Edwina Herring leads Live Arts' Online Treasure Trunk Theater, featuring new stories, games, crafts, and more that arrive weekly in your inbox.
Mother’s big helper: One silver lining of our new stay-at-home society is that it’s provided hours of quality family time. Hours and hours—with no end in sight. Luckily, Live Arts’ Online Treasure Trunk Theater offers parents some guilt-free virtual assistance from Edwina Herring. New stories, games, crafts, and more arrive weekly in your inbox, and kids can interact at their leisure—while you decide when it’s time for an early happy hour.
Tuesdays, April 14 through May 26. $50, 6 classes. livearts.org.
The imperfections of life unravel the hopes of a working-class family in the Tony Award-winning play The Humans, at Live Arts through February 16. Photo by Martyn Kyle
What do you do when structures fail? When you did everything right, you played by the rules, yet the safety you thought you’d shored up for the future disappears with a twist of fate? In The Humans, a Tony Award-winning comedy-drama by playwright Stephan Karam, characters wrestle to find peace and connection amidst the rumbles and groans of loss.
The play opens with the Blakes gathering to celebrate Thanksgiving in a Chinatown apartment with Mom and Dad, two college-educated children, plus a grandmother and boyfriend in tow. Their celebration of this uniquely American holiday, all about bounty and gratitude, provides a frame for examining the fragile complexities of family love and the fiction of the American Dream.
Young Brigid is a recent college grad, working as a bartender while applying for music jobs, and she offers a true millennial take on everything from student debt to superfoods. She shares the recently acquired apartment with her boyfriend, Richard, a much older grad student, who comes from money and has committed himself to becoming a social worker. Their furniture is stuck on a moving truck somewhere, so the meal is served at a folding table, a champagne toast swigged from Solo cups.
When Brigid’s Irish Catholic parents, Erik and Deirdre Blake, arrive from Scranton, Pennsylvania, they come bearing gifts. Erik gives his daughter a camping lamp and cans of tuna. He wants her to be prepared in case this part of Manhattan floods again. Deirdre offers Brigid a statue of the Virgin Mary for a more general type of protection. In addition to the stresses of low-paying jobs and the strains of longstanding wedlock, Erik and Deirdre are caring for Momo, the grandmother stricken with dementia.
Aimee, the older sister, is stressed out by her job as a Philadelphia lawyer, a recent breakup with her longtime girlfriend, and a painful flareup of ulcerative colitis. She’s a classic first-born child, bouncing between her Blackberry (the play is set in the early 2010s), the bathroom, and moderating bickers between her mother and younger sister.
The apartment itself is both backdrop and character. The top tier of the place is a ground floor room, its lone window bracketed by bars. The bottom is windowless, a basement that groans with the weight of the building. An upstairs neighbor thumps and bangs. Lights flicker and fail, one by one, throughout the course of the show.
The ominous setting gives the play a vaguely catastrophic feeling. Despite Brigid’s insistence that the place is palatial for the price (and, to be fair, she’s probably right), you aren’t surprised that Erik insists she’d have a much better life in Scranton.
A specter of fear haunts all the Blakes, originating from the failure of systems and people designed to protect them: pension plans, marriage, teachers, partners, the human body itself. To combat it, they turn to rituals—the songs they sing every holiday, the prayers before meals, being together and loving each other despite the small cruelties.
Live Arts’ production is directed by Francine Smith, who rose to a significant challenge. She not only orchestrates the subtle frictions of people managing secrets and sympathies, she does it across two floors, overlapping dialogue, and a script that requires unspoken communication and comedic timing.
The cast is excellent across the board. In a show where success depends so heavily on the humanity and authenticity of its actors, I was fully engaged throughout the two-hour runtime. Larry Goldstein plays Erik with an impeccable sense of that dad’s-got-it-all-figured-out distance, keeping things mellow and grounded and acting the part of provider until he just can’t pretend any more. Geri Schirmer is funny and real as Deirdre, bruised by the love she offers her daughters in turns both smothering, stoic, and outspoken.
