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The Charlottesville Black Arts Collective creates and engages community

Local artist Somé Louis has found space for exploration and expression by participating in CBAC exhibitions. Photo by Eze Amos.

When you want to initiate change—real change—it’s hard to do it alone. The time, effort, versatility, and resources it takes to affect progress as an individual requires a level of passion and privilege most of us cannot afford when there are children to raise and bills to be paid. But when change needs to happen, people have a tendency to step out and find each other.

When you’re part of a collective, you’re part of a democratic collaboration of efforts. You find ways to work together, to do what’s best for everyone involved. You embody gestalt, and organize yourselves into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, enabling the collective to achieve advances that extend beyond itself. 

This is exactly the kind of work the Charlottesville Black Arts Collective is achieving: initiating change for the betterment of our community, and for Black creatives throughout the commonwealth. The drive to open up opportunities that explore and evoke the essence of Black culture is on full view in the CBAC’s upcoming exhibition “Sugah: Black Love Endures,” which opens at McGuffey Art Center on September 6.

Community commitments

The story of the Charlottesville Black Arts Collective began in 2020, with another artist-run cooperative, the McGuffey Art Center. Two members of McGuffey’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee reached out to Black creatives in the area, seeking individuals interested in curating an exhibition of works by Black artists. Instead of an individual taking the helm, a small group coalesced and agreed to curate the show together. The process served as a catalyst for the creation of the CBAC, which debuted “Water: The Agony and Ecstasy of the Black Experience” in 2021, its first curatorial effort at McGuffey. 

“Love is in the Hair,” by “Sugah: Black Love Endures” exhibiting artist Cherrish Smith. Image curtesy of the CBAC.

Since then, the CBAC has partnered with the arts center to mount exhibitions each year, including the 2022 show “Lay My Burdens Down,” and 2023’s “Blackity Black Black,” an embrace of quintessentially Black aesthetics. In this relationship between hosting venue and curatorial collective, McGuffey sponsors the shows, while the CBAC creates open calls, curates the exhibitions, and works directly with the exhibiting artists. McGuffey members help with the art installation process, publicity, and—crucially—provide gallery space for the shows to take place. 

“This partnership allows us to help amplify Black art and provide a means of sharing Black art with McGuffey members and visitors as well as helps broaden the diversity of work and artists showing work at McGuffey,” notes CBAC member Kori Price. When asked about the partnership between the CBAC and MAC, Bill LeSueur, operations manager at McGuffey Art Center, added, “It’s mutually beneficial. The search for inspiration is continual. MAC will continue to support CBAC and open up opportunities for underrepresented artists. This establishes a model for future partnerships and additional collaborations.”

Progressive partnerships

As an untethered, volunteer-based collective of artists and art enthusiasts, the CBAC seeks out this type of community partnership to facilitate opportunities for artists in and around Charlottesville, centering Black voices and their creative work. While these opportunities most often take the form of exhibitions geared toward showcasing and selling artwork, the CBAC also aims to support artists by providing workshops to share skills and learn from each other, as well as critiques to provide feedback to creatives, and social gatherings such as community cookouts to strengthen existing relationships and foster new connections.

Tori Cherry, Leslie Taylor-Lillard, Kori Price, Benita Mayo, Kweisi Morris, Tobiah Mundt, Derrick J. Waller, and Mavis Waller currently make up the member roster of the Charlottesville Black Arts Collective. The CBAC is adamant about forming connections with community partners to expand the reach of Black artists throughout the greater- Charlottesville area—in addition to McGuffey, the group has established partnerships with Alamo Drafthouse, New City Arts, Second Street Gallery, and Studio Ix—creating platforms for their experiences to be shared through “a Black lens with clarity and creativity,” as Price puts it.

How sweet it is

Since its inception, the CBAC has focused on curating exhibitions and experiences around ideas that are unique or essential to Black culture. Themes that encourage the expression of Black joy have become especially important to the collective, like 2023’s “Blackity Black Black” and “Black Eyed Peas, Greens, and Cornbread”—an exhibition in celebration of new beginnings and the future—mounted at Studio Ix earlier this year. “Black love seemed like a natural next step for us,” says Price. “We all felt that the way in which love is expressed within the Black community was unique and were curious to see the ways in which artists might choose to depict and communicate love through their art.” 

Richmond-based artist P. Muzi Branch’s “Bi-Cultural,” on exhibit in “Sugah: Black Love Endures.” Image curtesy of the CBAC.

Featuring works from P. Muzi Branch, Lizzie Brown, Chris Green, Jae Johnson, Leslie Lillard, Somé Louis, Tobiah Mundt, Maiya Pittman, Kori Price, Joshua Ray, Dorothy Rice, Cherrish Smith, and JaVori Warren, “Sugah” (pronounced SHU-gah) explores aspects of love related to the familial, the romantic, the self, and the cultural. Paintings, photographs, fiber arts, and mixed media works depicting affectionate embraces, acts of service, and cultural expressions define the look and feel of the exhibition. 

Exhibiting artists Dorothy Rice and Cherrish Smith both chose to explore external identity markers in their respective works, “The Sisters Braid Love” and “Love is in the Hair.” In her exhibition application, Smith—the youngest artist in the show and a repeat participant in CBAC exhibitions—explained, “Black hair is art in itself … Black hair is love, and it helps me freely be me no matter how I choose to wear it!” 

Drawing inspiration from Gustav Klimt’s “The Kiss,” Lizzie Brown’s contribution to “Sugah” explores romantic love with a nod to art history. As the artist explains, “The intimacy, peace, and security shared between the two lovers is further emphasized through the use of circular motifs, which are symbolic of the wholeness and intricacies of their connection.”

Lizzie Brown’s “Intimacy: The Forehead Kiss” will be exhibited in “Sugah: Black Love Endures.” Image curtesy of the CBAC.

Local artist Somé Louis, who previously showed with the CBAC in “Blackity Black Black,” presents “Gestures of Play,” an embroidered handkerchief that captures the energy of childhood exuberance, documenting dance-like movements. The depiction of dance is “an act that binds me to my cousins and aunties in the Caribbean, who all studied dance, and understood movement through dance in a variety of ways,” Louis wrote in her exhibition application. Speaking on her experiences with the CBAC, Louis says, “It’s always great to find a space that allows for expression and exploration as an artist, which I have found as part of the CBAC exhibitions.”

Richmond-based artist P. Muzi Branch is also showing with the CBAC again after his inclusion in “Blackity Black Black.” Expressing the importance of the opportunities afforded by the collective, Branch asserts, “The CBAC group, through presenting thematic exhibitions, is affirming Black American visual art as a legitimate cultural genre that speaks for, informs about, and undergirds the Black community. African American visual art has unique ethnic norms, ideological themes, and aesthetic qualities that set it apart from all other culture-based art. The term ‘Black art’ is a cultural designation, not a racial one.”

Call and response

The affirmation of Black art and the expansion of cultural understanding and appreciation is at the heart of CBAC endeavors like “Sugah: Black Love Endures.” The benefits of this work extend beyond individual accolades and artistic achievements, impacting not just Black creative communities, but the entire Charlottesville community. As Price confirms, “The art in our shows is for everyone and provides a wonderful opportunity for patrons to explore new art and discover new artists.”

New exhibition opportunities attract new talent, enticing artists to show work in this area for the first time, or to show their work for the first time period. New artists bring new ideas, new expressions, new aesthetics to bear, and we all benefit by getting to see and experience novel examples of art and entertainment. New works creating stronger impacts on audiences bring new attention to an art scene. Viewers come to discover artists and works that resonate with them. New audiences strengthen creative communities by investing their time and resources into galleries and venues, which in turn use those investments to strengthen their programs that benefit artists and audiences, creating a mutually beneficial cycle of cultural and capital exchange. 

