Oklahoma!

Walker running again

Charlottesville Mayor Nikuyah Walker officially announced on Friday that she’s seeking re-election to City Council in the fall. The announcement does not come as a surprise: Walker has hinted multiple times in recent months that she planned to run for a second four-year term on the council.

During a 28-minute Facebook Live broadcast, Walker spoke about the fight for racial justice that has driven her work on council.

“As a Black woman sitting in this position, especially the last two years, I have been very exhausted,” Walker said. “Even though I’ve always been ready to battle with people, it’s been a challenge to be under attack all the time. But I am a fighter in my spirit.”

Walker said she decided to seek reelection because she felt she had a duty to her constituents, particularly young Black people. “What will giving up show people who have been inspired because you’ve been here?” she asked herself before throwing her hat in again.

“I am tired, but we have to continue,” said Walker. “This is not just about us. The whole world is watching.”

Who’s she running against?

Strap in, this can get a little confusing. Two seats on Charlottesville’s five-person City Council will be up for grabs in the fall. In November, four candidates will compete for those seats: Mayor Walker, an independent, will run against another independent, 23-year-old entrepreneur Yasmine Washington, and two Democratic candidates.

Those Dems will be chosen at a primary on June 8. Three candidates are running for the two Democratic nominations: School board member Juandiego Wade, UVA planner Brian Pinkston, and entrepreneur Carl Brown.

Check back next week for a full preview of the June 8 Democratic primaries at both the local and state levels.

“More than anything, I’ll miss the fights. At a posh school like UVA, Sheetz provided a place to see the real side of people at night.”
—UVA student Sam Beidler, speaking to The Cavalier Daily about the announcement that the Sheetz on University Ave is closing

News briefs

Class of 2021 says farewell

The second of UVA’s back-to-back graduation ceremonies went off without a hitch last weekend, as the Class of 2021 took a well-deserved walk down the Lawn. We’re happy for the students—and also happy that we’ll be able to get a restaurant reservation this weekend.

Students must get vaccinated, says UVA

UVA will require its students to get vaccinated before returning to Grounds in the fall, the university announced last week. Students have until July 1 to share their proof of vaccination with the school health system. Dozens of colleges and universities around the country have announced similar policies, including liberal arts schools like William & Mary and large state universities like the University of Michigan.

Charlottesville Opera builds community, closes season with ‘Oklahoma!’

What do cowboys, farmers and love triangles have in common with the United States of today? To Michelle Krisel, artistic director of Charlottesville Opera, the answer is a lot. That’s much of the reason why Krisel and Charlottesville Opera (formerly Ash Lawn Opera), chose Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! to close the company’s 40th summer season.

The Paramount Theater

Through August 5

“This piece is so important at this time for our country to come together,” says Krisel. “This is about farmers and the cowboys coming together to build a community,” noting that the musical takes place in the years before Oklahoma became an official state in 1907. “This is not ancient history. The issues that they were struggling with—coming up with their identity as a state, respecting the individual but building the community—is what makes America great.”

To open the opera’s 40th anniversary season, the company presented Middlemarch in Spring in collaboration with the Virginia Festival of the Book. It was the company’s first premiere in 35 years. Earlier this month, the Charlottesville Opera performed Rigoletto on the Paramount mainstage and at Virginia Tech’s Anne and Ellen Fife Theater. During Oklahoma! professional soloists and students from the Charlottesville Ballet will join actors and actresses. Together, these artists bring to life Oklahoma! main character Laurey’s opiate-induced dream ballet.

Krisel says creating these artistic partnerships built the foundation for the opera’s anniversary season. During her tenure as general director and artistic director, Krisel focused on collaborating with entities such as the Festival of the Book, Virginia universities and colleges and their students, and like-minded arts groups like the Oratorio Society of Virginia, the Wilson School of Dance and the Virginia Consort.

It’s a memorable season for Krisel, as she recently announced her retirement. She’s stepping down after nearly a decade growing the Charlottesville Opera, and prior to that she built a number of international education and community programs from the ground up at the Washington National Opera. Krisel says she’s excited about the season’s new artistic endeavors.

“If you scratch the surface of an opera singer, how did we fall in love with opera? We sang in our high school or high school musical. What is our national vernacular? It’s the American musical.” Michelle Krisel

“I conceived of the three pieces in our anniversary season as a way to make new friends through community-building, and each in a different way,” Krisel says. “I picked the repertoire by what I think the public will like, what we can do well and what we can afford to do but, more importantly, what can that piece do for us?”

Another of the opera’s relatively new partnerships is with Mary Birnbaum, a theater and opera director who directed La Traviata last year and returned this year to direct Oklahoma!.

Like many theater kids, Birnbaum says, she remembers casting her sister in shows she produced as a child in her family’s living room. She graduated from Harvard and L’École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris—a prestigious movement and mime school whose tradition stems from Italian commedia dell’arte. She now lives in New York, co-writes and directs productions around the world and teaches acting at Juilliard.

“It’s about the art you make, whether it’s inclusive and involves the community. That’s the way the arts will continue to flourish and have meaning in people’s lives.” Mary Birnbaum

Birnbaum “begged” Krisel to let her direct Oklahoma!, citing the timeliness of the musical’s story, the strength of Krisel’s artistic leadership and the cast’s “brilliant” talent.

“If you scratch the surface of an opera singer, how did we fall in love with opera?” Krisel says of finding the musical’s talented cast and crew. “We sang in our high school or high school musical. What is our national vernacular? It’s the American musical.”

“I don’t get to do musicals a lot, and had a sense that I needed to work on a musical this summer,” Birnbaum says. “Musicals are American opera, and [Oklahoma!] features our greatest composer and librettist.”

To materialize Rodgers & Hammerstein’s first collaboration as an artistic duo, Birnbaum kept the set sparse. As an audience member, Birnbaum says she never finds theatrical representations of the outdoors realistic, and wants her pared-down set to emanate feelings of unity, transformation and community engagement.

Birnbaum and her cast play around a lot to understand the dynamics of characters and how they “fought tooth and nail to get everything they have.” They explore feelings of deep political unrest, the shifting grounds that ensue from a disrupted status quo and discuss what it means to be American.

“In a time where you can have a hit like Hamilton, musical storytelling clearly isn’t dead,” Birnbaum says. “It’s about the art you make, whether it’s inclusive and involves the community. That’s the way the arts will continue to flourish and have meaning in people’s lives.”