As Momo, Meg Hoover makes it easy for us to believe her brain is crumbling; it’s no small feat to play in that liminal space, but she does it well. Lena Malcolm, as Aimee, gives us real pain with enough big sister chutzpah to bring back the laughs. Madeline Walker delivers a Brigid who is everything you’d expect—overly sensitive to her parents and wounded by small slights. Johnny Butcher rounds out the ensemble as Richard, who brings equal doses of sincerity and humor, acting as the palate cleanser and awkward-silence-filler that boyfriends typically play during the holidays.
The two-tiered set design creates a physical container that lives and moans around the family in action. Kudos to Gwyn Gilliam and the entire production team for using lighting, sound, and props to make this human experience feel real.
In Vulture, Jesse Green described The Humans as “the most, well, human play I’ve ever seen.” Live Arts’ production does an admirable job bringing that humanity to life. We see ourselves in its people, so flawed and familiar. Nothing distracts us from the discomfort of humans pretending not to struggle. But hope arrives alongside the pain. Forgiveness knocks on the door of betrayal. Being human is the thing that hurts, but it also sets us free.
The imperfections of life unravel the hopes of a working-class family in the Tony Award-winning play The Humans, at Live Arts through February 16.
Gorilla Theater stages "Twelfth Night," one of Shakespeare's most beloved comedies, through February 15. Publicity photo
Love and deception: Romance, comedy, and deceit come to the stage in the form of one of William Shakespeare’s most beloved comedies, Twelfth Night. Directed by Jamie Virostko and featuring a talented ensemble, this intimate spin on the Bard’s twisted love triangle combines gender-fluidity with romantic chaos in a traditional yet pared-down production.
Through Saturday, February 15. $10-15, times vary. Gorilla Theater, 1717 Allied Ln. 233-4456.
Each element of this production, from the sets to costumes to lighting and sound design, is wildly, wonderfully creative. Photo by Martyn Kyle
The year is 1995, “Friends” is all the rage, and Tilly Evans is “the most uncommon form of nerd in the world”—a girl-nerd who loves Dungeons & Dragons.
So begins She Kills Monsters, the 2011 comedy-drama by Qui Nguyen. Known for his innovative use of pop culture, stage violence, puppetry, and multimedia, Nguyen transports us to a simpler time “before Facebook, World of Warcraft, and massive multiplayer online RPG’s.”
Agnes Evans is Tilly’s older sister, an English teacher in small-town Ohio. We learn that on the eve of her high school graduation, as she wished her life “was less boring,” a car crash killed Agnes’ mother, father, and Tilly all at once.
Agnes never connected with Tilly or her penchant for armor and fantasy talk. But when she finds a D&D notebook, handwritten by Tilly, she’s determined to make sense of it—to understand Tilly in ways that she couldn’t while her sister was alive.
To learn more about the role playing game, Agnes seeks out a Dungeon Master, an experienced player who acts as referee and storyteller, and so meets Chuck Biggs, a swaggering nerd who describes himself as “big where it counts—in the brain.”
That’s how Agnes learns that Tilly, aka Tillius the Paladin, was a highly respected, widely-known force in the D&D community. It’s the first of many surprises Agnes will uncover about her sister—once she steps inside the game.
From the show’s opening moments to its fantastical conclusion, UVA’s production of She Kills Monsters immerses audience members in a world of imagination. Like Agnes, we enter the theater fresh from “average” lives and quickly find ourselves flooded with the sights, sounds, and excitement of epic battles, supermodel elves, sexy demon-women, and slapstick crusaders. Each element of this production, from the sets to costumes to lighting and sound design, is wildly, wonderfully creative.
Consider the monsters (there are many), all of which need to be slain. The majority are massive puppets, wielded by students who operate the creations with grace and careful choreography. It took a team of 13 students to create these larger-than-life enemies, and the overall effect is fantastic. Up close, each monster is a standalone work of art.
For scenes set in average spaces like high school hallways and suburban living rooms, towering gray set pieces create a muted backdrop without much color or character. But when you enter the world of the game, the simple canvas comes to life, illuminated by projections of Lord of the Rings-style landscapes, WWE-type announcements, and lights that shift across spectrums and sometimes strobe.
The costumes are equally evocative. Sweeping gowns with thigh-high slits, leather breastplates, and gleaming swords; the hooded cloak Chuck sweeps around him like a dorky Merlin DJ—each detail is vivid, colorful, and supremely entertaining. As time passes and she finds herself drawn deeper into the game, even straight-laced Agnes allows herself to don elbow-length gloves and a leather epaulet.