It’s through this lens that the full scope of the CBAC’s efforts can be understood. The message behind many of the works in “Sugah: Black Love Endures” is that to feel love is to feel safe, secure, supported. When we show up for Black artists, we offer our support. We offer a sense of security and commitment to culture and community. We offer love, and may that love ever endure.

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Arts

Can you hear me now? Local podcasters come in loud and clear

Jenée Libby hosts the food podcast Edacious, which features face-to-face interviews with people in the local food scene. Photo: Amy Jackson Smith

Back in 2005, Apple CEO Steve Jobs declared that podcasting was “the next generation of radio.” When the company began supporting podcasts on iTunes that same year (so users could easily download the audio shows onto an iPod, where the name originated), the medium gained steam, and lately podcast consumption has exploded. Last year Apple Podcasts reached 50 billion all-time episode downloads and streams, soaring from 14 billion the year before.

Though it’s taken a decade for podcasts to fully capture the public’s attention, Charlottesville producers have been riding the rising wave: the city now boasts more than two dozen home-grown podcasts, from independent hidden gems to long-established flagships.

“A lot of the first and most successful podcasts out there are repurposed radio shows,” says Nathan Moore, general manager of UVA-based WTJU radio. “A podcast is like a radio show you can take with you and replay anytime.” In 2017, he launched the station’s online podcast network, TEEJ.fm, which now hosts more than a dozen locally-produced shows.

Many national broadcasts such as NPR’s news and conversation shows are now available as podcasts, and local stations like WINA post most of their programs in online subscription form as well. But an increasing number of independent producers skip the radio step entirely.

“It’s a funny medium because it’s so democratic that people can do it with almost no budget,” says local host Lorraine Sanders. Armed with a recording device (like a smartphone), and access to an internet platform to host the show (like a personal website or an app such as SoundCloud), anyone can dive into podcasting.

But while the barriers to entry are low, creating a successful podcast that attracts a following of loyal subscribers requires long-term planning and knowing your audience. Sanders hosts Spirit of 608, a widely-followed podcast that offers creative and media advice to aspiring fashion industry entrepreneurs. But she got into podcasting when she and a friend created a short-lived show called Underclothes, dreamed up on a whim over a glass or two of wine. “We said to ourselves, ‘we’re hilarious, people would love this, we should start a podcast,’” she laughs, “but of course it’s much more difficult than you think to make it good.”

Feed your brain

Podcasts can vary widely in both length and style. From a sixty-second music snippet to an hour-long interview, from almost wordless meditation to shrill political argumentation, from esoteric science reporting to immersive episodic fiction, there is truly a podcast for everyone. More than one, apparently—last year the average user listened to seven different podcasts each week.

For UVA neurologist Ted Burns,  producing a podcast has become an extension of his teaching. “In 2005, I wanted to help the neurology residents maintain their education once they’d moved on, and then I read that college students were taping their lectures and putting them on iTunes,” says Burns. “I thought, ‘well, that’s the answer.’”

He created a show, called simply Neurology Podcast, that features interviews with researchers who share their latest findings and insights, and allows its (physician) listeners to gain continuing education credit. In 2007, the research journal Neurology agreed to host it, and since then its audience has grown steadily, now boasting 45,000 downloads each week, over 18 million since its inception.

While some of the content is fairly technical, Burns also features relatable stories, such as his interview with Robin Williams’ widow on how she dealt with her husband’s dementia, and his own experience dealing with a sinus cancer diagnosis in 2013. He sees learning opportunities everywhere. “Our next goal is to be part of a voice-assisted ‘Tell me about my day’ type app,” he says, not entirely in jest. “As in, five minutes of NPR, the weather forecast, and then two minutes of neurology news.”

Ted Burns, a professor of neurology at UVA, started his podcast to help neurology residents maintain their education. Photo: Eze Amos

Community connection

While national shows often cover wider themes and larger events, local shows can cater to the more immediate community, and some try to do a bit of both. For instance, several limited podcast series recently focused on the events and aftermath of August 12th, such as A12, a six-episode series created by UVA professor Nicole Hemmer for the Miller Center, which explored the larger history behind the clash, and The Trial of James Alex Fields, local activist Molly Conger’s daily chronicle on TEEJ.fm of the court proceedings in the emotionally laden case.

Two long-standing, internationally-acclaimed radio shows produced by Charlottesville-based Virginia Humanities have successfully transitioned to the new medium. With Good Reason is an award-winning weekly broadcast carried on public radio stations nationwide that focuses on Virginia scholarship, culture, and history as well as topics of broader interest. Though the radio show has been established for more than two decades, the production began being distributed as a podcast a few years ago, bringing the elegantly crafted program, hosted by Sarah McConnell, to an on-demand audience.

Kelley Libby, the show’s associate producer, distinguishes between simple podcasting and “audio storytelling.” “A podcast can be just you, broadcasting your thoughts to the world, whereas audio storytelling makes an effort to relay a narrative,” using features like ambient sound, music, interviews, and historical context. Even a news show like the New York Times’ The Daily, “does a good job at transmitting the news through really awesome storytelling,” she says.

Libby is keenly interested in the possibilities of experimental forms of podcasting, and she’s been trying out new modes on her own podcast series American Dissent and UnMonumental, the latter of which features no narrator, only the voice of the interviewee. “I’m very interested in community storytelling, and [this style] feels more like a collaboration with the person, not as extractive,” she says. “It feels less like I’m taking ownership of a person’s story and more like I’m helping amplify a person’s own story through editing.”

UVA history professor Brian Balogh, co-host of Virginia Humanities’ second podcast, BackStory, remembers his show’s inception in 2008. “We laughed at the idea of anybody listening to three historians talking about history, and we’re still amazed,” he says. But people did tune in to the show, which was eventually picked up by over 200 public radio stations and now has moved to a podcast-only platform. “There’s more flexibility in terms of timing with a podcast,” he says. “A show may run 40 minutes or 60 minutes depending on the topic, and that’s fine because it doesn’t need to fit into a radio time slot.”

Balogh loves both radio and podcasts, and marvels at how much he himself has learned by making BackStory. “We try to convey our own struggle to understand the history of any topic,” he says, “so we hope not to come across as talking head experts but as fellow explorers of the meaning of history.”

Captain Bob Abbott hosts Coming Home Well, which addresses the mental well-being of soldiers returning from deployment.

A sense of purpose

Many podcasts venture far beyond news and entertainment to tackle deeply serious subjects for both the host and the audience. Support-oriented podcasts for victims of illness and trauma, for people grieving loss or battling addiction, serve as critical gathering places to listen, find help, and feel understood. Charlottesville podcaster and former Air Force Captain Bob Abbott’s weekly WINA radio show, Coming Home Well, which is also distributed as a podcast, addresses the mental well-being of soldiers returning from deployment.

“I started the show after returning from Afghanistan with PTSD and seeing a need, quite honestly, to do something to prevent veteran suicide, both for others and for myself,” says Abbott, who interviews veterans and specialists on topics like veteran homelessness and discrimination against females in the military. Abbott’s subject matter is close to his heart, and a powerful motivator. “So many people who start podcasts quit after a half-dozen episodes because they haven’t figured out why they are doing it,” he says. “My ‘what’ is veteran suicide, but my ‘why’ is my friends who have died. I know I can’t quit, because if I quit, I die.”

