Buy Less, See More, Eat Anything

All I'm shooting for is to be a better person. That's all.

But I'm a lousy consumer, I've got no faith and I say yes to blood.

So, yea, it was just another Friday night.

First up was the opening of Brian Ulrich's shows, "Copia" and "Closeout" at the mobbed Anderson Gallery.

(sniff) Wasn't it just a few weeks ago when we were all reveling in unlimited parking and the absence of students when, wham, bam, thank you ma'am, they're back and looking earnest and trying to understand photographs from the mid-20th century?

The show was a fascinating look at our culture of consumerism, from surreptitious photos taken in big box stores to posed thrift stores shots to vintage photographs of people during the Great Prosperity.

While the photographs taken since 9/11 had an uneasy familiarity, not to mention over-saturated colors, the pre-1970 black and white photos had a dense sense of texture and tone that gave them a rich look no longer attainable with a digital camera.

And while the show raises all sorts of questions about how we buy and why, I can rest assured that my infrequent trips to the thrift store have little in common with the desire to own more of the latest and greatest.

From the VCU campus, it was but a short trip to exchange the artsy student crowd for the rabid theater crowd for the Acts of Faith Festival preview.

Walking into the November Theater, a concession stand host called out that the orchestra seating was full, so to head upstairs to the balcony.

Once comfortably ensconced in the front row of said balcony, a look down confirmed that there were still plenty of available seats downstairs.

The couple who sat down next to me mentioned the same thing.

Then he said, "I'm not sure I've been here since I saw John McCutcheon here 25 years ago."

Well, my dear sir, then you aren't getting out enough.

The Reverend Alex Evans began the evening by welcoming us to the 9th year of the Acts of Faith Festival and then doing a roll call of all the church groups represented tonight.

Each one clapped and hooted to show their presence, but since he didn't call out a category for "heathen," i had no opportunity to clap or hoot.

Let's not leave out the faithless, Reverend.

We have lack of faith and surely that's part of the festival, too.

From there, we were off and running with a preview of the 18 plays that will comprise the festival.

Some had casts to do a scene (Henley Street's "Faith Healer"), some had films or stills because the show was already in production tonight (Virginia Rep's Children Theater's "Magic Flute) and some had key people talking about the play-to-come concerning bright young things (Noel Coward's "Hay Fever").

A couple had full musical numbers (Hanover Tavern and "Breast in Show"), one taught us an Arabic greeting (For Our Children Productions), and one began with the reliably amusing Evan Nasteff dressed circa 1984 as an announcer (Cadence's "Sons of the Prophet").

Not surprisingly, the announcement and arrival of Carol Piersol (formerly of the beleaguered Firehouse Theater Company) got a standing ovation from the theater-savvy in the room.

The little company that could (TheaterLab) did a rousing scene from "Riding the Bull," with two Ghostlight Afterparty regulars, Deejay Gray and Maggie Boop.

Richmond Shakespeare performed an act of faith when they had an actor do a monologue from "The Tempest" when rehearsals don't even start until next week.

It was a pleasant surprise to learn that Friends of Dogwood Dell are now doing a winter season and the talented Todd Schall-Vass was part of the cast for "ECCE."

Richmond Triangle Players had one of the best lines ("The 1970s have a great deal to answer for") and the always-hilarious Chris Hester as a manchild in porcupine-land.

All in all, it was a satisfying look at the plays that will provide the community talkbacks about all kinds of issues of faith for the next couple of months.

As someone pointed out, national theater performance groups are looking at our model of how the faith and theater communities can work together annually to engage the community in meaningful conversation about important issues.

So, yea, we're pretty cool. Even the heathen part of the audience, I might add.

But here's the dilemma.

Say we've evolved to where Richmond has a vibrant scene, where on any given Friday night, a person can go to a compelling art opening followed by a theater preview and when she walks out at 10:15, she's yet to have dinner.

Where in this happening city can a person go have something more than bar food, something as interesting as the art and theater she's seen tonight?

