The Byrd Theatre Archives

Blaze Foley: The Folk Legend of Country Music

Christopher Brown | October 25, 2019

Topics: Blaze, blaze foley, country, country music, ethan hawke, film, movies, music, sybil rosen, The Byrd Theatre, Todd Schall-Vess, townes van zandt, willie nelson

Before Ethan Hawke’s Blaze film was released, the name Blaze Foley was largely unknown. Hawke hopes to change that.

On Sunday, October 6, Ethan Hawke made a personal appearance at a movie screening at the Byrd Theatre. Hawke is famous for his decades-long career as an actor, and is currently in the Richmond area filming the upcoming Showtime limited series The Good Lord Bird. However, Hawke didn’t come to the Byrd to discuss any of that. Instead, he came to talk about Blaze Foley.

In 2017, Rolling Stone published an article titled “100 Greatest Country Artists of All Time.” On that list, artists ranged from all-time legends like Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, and Dolly Parton to more recent game-changers like Taylor Swift, Shania Twain, and Garth Brooks.

However, Blaze Foley’s name did not appear on that list. Despite his impact on several of the groundbreaking artists listed, Foley’s is a name lost to time. Born Michael David Fuller, Foley only released one album during his lifetime, though his songs were later recorded by Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Lyle Lovett, John Prine, and other well-known country artists.

Foley endured trials throughout his life. While pursuing his goal of becoming a famous musician, Foley faced polio, alcoholism and drug use, physical abuse, and a failed marriage. Ultimately, the success that Foley did obtain was short-lived. While trying to protect his friend, Concho January, Foley was shot and killed on January 31, 1989. He was 39 years old.

After his death, Foley’s legacy was initially told through those who knew him, including his wife, Sybil Rosen, and country artist Townes Van Zandt. Rosen would eventually write a memoir about the time she spent with Foley, Living in the Woods in a Tree: Remembering Blaze Foley. In the memoir, Rosen recounts the history of how the couple met, and the events leading up to their short-lived marriage.

During that time, Rosen became Foley’s muse for his songwriting, showcasing the good and bad of their relationship. Songs like the widely covered “If I Could Only Fly” and the hidden gem “I Should Have Been Home” detailed Foley’s struggle with alcoholism, drug use, and staying faithful while trying to become a successful musician.

When Rosen published her book in 2008, she couldn’t have foreseen that a decade later, her work would become the basis for a full-length feature film. Hawke, an Austin native, took an interest in Foley’s story, writing and directing a biopic based on the events described in Rosen’s book. It was that 2018 film, Blaze, that Hawke presented and discussed with the Byrd Theatre crowd earlier this month.

“It is about Blaze Foley, but it’s also about the intangibility of the unknown,” said Todd Schall-Vess, general manager of the Byrd Theatre, describing Hawke’s film. “The ‘Blaze here is not just Blaze Foley, it’s the ‘Blaze’ of fame, the ‘Blaze’ of the agony of not being recognized, the ‘Blaze’ of wanting so much for it to be just out of your reach.”

Blaze premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. The film stars Hawke’s friend and musician Ben Dickey as Foley, Arrested Development actress Alia Shawkat as Rosen, and musician Charlie Sexton as Townes Van Zandt. The movie also features cameos from Rosen, who played her own mother, Ethan Hawke as a radio host and country legend, and Kris Kristofferson as Foley’s father, Edwin Fuller. For Dickey, it was his first major acting role.

“The magic was Ben finding Blaze Foley,” Hawke said. “For his first [acting] job, he won ‘Best Actor’ at the Sundance Film Festival.”

As the director of Blaze, Hawke uses Foley’s music to tell his story. Right before his death, Foley had recorded a performance at the Austin Outhouse — later released as Live At The Austin Outhouse — which Hawke uses as a basis to begin the tale. There are also radio segments featuring Van Zandt, and one of Foley’s closest friends, Zee (Josh Hamilton), telling Foley’s story through their point of view.

While his life was cut short, Foley’s music and his legacy lived on. Merle Haggard covered “If I Could Only Fly” twice, first Willie Nelson on their 1987 collaborative album Seashores of Old Mexico, then again on his 2000 solo album, which was named after the song. Van Zandt wrote a song in Foley’s honor called “Blaze’s Blues” in 1990. Country artist Lucinda Williams even wrote a tribute song for Foley, titled “Drunken Angel,” for her 1998 album, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.