For those compelled to tell a story, why start a podcast instead of, say, writing a blog, book, or newspaper article, filming a video, or posting to Facebook or Twitter? One answer lies in the visceral impact on listeners of hearing voices and music through headphones or while driving. “Audio is a very affective medium, because our brains process sound information in a physical way,” says WTJU’s Moore. “Relying on audio alone produces a more emotion-driven experience.”

Sanders agrees, and points to latent psychological effects as well. “Before starting my own, I became obsessed with podcasts from a listener standpoint,” she says. “For me personally, it’s the most intimate form of media that exists. It’s more impactful than anything I read online in terms of how much I remember and the actions I take after listening, like going to look something up or making a purchase.”

Ellen Daniels, co-host and producer of Apropos of Something at WPVC radio, is motivated to communicate the stories of local people with a particular focus on social justice issues. “It’s a very creative process for me,” says Daniels, who has a journalism background. “I love to learn a person’s story, talk about what they’re doing, and then to try to bring that story out in an interesting way.” AOS is a rare live show, which means no do-overs or edits, and Daniels is proud of their 69 episodes thus far. “We do a lot of up-front research and pre-interviews so we can bring energy to the stories,” she says. “We’re really promoting our town.”

Most podcasters tend to be natural storytellers, extroverted and verbose, and passionate about their specialty. “When I was a kid, I had a Mr. Microphone, and I used to read the newspaper out loud,” says Jenée Libby, host of the food podcast Edacious (an archaic word meaning ravenous). “I always wanted to be a broadcaster.” Libby began writing a restaurant review blog called “Edible Charlottesville” in 2008, but quickly found she was more interested in the stories of the chefs than in the actual food. She wrote long chef profiles which she posted on her blog, eventually recording them in her voice, and finally made the leap to podcasting interviews of local and regional food industry people.

“I started by asking my friends in the industry to be on the show, and then asked them who I should talk to next,” says Libby, who only conducts face-to face-interviews. “Distance interviewing creates a bit of a wall where the connection to my guest isn’t as strong. I like to talk about deeper things, triumphs and challenges, where do you see yourself in the future.” Though she does all of her own post-production and distribution, Libby recently joined the TEEJ.fm network, hoping to find a group of other local podcasters to “meet up with and bounce ideas off each other.”

In 2017, WTJU general manager Nathan Moore launched the station’s online podcast network, TEEJ.fm, which hosts more than a dozen locally-produced shows. Photo: Eze Amos

Drop the mike

Nathan Moore is aiming for just that kind of vibe with TEEJ.fm. “Our network of podcasts hopes to sustain a model of community storytelling rooted in a place; everybody who’s involved here has a tie to UVA or Charlottesville or both,” he says, noting that joining the network is open to anyone at no cost and comes with great perks like studio space, training, and distribution for fledgling productions. “There’s a long tradition of documentary and idealistic storytelling in the public radio world, and the power of stories to bring us together informs a lot of what I want to do with TEEJ.fm.”

As smart cars, smart home speakers, and optimized mobile apps make podcasts easy to integrate into everyday life, usage stats are beginning to tell the tale. Last year, one quarter of all Americans over age 12 listened to podcasts regularly (one-third of 25- to 54-year-olds), and 12 million people tried a podcast for the first time in 2018. Producers believe there is enormous potential for reaching many more.

“There are lots of micro-audiences—groups who share a common set of values or interests or a physical place—that podcasters could consider when they’re thinking about their target listeners,” says Kelley Libby of Virginia Humanities.

For his part, Dr. Burns likes to envision the far-reaching ripple effect of educational podcasts. “I’ve been motivated by this idea that if we can make neurologists around the world smarter and better, then they can provide better care to their patients, and that’s pretty damn impactful,” he says.

For podcasters raising their voices, the world seems eager to lend an ear.

 

 

 

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In a new documentary, UVA students and residents of a juvenile correctional facility connect through Russian literature

When the great classics of world literature were first being written, they were not meant for students or academics decades or centuries in the future. First and foremost, they were meant to foster a relationship between reader and writer. For Andrew Kaufman, who teaches Russian literature at the University of Virginia, that connection came to life during a prison workshop he taught in 2009, on Leo Tolstoy’s novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich.

The story, about the thoughts and emotions that overcome a man who is suddenly conscious of his imminent death, is one of the first stories taught in Russian literature classes. New students are encouraged to dissect Tolstoy’s meditations on sin, the valuing of physical and social pursuits over spiritual ones, and other Russian writers who underwent similar deathbed conversions, such as Nikolai Gogol.

What Kaufman discovered in the workshop was a new dimension to the work, sparked when he shed his “professorial persona” and simply asked the inmates, “What did reading this story mean to you?”

“I had to come to this jail…to see what I did. But I learned something from this story I can use when I get out,” Kaufman recalls one participant telling him. “It’s too late for Ivan,” another said, “but it’s not too late for us.”

In an email, Kaufman observed that “Ivan Ilyich, a careerist judge living in 1880’s Russia, couldn’t have been more removed socially, economically, and culturally from the world inhabited by the inmates at the Virginia Beach Correctional Center. Yet his story struck a powerful chord in these men, inspiring them to open up to a complete stranger about bad decisions they’ve made, people they’ve hurt, and opportunities they’ve squandered, or perhaps never had to begin with. It…encouraged others to see their world anew, to glimpse fresh possibilities for their future.”

“I came away from that experience realizing and understanding the story in a new way for myself,” says Kaufman. “I had written about it, I had studied it many times, but for me as a teacher, teaching in this unfamiliar context, it made it come alive in a whole new way.” It planted the seed for Books Behind Bars, the program he would found the following year. 

No-comfort zone

The idea behind Books Behind Bars was to bring students enrolled at the University of Virginia to the Beaumont Juvenile Correctional Center to discuss the works of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, and other greats of Russian literature with incarcerated people of the same age group.

“[I thought], if going into an unfamiliar environment and leading a discussion about a story that I thought I knew can have that kind of an illuminating effect on me,” says Kaufman, “what would happen if I were to create a class in which I’d put my students into a similar environment…and then have discussion about literature outside of their comfort zone? What learning might take place for them?”

In 2016, Kaufman’s Books Behind Bars class was documented by Charlottesville-based filmmaker Chris Farina for Seats at the Table, which screens at the Virginia Film Festival on Sunday at Newcomb Hall Theatre.

In the film, metaphorical barriers between people are dismantled, even as physical ones remain. Both student and resident come to the table ready to discuss the same written work with radically different life experiences, but with a shared desire to understand each other. The literature they read together speaks to universal fears and emotions that are hardcoded into us as human beings; Tolstoy’s How Much Land Does a Man Need? challenges our need to acquire, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Matryona’s House asks how much a person can give before it becomes too much. And in analyzing it together, the walls that separate one person’s experience from another’s begin to soften, allowing student, resident, and even author to contribute to a free exchange of ideas at a level that would have previously been difficult to imagine.

One resident called the class “the one time I don’t feel locked up.” Photo: Sanjay Suchak/UVA

Perceived notions

One of the most striking things about Farina’s documentary is the film’s refreshing tone of good faith. The viewer is dropped almost immediately into the action of UVA students entering Beaumont (which closed in 2017) for the first time, not knowing what to expect.

Maybe a university student wants to alter his perception of what makes a person “criminal.” Perhaps a resident has a specific notion of what a university course is or what sort of person thrives in it. And neither participant has much familiarity, lived or otherwise, with the time or place where these works were written. But as the film progresses, the viewer witnesses genuine emotional exchanges between three very different people—UVA student, correctional facility resident, and 19th-century Russian author.