This person decided on Belmont Food Shop, knowing that they have a late night cook's menu that offers no choices and impressive offerings.

I slid in next to a couple discussing music with a musician next to them and was immediately at home.

The  wine list yielded up Negroamaro Corte Salice Salentino Riserva, which the barkeep promised would deliver "black and bitter," as fitting a match for whatever was going to come out on the cook's plate as I could hope for.

Meanwhile, the pleasantly chatty couple ("You look familiar," she said, leaning in. "Are you a singer?" Ha! It is to laugh) next to me were sharing desserts and ordering after-dinner drinks and coffee.

The bartender made up a drink to accompany her French silk pie and after one taste of the amaretto/elderflower/bubbly concoction, she noted, "Well, that'll make me a better person."

What more could a person ask of a drink?

My cook's plate arrived and it was magnificent: chicken leg confit with frisee, radishes with butter, sliced lamb heart with pickled okra and pickled onion and blood sausage cake with a fried quail egg atop it. Oh, yes, and wedges of bread.

There may be people who would turn up their nose at this array of offbeat and offal, but I was thrilled and dove in like I hadn't eaten since afternoon (I hadn't).

I think it's brilliant for Belmont to offer a safe menu for evening dining and to pull out the interesting stuff for late night adventurous types.

Hell, I don't even care what's on the plate because the kitchen is so adept at deciding what to offer.

My bar companions asked me where I liked to go for music, acting like they'd hit the jackpot when I began over-sharing my favorite haunts and why.

More black and bitter followed to accompany a chocolate truffle and some candied orange peel, the latest sweet offerings from a kitchen that always seems to be trying something new.

Sitting there finishing my Italian wine, listening to music from the '20s, with the bartender singing along to "Ain't Misbehaving," the server and I got in a discussion of the pleasures of green Chartreuse.

I told her of an impossibly hot, humid summer night on nearby Floyd Avenue with a a handful of overheated friends and a bottle of Chartreuse that was still memorable fifteen years later.

"Wow, yea, I'll have to try that," she said, clearly intrigued by my story of misbehaving, no ain't about it.

It should make her a better person. Or, at the very least, a heathen.

Faithfully Yours in Fantasy

Faith can mean so many things.

I used to consider it a supreme act of faith that my 90 plus year old neighbor planted bulbs every Fall, fully expecting that she'd see them bloom come Spring.

Once you've had your heart broken, certainly falling in love again is an act of faith and people do that all the time.

It's that range of definitions of faith that make up the fifteen productions in this year's Acts of Faith Festival, which previewed tonight at the Empire Theater, right here in lovely downtown J-Ward.

Some choices are obvious, like "God of Carnage" or "Jewtopia" while some require a closer look to figure out the faith connection.

"Always...Patsy Cline"? Er...? "Ain't Misbehaving"? Um...? Okay, "The Tragedy of Macbeth," sorta, kinda.

Tonight's preview offered brief snippets of all the plays, hopefully whetting the audience's appetite for seeing the full productions.

The brief scene from Henley Street's "Lord of the Flies" reminded me how unsettling that book had been back when I read it in school.

"Shakespeare and Galileo," which I actually saw when it was first produced at the Carpenter Science Theater, imagines that Shakespeare went to Italy and met the great scientist.

This one was obvious. Galileo's description of the moon was the perfect melding of art and science, aka a higher power.

There were plenty of humorous moments, too.

We were told by the director of the Seminary Shoestring Players from Baptist Theological Seminary that he'd started the group because, "I thought it was a good thing for students going into the ministry to learn how to act."

Major laughter greeted that remark.

Likewise there was tittering for Cadence Theater Company's scene from "August: Osage County" where the woman says, "Men always say crap like that, as if the past and future don't exist."

You guys know better, right?

Despite most people probably not even noticing, one moment that brought a smile to my face was during the Patsy Cline song, "Walking After Midnight."