With Blaze, Hawke hopes to bring Foley to mainstream consciousness, taking him beyond the inner circle of country music legends who’ve kept his songs alive since he was killed 30 years ago. And the film is a great step in that direction, showing that Foley’s life embodied the true spirit of country music. Beyond today’s surface-level Nashville pop country, which focuses more on trucks and parties than any of the struggles that were traditionally found at the heart of the genre, Blaze depicts Foley in moments of sadness, anger, and frustration — the emotions that inspire some of the best country songs.

Hawke’s film does justice to Foley’s life and music, and helps to give this unknown country music legend some of the well-deserved recognition he never achieved during his lifetime.

If you missed the Blaze screening at The Byrd Theatre, the film is currently available on iTunes and Showtime’s streaming service.

Top Image via IFC Films

Alienation, Feminist Rage, and Vampires: A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night Comes to The Byrd

Chris Cassingham | October 17, 2019

Topics: A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, Ana Lili Amirpour, Aresh Marandi, Iranian films, Sheila Vand, The Byrd Theatre, vampire movies

Delving into the alienation of modern life, groundbreaking Iranian film A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night is so much more than just another vampire picture. It comes to The Byrd next week.

A melancholy romance draped in the atmosphere of 1950s noirs and 1960s spaghetti westerns, Ana Lili Amirpour’s 2014 directorial debut announced her as a powerful cinematic voice. From the moment Kiosk’s “Charkhesh E Pooch” starts playing, you’ll know that A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night isn’t going to unfold like anything else you will see during the Byrd Theatre’s Halloween-themed October lineup of programming. The third installment in their “Vampires” series, A Girl Walks Home is an engrossing tale of loneliness, revenge, and freedom.

A Girl Walks Home is a story about rage, framed by the extraction of oil, the struggles of the lower class, and the irresponsibility of government. Amirpour deftly distills these cumbersome issues to the small-scale exploits and excesses of men driven by their economic conditions and carnal desires. In the fictional Iranian locale of Bad City, people walk the streets, deal drugs, and get high under the silent, watchful eye of a lonely vampire, known only as The Girl. She rages against advantage, entitlement towards women, and, as evidenced by her encounter with a young boy she sees begging on the street, the promise that things will be this way forever. To The Girl (played by Sheila Vand), everyone in Bad City is out for themselves.

That is, until she meets Arash (Arash Marandi), a hardworking man who is also caring for his father Hossein (Marshall Manesh), who is addicted to heroin. The Girl first encounters Arash outside the home of Saeed (Dominic Rains), a drug dealer who’s previously stolen Arash’s car to in lieu of money Hossein owes him. When Arash first encounters the Girl, she has just finished feasting on Saeed’s blood. Their prolonged gaze betrays a mutual loneliness that only draws them closer together throughout the film.

When they find themselves together again, Arash is spiraling out of control like his junkie father before him, desperate for an escape from the never-ending cycle of drugs and addiction that plague Bad City. It’s a desperation reminiscent of James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause, though Arash’s emotional restraint while dealing with his father’s drug-deprived vitriol underlines a responsibility with which Jim Stark never had to contend.

The Girl also senses his desperation, which is why she invites him back to her home. Under the light of a disco ball and accompanied by the pulsating freedom of “Death” by The White Lies, their loneliness morphs into a silent but mutual understanding. This scene feels like something out of a summertime teen romance. You can imagine in any other film, Arash and The Girl would be holding hands, running down the street in slow motion as they look behind them at a life they will soon leave behind. In The Girl’s room, the music fills every corner, yet their embrace is intimate, tense, and cathartic; shaped by Amirpour’s gentle, genre-bending touch, it feels revolutionary.

A Girl Walks Home conjures comparisons to a range of films from the vampire genre, from Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive to Karyn Kusama’s cult classic Jennifer’s Body. It combines the former’s sense of longing in an unforgiving world and the bonds that hold its lonely people together, while sprinkling in the latter’s catharsis of female revenge. Even with these cues, though, Amirpour manages to create something wholly original. So many of the most important emotional beats are accomplished with longing stares, and the story is moved along not just by meditative shots and crisp black and white photography, but also through a soundtrack so eclectic and alive it stands as its own piece of art.

