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Facing Time with Lynne Childress

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It seems to me like Lynne and I go back way further than we actually do. We got along so well when we did meet that when I tried to remember our meeting, I was off by a few years. Our story begins at the Folger Shakespeare Library where I was at first a teaching artist for their Shakespeare Steps Out in school residency program. I would eventually become the Elementary Education Coordinator running the aforementioned program. Lynne at that time came in approximately once a year to portray our Mistress of the Revels at the Annual Children’s Shakespeare Festival and worked as a teaching artist with our high school residency program, but had also been the EEC at the Folger prior to my predecessor’s tenure. This position actually cycled through four black women on the DC theatre scene at the time. One playwright who I’d worked with at the Smithsonian and who’s show I would later appear in under the direction of my good friend who would also later work with me at the Folger. Anothe
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An Hour with Adriana Green

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Hang in there with this one. I don’t know how to write about Adriana without going in deep. She is one of the fiercely brightest people I have ever known. Just talking to her makes me feel smarter, like honored that she considers me worthy of having discussion with.I say that with complete deference. I mean, I know I am pretty intelligent, but I don’t really feel smart enough to hold a scholarly conversation with her. Not really. But I am perfectly alright with that and hell yes I’ll engage every time, because I know I’m learning something. Like what in the hell is Afrofuturism? Striking is what comes to mind when I think of my first impression of Adriana. Striking, observant and present. Our first encounter was at a staff retreat when I first moved to Richmond and was a newly employed teaching artist with SPARC (School of the Performing Arts in the Richmond Community). We sat in the living room of a massively posh home off River Road in the West End surrounded by my other new co
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Coffee with Jessica Zweiman

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It's Been 20 Years! Ah, Jessica Zweiman. Jess Zweiman was the petite, platform mouse stomper boot wearing, rebel Jewish goddess of my dreams in college. I didn’t even know I’d dreamed of her, but there she was in all her glory as a member of the West Virginia University Theatre Department class of 1999. It is absolutely insane to me that it has been almost 20 years since we graduated. We both turned 40 recently. How in the hell did that happen? Mouse Stompin' Jess Jess at First Glance: The College Years My first remembrance of Jess is seeing her across a dark acting studio in the bowels of the CAC (short for Creative Arts Center, a building which resembled a giant toilet), looking fierce, probably lounging on a classmate, and intensely favoring Kirstie Alley. It was her eyes. They held some type of wisdom, and wit, and just straight up fierceness. When I found out she was from New York, I thought well damn, there you go . She looked like she had her shit together.
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Location: Richmond, VA, USA
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