Instead of a band, she had a pianist accompanying her tonight and for sheet music, he was using an iPad.

That's right, touching the screen periodically to go to the next page of music to play a song from the fifties.

He must have had faith that technology wouldn't fail him in the midst of the performance.

And while I'm a card-carrying heathen, one thing I appreciate about the Acts of Faith Festival is that they have talkbacks for every play, inviting audience members to share their take on the issues presented in the plays.

So it's safe to say that once the festival begins, I'll catch a few of the plays and maybe even share my opinion with a roomful of strangers.

I moved from faith to fantasy by going to Eric Schindler Gallery for the opening of Lily Lamberta's new show "Pageant Style Puppetry and Folk Art."

Lily is the brains and talent behind All the Saints Theater Company and the fantastical puppets and masks used in the Annual Halloween and May Day Parades, two events I love participating in.

Her fanciful mounted heads look down from walls oozing personality like no actual stuffed animal ever could.

"Grandma Forest" had lace eyebrows."Watchman of the Woods" had a burgundy velvet head wrap with tassel.

"Winter White Caribou," the piece I coveted, was extravagantly feminine, pink, lacy and with delicate twig antlers.

From the front brightly lit gallery room to the second room represented a colossal shift in mood.

In that space, Lily had crafted a luminous shrine to her parade works. This, I knew, was Lily's world.

Enormous puppets, heads, hands and skulls hung from the walls with fairy lights strewn around them.

Familiar faces from past parades looked down, including George Washington, whom I remembered from the Founding Fathers-themed parade.

It was here I found the artist herself, dressed in a short black taffeta prom dress and cowboy boots, looking like she was having the time of her life among the capacity crowd.

But she didn't seem in the least surprised about all the people raving about her work, snapping photos of it or that she'd already sold three pieces.

And why should she? As far as I can tell, being an artist is a full-time act of faith.

Easy as 1,2,3

I teared up over an imaginary beagle, I laughed my ass off as a friend shared his early dating adventures on stage and I did my best to keep up as a trombonist played both the melody and bass line concurrently. It was a really fun evening.

Beginning at the Empire Theater for the Acts of Faith Theatre Festival Preview, I snagged an aisle seat in a rapidly-filling theater.

The festival is a collaborative effort between the faith and theater communities and even a heathen like me usually finds productions worth checking out at the preview.

Not all the plays done during the festival are overtly religious (Romeo and Juliet) while some clearly have that bent (Godspell). The brief scenes we saw tonight gave a peek into what can be expected from this year's offerings.

Swift Creek Mill Theater is doing Once on This Island, which the emcee noted she had once performed in as part of an all-white Canadian cast. "Hey, we work with what we have up there."

Richmond Triangle Players are doing This Beautiful City, a play about an evangelical group that explores the separation of church and state, a subject on which I feel strongly.

Firehouse Theater is doing Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead about the Peanuts gang a few years on. The scene we saw involved CB discovering that Snoopy has become rabid and eaten Woodstock, an indication that he has to have his old beagle put down.

I got way more emotional than I should have when CB said that he just knew when Snoopy "didn't come bounding out of his red doghouse" that things were bad. Don't remind me.

Some moments were unintentionally comedic, like when the lead actor of The Choices of a Traveler walked on stage, and a gleeful voice in the audience squealed "Daddy!" to the delight of the crowd.

All in all, the festival looks to be presenting some provocative theater this spring and all the productions will offer an audience discussion after one of the performances. I, for one, like to talk back after seeing a play.

Conveniently, my second stop was just around the corner form the Empire and as I rounded the corner, I ran into friends leaving Comfort for the same show ("Look at you, switching those hips," I was told. No, I'm just walking fast because it's fricking freezing out here).

Gallery 5 was hosting the Comedy Coalition's Richmond Famous event. This is an evening where a local personality shares some true stories from their life and then the improv group goes for the soft underbelly of the story and improvises with scenes and characters stolen from the guest's stories.