The Girl acts as a transgressive femme fatale, whose interactions with most men bring about their downfall. She is also a steely-eyed law-woman on the lookout for malefactors taking advantage of the little guy. Bad City is a lawless land, and it’s thanks to the diligence of The Girl that the filth lining its streets is swept away. But her chance encounter with Arash, and their subsequent time together, makes her realize that she can also escape the loneliness of Bad City. She doesn’t have to take on the heavy responsibility of ridding the world of evil men; it shouldn’t solely be hers to bear in the first place.

Films driven more by their style and atmosphere are hard to sink your teeth into, and characters that merely exist in a stylized world without a propulsive narrative pushing them forward are hard to relate to. That is why, even though A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night feels long, it doesn’t drag; it doesn’t do any of the work for you. Its greatest strength is that it is completely unencumbered by the so-called boundaries of its genre. It not only works well as a horror film, but also reaches beyond that category.

The very first frame of this film tells you it isn’t going to conform to your expectations. The experience of watching it is rewarding because, just like The Girl and Arash, it finds freedom outside the confines of its prescribed limits and revels in every second of it.

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night is playing at The Byrd Theatre on Monday, October 21 at 7:15 PM. Tickets are $6 and can be purchased in advance at The Byrd’s website.

Mongays Week Five: Pariah

Wyatt Gordon | July 1, 2019

Topics: Black Pride Month, Black Pride RVA, LGBTQ women of color, MonGays, Pariah, The Byrd Theatre

Every Monday throughout June, The Byrd Theatre celebrated Pride Month with #MonGays, a series spotlighting the LGBTQ community. This week, Black Pride RVA launches Black Pride Month with their selection of Pariah.

What do you do when your family doesn’t understand part of who you are? Even worse, what do you do if they disapprove? This is the challenge facing Alike, the young protagonist of Pariah, but these questions may have also been running through the minds of the founders of Black Pride RVA two years ago.

From the erasure of the black trans women that threw the first bricks at Stonewall to the alarmingly high rates of HIV infection among minority LGBTQ Americans, the existence of racism in the queer world is well documented. Black Pride RVA was founded as a protest, not against any group or organization in the Richmond scene (as some rumors have it), but rather as a positive protest, to celebrate the dual identities of queer people of color.

When Virginia Pride reached out to Black Pride RVA about sponsoring a week of MonGays — a special grand finale week in July: Black Pride Month — their leadership knew they “wanted to participate to increase our visibility and highlight the broader diversity of the LGBTQ community in Richmond.”

That same desire to shine a spotlight on the diversity of the queer community also led them to choose Pariah, a film that focuses on the struggle of a butch black girl to come to terms with her sexuality amidst her conservative family. “Our team was drawn by the story of a masculine-leaning female lead and her journey to acceptance,” Black Pride’s leadership stated. “We wanted a film that showcases LGBTQ women of color since their stories are not often told on the big screen, despite the fact women are more likely to identify as LGBTQ in the US.”

That lack of visibility makes it harder for others in the same situation as Alike to come out. A dearth of positive role models and stories is one of many theories mooted as to why queer people of color face higher levels of depression. The leaders of Black Pride RVA know the struggle all too well.

“Representation is important,” they stated. “Showing Pariah on the big screen helps to lift up the stories of queer women of color who make up the fabric of the Black LGBTQ community. We hope the audience will see the struggle to be yourself is difficult, and in the face of difficulty there is black joy, resilience, and acceptance.”

Black Pride RVA celebrated its inaugural festivities last year to help queer people of all colors in Richmond to overcome that struggle and move collectively towards the positive side of being LGBTQ. “Our work is all about lifting the unique voices and lived experiences of Black LGBTQ persons in the greater Richmond area,” they stated. “This is why we created Black Pride RVA weekend.”

Tonight’s screening of Pariah at the Byrd Theatre will offer the audience the chance to join Black Pride RVA in their celebration of our Commonwealth’s queer people of color. “Pariah highlights the power of voice, resilience, and acceptance. This is a movie Richmond needs to see.”

