Author: Tami Keaveny

Comedy in plain sight

Approaching the ordinary as absurd, Sheng Wang tells relatable tales laced with oddball observations within his own striking distance. “There’s a restaurant near my house called Sheng Wang. It’s spelled exactly like my name,” his deadpan delivery begins. “All my friends tell me I have to go and eat there, and I secretly agree. I don’t know what’s supposed to happen, what kind of fantasy I’m expecting. Like if I walk in and the whole staff will go, ‘Oh my god, it’s him! Man, we’ve been waiting for you. The prophecy has begun.’ And I look around, and there are baby pictures of me everywhere.”

While many of his contemporaries rely on shock and awe, Wang doesn’t strive to push the envelope. He turns stories about automatic paper towel dispensers, dental floss, and hardboiled eggs into laughs through physical comedy and tongue-in-cheek observations. “I don’t come off as a very edgy comedian,” Wang told C-VILLE. “I’m not too crazy about, or interested in, shock value. But if there is something I want to talk about, I don’t censor myself. I don’t want to preach, and I don’t want to say things that are lies or not honest. I want to make people think, and I want it to be funny and smart.”

Wang caught the bug to pursue comedy after participating in a performance group while attending the University of California, Berkeley. “I got involved with a performance arts group. A very amateur group that would let you do whatever you wanted on stage, and got a little taste of what stand-up was like,” he said. “I did horrible stuff.” He honed his routine in Bay Area clubs before making the jump to touring nationally. “It was a thrill to be a part of something creative and a live performance. After I finished college, I realized I didn’t want to do anything else. “ So he hit the road with the Comedians of Comedy and then American Eagle’s Campus Comedy Challenge. He is frequently in the line-up on Comedy Central and had his own half-hour special on the network in 2011.

The Taiwanese Texan comedian’s website defines his current residential status as “Sheng Wang pays rent in New York City.” As a new New Yorker, Wang is cautiously adjusting to the pace of big city life, and working out his fears through his art.

“My biggest paranoia in New York, my main fear, is bedbugs,” he began. “It’s how one day when I was falling asleep I felt something fall on my body, and I thought it was a bedbug. I thought, ‘This is it, I may have to throw all my belongings away and leave.’ Then I turned on the lights and it turned out to be a cockroach. And that’s disgusting, but in New York that became a positive experience for me.” Seeing the humor in such acceptance, Wang added, “So, it was a relief. I guess I’ll stay a little longer. I thought I had a problem, but it’s only roaches.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggx9kLLkpME

After 10 years playing a comedy scene wrought with talent, Wang is looking toward that bigger break. “I love doing a good show, but the most fun to me is writing new material and new jokes. Finding a new connection to the audience,” said Wang. “I’m working on being more of a presence on stage. Every performance is completely unique and you need to go with it. That is a philosophy that is interesting and inspiring to me.”

As a tactic for self-motivation, Sheng Wang has set some goals: “I’ve been trying to get my shit together… I want the perfect album—and when is that gonna happen? I have set this goal for myself, where I’m not drinking or smoking until I complete that project. Two parts to it: One goal is the album, the other is that I am trying to get 100,000 followers on Twitter.” He is currently just below 3,000.

Traipsing the comedy circuit doesn’t feel like a job to Wang. Beyond working out new material, another passion is sampling food on the road. “In general, I like to eat anything delicious,” he said. “When I’m on the road I like to seek out the best.” He hopes to find good barbecue, shrimp and grits, and chicken and waffles on his next stop in Virginia.

Looking forward to his third return to Charlottesville, it seems the city has worked its charms on Wang. “It’s a cool little town. Beautiful, and the people are nice,” he said. “I remember eating pretty decent food. I like a little bit of nature, good food and good people, so as far as I’m concerned, Charlottesville is a happy place for me to visit.”

Have your say. Drop a line to mailbag@c-ville.com, send a letter to 308 E. Main St., or post a comment at c-ville.com.

Sheng Wang/United Nations of Comedy Tour

Paramount Theater on December 1

Hats off

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is the latest gem in a long line of family-pleasing productions from the Black Box Players and its founder/director MaryAnne Thornton. An active realtor, a children’s book author, and sponsor of the annual C’ville Jr. Idol competition, Thornton has provided community access to the stage since 1986. She has led her productions with hands-on everything, from scripts to costumes to sets, and worn many, many hats along the way. Thornton gives her gift, and keeps on giving.

Through 12/9 $9, times vary. Burnley Moran School Auditorium, 1300 Long St. 970-7600.