The sound design might be my favorite aspect of the production. As you probably expect, big-screen-worthy soundscapes usher our heroes along their quest. But it’s details like the sound of rolling dice between scenes and the occasional blast of ’90s anthems that make it fun. Keep your ears open for a special Mortal Kombat moment—you won’t be disappointed.
As Tilly, Karen Zipor is strong and composed, just untouchable enough to maintain her believability. After all, she’s a game character, not Agnes’ flesh-and-blood sister, though you spend most of the show forgetting this fact. Aaryan Balu is fantastic as Chuck, who toggles between bombastic DM and uneasy stand-in for Tilly. When he cautions Agnes against pushing the script to fill in the blanks of her sister’s identity, the torment and tension is real.
Tori Kotsen, who plays Agnes, does an excellent job carrying subtle grief into every scene, even when she’s down on one knee sword-fighting a five-headed dragon. As she slips deeper into Tilly’s world, she begins meeting the people who inspired the game. She comes to know her sister’s heartache, rewritten as sexy comrades-at-arms and cheerleader succubi.
Such a rollicking, complex production requires tremendous teamwork. It’s a testament to the entire cast and crew, and especially director Marianne Kubik, that this show delivers fast-paced comedy, multiple choreographed fight scenes, and enough heart to gives us space to feel all the feels.
She Kills Monsters is a deceptively simple story about family, grief, and coming of age. From Agnes’ viewpoint, Tilly is an outsider. From Tilly’s perspective, she is a leader and warrior who doesn’t want to fit in in the first place. But where these two sisters finally meet is someplace in between real life and high fantasy. In this world, young women battle for the people they love and become their own heroes in the process. Here, killing monsters means carving a path to the world as you want it to be.
She Kills Monsters, starring Aaryan Balu as Chuck, Ingrid Kenyon as Dark elf Kaliope, and Tori Kotsen as Agnes, is at UVA’s Ruth Caplin Theatre through November 23.
"Follies," now at Live Arts through October 27, is based on a story about the reunion of some performers from the Ziegfeld Follies. Publicity photo
Grand stage: A Stephen Sondheim and Richard Rodgers collaboration would appear to be a sure bet for any Broadway investor, yet 1965’s Do I Hear A Waltz? fell far short of critical acclaim. The redeeming factor is that it caused Sondheim to only accept projects where he could write both the music and lyrics, and led to Follies, one of the most ambitious musicals of his career. The award-winning musical evolves from the reminiscences of showgirls, and is based on a story about the reunion of some performers from the Ziegfeld Follies. It features a stylistic revival of the theatrical revue productions that defined old Broadway, and director and accomplished thespian Robert Chapel says, “I deeply admire Live Arts’ chutzpah in accepting the challenges producing this grand musical brings.”
Through Sunday, October 27. $25-30, times vary. Live Arts, 123 Water St. 977-4177.
Leslie Scott-Jones, Ray Smith, and David Vaughn Straughn star in Hambone, the Charlottesville Players Guild’s Afro-futurist adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Photo by Cara Walton
Let’s pretend for a minute. It’s sometime in the not-too-distant future. Charlottesville is a thriving black kingdom, free of the white gaze and white corruption, and comprised of various hamlets, including Vinegar Hill, Starr Hill, and between them, Gospel Hill, the kingdom’s seat and center of spirituality.
Such is the premise of Hambone, an original, Afro-futurist telling of Shakespeare’s Hamlet by local all-black theater troupe the Charlottesville Players Guild.
You know how Hamlet goes: King Hamlet has died. His son, Prince Hamlet, returns home to mourn, only to find that Queen Gertrude has taken up with the dead king’s brother, Claudius. The king’s ghost visits Hamlet with a message: Claudius killed him, and young Hamlet must avenge his death. In the process, young Hamlet goes mad (or does he?).
And while the play is technically fiction, much of what Hambone delves into in the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center auditorium is real.
The Charlottesville Players Guild’s desire to rework Hamlet came about during the troupe’s summer 2018 Macbeth adaptation, Black Mac. The cast became particularly interested in familial relationships among those characters, and Hamlet came up as another play rife with family drama.
