides of the chimney. That builds up a deposit of carbon and creosote, which is flammable. These types of chimneys should be cleaned two to three times a year.

What are some other best practices for the care and keeping of chimneys?

Keep your wood dry, and let it dry naturally. Get your wood six to eight months in advance and stack it so that the ends of the logs are facing north and south and cover the top but not the sides. The north and south winds will dry the wood quickly, but covering the top will keep the rain from re-soaking the wood. After six to eight months with wood sitting out, you can cover the sides too.

Keep a fire extinguisher nearby your fireplace or wood stove at all times. Any combustible material near your stove needs to be, by law, 3′ away.

People should always have a screen on their fireplace if they don’t have glass doors. Wood pops and it could pop a hot ember out onto your carpet and start a fire.

Small fires burn less efficiently than larger fires. The hotter the fire, the less buildup in your chimney.

Never put material that will flare up in your fireplace. Wrapping paper, for example, flares real fast up through the damper into the flue, and if your chimney is dirty, it will ignite it. There are more fires on Christmas Day than any other time.

How common are chimney fires in this area?

Most people that call the fire department, it’s not because of chimney fire, it’s because they didn’t know how to heat their chimney up. They open the damper and just light a fire. If it’s cold outside, that means the chimney is cold. It’s drawing backwards. If you don’t heat it up first, when you light a fire it will fill the house with smoke. That’s when people call the fire department.

Open a newspaper up to its full length, like you’ve got your arms spread apart, roll that up into a cone and light the big end of the cone. Stick it up through your damper. Do that until you no longer feel cold air. Then you light a kindling fire. A kindling fire will burn hot and warm the chimney up. Then you add small pieces of wood until you work up to a major fire.

In addition to regular cleanings, what can homeowners do to prevent chimney fires?

Most people refill their stove in the morning, when they still have a few hot embers left. But run the wood stove pretty hot for about 20 minutes first thing in the morning, and that’ll dry out the creosote and burn it out of the chimney before a large amount has the chance to build up. There’s a chance you could set it on fire, but if you’ve got a good airtight stove, you can close the drafts on the stove and usually kill a chimney fire.

This is a remedy that some people use: Take a spray bottle with just plain water and mist it into the stove to create steam and kill the chimney fire.

But the first thing you should do if your chimney catches fire is to get everyone out of the house. Bring your phone and kids and call 911. Make sure you get the cat, too.

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Arts

Book mark: Jennifer Niesslein’s Full Grown People turns 1

Jennifer Niesslein has assembled compelling essays from her acclaimed blog into the book Full Grown People: The Greatest Hits, Volume 1. “The book is a great introduction, and if you’ve just found the site and don’t want to slog through back essays, this is a great way to catch up,” she said. Photo: Emily Morone.

To celebrate the first birthday of her online literary journal Full Grown People on October 4, editor Jennifer Niesslein published a book.

“Full Grown People: The Greatest Hits, Volume 1 gives you a good idea of our breadth,” she said. “It covers a lot, from parenting issues, when you’re looking at maybe your kids leaving soon, to an essay on loving and leaving an addict. There’s one about going rafting with a blind person. One is about dealing with aging parents. It’s the whole glorious smorgasbord of what adulthood can bring in your life.”

Last year, the former editor of literary magazine Brain, Child started Full Grown People (FGP) as an outlet to publish essays about the transitional moments of adulthood. “It grew out of my own personal existential crisis about what the hell am I doing now [after leaving Brain, Child],” she said. “It felt like an awkward age.” Since its inception, one FGP essay was listed as a notable essay in the newest edition of The Best American Essays and another was published in Best Food Writing 2014.

For Niesslein, who creates collaborative editorial experiences with her authors and teaches essay writing courses at WriterHouse, publishing an FGP anthology made sense for two reasons: as a revenue source for the ad-free website and a means to extend its audience. “The book is a great introduction, and if you’ve just found the site and don’t want to slog through back essays, this is a great way to catch up,” she said.

Available only through fullgrownpeople.com, book sales have been good so far. “Only three were to blood relatives,” Niesslein said with a laugh. “The most gratifying thing about being an editor is that when you publish, someone is going to think, ‘God, I needed this right now.’ People I know will say ‘God, that one essay, it just blew me away.’ And because I’m part editor, part fan girl, really, I’m always like ‘Yeah, wasn’t that awesome?’”