Pariah marks the fifth and final week of MonGays — a queer film series celebrating the LGBTQ+ community every Monday during Pride Month and the first week of Black Pride Month — tonight at 7pm at the Byrd Theatre. The 2nd annual Black Pride RVA weekend is July 18-21. Check out www.blackpriderva.com for details.

MonGays: Paris Is Burning

Wyatt Gordon | June 24, 2019

Topics: ball culture, health brigade, HIV/AIDS, Jennie Livingston, MonGays, Paris Is Burning, Pose, The Byrd Theatre, Vogue

Every Monday throughout June, The Byrd Theatre will celebrate Pride Month with #MonGays, a series spotlighting the LGBTQ community. This week, a film that should need no introduction: Paris Is Burning.

Do you wish Blanca Evangelista were your mother? Has Lil Papi become your latest crush? Is Pray Tell the person you aspire to be? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you’re certainly a fan of Pose. But how much do you know about the award-winning documentary that inspired it: Paris Is Burning?

This season of Pose, house mother Blanca becomes convinced that New York City’s underground Ballroom scene is about to go mainstream, thanks to Madonna’s hit single, “Vogue.” What she doesn’t know in the show is that it will take another three decades before ball culture truly approaches the realm of common knowledge and begins to accept the scene’s black, brown, and trans roots.

When Virginia Pride first approached Health Brigade about sponsoring week 4 of MonGays at the Byrd, Heather Turbyne-Pollard, the free clinic’s Director of Resources & Philanthropy, immediately knew which to choose. “NYC ball culture has been recently reintroduced to younger audiences in a major way, with Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk’s TV series, Pose,” Turbyne-Pollard stated. “This series has been groundbreaking for its inclusion of the largest transgender cast ever for a scripted series, and that’s pretty magical. Knowing this, we wanted to provide some exposure of where ball culture began, with Jennie Livingston’s cult classic documentary film, Paris Is Burning.”

The erasure of the black and brown individuals that created ballroom culture began as soon as the scene’s popular resonance began. Madonna’s hit song — inspired by the 1980s invention of voguing by queer people of color — ignores the dance’s actual creators, choosing instead to pay homage to white celebrities unrelated to ball culture, such as Gene Kelly and Ginger Rogers. Although director Jennie Livingston failed to pay her documentary’s participants as promised, her film at least re-centered the phenomenon on its actual progenitors.

Jamie Burch, Health Brigade’s Resource & Development Associate, sees tonight’s screening of Paris Is Burning as a chance to celebrate their organization’s long history of serving the LGBTQ community in Central Virginia. “The houses and families celebrated in Paris Is Burning remind us of the folks we’ve been serving in Richmond for almost 50 years,” said Burch.

Watching this season of Pose begin to grapple with the devastation HIV/AIDS wrought upon the queer community, and especially its people of color, has not been the revelation for Health Brigade’s staff that it has been for mainstream society. Back when it was the Fan Free Clinic, their staff knew the level of death and despair all too well.

“One of Health Brigade’s proudest moments in the 80s was our response to the AIDS pandemic, sending out care teams to support those living — and dying — with AIDS,” Burch explained. “Our volunteers warmly embraced those who had been abandoned by family, friends, the community and society. In the 90s, as HIV/AIDS became a manageable, chronic disease, we shifted our focus to HIV/AIDS education, prevention, testing and support services. We became known as ‘the’ place where you could obtain services and support if you were infected or affected by HIV/AIDS.”

Health Brigade hopes that by elevating Paris Is Burning to the big screen at the Byrd, they can help to memorialize that dark era and the struggles of those who lived through it, while also providing a night of hope and joy centered on the stories of queer people of color. “We love Paris Is Burning because, although many of the individuals featured in the film were navigating the complexities of AIDS, racism, poverty, violence, and homophobia, they managed to somehow band together to form an amazing outlet for celebrating their identities and supporting one another,” said Burch. “We think that’s something worth reminding folks of, especially today.”

“We love the idea of adding some extra celebration of Pride during June,” Burch continued. “MonGays is made from a few of our favorite things: our beloved LGBTQ+ community, neighboring nonprofits, and a local institution of Richmond culture: the Byrd Theatre.” Health Brigade hopes some of tonight’s attendees will turn out in their ball finest, whatever their chosen category may be.