The troupe decided to make Hamlet into “the ultimate black family drama,” one that showcases “the spectrum of black family,” says Leslie Scott-Jones, CPG’s creative director who adapted the script and also plays Queen Gertrude. Director Shelby Marie Edwards chose to focus the production on grief, specifically “the way grief is looked at from the African continuum.”
“One of the ways we incorporate an African aesthetic is how the characters deal with death, how we frame death within the show,” says Edwards. “I don’t want to give away too much, but it’s not like they die and that’s it,” she says, because in the African diaspora, one’s ancestors are always present. It’s not life and death, Edwards explains, but rather “life, death, and transformation.” Take King Hamlet’s ghost—whose message for his son drives much of the plot—as just one example.
When Hamlet/Hambone (played by David Vaughn Straughn) so famously asks in his soliloquy, “To be, or not to be?,” he contemplates life and death. But in Hambone, it’s less a question of physicality and more one of spirituality: Will he accept grief as a part of life and continue on, not just breathing but actually living? Or will he allow grief to consume his soul and render him essentially lifeless?
What’s in a name?
Why call this adaptation Hambone? Some folks might know “hambone” as an African American style of dance that involves slapping one’s own body to create a rhythm (it’s also called the Juba dance, or, originally, the Pattin’ Juba). But it was also used as a derogatory term for black performers. “So, that’s the perfect name for this [production], because [Hamlet] performs madness for certain people to elicit a response,” says Leslie Scott-Jones, who adapted the script. “It’s also a commentary on code-switching.”
Many of the CPG’s creative choices for Hambone add new and interesting layers. They meld African American vernacular English with Shakespeare’s early modern English. Ivan Orr has composed an original soundtrack —which he describes as hip-hop as it might sound in the future —that helps establish the mood and propel the story forward.
Horatio, Hamlet’s best friend, typically staged as a man, is a woman, and Hamlet is in love with her, despite the fact that he’s betrothed to Ophelia. His friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are also women. That could explain Hamlet/Hambone’s intuition, and why he can communicate with his father’s spirit, says Scott-Jones. And what does all that say about Hamlet/Hambone’s relationship with his mother, Gertrude?
King Hamlet and Claudius are twins (both played by Ray Smith)—which raises new questions (and probably a few eyebrows) about Gertrude’s hasty marriage to Claudius, itself complicated by the fact that in this production, Gertrude is pregnant. And that raises all sorts of questions about heirs and future kings.
David Vaughn Straughn plays the title role in Hambone. Photo by Cara Walton
The CPG has also added a griot, “an African storyteller who holds wisdom,” explains Edwards, a role played by Brenda Brown-Grooms, a local pastor renowned for her sermons. Brown-Grooms grew up in Charlottesville, and her family attended one of the black churches located on Gospel Hill.
This is yet another way in which the substance of Hambone is quite real, particularly for Charlottesville’s African American communities. Gospel Hill and Vinegar Hill are physically gone from present-day Charlottesville, majority black neighborhoods razed by the city in the mid-20th century in the name of “urban renewal.” And Starr Hill, another such neighborhood, is starting to disappear, too, thanks to gentrification (and, it can be said, the whiteness that the Charlottesville imagined in Hambone has managed to escape).
While these neighborhoods are physically gone, their presence remains—in people, stories, photographs, in Hambone, and in grief. Black Charlottesvillians still mourn these losses. These neighborhoods lived, they died, and now they are transformed.
“I want to have a real, cathartic moment on stage,” says Edwards, one that can work in service of transformation for actors and audience alike. “I always want the audience to leave a little bit more healed than when they began,” she says. “I want the audience to un-learn any conceptions, consciously or unconsciously, they might have about what people in black bodies can do.”
See Hambone, the Charlottesville Players Guild’s Afro-futurist adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center August 22 through September 1.
The Live Arts Teen Theater Ensemble brings love and light to its production of Rent, on stage through July 28. Photo by Martyn Kyle
Before every rehearsal and every performance, the cast and crew stand in a circle. They hold hands, close their eyes, inhale deeply, and exhale fully. “I am light,” they say. “I am love. I am here. I am light. I am love. I am here.” They repeat it over and over, until everyone feels ready to take the stage in the Live Arts Teen Theater Ensemble’s production of Rent.