The feeling is mutual. “It’s an honor to be included and great to work with [Niesslein] because she has such a fresh take on very honest and intimate storytelling,” said Gloucester County resident Jennifer James, whose essay “Under the Table and Dreaming at Hillside House” appears in the new anthology.

A fiction writer at work on a novel, James said non-fiction writing “is actually a lot more fun for me,” a source of connection between deeply personal moments and the universal truths beyond them. “When my first son was born and my husband’s grandmother died,” she said, “it was a juxtaposition of the worst that could happen and how, in life, unexpected joy can happen, too.”

Local contributors to FGP online described additional forms of connection. “I write a lot about my children, and one of the reasons I relate to them so well is I can remember very clearly what it was like to be a kid,” said Browning Porter, a local poet, storyteller, and graphic designer. “But it feels like there’s something in my mid- to late-40s that’s really interesting too, and maybe deserves its own kind of attention. It’s kind of like the idea that we never stop growing up. Even though we’re grown ups we’re dealing with the same stuff.”

Angel Gunn, a novelist and freelance writer, said her essays voice the identity crisis that she went through as a mother. “In some ways I think writing your darkest fears exorcises them. I worried I would be judged for it, but I connected with so many people who got how it felt to sacrifice parts of yourself to take care of other people.”

Susan McCulley, a blogger and movement instructor, said her non-fiction reflects the mindfulness she teaches. “Mundane things that happen to us can be transformed if we really notice them,” she said. “There’s something to me about paying attention to our experiences and allowing them to be meaningful even if they are seemingly small,” McCulley added. “That’s what [Niesslein] chooses. These pieces, even when they’re about a man with alcoholism or a breakup, they’re about me on some level. These aren’t just people sharing their stories but what connects us in those stories.”

Hear short readings by local FGP writers Erica S. Brath, Angel Sands Gunn, Jennifer James, Susan McCulley, Browning Porter, and Miller Murray Susen on November 2 at WriterHouse.

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Arts

Perspective shift: Denise Stewart plans for change in The Sugar

Live Arts launches its 2014-15 season with The Sugar, a locally sourced comedy written by Denise Stewart. Photo: Martyn Kyle.

Local playwright, actor, UVA drama lecturer, and wellness coach Denise Stewart is on a sugar fast.

“I’m on day four because I thought it would be interesting and fun and maybe something to blog about. It’s already hard,” she said. But not as hard as the 30-day raw food fast she did earlier this year. “I’d feel rage that moved very quickly into a superior attitude. I would see breaded chicken at a party and think, ‘What is the world coming to? What are these people thinking?’ I knew that was a different place for me.”

Art reflects life in Stewart’s newest play The Sugar, which kicks off Live Arts’ 2014-15 season. “I’m not a moderate person,” she said. “This is a play that celebrates and highlights the extremist in all of us.”

The show follows Sally Dawson, a wellness coach in a small Southern town who decides to go on—you guessed it—a sugar fast. Her resolutions are quickly tested by the appearance of her freeloading brother, a national headline-making murder trial, and other issues locals might recognize.

“It’s not about dieting, of course,” Stewart said. “I think it’s about this idea that everybody’s got a plan. You watch 30 days in the lives of six people and what they’re working on. People have plans for other people who don’t want to go with the plan, so the plan gets spoiled, and then you have another plan. The things you planned are sometimes trivial, like a sugar fast, yet there are major repercussions when you’re trying to get control through renunciation. Like becoming a stranger in a new town, and then your old life comes right back to you.”

Her own experience has no doubt shaped Stewart’s multifaceted perspective. Encouraged from an early age as both a writer and an actor, and working on and off as a teacher since age 23, she was invited to return as a playwright-in-residence to her alma mater Catawba College, just after her graduation. “Jim Epperson brought me back [in 1998], and that same year he pushed me to apply to UVA’s MFA in playwriting program. That was pivotal.”

Eventually, a string of blog posts about her childhood became an hour-long performance piece and a lasting influence on her career. “So much of the work I’m doing now, from teaching to coaching to writing, has been created because of people who knew Dirty Barbie and either wanted to see it again or see more of my work,” she said. “The biggest lesson has been to be true to my roots, my storytelling, and my personality. I hadn’t trusted myself like that before.”