“Part of it is bringing people together at that age,” says Farina, “and part of it is the stereotypes they have going in. They dissolve within a couple weeks, and they really open up. And particularly for the residents, it’s their one time of the week when they have a little sense of safety, but also a little sense that they can be themselves and not have to put up their guard. It means a lot to them. One [resident] literally said, ‘That’s the one time I don’t feel locked up. I can be myself.’”

Farina’s style of filmmaking allows the story to unfold with minimal prompting, but it is anything but passive. It took energy, focus, and determination to create the space where the man with the camera at the end of the table could be trusted with this level of vulnerability. Farina attended the program for two years before recording a single image, then made sure that trust did not dissipate once production began.

“I conducted a bunch of early interviews with the residents to get them to be a little more comfortable with me,” says Farina. “That relationship between me and them, I knew was going to be crucial, and so I wanted them to understand that I wasn’t sitting there with an agenda. I was sitting there, asking them the questions, and leaving it up to them as to what they want to talk about.”

“Chris did a great job with that,” says Kaufman. “Not every filmmaker would have been able to get the residents to open up like he did.”

The students who came into the class knew they were going to be filmed. But Kaufman says, “I told them, we’re not there to please the filmmaker. We’re here to do our work, and the cameras are just other students in the class.”

He adds, “There was a kind of heightened level of urgency when the cameras were there. It didn’t change anything, but I think it gave everyone, even at a subconscious level, the sense that what we’re doing is important.”

Gene Rhodes, director of photography, with producer and director Chris Farina. Photo courtesy Rosalia Films

Story sharing

Farina’s approach to filmmaking is to let the subject tell his own story as much as possible, a quality that is also seen in his earlier work. West Main Street, also screening at VAFF (Saturday at Vinegar Hill Theatre), captures residents of the Charlottesville neighborhood in the late 1980s and ’90s just as they are, tying them to their location through shared memories and interwoven archival footage.

Farina’s involvement with Books Behind Bars came on the heels of another project relating to experimental education: World Peace and Other 4th Grade Achievements, a documentary he made in 2010 about Virginia educator John Hunter, who developed a game that allowed young students to address global conflict. Hunter’s game puts children in roles of global consequence-—prime minister, head of the United Nations, trade association leaders, and the like—and charges them with resolving conflicts in their own interest. In the process, they discover that collaboration is the key to success.

Despite their obvious differences, the connection between the World Peace Game and Books Behind Bars is also evident: Both programs create clear parameters and a structure for learning, then inspire the student to go places he might never have imagined. In the real world, two strangers who notice they are both reading the same book would not necessarily begin discussing their life choices and their feelings of pride and regret. But in a trusting environment where one is allowed, even encouraged, to open up, a shared story becomes a powerful thing—a springboard for conversations that might never have occurred otherwise.

“I heard this from both students of the [World Peace] game and from Books Behind Bars, it’s the ‘most important class they ever took in their life,’” says Farina. “The reality is, I’m not sure that the university students were expecting such a level of learning from the residents…and that by itself is such an important part of education—to realize that it’s by listening to others that we can learn.”

Leveling through literature

“In 2010,” says Kaufman, “one of the UVA students was asked by one of the young residents, ‘Do you guys read these same books that we’re reading here? You read these in your UVA classes?’ And the UVA student said ‘yes.’ And you could just see the glowing pride on the face of the resident who had asked that question. And that little moment…then the UVA student in turn was also very proud and very happy to have been able to share that with the resident. That moment of connection, I’ll never forget that. Because for me, in so many ways, that’s what education is about.”

Russian literature isn’t the most obvious subject matter for young people to connect around. But Kaufman says one plus is that it’s equally foreign to both groups. “The UVA students and the residents are kind of figuring this stuff out together,” he says. “Neither group is an authority on this…and that creates a sense of…honest connection.”

Discussing a modern American author may get people talking about today’s issues, but an unfamiliar author from a distant time and place focuses the conversation on universal truths.

“It is the urgency with [what] the Russians call the accursed questions: Who am I? Why am I here? How should I live?” Kaufman says. “Russian writers, they tell great stories, but they never looked at themselves as storytellers alone.”

“Ivan Ilyich is a great example,” he adds. “Tolstoy will not let you run away from that question: Why the hell are you on this earth, and what are you going to do with your short time here? He won’t let you walk away from it, no matter how much you want to. …Those are questions that students are hungry for, that residents are hungry for, and they didn’t realize that they were allowed to talk about in literature classes. But it’s very liberating for them.”

Kaufman says the opportunity to discuss life through literature is a connection that’s especially needed right now. “We do not know how to have conversations in this country with one another about anything substantive without getting at each other’s throats,” he says. “We don’t know how to talk.”

“Tolstoy will not let you run away from that question: Why the hell are you on this earth, and what are you going to do with your short time here?” –Program director Andrew Kaufman. Photo: Sanjay Suchak/UVA

Two sides

One memorable sequence in Seats at the Table juxtaposes the two groups of students in the most human of activities: a shared meal. The UVA students enjoy a restaurant’s outdoor seating while laughing, bonding, and discussing the program and anything else they please. It’s a boisterous, noisy, joyful occasion. Cut to Beaumont: enforced silence. Absolutely no talking allowed. The scene amplifies the sense of liberation felt by residents during class, where no such restrictions exist.

It’s at this moment that the viewer may notice that the film has no score, an intentional decision made by Farina to capture the music inherent in the dialogue. “I didn’t want to inject myself in it,” he says. “I wanted to get out of the way. I wanted people to feel the emotion from what they were in the midst of, and not impose, ‘Okay, here’s the emotion you need to feel right now.’”

It’s tempting to describe the ending scenes of the film, but it’s best to see them as the journey unfolds. The residents are prohibited from contacting UVA students for five years after participating, but as the program enters its ninth year, the lasting effects are still apparent. A Washington Post piece from July 5, 2018 followed Josh Pritchett, who took the course while incarcerated, then again as an enrolled student at UVA. Other success stories, like that of Douglas Avila–who appeared on television with Kaufman, describing his journey from Beaumont to studying fine arts in college thanks to the program and the lessons learned from Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment–speak to the long-term impact of Books Behind Bars.

UVA graduate Kelsey Bowman, a double major in psychology and youth & social innovation who is seen in the film, says the experience made her more interested in social justice work, and influenced her decision to pursue a master’s in social work. “What I hope to do with that degree is some kind of rehabilitation programming or counseling…in a correctional setting,” she says. “This course…really pushed me towards that path.”

Maeve Curtin, a global development studies major, reflects that, “We need more people who are willing to recognize our shared humanity, and we just happen to use literature as a way of getting [to] that ultimate goal, for how we should be living our lives every day.”

There are real factors that cause people to make different decisions, arrive in different circumstances, and form different sets of beliefs. But so much of what divides us is little more than fog; the appearance of division that clears the moment you approach it. Russian literature is a field often seen as prohibitively complicated, due to the lengths of many of the works, the often impenetrable names, and the era-specific references, to name a few perceived obstacles. But what Seats at the Table shows us is that two people from different walks of life sitting across from one another can pierce fog as well as any classroom–by trusting their shared humanity.