To travel from Newport, Rhode Island to Seattle, Washington with your family–who are all together for the first time since an emotionally wracking divorce a decade-and-a-half ago–most people of sound mind would tackle the 3000 miles in an airplane, or a car, or a train. Emmy award winning documentary film producer/book author/decorated journeyman Sprague Theobald packed his family onto a trawler and sailed north on an 8500 mile trek through the treacherous Arctic sea route, the Northwest Passage. A combination of flaring tempers and icy weather threatened their voyage at every impasse. The Theobald clan faced death continuously, from their boat getting trapped in ice, to their daily encounters with polar bears. Sprague Theobald’s new film, The Other Side Of The Ice, is the story of their journey, a harrowing tale of adventure and survival in the pursuit of redemption. A discussion with director Sprague Theobald will follow the film.

Sunday 11/4 Virginia Film Festival, Nau Auditorium, 1pm

When Boyd Tinsley set out to make Faces in the Mirror, it was more of a calling than a choice. After years of plotting out film projects in casual conversation, the ideas that formed his first feature came fast and furious. “Making a movie is something that I’ve thought about doing since the mid-’90s,” said Tinsley. “All these different elements came together to where I had to make a movie.”

When inspiration struck, the violinist for the Dave Matthews Band acted quickly to form his team with executive producer Fenton Williams and follow the urging of his cinematic muse. So quick, in fact, that the score was composed first. The musician in Tinsley had channeled the music before the cameras were turned on.

The film was shot with little use of a script, and was made in reverse using the score as the guideline for the imagery and plot. “We had to literally dance the movie around the music,” he said. “We made the movie move with the music. We made the movie feel like the music.”

The film stars Ryan Orr as an emotionally conflicted son on the day of his father’s funeral. The death serves as the catalyst for a trippy journey through discovery and forgiveness. “There is very little dialogue, so a lot of the movie is expressed by Ryan Orr, who is a modern day silent picture star, in my opinion,” said Tinsley. “Ryan goes through most of this movie without saying a word, but you are absolutely intrigued by him.”

Haunting music, led by Tinsley’s signature violin playing and a long list of talented performers, serves as the dramatic device to Orr’s mostly silent narrative as it moves viewers through heart-rending flashbacks, moments of grief, and mysteriously sexy scenes like the pivotal bonfire dance. “I love to feel things in movies. Music is a really important element of that for me,” he said. “When what I see and what I hear come together and dance together, I want to feel something.”

Tinsley praised director Aaron Farrington for his “brilliant creative mind” and the ability to interpret his artistic vision. “Boyd never told me we were filming in reverse,” said Farrington. “It kind of made sense. When it came time to start shooting, there was all this music. That was the information that I had—the music. I tried to use it to inform everything we did onscreen. Not necessarily specifically, but music as a whole to the movie as a whole.”

While Orr is the central character of the film, it’s Charlottesville that steals the show visually. Johnny St. Ours’ cinematography guides viewers through a dreamy landscape via aerial shots, pans from moving vehicles, dramatic sweeps over historical properties, and many other familiar landmarks. The cast and crew are primarily local as well.

“Charlottesville is a really important part of this movie,” said Tinsley. “Everybody knew it was going on, but nobody really talked about it. It felt like the biggest known secret in Charlottesville. And there was a sense of anticipation, the same sense of anticipation that we had in making the film.”

Tinsley connects the evident sadness in the film to his own grief over the loss of friend and bandmate, LeRoi Moore. “It was [conceptualized at] a pretty dark time for me. It was right after LeRoi had died. It was in that fall, and I was down. Roi was really close, he was a mentor of mine, a really good friend of mine, and so it brought me down. I was in a dark place and I think that some of it comes from that.”

The most important take away for Tinsley is an emotional reaction. “It should be an emotional thing that goes through your body. It should be more than just something that you see—it should be something that you feel. When things are truly from the heart, you cannot help but feel it. Everybody will feel this differently.”

The first thing I sensed after stepping inside Vacanti Violins on Fourth Street was a hush like I’d entered a shrine or a place of worship. The walls are lined with gleaming, caramel colored violins and the workshop area appointed with knives, planes, gouges, and scrapers of every shape and angle. Essence of varnish, wood, and natural oils permeates the air.

Jonathan Vacanti is one of a very few luthiers (makers of stringed instruments) in the area, and the only one currently doing business in Charlottesville. He is a keeper of a meticulous and precise craft that requires skills best learned through apprenticeship, and bound by methods unchanged for centuries.