The Sugar, which was commissioned by Lee Street Theater in Salisbury, North Carolina in 2013 for an early 2014 opening, likewise drew on autobiography. Though the work itself would be fictional, Stewart said, “I knew I either wanted to write a Southern rock tragedy about my brother or a zany comedy. I’m not a musical person, so I thought, ‘Lets do what I have time for.’ I thought this was going to be a zany office romance, but it wasn’t too long in the process before the brother came knocking.”

That organic discovery is part of the creative process Stewart would like to see more of onstage. “We’re in a time where we don’t have enough new voices, enough new playwrights churning stuff out. I know for sure not enough people are writing, because we’re always doing old plays [in the UVA drama department],” she said. “It’s a fun way to talk about aspects of theater history. As a working playwright I feel comfortable talking about my process and how I’ve made my way. I want to encourage people to write more.”

Fortunately, she said, life in a good arts community makes that possible. “I think someone put a bug in Julie [Hamberg, artistic director of Live Arts]’s ear [about The Sugar]. I knew that if Live Arts could make that commitment, I would make a deep commitment to changing the script.” With feedback from director Ray Nedzel and the show’s cast, she’s made improvements throughout the rehearsal process in preparation for the show’s Halloween launch.

The Sugar will be the first piece to run in the newly renovated Live Arts space. After a major capital campaign investment, the building offers a new lobby, lounge spaces, stairways, and classrooms, and the season line-up is more ambitious than ever. On December 5, the largest cast in Live Arts history will take the stage for Les Misérables, and in February, the Virginia premiere of Crooked will explore issues of family, faith, and adolescence. The 2013 Tony Award- winning comedy Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike opens on March 6 and two spring repertory shows, The Mountaintop and Gruesome Playground Injuries begin in April.

Live Arts will host the U.S. premiere of 2014 Edinburgh Fringe Festival favorite Fight Night on May 15. This immersive performance will ask audience members to vote for onstage personalities and examine democratic peculiarities in the process. The season will close with the musical Xanadu, so prepare for roller disco and sidewalk chalk starting July 17.

Through 11/22. $20-25, times vary. Live Arts, 123 E. Water St. 977-4177.

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Following bliss: Sacred relics on exhibition at CitySpace

The “Maitreya Loving Kindness Tour” offers a chance to get close to Buddha. “If you wish, there will be a monk on hand to offer a personal blessing,” Leena Rose Miller said. The tour also offers a period for baby blessings and pet blessings.

“I was walking down the street in Asheville a few years ago, and I saw a line forming at the center where I’d occasionally attended meditation,” said Leena Rose Miller. “I thought, ‘What’s this?’ and got into it, not knowing what to expect. I can honestly only tell you that when I stood in front of these sacred objects, I felt like my life had changed.”

A medical intuitive and former director of the Downtown Healing Arts Center, Miller is the Charlottesville host of “Maitreya Loving Kindness Tour,” a travelling collection of relics of the Buddha and many other Buddhist masters.

According to Amanda Kard, an employee of the tour, relics include pieces of masters’ robes, a strand of hair, and slivers of writing, but “most of the relics are little crystals found in the cremation ashes of the masters. We only find them in the ashes of great saints. They were manifested by these masters to embody qualities that we can develop, like wisdom and kindness.” The oldest, she said, were found 2,600 years ago, and “it’s pretty clear to anyone, even those who aren’t sensitive to it, that these have a powerful energy.”

Each cluster of small crystals is held in a small round dish under a glass display case. They take center stage in a room full of candles, kataks, a golden statue of Maitreya Buddha, and visiting monastics and volunteers.

The exhibit includes more than 3,000 relics from 40 masters, including donations rescued by the Dali Lama from Tibet. Collected by Lama Zopa Rinpoche, the spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition and founder of the tour, they travel with the support of a global network that has brought the multifaith, multicultural event to more than 2.5 million people in 69 countries since 2001.

What began as a way to raise funds for a 150-ft Maitreya Buddha statue in Bodhgaya, India “has been so transformative for so many people that they decided to keep the tour going,” Kard said.

Three local Buddhist communities have been instrumental in the arrival of the tour, including Geshe Tenzin Yangton, the new resident lama at the Ligmincha Institute; Venerable Tenzin Ghepel of the Jefferson Tibetan Society; and Venerable Khenpo Nwang Dorjee, the founder, abbot, and director of Tashi Choeling Buddhist Foundation. Tibetan children will sing a welcome song during Friday’s opening ceremony, for which invited monks from New York and Mayor Satyendra Hujaour will be in attendance.