Get lit

The syllabus for Books Behind Bars contains some of the greatest and most celebrated works in the history of Russian literature, with themes of redemption, finding
inner peace through suffering, and reconciling one’s physical and spiritual needs. Here are three of the works the participants read and discussed in Seats at the Table.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich
by Leo Tolstoy

As a painful illness brings death closer by the hour, Ivan Ilyich reckons with the manner in which he has lived. He struggles with why, despite a life lived according to the norms of his social class, he deserves such anguish, ultimately accepting that none of his social climbing and proper (yet unremarkable) living can help him in the face of genuine suffering and impending death. Tolstoy is best known in the West for his epic novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, but much of his philosophy and gift for language is captured by his short stories and novellas. Here, we see his interpretation of how one can—and indeed, must—live morally, and consider his spiritual well-being, even in his everyday behavior.

How Much Land Does A Man Need?

by Leo Tolstoy

A peasant named Pahom unknowingly tempts Satan by proclaiming, “If I had plenty of land, I shouldn’t fear the Devil himself!” After acquiring some land and establishing a more comfortable life, Pahom becomes obsessed with the land itself, suspicious of perceived outside threats. Ultimately, the title’s question is answered in Pahom’s fate: A man only needs enough land to be buried in. Tolstoy’s parable contains an epic quality, yet is succinctly told, and can be read as a companion piece to The Death of Ivan Ilyich as two stories with very different tones but the same moral core.

Matryona’s House

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

A former prisoner in a Soviet gulag—a network of forced labor camps—takes up residence on a collective farm with a woman named Matryona. She lives meagerly, even by the standards of collective farmers, and is always ready to help others and work for little or no reward. Solzhenitsyn, himself a former gulag prisoner and author of The Gulag Archipelago, depicts Matryona as one who gives of herself regardless of the ruling ideology of the current regime. She does not need to be a high-ranking church official, nor a devout communist, to live a life of service; Solzhenitsyn shows us that a person’s inherent goodness is not connected to her surroundings, status, or any other earthly considerations.

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Arts

Promoters like Robert ‘Blacko’ Douglas find a new place for local black music

Photo: Jackson Smith

Jeyon Falsini wades through a crowd in front of his club, the Ante Room (at the time, the Main Street Annex), on the night of a big hip-hop show—Project Pat. He starts pointing out the players on the scene.

Seems like just about everyone is a party promoter.

There’s Streetz Blonko, rapper first, promoter second. He’s big, outspoken. He’s got an edge.

There’s David Wayne, owner/operator of SB Entertainment and the official host of the night’s event. He’s polished—a chef by day, scenester by night—and as active in Richmond as he is in Charlottesville.

Then there’s Robert Douglas, aka Blacko, aka Blacko da Rappa. Douglas has the outsized presence of Blonko—although maybe not as loud or edgy—and the regional ambitions of Wayne. He runs Wild Boyz Entertainment. He’s also the agency’s chief talent.

Douglas isn’t “da Rappa” all that often these days, he says. His performances are mostly as a deejay or vocalist for Double Faces Gogo Band. Performing isn’t even necessarily his focus anymore. He’s finishing up a business management degree at PVCC, and he’s looking to push Wild Boyz to ever greater heights.

Blacko, along with that throng of promoters, emcees, singers, deejays, videographers and producers milling around outside the Ante Room, is also looking to grow the scene for African-American music in Charlottesville and Central Virginia. He wants to push urban music—not just hip-hop—in an area where it’s scarcely given media attention, an area where it operates underneath the notice of the workaday crowds going about their business.

“It’s a few people that appreciate it,” Douglas says. “I have a following because of my background, because of the rap background and nightlife and doing the promotions. I have a good group of people in support, that’s what’s kind of keeping it going. We’re keeping it going.”

Blacko vs. Douglas

Why are there so many promoters on the C’ville hip-hop and R&B scene? Basically, you have to be a promoter to make it as a performer, according to Falsini.

The scene isn’t all that large, so if you’re a deejay or an emcee and you want to fill the Ante Room or the M&M Lounge for a hip-hop dance party, you have to promise the venue a full house. You have to share the risk.

“Robert and I got to a point where we liked working together, so we started hosting parties,” Falsini says. “He would get a deejay, put it all together, and those parties were successful.”

Photo: Jackson Smith
Photo: Jackson Smith

From there, Douglas launched Wild Boyz, a one-stop shop for nightclub parties. He still throws down at the Annex, but he’s also taken his act—both the parties and Double Faces Gogo Band, which he manages—to other venues like the M&M Lounge and Restaurant on Preston Avenue and the recently closed Fusion’s Restaurant and Lounge in Culpeper. Douglas says his goal is to keep pushing beyond C’ville’s borders.

“I’m trying to get us further and further up north, and to Richmond,” he says. “Wherever I deejay, I try to spread the word about the band, and I deejay every weekend.”

Falsini says Douglas sets himself apart from the sea of local promoters by working the scene like a job. He hosts parties on a regular basis, and he adds value in multiple ways. On top of promoting shows and booking the entertainment, he offers security, professional photography and videography and a photo booth for some events.

“Me and Jeyon, we go back,” Douglas says. “He did a lot of what helped me get started. I called him one day; he had an empty building. I said, ‘Can I throw a party?’ I never really tried it, but I said, ‘I got a band, you got a building,’ and it’s been going ever since. Look what he got, and look what we got.”

Douglas still considers the Ante Room home. Double Faces was the headliner at the grand reopening on February 27, when the venue rebranded from the Main Street Annex. And he says he’ll drop whatever he’s doing to be there when Falsini asks him to deejay an event. That’s saying something—when he’s not promoting parties, Douglas works in facilities management for UVA, and he expects to finish his business degree next year.

While he’s not sure where the degree will take him in terms of his next career move, he’s certain it can only help his efforts with Wild Boyz, which he says has taken on a number of new acts in the past several years and worked with other players in the promotions game.

But there’s more than a hint of competition on the scene. Streetz Blonko says his outfit, 700 Block Entertainment, has been more successful at pushing beyond Charlottesville than Wild Boyz.

“The difference is we do party promotions everywhere,” he says. “I’m from Charlottesville, but I’m trying to get major, go to New York, North Carolina, everywhere.”

Hip-hop in the ’ville

Nowhere in C’ville’s urban music scene is competition more alive and well than among local rappers. Douglas says that on top of losing some of his passion for rhyming, he gets turned off by the sheer number of people who think they can make it big as an emcee without putting in the work.

And those numbers are indeed large, according to Streetz.

“There’s a lot, yo,” he says. “I’ve been rapping since I was 9 years old. I went to prison for like nine years. When I came home in 2012, there were a handful of rappers. Now every other week I see another rapper, dozens more rappers.”

Streetz, whose biggest break was opening for Waka Flocka Flame in D.C. on September 14, 2013, says there’s definitely talent in town. The problem is the good emcees haven’t gotten the attention they deserve. That, plus the fact that the crowds are often small, drives some of them to larger markets.

Plus, there’s that whole competition thing.

“In the black community, there is a lot of jealousy,” he says. “Nobody wants to see the next person make it. Even if you hot, they aren’t going to share your shit on Facebook. It’s a hatred thing; it’s a jealousy thing. It hurts me real bad.”

Damani Harrison, formerly of hip-hop group The Beetnix and recently departed artistic and education director at the Music Resource Center, sees the opposite. He sees a unified hip-hop scene. He reckons if he got all the rappers in town together who support each other, it would shock most locals.

“I don’t think there is media coverage about it,” he says. “But I want to show the community how many active rappers there are in the area, the amount of unity and love there is among them.”

Harrison says it would be difficult to ballpark the number of hip-hop acts in and around Charlottesville, but in his decade and a half at the MRC he says the number of local rappers he saw “was tremendous.”

