Editor's Note: For more on the life and legacy of Sojourner Truth, read Christian Detres' companion essay HERE. This has been an inspirational season for Richmond’s homegrown theatre. We are following up the sold-out run of Witchduck with the mid-project musical...
This was the fourth year for the Disturbin’ the Peace Festival, making its return to Baltimore on February 1st. An all-day music festival organized by Flatspot Records, the lineup consisted of 13 bands that got the chance to be embraced by the Baltimore hardcore music scene. The sold-out event began around 2:30 p.m. and went off with almost no...
Walking through Frida: Beyond the Myth at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts doesn’t feel like attending a documentary screening — it feels like slipping into Frida’s world. It disorients you into her mind. You step through doorways that feel like mirrors, gaze through archways into rooms you haven’t reached yet, and find yourself caught in a web...
Tried to give this one a nice balance, something to cure it all. Get the rage out at a hardcore fest, slamming elbows and diving over the fence. Cry your heart out to some gritty country ballads. Dance away the cares with something a little more fun and light hearted. Got a show coming up? New single? Simply want someone to talk music? I am your...
In the Richmond of 2005, Teddy Blanks was everywhere—playing packed shows with Ross Harman as the pop duo The Gaskets, writing sharp film reviews and interviews for the early issues of RVA Magazine, and even acting in a short film that, for me, still holds personal weight. He brought with him the energy of a dance party, a quick mind, great...
After a night spent on the coziest sofa in all of Appalachia, we headed up early to the top of a university parking deck, parked beneath a sign that read “No Parking / No Loitering,” and lined up the shot—my director and me, just the two of us that morning to grab a simple scene of my character looking off into the mountains, being sure to...
Richmond’s own Black VA Theatre Alliance brings this month’s second outing of a Dominique Morrisseau play to a local stage, following Firehouse Theatre’s excellent production of Detroit 67. Like Detroit 67, Sunset Baby explores the living room dramas that persist against the backdrop of social unrest, activism, and disenfranchisement. We are...
"A long, long time ago, I was in a Richmond, Virginia–based band called The Jefferson Plane Crash. We were writing an album, and our practice space was the old, infamous Compound. I distinctly remember walking into the restroom to hit the head, and I noticed a perfectly—vertically—placed magazine with artwork and imagery that just stood the fuck...
“Everything seemed the same, but it wasn’t. It was a nightmare.” By 1978, the American Dream was officially dead. The counterculture of the ’60s and early ’70s had been absorbed into the mainstream, packaged and sold through a matrix of unlimited consumerism and second-rate marketing. The Vietnam War ended disastrously. Nixon had just...
It’s a great week to be a Richmonder. I tried to cover a little bit of everything here—something to calm the storm, something to shake it up more—and as always, if you’ve got something, let me know. Got a show coming up? New single? Simply want someone to talk music? I am your guy at griffin@rvamag.com. The CameLTuesday, April 8th, 2025Teen...