That affirmation is intended to keep the cast and crew grounded and present, moving them forward into a richly emotional performance with energy and positivity “so that they can accomplish what they need to accomplish,” says director Ti Ames. And with this particular production of Rent, there is much to accomplish.
Rent is one of the most successful pieces of American musical theater to date. With music, lyrics, and book written by Jonathan Larson, the play was first produced in 1994, and in 1996 began a 12-year Broadway run. The musical (often classified a “rock opera”) nabbed four Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize, and in 2005 was made into a feature film.
Even if you haven’t seen Rent, chances are you’ve heard someone, somewhere, singing “Seasons of Love” (and had it stuck in your head for the rest of the day). But for those who are unfamiliar with the musical, Rent is about a group of bohemian friends living in Manhattan’s East Village at the start of the 1990s, during the HIV/AIDS crisis.
Cast member Greyson Taylor has heard arguments that, 25 years after its debut, “Rent is dying, or that Rent isn’t important anymore,” that the stereotypes of the LGBTQ+ community the musical explores are no longer accurate, or that the HIV/AIDS crisis is behind us, or that the tale of bohemians trying to make art and pay their rent in a gentrifying Alphabet City is a tired one. But the arguments for Rent’s irrelevance are misguided says Taylor, because, at its core, “Rent is about love. And Rent’s about family,” two universal and eternal aspects of the human experience.
None of the adolescent cast, nor its 24-year-old director, were born when Rent first hit the stage. Yet, in the musical, they’ve found a place to tell their own stories, of many backgrounds, races (actors of color make up more than half of the cast), genders, and sexualities, all experiencing the ups and downs of life together.
Director Ti Ames, who at 24 is not much older than the cast, grew up doing theater at Live Arts. This is the first production Ames has directed at the theater. Photo by Martyn Kyle
A production like Rent “can fall into the trap of being presented in the same way over and over again,” notes Taylor, but “when someone like Ti steps in and creates a completely new way to tell the story, it’s a whole lot easier for people to stop and listen.”
Ames’ artistic choices make this production unique. At the start of the play, the book dictates that “two thugs” should chase after the character of Tom Collins, and in this production the “two thugs” are two white cops. The character of Angel Dumott Schunard (Taylor’s role), typically staged as a drag queen, is here gender fluid.
Ames has actor Camden Luck playing the famously problematic Maureen Johnson as a TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) who inappropriately touches the afro of her girlfriend, Joanne Jefferson—something that happens to Mo Jackson, the actor playing Joanne, all the time in real life.
In this production, the characters of Mark Cohen (played by Jakobh McHone) and Roger Davis (played by Thad Lane), dap whenever they see one another, an intentionally chosen gesture that Ames hopes will help normalize platonic affection between two young black men. And April, Roger’s dead girlfriend usually only mentioned by name, is instead an on-stage character whose actions are unexpectedly (at least, to Roger) mirrored by another character.
Ames incorporates Africana elements, such as call-and-response, constant breaking of the fourth wall, and the presence of ancestral spirits. This has been particularly interesting for Taylor, because for his character, Angel, it means that when (spoiler alert) Angel dies, Angel isn’t really gone. “She’s still just as much a part of everyone’s lives,” continuing to help them believe in love, he says. “That’s probably what hit me the most.”
“I am so proud of these kids,” says Ames, who has been constantly moved by the ways in which the actors have plumbed their own emotional depths to bring the characters to life in a way that forces close examination of both difficult issues like racism, homophobia, and loss, as well as joyous experiences like friendship, falling in love, and sharing a first kiss. They’ve taken risks, they’ve pushed themselves. They build each other up. They’ve learned to take breaks when they’re feeling overwhelmed, and to be wholly present with one another on the stage. Plus, “they can sing their little butts off,” says Ames with equal amounts affection and respect.
The Live Arts Teen Theater Ensemble rehearses Rent. Photo by Martyn Kyle
This is technically the Rent: School Edition, but the cast would be loath to have their production passed off as “just a teen show.”
“Everyone in this show is well-equipped…capable of displaying the massive amounts of emotion that come behind this show,” says McHone, who is so committed to Rent and his castmates that he drives an hour and a half each way, from his hometown outside of Harrisonburg, to be in this production.