“There is this massive hip-hop scene, and anyone that is in it knows about it through social media,” he says. “Every single day, I am seeing a high-quality video of someone from Charlottesville. I can’t keep up with the amount of people doing quality work. I am talking about legit, go to the studio, cameras and lighting videos.”

Harrison points to MRC alums C-Ryan and William “Chaos Chytist” Rhodes as examples of locals making nationally recognized hip-hop. “They just moved to Atlanta,” he says. “They make a lot of money now.”

Douglas himself has plenty of songs and videos floating around on the Internet, and he has a studio where he still records and produces for other hip-hop artists. But he says the main thing that has pushed him beyond hip-hop to music like go-go is the fact rap isn’t what it used to be.

“I think it’s because everybody just follows a trend,” he says. “Hip-hop isn’t original anymore. Everybody used to put their heart into it. …We used to stand in a circle and battle, and people used to show up to the showcases. The rappers don’t have that support no more.”

Ready to go-go

Jeyon Falsini, founder of the Main Street Annex—now the Ante Room—where Blacko deejays and where Double Faces Gogo Band performs, says to make it in the local hip-hop and R&B scene you have to be a promoter and rapper. Photo: Eze Amos
Jeyon Falsini, founder of the Main Street Annex—now the Ante Room—where Blacko deejays and where Double Faces Gogo Band performs, says to make it in the local hip-hop and R&B scene you have to be a promoter and rapper. Photo: Eze Amos

Charlottesville is relatively unique in having a go-go scene. The genre, which places heavy, layered percussion underneath R&B, hip-hop and other musical forms, was born in Washington, D.C., in the 1960s under the direction of the likes of Chuck Brown, the Young Senators and Black Heat. It’s never really taken off in other areas of the country. Arguably the biggest national hit a go-go band ever had was DJ Kool’s “Let Me Clear My Throat.”

Donnell Floyd, founder of D.C.-based Familiar Faces, is one of the performers currently carrying the go-go torch. He says there are three or four bands in the district, like Backyard and Rare Essence in addition to Familiar Faces, that can bring 300 to 400 people out to a show three times a week.

The topflight go-go bands play about 50 percent originals in addition to the covers, according to Floyd. Other bands, Double Faces included, stick to the crowd-pleasing covers. Floyd says go-go bands often get a bad rap because they rely so heavily on covers, but that’s the way it’s been back to the early Chuck Brown days.

Indeed, when Blacko talks about Double Faces’ music, there’s an edge of defensiveness.

“We cover everything—a lot of people don’t know that,” he says. “It’s really a lot bigger than what people think is just a go-go band. We’re go-go, but we’re bigger than that.”

Floyd, on the other hand, says there’s nothing wrong with being “just a go-go band.”

“I say the opposite. Go-go is like steroids for any music,” he says. “What makes go-go is what you put underneath, the percussion you put underneath the foundation. Chuck Brown put go-go underneath jazz and blues. Backyard puts it underneath rap and hip-hop, Rare Essence is under R&B. I wouldn’t say we are ‘not just a go-go band.’ We absolutely are. I sent my kids to college on go-go.”

For what it’s worth, Double Faces has had its share of success as well. An offshoot of the now defunct The X Band, the band’s been shifting between eight and 10 members for the last three and a half years. Dean “Phace” Smith is the frontman and constant, and Blacko’s been onboard as vocalist, deejay and manager since the beginning, transitioning from his role as keyboard player in The X Band. Some of Double Faces’ musicians come from gospel backgrounds, where Harrison says you often find the best players in town.

Blacko says he can book Double Faces for two or three nights a week during the summer, but it’s sporadic. Sometimes one gig a week is all he can ask for. The high point of the Double Faces run was probably playing the Tom Tom Founders Festival two years ago. But Blacko has hope the band can keep moving up.

“A lot of people that have checked us out are pleased, but a lot of clubs and venues haven’t gave us the shot yet,” he says. “A lot of people haven’t gave us that voice and let us be heard.”

The voice you will hear if you get the pleasure of seeing Double Faces is loud, party-driven and highly sexual. Indeed, a sub-genre that’s often tied to the likes of Floyd’s Familiar Faces is “Grown & Sexy” go-go, and Double Faces falls pretty firmly in that camp.

Jeyon Falsini says Double Faces is “really amazing” at taking contemporary songs and filtering them through its percussion section, which includes a drum kit, cymbals, cowbells and wood blocks.

“It’s percussion on top of percussion,” Falsini says. “I like to call it ‘black jam-band music.’ They jam out and do solos. It’s a great party sound, and I can always count on Double Faces bringing out a crowd. Always.”

Sometimes there are horns in go-go, but not in Double Faces. Guitars aren’t featured; keyboards provide much of the instrumentation.

In addition to the Ante Room, Falsini says go-go bands are finding a place at Rapture and the M&M Lounge. While the hip-hop scene in Charlottesville has had trouble maintaining consistent venues due to occasional outbreaks of violence, Falsini says the go-go crowds are more mature and easygoing—everyone’s just there to enjoy the music and dance.

Harrison says the go-go scene has value for black music fans in general.

“I see the stuff [Blacko] promotes, and I love what he’s doing out there; that is, actively attempting to keep live music in the urban community alive,” he says.

The next stage

DJ Blacko (aka Robert Douglas) performed July 8 at Fusion's Restaurant and Lounge in Culpeper with The Double Faces Gogo Band. Photo: Ron Paris
DJ Blacko (aka Robert Douglas) performed July 8 at Fusion’s Restaurant and Lounge in Culpeper with The Double Faces Gogo Band. Photo: Ron Paris

When he started Wild Boyz Entertainment, Douglas says all he had “was a laptop and a dream.”

“Now I have a couple thousand followers,” he says. “When I first started, I had a couple hundred. I am running close to 20 grand a year off of entertainment, and I put myself through college.”

Which side of the business will flourish—hip-hop, R&B, deejaying or go-go—is anybody’s guess, but go-go seems to have as good a chance as any. Floyd figures the genre is still strong around D.C. Is it where it was at its height two decades ago? No. But in the last five years, he says, it’s done well.

As for Charlottesville’s scene, Douglas is likewise optimistic. He says Double Faces is taking more and more phone calls from people outside of Charlottesville, and more local doors are opening. “What the business degree has taught me is how to talk to the people we haven’t opened doors with,” he says.

But it takes hard work, Douglas continues. You have to work it like a job. You can’t run up a bar tab that’s bigger than your paycheck. And you can’t allow yourself to get paid in “beer and wingdings.”

Perhaps most importantly, you have to remember the crowds don’t just show up. You have to get out there and spread the word. You have to promote.

“I don’t want to speak ill, but everybody comes up and automatically wants to be in competition,” Douglas says. “It took years to get where we are, and we’re still not accepted everywhere around here. No one’s knocking down our doors. I booked these shows myself.”

GAGA for go-go

Go-go is a musical genre that places heavy, layered percussion underneath R&B, hip-hop and other musical forms.

  • Originated in Washington, D.C., in the 1960s
  • Dance music that emphasizes audience call-and-response
  • Go-go pioneers include Chuck Brown, the Young Senators and Black Heat
  • In the mid-1960s, “go-go” was the word for a music club in the D.C. African-American community

BLACKO’S PLAYLIST

DJ Khaled and Jay Z, “I Got the Keys”

Blacko’s take: “Jay Z’s latest track has been on repeat. It’s pretty dope.”