Paris Is Burning marks the fourth and penultimate week of MonGays — a queer film series celebrating the LGBTQ community every Monday during Pride Month — tonight at 7pm at the Byrd Theatre.

Nightmare Van Brings Skateboard Carnage To The Big Screen

Oliver Mendoza | June 20, 2019

Topics: Bust Crew, Cory Bittle, Daniel Ravenal, gilbert crockett, Jon Rowe, Max Mattoon, Nightmare Van, Pat Burke, The Byrd Theatre, Ty Beall, Venue Skateboards, Will Rosenstock

Will Rosenstock, Bust Crew, and Venue Skateboards are bringing Richmond’s best skateboarders to the Byrd Theatre next Friday with Nightmare Van.

The crusty, gritty streets of Richmond are a haven for a familial group of skaters that seems to keep on growing. And on June 28, they’ll hit the big screen, as Nightmare Van, a video by Will Rosenstock, will premiere at the Byrd Theatre in Carytown.

Rosenstock recently had footage used as part of Quasi Skateboards’ Mother, a long-form promotional video featuring Gilbert Crockett, another Richmond local. Rosenstock has also filmed several videos for local skate shop Venue Skateboards, formerly known as Dominion. Nightmare Van exclusively features Bust Crew, a collective or “crew” of skaters in the Richmond area. It was produced in association with Venue, but created entirely by Rosenstock himself.

According to Rosenstock, Gilbert Crockett basically put Richmond on the map for the skate community. Crockett’s debut video appearance, which made up the opening segment in skate shoe company Fallen Footwear’s 2008 video Ride The Sky, prompted his return from Los Angeles to Richmond. Once back in Richmond, Crockett and Rosenstock linked up and began working together. Their friendship and collaboration has been consistent ever since.

*Maury Blankinship; Photo by Thomas Goldman*

Existing in a relatively small city, the Richmond skate scene is very tight-knit. Venue Skateboards-sponsored skaters like Gilbert Crockett and Daniel Ravenal, as well as Venue owner Maury Blankinship, all tend to be on the same page about skating. “We’re all really tight, we all go on trips — we’re basically like a family,” Blankinship said. “They do a lot of stuff for the shop for nothing; they help the shop out a lot.”

Since the internet became available on a widespread basis, many brick-and-mortar retail stores have been in decline, and skate shops are no exception. But Blankinship has taken matters into his own hands, and by doing so, has seen an increase in the profit margin compared to the previous years. “This year so far has been far better,” he said. “All of the sewing and screenprinting [that] I do personally saves a lot of money, and the profits are larger.”

According to Blankinship, Venue’s skateboarders are a big help; they ride Venue skateboards, spread the shop’s name and logo around, help with promotion, and never ask for discounts. Rosenstock helps Blankinship maintain Venue’s Instagram account to help out with their social media marketing. “I’m letting Will have the whole spotlight for this premiere, since he worked hard on the video,” Blankinship said. “Let that be his own thing.”

Daniel Ravenal is only 22, but has lived in Richmond all of his life, and grew up skating in the city. According to Ravenal, looking up to the older generation of skaters and shop-sponsored riders like Blankinship, Crockett, and Rosenstock paved the way for his progression. “Having Venue here, and that community here, and to be a part of that, definitely changes the way you look at everything,” Ravenal said. “Richmond has a really good skate scene for the size of the city, I think people do look at Richmond skateboarding and respect it.”

Ravenal is getting “flowed” product — given free goods in exchange for public endorsement — from Quasi Skateboards and Adidas, and is part of another Richmond skate crew called Inbred. According to Ravenal, Inbred grew from the younger generation of Richmond skateboarders, which he was part of. After recognition from Rosenstock and Venue rider Ty Beall, they all just became friends.

“I’m very grateful to be here and film with Will,” Ravenal said. “It is nice to get recognition from those videos, and he does a really good job with them.”

According to Rosenstock, moving out to L.A. some years ago along with Beall and fellow Venue rider Jon Rowe helped build the connections that would lay the foundation for Bust Crew and the Venue videos to come. “We would meet people and they would recognize Jon or Ty, and go ‘What are these Virginia kids doing out here?’” Rosenstock said.