“I took the old-fashioned route,” said Vicanti, with a nod to his apprenticeships and over 1,000 restorations. “Now you can go through school, but the apprenticing system is how it was always done—living and working with a master.” Vacanti began his journey of apprenticeship in 1995 at the highly reputable Reuning & Son in Boston, and then alongside violinmaker Andranik Gaybaryan, whose clients include the master violinist for the Boston Symphony and the concertmaster of the Boston Pops.

A luthier’s work may include guitars, mandolins, lutes, dulcimers, and bowed instruments. Most practitioners focus on one instrument, and Vacanti’s is the violin. To move up from apprentice, students work for years on restorations and eventually graduate to their own pieces. The craft is stoic, requiring patience and an occupational loneliness akin to that of a researcher or writer. It takes years to master the skill and science of lutherie, and, more concretely, the creation of 10 violins before you are considered a pro.

Because most pieces take at least a month to create, the luthier must be fueled by a steady passion for the instrument and the art form. Antonio Stradivari, the world’s most famous luthier was also one of the most prolific, creating over 1,000 violins in his career and giving them such a unique sonic quality that scientists and craftsman alike have been chasing their mystique for centuries.

Vacanti builds instruments based on famous designs, and his restoration focuses on pieces built in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The Stradavarius form is the epitome of design for luthiers. “My violins are patterned on the 1709 Antonio Stradivari and 1735 Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesu —two of the finest violins from the golden period of violinmaking in Italy 1650-1750,” said Vacanti. “However, every violin I make has a character that makes it recognizable as a Vacanti, especially the handmade varnish.”

The common ingredients of a master’s violin are the same today as they were centuries ago, sourced by necessity from forest materials. The glue that bonds the wooden body together is derived from boiled rabbit hide (animal activists will want to avoid this line of work), the varnish comes from tree sap and linseed oil, the shellac from “bug poop,” and bows are made of horse hair. Such is the source of the sweet leathery aroma that wafts through Vacanti’s shop.

When it was time to hang his own shingle, Vacanti chose Charlottesville for its vibrant classical music community and noticeable absence of luthiers. Since opening in January 2012, Vacanti Violins has been well-received. “Lots of the students and players used to drive all the way to D.C.,” he said. “Their violins come to me neglected because people didn’t want to make that trip.”

As they line the wall in soldier-like formation, Vacanti refers to his violins individually, holding them gently, personifying them through their backstories and unique traits. Ironically, he does not play the violin himself. His hands form them with millimeter-perfect precision, from humble materials, into shapes conceived five centuries ago by Italian masters. It is up to the trained musician, though, to make these violins sing.

“My reward is knowing that I help bring music into people’s lives,” Vacanti said. “Playing a musical instrument can be one of the most enjoyable experiences in our lives.”

Have your say. Drop a line to mail bag@c-ville.com, send a letter to 308 E. Main St., or post a comment at c-ville.com.

Landscape photographer Stacey Evans loves maps.  She loves how they represent geography, the way they look, and the linear connections feed her interest in elemental design.

“I look at maps quite a bit and I’m fascinated with maps,” said Evans.“I love knowing if I’m going north or if I’m going south.  I don’t use GPS to track where I’m going.  That kind of takes the beauty and mystery away from it.”

What began as a passion for maps and travel, has resulted in her latest photography exhibition, “Passenger,” a collection of photos shot while riding trains on both coasts of the U.S.

“I was using trains for transportation. Going to New York City and to Charleston, S.C., to visit friends and family. As I continued to ride these routes repeatedly I was interested in the land, how I could have access to that land, “ she said. “I was interested in all the beauty that was passing me, and the differences between New York and Charleston. So it was a natural transition to start taking photographs.”

Equipped with a Canon 5D, Evans plays fast and loose with the traditional standards of ISO and noise. In pictures like “Under the Bridge—Pennsylvania, 11:58:08PM, Capitol Limited, Summer 2012” she pushes digital format boundaries to turn a quick capture into an engaging and mysterious photograph. As a remote observer on board a train, she is witness to gems of nature, the backside of industry, and an honest view of Americana as in “Swimming Pool—Illinois, 8:17:39AM, Capitol Limited, Summer 2012.”

Documenting the passing landscape from a place of secure isolation allows Evans to imagine the intrigue in her work.

“There are a lot of things I have witnessed that I would not have seen, had I not been on a train,” she said. “There’s so much compelling information out there.  I think the strangest (story) is when we passed a field where there were two cars with open trunks and in my mind it looked like an episode of ‘The Sopranos.’  I see a lot of things in the passing moment and I will never know the full story of what is happening in that scene.”

“Passenger” is on display at Chroma Projects Art Laboratory through October 27.