Fat Joe and Remy Ma, “All the Way Up”

Blacko’s take: “I like all kinds of music, though. My playlist consists of stuff from Lil Wayne to Hall & Oates.”

Backyard Band, Street Antidote

Blacko: “My Backyard repeat is the whole new Antidote CD. I listen to the whole CD…no favorites.”

Northeast Groovers, Any Track

Blacko’s take: “I just like when NEG let they beats ride and bring in the crank and 808s.”

Suttle Thoughts, “Love Is Stronger Than Pride”

Blacko’s take: “I listen to my man Steve Roy and Suttle Thoughts almost every day. This is a real laid-back joint. They’re my highway band.”

Double Faces Gogo Band, “We Do It”

Blacko’s take: “I wrote that one myself.”

You’ve heard it before

Photo: File photo
Photo: File photo

You may be more familiar with go-go style than you think. Here are some artists who have sampled Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers’ percussion-heavy tracks.

Nelly’s “Hot in Herre” sampled “Bustin’ Loose”

Wreckx-N-Effect’s “I Need Money” sampled “We Need Some Money”

Run DMC’s “Run’s House” and Duran Duran’s “Come Undone” both nod to “Ashley’s Roachclip”

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Arts

ARTS Pick: Cirque Italia

Cirque Italia takes the big top poolside and brings a European flair to family entertainment. Photo: Publicity photo

Looking for an affordable spectacle? Try the Italian circus that tours city to city, sets up under a giant tent and presents aerial acts, hand balancing, contortionists and mermaids over a 35,000-gallon water tank. Cirque Italia creates a “vivid, dramatic and moving experience” without animals, despite the rumor of a dinosaur appearance.

Thursday 7/21–Sunday 7/24. $10-50, various times. Fashion Square Mall, 1600 Rio Rd E. cirqueitalia.com.

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Arts

Local author Emma Rathbone stays focused with Losing It

Photo: Renee Reighart

Writing a novel isn’t easy by most measures, but it’s said that your second novel is where the anxiety really kicks in. Pressure builds to craft a book that’s readable and critically embraced, without being too similar to its predecessor. Of course, this is even more true if your first was met with popular success. Just ask author Emma Rathbone, whose second book, Losing It, was released on July 19 by Riverhead Books.

A recent transplant to Los Angeles, Rathbone is an alumna of both the UVA Creative Writing MFA program and Charlottesville itself. She is known for her first book, The Patterns of Paper Monsters, and as a contributor to The New Yorker’s Shouts & Murmurs column. In the latter, her oddball comedic knack is on full display in pieces with titles such as “The Lost Pages of Fifty Shades of Grey” or “A Few Things I’d Like to Convey with My Funky Lizard Brooch.” (If those leave you with any doubt of Rathbone’s sense of humor, you might also be interested in knowing that her MFA thesis was titled, Retarded revolutions around the dickface sun.) This same eccentric jocularity provided an undercurrent for her debut novel, but Rathbone really hits her stride in Losing It.

Perceptions and stereotypes about the second novel aside, Rathbone found the opposite to be true. “Losing It was a little easier because, having written Patterns, I knew it was possible to finish a novel,” she reflects. “I knew how hard it was going to be, and that it’s okay to have many fits and starts, and to have to throw a lot of stuff away. So, there was a little less anxiety about the process the second time around. Both times it was about generating material, figuring out what was chiming, finding a through line, shucking away what doesn’t work, rewriting, then tightening and tightening and tightening.”

Rising to the challenge of the second novel with wit and verve, Emma Rathbone reads from Losing It on July 23 at New Dominion Bookshop. Photo: Publicity photo

Working on the idea on and off since 2010, Rathbone wrote the vast majority of Losing It in Charlottesville. “It’s a great place to write because it’s fairly quiet and inexpensive, compared to a big city at least,” she says. “I love the beautiful, overgrown South, and that had a lot of influence on the book. There are some aspects of Charlottesville that I kind of grafted onto Durham, where the book is set, because it’s fiction and you can do whatever you want.” Indeed, a character closely resembling Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall Harmonica Man makes a cameo in the novel as do various downtown shops, the Sprint Pavilion and nearby carousel, Cismont, Sperryville, Ivy Nursery—even the Lazy Parrot.

On its surface, this book is about Julia, a 26-year-old virgin who’s determined to finally lose “it” one summer after also losing a promising career as a swimmer and other social identities from her youth and early 20s. “I wanted to explore the conundrum of wanting something very badly—to the point of obsession—while on some level knowing that the more you want it, the harder it will be to get,” Rathbone says.

The quest keeps Julia distracted throughout the book as she considers a smorgasbord of options for doing the deed but also ponders whether she’s made some sort of irreversible error that led her to a sexless fate. All of this is exacerbated when Julia moves in with her Aunt Vivienne, a 58-year-old virgin. “I thought it would be interesting to put someone who is grappling with the question of ‘meeting someone’ and what that means, next to someone for whom the worst-case scenario has played out,” says Rathbone. Elevating the work beyond the plot of a Judd Apatow movie, however, Rathbone uses Julia’s first-person narration as a framework to dig deeper into underlying anxieties and expectations about life that are surprisingly universal.

“Most people who know me will admit I’m not a chilled-out cucumber,” jokes Rathbone. “I’m pretty anxious and neurotic, so it was not hard for me to channel that side of Julia, and it was kind of fun. I like characters that have a constant, antic, kind of bitchy narration going and are always pulling out the threads of themselves and other people, and so that’s the kind of vein I tried to write in.” She balances this high-energy and, at times, off-the-wall style with a careful and considered approach to characters. As a result, Julia and the book’s major supporting characters—including Aunt Vivienne—exhibit peculiarities and personalities that extract the reader’s empathy for those in the throes of self-discovery, while suggesting that no one ever really finishes that process.

Rathbone’s likable wit and finely tuned ability to expose the intricacies and absurdities of social interactions are evidenced in all of her work, and Losing It is no exception. Next up, she’s expanding her oeuvre by joining the team of writers for an upcoming Netflix comedy series while also beginning work on her third novel.

Do you have a favorite book that incorporates Charlottesville landmarks?

Tell us about it in the comments below.

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Arts

ARTS Pick: Maupintown Film Festival

Local filmmaker Lorenzo Dickerson heads the Maupintown Film Festival, which highlights stories of African-American historical, educational and social value. Photo: Courtesy subject

The Maupintown Film Festival showcases works of historical, educational and social value that address the achievements and plight of the African-American community. Included in the 12-film lineup is local filmmaker (and founder of Maupintown Media) Lorenzo Dickerson’s documentary Anywhere But Here, which examines the cause and effect of mass incarceration, as well as his Color Line of Scrimmage, a story of triumph against all odds at Burley High School in 1956.

Saturday 7/16 & Sunday 7/17. Free, times vary. Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, 233 Fourth St. maupintown.com/film-festival.

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Arts

ARTS Pick: Beach Blanket Bingo

The Virginia Film Festival's Moonlight Movies Series continues with a screening of the 1965 teen film Beach Blanket Bingo. Photo: Courtesy Virginia Film Festival

The modern convenience of food trucks and a WTJU DJ accompany the Virginia Film Festival’s Moonlight Movies screening of the 1965 teen flick Beach Blanket Bingo. A singer’s agent uses publicity stunts against her will, so Frankie Avalon and his gang of beachgoers must save the day in the fifth installment of the “Frankie and Annette” beach party film series by William Asher. To complete the vibe, attendees are encouraged to bring beach chairs, blankets and bingo to the outdoor event.

