Author: Salvador Sanchez
After 30 years, Richmond Triangle Players theater company is still keeping the conversations going. What a long, queer journey it’s been for the Richmond Triangle Players. “Our original space was so small that you could stand on the stage and reach over your head and adjust the light,” remembers the theatre company’s co-founder Steve J. Earle. Specializing in LGBTQ themed works, the resilient troupe will kick off its 30th anniversary season on Wednesday night with one of its most ambitious productions yet, “The Inheritance.” The RTP company traces back to 1992 with its original productions staged in a place described…
RTP hosts the regional premiere of a sprawling, two-part, Tony-winning epic. What will it take to entice theater-goers to commit to seven hours of “The Inheritance,” the acclaimed story of three generations of gay men grappling with echoes of the AIDS crisis in contemporary New York? Deejay Gray, one of the lead actors in the production opening at Richmond Triangle Players (RTP) this weekend, provides at least a half-dozen reasons why the show is a “must-see” event. There are the obvious ones: the 2020 Tony award for Best Play and the chatter about the sprawling, explosive story being the next…
Virginia’s Beth Macy is back with a follow-up to her acclaimed book about the opioid crisis. Beth Macy is arguably the best non-fiction author in Virginia today. Since her first book in 2014, “Factory Man,” she has scored hit after hit with the biggest so far being “Dopesick,” a narrative about the opioid drug crisis in Southwest Virginia that won a slew of state and national awards and was made in into a Peabody-winning Hulu television series starring actor Michael Keaton. Her latest effort is “Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America’s Overdose Crisis,” which serves as a…
Wheel Simple Bicycle Repair is serving customers and building community. Many bike mechanics earn a reputation as macho elitists with no time for amateur riders – but not Robbie Wood. At his Union Hill shop, Wheel Simple Bicycle Repair, Wood goes out of his way to serve his customers and to use his talents to foster community in Richmond’s East End. After almost three years at his Mosby Street location, Wood is expanding his business without giving up on his heart for helping those who need a hand. Ever since he was a kid Wood has always been on bikes,…
Trey Burnart Hall brings the full Vocal Rest Records lineup to Gallery5 for the label’s first festival. On the day Trey Burnart Hall was interviewed for this story, he budgeted his time carefully. Not just because he keeps exceptionally busy running a record label, playing in bands and producing studio recordings, all on top of working in the writing center at Virginia Commonwealth University, his alma mater. It’s also because his ability to speak on any given day is finite. “My voice is like old cell phones where the minutes are limited,” he says. In 2015, Hall was making plenty…
Two holistic medicine spots, Boketto and modern spa, Skin by HC, look to rehabilitate a buzzword warped by social media marketing. In an era of runaway marketing, ‘wellness’ has suffered. Many things that fall under the umbrella of wellness have been squashed so forcefully into the mold of peak bankability that they’ve become sterile; bland enough to make no offense, swathed in gorgeous graphic design carefully crafted to appeal to the sensibilities of modern consumers. This wellness is one that is no longer part of a comprehensive approach to health, but a class marker—a lifestyle add-on that indicates a certain…
Tired of the humidity? Tired of getting COVID? Tired of Richmond’s crappy drivers straddling the center of a double yellow line? Tired of being tired in general? Then perhaps you, my friend, need a good ‘ole fashioned, primitive rock show to bash your brains out. When it comes to scuzzed-out garage rock, we trust the folks from Dig! Records in Leesburg to deliver the goods. This Saturday, they’ve got a full bill of fun at Black Iris that includes the debut of the Barbed Wires, whose Richmond punk pedigree includes Strike Anywhere, Sick Bags, Pink Razors, as well as locals…
An in-depth interview with Adrian Belew, guitar wizard and sideman to the stars. Adrian Belew’s career in music seems like some Hollywood-styled fable, the story of a Zelig-like character who comes from nowhere to influence everything … and yet remains largely unknown to the general public. “From the time I was young, I had an interest in both pop and the avant-garde,” says the guitarist/producer/songwriter/vocalist. “I always liked interesting movie scores and avant-garde percussion music, but at the same time, I was in love with the Beatles and the Kinks. I like catchy, singable songs that have something interesting musically…
A look at the influx of new restaurants that have swept through the high-rent corridor of Libbie and Grove Avenues. For much of 2020, the dining options in the previously hopping, high-rent corridor of Libbie and Grove Avenues seemed to be shrinking as fast as the economy as a whole. Establishments that had been active anchors of the neighborhood at one time – Starbucks on Grove, Sweet Frog on Libbie, and Cafe Caturra on Grove- were all shuttered within the span of a year. While the dark days of lockdown dragged on and storefronts sat empty, local residents waited hopefully…
A non-traditional love triangle, “Both Sides of the Blade” is a return to form for French auteur Claire Denis. Though I love many Claire Denis movies, it occurred to me while watching “Both Sides of the Blade” that I don’t remember them specifically. I can barely tell you what “Trouble Every Day,” “35 Shots of Rum,” “Bastards,” and “Let the Sunshine In” are about in a narrative sense. However, I can recall images, performances, and an ecstatic tone in which despair and rapture are heightened, conjoined, and imbued with ordinary realistic qualities all at once. Music and movies are often…