In fact, it was Rowe who inspired Nightmare Van‘s name, according to Rosenstock. Rowe had purchased a minivan and loaded it up with all sorts of power tools, saws, and other bizarre tools. Rosenstock, Rowe, Beall, and another filmer, Max Mattoon, would seek out abandoned buildings, dingy alleys and rundown houses. The crew would get into “bad kid things,” Rosenstock said, breaking windows and exploring decayed ruins, giving themselves the name “Nightmare Crew.”

“Anything you see in a Jon Rowe part, you’ll quickly realize it’s not a spot — it’s some piece of shit he found that looks cool,” Rosenstock said. “He’s just trying to find the worst possible thing ever to skate.”

This leads Rowe to some well-guarded spots in particular, like the SunTrust Bank corporate office on East Main Street. It has the kinds of marble ledges and stair steps that skateboarders go crazy for, but it’s heavily patrolled by security, and skateboarders can rarely skate there for more than 10 minutes without being chased off or having the cops called on them. But that didn’t stop Rowe from getting footage there — a fact that Rosenstock particularly appreciates.

“There’s this one trick, in particular, we probably went back for, like, 10 times,” Rosenstock said. “It was so relieving when he finally got it, because it would be such a battle. But he’d immediately start going for it — no time to warm up.”

The scrappy aesthetic of the city’s pro skateboarders has made them yet another local culture experiencing consequences from gentrification. As Richmond expands and new construction sprouts up around the city, some regular skate spots get destroyed, and Rosenstock finds that not much good comes from the new construction that replaces it. The new buildings and fixtures are usually built with knobs — hard, bolted-on objects intended to stop skateboarders from skating obstacles.

“We’re not getting anything in return, and we’ve lost a lot of awesome spots over the last few years,” Rosenstock said. “The charm of Richmond, for us, is that everything is so crusty and rundown.”

According to Rosenstock, during the creation of Nightmare Van, he and the crew usually took trips on weekends to places like Baltimore, North Carolina or D.C., just to get out of Richmond and skate different spots for film purposes. Sometimes the trips were even longer than that. “We took a week and a half in St. Louis,” Rosenstock said. “We did an Atlanta trip for like a week. I didn’t get to go, but they still stacked a bunch of footage out there.”

Whereas recent videos filmed by Rosenstock typically featured the same lineup of local skaters — Gilbert Crockett, Daniel Ravenal, Jon Rowe — Nightmare Van will have a few skaters that are relatively new to the scene in Richmond. Cory Bittle, from the Virginia Beach area, will have his first video segment filmed with Rosenstock. Bittle’s approach to skateboarding impressed the director.

“He doesn’t want to skate unless he’s just pushing himself as hard as he can,” Rosenstock said. “He will find the perfect spot for himself to do that specific trick, and he’ll either do it, or get so broke off and work so hard for it, [he’ll] probably come back later.”

Pat Burke is a name that some in the skate community may remember from the 2009 $lave Skateboards video, Radio Television. Burke’s segment in that video featured him throwing himself down huge sets of stairs and over large gaps.

“Everybody’s got their thing, and Pat’s is just flying down huge stair sets,” Rosenstock said. “I’ve never really filmed somebody who’s that consistent at jumping down huge gaps and stair sets.”

After Radio Television, Burke seemingly became irrelevant to the skate scene for a decade. However, he recently moved to Richmond, and after filming a clip with Rosenstock, the two found some chemistry. Burke’s been skating in Richmond for a little over a year now.

“He is just a wild animal when it comes to skating, he’s almost too motivated,” Rosenstock said. “He will get, like, four clips in a day, and that’s not enough for him.”

Most of the skaters involved in the video work full-time jobs, some of them doing hard manual labor or holding down a nine-to-five. “They’ll still bust ass and put out amazing video footage, just because they love the shop and they love to skate,” Rosenstock said. He’s certain that the results of their commitment will impress all Nightmare Van viewers. “I think people will realize, the dudes that ride for Venue are on another level of loyalty.”

The video premiere for Nightmare Van will take place starting at 5 PM on Friday, June 28, at the Byrd Theatre, located at 2908 W Cary St. in Carytown. Admission is free, and Will Rosenstock will be there selling physical copies of the video for anyone who might want to keep it on repeat for days to come, properly appreciating all the blood, sweat, and time put into it.