Taylor wants “everyone to leave the theater with a heightened sense of awareness” of the work yet to be done around the many themes addressed in Rent.
It’s what the cast has done, adds McHone, and these are lessons the cast expects to take with them even when the stage lights go down.
That, and the fact that they are light. They are love. They are here.
The Live Arts Teen Theater Ensemble brings love and light to its production of Rent, on stage through July 28.
Kate Lambert Cadaret plays the iconic lead role in Hello Dolly! at Four County Players. Photo by Linda Hogan Photography
Before Match.com and the like, we had matchmakers such as Dolly Gallagher-Levi, the exuberant leading lady in Hello, Dolly!. Arriving in New York City to assist Yonkers half-a-millionaire Horace Vandergelder in finding a new wife, Dolly works her way through one tricky escapade after another before discovering she is the perfect mate for him. Memorable songs “Before
the Parade Passes By,” “Put on Your Sunday Clothes,” and “Hello, Dolly!” make the musical one of the most popular in theater history.
Through April 14. $10-18, times vary. Four County Players, 5256 Governor Barbour St., Barboursville. (540) 832-5355.
A team of adolescent girls navigates life’s ups and downs during the course of an indoor soccer season in The Wolves, now playing at Live Arts. Photo by Martyn Kyle
When you think of teenage girls, what do you picture?
Perhaps you think of your own fast-talking children or your experience in high school. Or maybe you default to cliques and clichés: prom queens and geeks, victims and villains.
In its latest production, a Pulitzer Prize- nominated play by Sarah DeLappe called The Wolves, Live Arts asks audiences to look beyond caricatures of young women and see complex characters.
The Wolves tells the story of nine teenagers as they sprint, stretch, and celebrate one season as a girls’ indoor soccer team. When the story begins, you’re dropped into a circle of adolescents warming up on Astroturf.
Swift dialogue overlaps and ping-pongs from period blood to the pronunciation of Khmer Rouge. As you attempt to make sense of the cluster of jersey-wearing young women, your brain differentiates by doing what it does best: sorting and making sense by stereotyping.
You’ve got the jock, the ditz, the studious overachiever…the list goes on. There’s even an awkward new girl to serve as a counterpoint for the existing tribe. As gossip swirls about the newcomer in their midst, longstanding teammates sharpen their loyalty like a knife.
By playing into your expectations, the show disarms you quickly. Whatever you believe or remember from your teens, there’s a dynamic to suit your tastes.
Personally, when I think of young women and sports teams, I think of being fed to the wolves. Maybe it was my years as a competitive dancer, where I consistently felt like an outsider. Maybe it was my choice to bridge middle and high school with a season on the girls’ cross-country team (I’d never run outside of gym class, but I desperately hoped I’d find acceptance among sweaty, more muscular peers.)
On some level, I still remember high school as a jockeying for social status. My default setting is undoubtedly reinforced by movies and TV, which often portray young women as boy-crazy, vindictive, and unmoored from the world at large.
This is precisely the misrepresentation tackled by The Wolves, which fits into Live Arts’ commitment to diversity by allowing young women a multidimensional representation on stage.
As producing artistic director Bree Luck writes in the show’s program, “This 2018/ 2019 season was devoted to giving voice to marginalized and underrepresented voices. So when our teen selection committee recommended The Wolves for a main stage production, we listened. Never before had we read a play that captured so perfectly the dialogue, the concerns, the richness of discourse, and the intricate behavioral patterns of young women.”
The show quickly peels back the veneer of uniformity, if not the actual uniforms. Each of the nine characters has a distinct personality, with a backstory and conflict that reveals itself over time. We see girls who are foul-mouthed, religious, sexually active, sexually reserved, rich, poor, well-read, well-traveled, and generally confused. They struggle with anxiety and mounting pressure, and almost never talk about boys.
Credit goes to director Kelli Shermeyer and the show’s talented young actresses—including Schuyler Barefoot, Margaret Anne Doren, Mary Lothamer, Camden Luck, Navashree Singh, Alejandra Sullivan, Iris Susen, Chloe Rodriguez Thomas, and Erin Young—for the fact that each character quickly becomes her own person.