Tonight's victim/guest was Kevin Clay, the tireless guy behind the GayRVA website and events and also a friend of mine. Kevin had bravely brought his college dating journal to share with the audience and it was a touchingly hilarious.

He told of trying to impress a date with a meticulously-assembled Easter basket, only to discover that the guy was Jewish. Oops.

He planned to reveal his heart's desire to another crush on top of the Empire State Building and when that didn't work out, he made a flow chart in his journal explaining why not.

You can imagine what ripe material this was for the lightening quick improvisational skills of RCC; two of them denied their love to each other using not only flow charts, but Venn diagrams, bar graphs and all kinds of geeky visual aids while the audience roared.

It was especially fun because I was in the front row, as were Kevin's boyfriend and best friend, both of whom laughed the loudest at Kevin's tales of being a 12-year old girl in a college guy's body.

By the time the comedy was over, I was starving and music-starved, so I went to Sprout to satisfy both needs. I love how they continue to keep the kitchen open for show-goers.

There was no way I was passing up the Blue Point oyster and mushroom quiche over mixed local greens with a balsamic reduction, a new item on the menu.

Even the bartender looked at it and said, "I haven't had that but it looks really, really good." It was and the peppery greens and dense, sweet balsamic were a nice contrast to the rich creaminess of the quiche.

I ran into a couple of musician friends (Sprout's shows are always full of them), providing the resources to answer any musical questions I might have during the evening, not to mention satisfying my conversational needs.

Tonight's show was billed as dueling soloists and performing first was Bryan Hooten (No BS Brass band, Ombak, Fight the Big Bull) on trombone and and then Chris Farmer on drums (with keyboards and loop), with a vague promise of something collaborative after that.

Bryan worked hard tonight, getting red-faced and sweaty and playing so fast and hard that you could hear the spit collecting in his instrument. Periodically he spit it out because he didn't have time to swallow it.

He improvised to a couple of pieces, did a most creative version of Ellington's "In a Sentimental Mood" and tore it up with a take on Herbie Hancock's "Chameleon."

Mid-song, I looked over at my multi-instrumentalist friend (who plays sax) to find him laughing. "I can't believe he's playing he melody and the bass line at the same time," he said by way of explaining his chuckling. It was quite a unique sound, that's for sure.

Between sets I got a piece of chocolate truffle cake and chatted with my friends. They were both getting antsy waiting to hear Chris do his magic on the drums.

And he was impressive, wrapping energetic drumming around those robot keys of his. My drummer friend told me that Chris is a big Brian Eno fan and I could almost hear that.

He also said he's a pocket rhythm drummer as if I understood that, but there wasn't time to have it explained during the performance, so that'll be another of my dumb non-musician questions next time we talk.

The crowd was full of serious head-bobbing Farmer lovers, including one annoying and tall guy who positioned himself in the very front, blocking everyone's view and taking endless pictures ("He's my main man!").

At one point, he even stepped up on the stage and then did a "stage dive," jumping five inches to the floor and bumping into people. Another oldster kept yelling for the Kinks. Spare me, both of you.

After the final collaboration with Bryan augmented by a friend of Chris' named Clint on keys and knob-turning, I went to pay my bill (the bartender: "I'm going to try that oyster quiche you had!" You should do that, my friend). Another excellent show and meal at Sprout.

I ran into one of the guys from Fight the Big Bull at the bar and we fell into a discussion of Keith Richards' autobiography (which he's reading and I've read excerpts from) and the British emphasis on the blues.

He was particularly disgusted that a much younger fellow sax player who had just left had confused Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. "But he's only 24, so what does he know?" Unlike me, he probably knows what pocket rhythm drumming is.

In my defense, though, I've never once confused Zeppelin and Floyd. Or, like the guy in tonight's crowd who compared a piece to Emerson, Lake and Palmer and then corrected himself to say Radiohead, confused those two.

So I've got that going for me. Which begs the question, is there anyone out there who will think that's enough?

Of course there is.