PERFORMING ARTS




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Writer’s Block | Poems by Anna Leonard

A Sunday series from RVA Magazine featuring writers from Richmond and VirginiaWriter’s Block is RVA Magazine’s Sunday series highlighting contemporary writers working in Richmond and across the Commonwealth. Each week, we feature original poems, short stories, or...

Waitress is the Show for Anyone Who has Ever Worked a Double

A woman works in a diner. The kind with refills, regulars, and fluorescent lights that never quite turn off. She’s married to a man who doesn’t deserve her. She bakes pies that are better than most people deserve. And she wants out. That’s Waitress, more or less....

Why Norfolk’s NEON District Works—and What Richmond Can Learn

In 2013, a two-day event transformed a neglected stretch of Norfolk, Virginia, into a pop-up arts district. It wasn’t a city plan—it was a vision. Volunteers opened temporary galleries in boarded-up storefronts. Food trucks rolled in. Sidewalks were painted with...

Waynesboro Wakes up: What Happens When a Town Believes Again

There’s nothing quite like being in the wilds of Virginia. Like Johnny Cash said, “I’ve been everywhere, man” — but there’s a particular kind of comfort I only feel when I’m traveling within the Commonwealth. And it doesn’t get much more Virginia than heading up into...

Review | ‘SMOKE’ at Firehouse, Fire in my Belly.

Once again, a trip to the Firehouse Theatre has found a way to send me home with a boiling pit of emotions churning in my gut and fiery rants on the tips of my fingers. Art is made to provoke, not to placate, and this is what I signed up for. SMOKE, the current...

Despite Dull Moments, As You Like It Delivers Gender Bending Fun

After torrential downpours cut a Friday performance short, Agecroft Hall witnessed some nearly perfect weather on Saturday and Sunday during its performances of Quill Theatre’s second summer production, As You Like It. A classic romantic comedy of the Bard, As You Like It offers a commentary on the rigidity of gender and love through the mode of...

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West Side Story is a Triple Threat

Virginia Rep brought to life the memorable work of Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Arthur Laurents, and Jerome Robbins in the classic production of West Side Story. Direction by Nathaniel Shaw perfectly intertwined the many moving parts and production elements vital to a production like this. Shaw captured the energy, drive, and conflict....

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Review: Quill’s Romeo and Juliet

Part of the beauty of William Shakespeare’s work is how timeless it is. The seemingly unrealistic, dramatic, even chimerical stories with his colorful characters have been told for centuries, and yet offer lessons and hypothetical situations that could easily occur within our world. One of Shakespeare’s most beloved, and arguably overdone...

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‘Preludes’ Musical Premieres at Firehouse Theatre Wednesday

Firehouse Theatre's latest production of “Preludes” is a trippy musical fantasia that takes viewers on a journey through 19th Century Russian history to dive deep into the music and mind of suffering Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, and the three-year writer's block, hypnotherapy, and psychological collapse that befalls him after his...

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