In the tight space of the Founders Theater, in identical uniforms and identical surroundings, each girl holds her own. Although it’s an ensemble piece, the play manages to avoid tipping favor to one or a few of its players. The dialogue is funny, the tension is real, and the experience is thoroughly enjoyable.
If these girls are wolves, we’re not meant to see animals tearing each other apart. Instead, we’re presented with a collective of fiercely complex and committed women standing side by side.
Throughout the play, each player carves her identity while facing some of the same heavy issues as adults face. In fact, when the show’s first adult appears, near the very end of the play, it comes as a bit of a shock.
Up until this point, every adult has been an absentee, from the substitute coach who also sells pot to the jet-setting parent with an empty ski lodge and loaded liquor cabinet. So when a soccer mom shows up to deliver orange slices, it feels like an afterthought. As she wonders, out loud, if she really knows anything, you wonder if anyone does.
That’s the moment you realize these teenage girls are holding up a mirror. They navigate depths of grief and joy with shallows of angst and laughter. They question the utility of self-discovery in a world with so much to learn. As you recognize yourself on the field, you see struggling, imperfect humans. So you hope the wolves will win—not just this game, but always.
Shelby Marie Edwards performs her solo storytelling piece, Holly’s Ivy, directed by Chicago-based actor, writer, and teaching artist Earliana McLaurin, at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center on Thursday. Photo by Joel Moorman
Shelby Marie Edwards still switches between “is” and “was” when talking about her mother.
After all, it’s not yet two years since Holly Edwards passed away in early January 2017. And in many ways, she remains present, not just in her daughter’s heart and mind, but in Charlottesville.
Shelby, a theater artist and performance artist now based in Chicago, will perform her original one-person storytelling show, Holly’s Ivy, on Thursday night at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center to help both herself and the community work through the lingering grief.
Holly was a nurse known for her compassion and care, for her advocacy on behalf of low-income citizens and residents of public housing, for the work she accomplished on the city’s Dialogue on Race steering committee and on the board of the JSAAHC, for her service as vice mayor…the list goes on.
“Mom did a lot for the community, and thecommunity did a lot for her, too,” says Shelby.
Holly’s Ivy carries Holly’s name, but it is a show about Shelby, focused on formative moments and rites of passage the 23-year-old has experienced. She tells stories, she moves, she dances, she sings. She explores how her family has shaped who she is.
“Grief is one of those things that everybody goes through,” says Shelby. “Everybody loses something or someone at some point. And yet, we’re expected to deal with it so privately. And that’s something that, ever since mom passed away, has been baffling [to me]. Grieving never ends,” she says.
Shelby began writing the show in December 2016 during a solo performance class when she was an undergraduate in Virginia Commonwealth University’s theater program. The following month, Holly died and the show “kind of sat in the corner” as Shelby grieved the loss of her mother and finished college. She spent the summer in Charlottesville, and during that time, she needed “some type of outlet,” so she finished writing Holly’s Ivy.
“The first half of the show is really like a fossilized version of who I was, and the second half is my journey afterwards,” she says. She used the “ritual poetic drama” methodology to write the show, an approach to storytelling theater that focuses on a journey toward transformational change both for performer and audience.
Holly’s Ivy runs about 45 minutes long, and while it’s often difficult to perform, Shelby feels it’s necessary. “There’sa moment in the show, towards the end, where I just feel it, every single time,” she says. “Words, performance—they give me power and help me feel like I can talk about it, and therefore heal. I really do believe [in] the power of the tongue.”
Shelby says she’s nervous to perform the show in Charlottesville, perhaps because her ties to her audience—and her audience’s ties to her—are tight.
“Everyone knows the backstory. Everyone knows how important she is, or was,” says Shelby. “I think a lot of people [in Charlottesville] haven’t actually grieved mom.”
This will be Shelby’s first time performing Holly’s Ivy in Charlottesville, and it will likely be the last. “I think it’s amazing that we want to honor her as much as we do, but I think it’s also important that we start the moving-on process. She wouldn’t want us stuck in this forever,” she says. She’s ready for the next step in her journey. “I hate ultimatums, but I think this will be the last time I do this show” anywhere, she says. “This time, it’sfor Charlottesville, it’sfor me. It’s for catharsis. It’s for healing.”