Kard, who has been traveling throughout the U.S. and Canada with “Maitreya Loving Kindness” since May, said that it “expanded my horizons of what’s possible for the world and my life.”

When the tour comes to a new town, she said, many attendees “come and don’t know exactly what they’re experiencing, but a lot of emotions will come, processes to resolve issues that haven’t been resolved. I hear a lot of people making peace or asking for forgiveness. In Nevada City, one woman saw a sign, came in, and started shaking and telling me how wonderful it was. She said she didn’t know Buddhists had relics, but she wound up sitting there for hours.” Many visitors choose to meditate in the space, and some will follow it throughout the region.

Miller had a similar experience. “I followed the tour to Atlanta and San Francisco,” she said. “When I moved back to Virginia, I contacted the international director, who is in London, and was offered the possibility of bringing the relics here.”

The historical Buddha’s relics will be on display at CitySpace through October 26. An accompanying exhibit, “Sacred Art of Tibet,” will be on display at Java Java throughout October.

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Gaining access: Tosha Grantham reaches out at Second Street Gallery

In her role as curator at Second Street Gallery, Tosha Grantham is broadening appeal through programs like the Second Saturday series “Yoga Art Grooves.” Photo courtesy of Tosha Grantham.

Curator Tosha Grantham’s biggest single show to date took over 10 years to develop. Featuring 112 objects by 18 artists occupying 4,500 square feet, “Darkroom” was a collection of photography and new media from South Africa’s period of apartheid. But it wasn’t size and scope that gave Grantham satisfaction.

“I was talking to someone outside the show, and one of the guards came out and was fanning herself and practically crying,” Grantham said in a recent interview. “Something she saw moved her that much. I feel like my job is done when people feel that connected.”

Grantham, who was appointed as curator at Second Street Gallery in 2013, said she likes to visit her exhibits anonymously, to take a seat and see how visitors from all demographics respond. “Different people bring different things to the viewing,” she said. “Watching people step up, stand back, take it in, and walk away helps me figure out how to do it next.”

This holistic perspective informs Grantham’s mission for Second Street. “I’d like to encourage people in the belief that this is a space to learn about art,” she said, suggesting that “those people who may feel intimidated by the lightbox presentation” of typical museums could approach the gallery as a place to gather information, no background knowledge necessary.

For September’s exhibit, “Re-Material” by Mary Ann Strandell, Grantham incorporated borrowed furniture. The installation lent itself to the integration of fine art and everyday objects, echoing the invitation the curator hopes to extend to those “people who peek into our window” as they walk down Water Street.

“Accessibly is something I’ve considered in addition to making sure we have exciting art for people who’ve supported Second Street traditionally,” she said. “I want to make choices to encourage new audiences to come by.”

The first such event will be an after school drawing and bookmaking session for children led by Warren Craghead on October 16. The event dovetails with “You Are Surrounded,” featuring work by Cynthia Henebry, Heide Trepanier, Sarah Boyts Yoder, and Craghead, all of whom are parents.

“We’re looking at the idea of how artists who also have young families negotiate their practice,” Grantham said. “By doing so, we are questioning or problem-atizing how artists make choices. I often hear artists say they had to choose [between family and full-time art] and get a real job. Why is art not a real job?”

During the Virginia Film Festival, Second Street will offer “Digital Media Gallery,” a show with work by UVA filmmaker Kevin Everson, Light House Studio youth filmmakers, and UVA intermediate and advanced cinematography students.

In December, Panamanian artist Arturo Lindsay’s “Portraits of Yemaya” will spotlight a series of portraits of the ocean and coastal communities whose lives center on it, and in February, Yeni Mao’s “The Conqueror” will bring Hollywood representations of Genghis Khan to life through video sculpture and letterpress.

Building on established relationships allows Grantham to “fan out into new directions.” In addition to a co-curatorial project with 1708 Gallery in Richmond, she plans to link local conversations with global themes. “Season 42 will be devoted to ideas of sustainability,” she said, and Season 43 will be devoted to fair trade, art markets, and other fair market economies.

“This is how we’re thinking of the season, but also contemporary art and social practice and life in general,” she said.

It’s a common misperception, she said, that art happens on the fringes. “It’s very other and special, but it’s also very central. In real life, it’s more of a ‘both and’ rather than ‘either or.’ Professionally it’s been my real life for a long time, so I’d like to share that.”

“You Are Surrounded,” Grantham’s second show as curator, will be on display through November 1.