Top Photo: Ty Beall, By Kevin O’Dell

MonGays Week Three: Saturday Church

GayRVA Staff | June 17, 2019

Topics: LGBTQ youth homelessness, MonGays, Saturday Church, Side By Side, Ted Lewis, The Byrd Theatre, va pride

Every Monday throughout June, The Byrd Theatre will celebrate Pride Month with #MonGays, a series spotlighting the LGBTQ community. This week, Saturday Church brings us an up-close look at the joys and struggles of LGBTQ youth.

Did you know that just 9% of young people identify as LGBTQ, yet queer kids account for roughly 40% of youth experiencing homelessness? Ted Lewis did. As the Executive Director of Side By Side (formerly known as ROSMY), Lewis is intimately aware of the challenges which face children who aren’t both straight and cisgender. Their experience working in queer inclusion stretches across a decade of professorial as well as administrative positions at UNC Charlotte and the University of Richmond before they finally landed at Side by Side three years ago.

Although public opinion towards the queer community has shifted drastically over the last several years, that doesn’t mean the LGBTQ community no longer faces persecution or prejudice. “With the tremendous progress our community has made, it can be difficult to remember that our LGBTQ+ youth still struggle with acceptance from their families, and sadly are often kicked out or separated from their family of origin,” saidd Lewis. Children represent an especially vulnerable population of queer individuals, as they lack the means to support themselves and are often still trying to figure out who they are.

When Virginia Pride first approached Lewis about sponsoring the third week of MonGays, Lewis realized a screening at the Byrd Theatre, Central Virginia’s premier destination for film, would “allow the audience to see inside a community or experience different from their own. Movies can help explain cultural differences, educate, and build empathy. We were excited to participate in MonGays, because it provides our community with a unique experience to better understand our youth and their needs.”

Saturday Church, a film by director Damon Cardasis, follows the tale of teenage Ulysses, a shy and effeminate boy, struggling with the responsibilities of being the “man of the house” after his father’s passing. Surrounded by his conservative family, Ulysses struggles with his gender identity, coping through his creation of a fantasy world filled with dance and music. After Ulysses meets a transgender woman and is brought to “Saturday Church,” a program for LGBTQ youth, his life becomes more joyful as well as complicated. He hides his love of voguing and the NYC ball scene from his family for as long as he can, until he’s forced to decide who he wants to be, even if that means risking his relationship with those he loves most.

“Side by Side was looking for a film that highlighted the work we do specifically around family rejection and experiences of housing instability, but we also wanted a film that was fun and filled with joy!” explained Lewis. “Saturday Church is a beautiful film that highlights both the struggles of coming out and facing rejection, as well as the joy we feel when we find communities of support. We wanted a film that highlighted this journey while also showcasing the beauty of someone coming into their authentic self.”

Ulysses’ story is all too representative of the journey many LGBTQ youth in Central Virginia are forced to undertake after they are kicked out of their family homes for who they are and/or who they love. Recently Side by Side, along with their partners at Nationz Foundation and the Virginia Anti-Violence Project, launched a new Host Homes Program to connect LGBTQ youth aged 18-25 who are experiencing homelessness with stable, safe, and affirming housing. “We work to ensure they have wrap around services and a community of support to get them to stability and a more permanent housing situation,” elaborated Lewis.

“One screening of an affirming film like Saturday Church won’t change the fact that queer youth are 120 percent more likely than their heterosexual/cisgender peers to experience homelessness, but it may be enough to inspire one family to take in a child,” added Wyatt Gordon, Creative Director of MonGays. “It may be enough to convince one kid that happy, stable homes are out there, or at least provide one evening during which they leave their worries behind, much like Ulysses does in the film.”

To Lewis, tonight’s screening of Saturday Church presents an opportunity to shift the way society thinks about protecting and caring for LGBTQ youth. “We hope the audience takes away that they play a key role helping our young people not only survive, but thrive,” they said. “Community care is what we need right now, and this film beautifully illustrates how community can come together to provide support, possibility, and love for our young people.”

Saturday Church will kick off the third week of MonGays — a queer film series celebrating the LGBTQ+ community every Monday during Pride Month — tonight at 7pm at the Byrd Theatre.