Friday 6/24. Free, sundown. IX Art Park, 522 Second St. SE. ixartpark.com.

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Arts

Offstage Theatre recasts The Maids as teenagers

Offstage Theatre’s production of The Maids, starring Emma Strock and Arrietta van der Voort, runs through June 18 at the historic McShane House. Photo: Publicity photo

Though Jean Genet’s 1947 play The Maids (Les Bonnes) is known as a sadomasochistic, cruel and absurd work, director Stephen Simalchik says he would describe his Offstage Theatre production as playful before he would call it dark.

“Something that is only cruel or shocking I wouldn’t want to spend a lot of time on,” he says. “We’re trying to understand it on more human terms, to reflect on the circumstances wherein people would actually behave this way.”

The play is believed to be based on a real-life French murder case that occurred in 1933, when two sisters employed as maids, Christine Papin (age 27) and Léa Papin (age 23), murdered their mistress and her adult daughter. Most productions tend to focus on the cruelty—a recent modernized English translation increased the violence of the language itself in a 2014 Lincoln Center staging starring Cate Blanchett. But from the moment Simalchik decided to direct this play using the original English translation, he was struck by the adolescent tone and envisioned whom he would like to cast as the younger sister, Claire: 16-year-old Emma Strock. He had worked with Emma before at Charlottesville High School and asked her to read The Maids and give him her impressions.

“I think that, in truth, the idea and the actress were the same thought,” says Simalchik. “But it doesn’t amount to anything unless the actor can respond to and process the material. She could see in her own way how it could translate into adolescence. It’s actually a judgment on Genet. These characters are people who don’t even understand themselves.”

For the older sister, Solange, Simalchik cast 19-year-old Arrietta van der Voort. He explains that skewing the characters younger translates the work into a slightly different state. His interpretation makes sense, though, as there is a good deal of pretending that goes on within the play as the sisters dress up in Madame’s clothes in order to act out their fantasies.

“It’s still the worst 70 minutes of someone’s life, among the three characters, but [the sisters] are still children playing,” says Simalchik.

The young age of the actors also serves to highlight how tightly their sisterhood binds them, emphasizing their dependence on each other.

“Sisterhood has been talked about a great deal in rehearsal,” Simalchik says. “Interpersonal relationships are at the heart of the play.”

The project was born months ago when Megan Hillary, who plays Madame and designed the set, began collaborating with Simalchik. They were in need of a performance space when they connected with Bree Luck, the artistic director for Offstage Theatre. Luck reached out to potential venues and was able to secure the historic McShane House, a mansion built in the 1930s and tucked away in the trees on Maury Avenue, an unlikely location near the bustle of Stadium Road. The era of the house’s construction made it perfect for the play.

“Because we’re in the right venue, the architecture is already creating a wonderful space for us,” Simalchik says. “There’s a starting point. It’s already saturated in a way. The house only gives us advantages.”

There are no scene changes. Rather, the play takes place over the course of 70 minutes in the bedroom of Madame, whom Simalchik describes as “an obnoxiously wealthy Parisian woman.” For the audience, he says, “it will be recognizable as theater. The conventions of theater performance are still there. It’s not immersive. It’s just happening in a site-specific location.”

Offstage Theatre has described the production as an “investigation into the confused and dangerous mindset of class-based murder.” Genet, who had spent some time in prison, wrote it in his 30s as an exploration of power and oppression.

“He had a complicated relationship to power and class,” says Simalchik, who was also drawn to the play because of his own questions about class and a desire to explore its complications.

And, as a director, he is aware of not just representations of class on stage, but of gender as well. He notes the abundance of roles available to white men and the need to pay attention to whose stories are being represented in theater.

“I can’t escape my identity as a white guy, but I can find stories that women will want to work on,” he says. “This is a difficult play for an actress of any age. It’s a crowning play for three powerful women. There are not many plays like that.”

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Arts

Festival of the Photograph offers new slate of free events

LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph takes place June 13-19 with a schedule of free community events such as the screening of Syria’s Lost Generation, a documentary by Ed Kashi and Julie Winokur. Photo: Ed Kashi

“I began asking local residents if they’d heard of LOOK3. The vast majority said, ‘Oh, you mean the pictures in the trees!,’” says Mary Virginia Swanson, LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph executive director. “I knew then that we needed to reach out with community-based programs that would be free and open to all.” Indeed, as a festival focused on presenting the work of nationally renowned photographers, outreach programs have played second fiddle in the past while names from the pages of National Geographic and the walls of prestigious galleries or museums received the most attention. This year, that’s going to change, as Swanson presents the first festival under her leadership.

“It is crucial to me that our events include the community,” she says. “I set out to learn what types of photography programs community residents were most interested in.” Over the past few months, she and other LOOK3 staffers experimented with free lectures and a print-sharing event to see what excited locals.

“The roots of LOOK3 reach back to this community and we are committed to expanding the rich history of photography that enriches this area,” Swanson says. Influenced by this desire and research, she is ready to launch her new approach.

In addition to the exhibitions and outdoor projections, artist talks by professional photographers and educational offerings for aspiring photographers that LOOK3 consistently hosts, this year’s festival will offer an impressive breadth of free programs. A community print share kicks off the festival on June 13, featuring the work of local photographers who submitted art in advance. Free to participate in or attend, the event sets the tone for the week-long festival by welcoming all.

“We already see how our high school mentoring programs have made an impact on youth,” Swanson says. “Just imagine if even more people were engaging in the power of photography to tell their stories.”

On June 14, LOOK3 presents a panel discussion titled “PDN’s 30 2016: New and Emerging Photographers to Watch,” a program that seeks to invite community members into this very type of engagement. Professional photographers will discuss their work while also exploring the broader topics of creative careers and the business side of art, offering advice for aspiring artists in all categories. It’s a chance to learn from the experts on topics ranging from getting work noticed to building support networks and finding your artistic voice.

The Pop-Up Book Fair is another addition to the festival, providing an outlet for local artists who have reserved a free space to display and sell their books and zines. “There are so many opportunities to self-publish photography books today, but one of the challenges is distribution,” says Swanson. “We wanted to give authors a chance to sell their zines and photobooks and share their work with a broader audience.” It’s free to attend and includes a book signing with participants.

During Family Photo Day on Sunday (which also happens to be Father’s Day, hint hint), LOOK3 offers free family portraits along with a book signing by young artists Abbey Ellerglick and Harper Tidwell, who are featured in the Aperture Foundation book, Go Photo! An Activity Book for Kids by Alice Proujansky. As a teaching artist, Proujansky will also be present to lead a hands-on, kid-friendly photography activity with Ellerglick and Tidwell. “We hope families from all parts of our community will turn out—especially those who are new to Charlottesville or new to this country who may not have had a portrait made in this new phase of their lives,” says Swanson.

Concluding the 2016 festival, LOOK3 hosts a free screening of Ed Kashi and Julie Winokur’s short documentary film, Syria’s Lost Generation. This event will also feature a presentation of photographs and text by Kashi and writer Don Belt, showcasing the pair’s work in Syria during the past two decades while on assignment with National Geographic. With insiders’ perspectives and tales from the ground, the discussion between the three artists will provide a free taste of the high caliber artist talks that populate the festival’s ticketed events.

In addition, exhibitions at more than 10 downtown gallery spaces and the official LOOK3 bookstore will all be free to visit and accessible throughout the week. And, of course, all it takes is a glance upward while walking along the Downtown Mall to take in the best-known free LOOK3 program, the popular TREES exhibition of nature photographs.

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June 6, 2014: Photography in Charlottesville