Arts & Culture
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Miss Mia Mac Finds Her Voice in Charlotte’s Poetry Scene
As a rising presence in Charlotte’s poetry and DJ scenes, Mia McCullough has emerged from her chrysalis, using her voice to shape spaces, uplift others and transform her trials into triumph. Performing as Miss Mia Mac, McCullough has been testing the full wingspan of her creative voice for a full…
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‘Stick Fly’ Proves Its Sticking Power at the Old Barn
After they break out on Broadway, some plays only seem to become more relevant, profound and mature — if they manage to stick around. That was my experience in attending the opening night of Lydia R. Diamond’s Stick Fly at Theatre Charlotte, which runs through June 1 at the Queens…
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Mena Mark Hanna on the Changing Face of Spoleto Festival USA
Across the Carolinas, the season flips on Memorial Day in late May each year, signaling the start of summer. In Charlotte and Charleston, our respective tourist meccas, each city’s transformation can be marked by an annual event. In the Queen City, it’s all about Circle-K Speed Street and the Coca-Cola…
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Meck Dec 250 Exhibit Explores Nuanced History, Impact of Debated Document
If you hear cannons erupt in the Uptown area on Tuesday afternoon, a second revolution isn’t underway. The noise is coming from the official celebration of the Meck Dec 250, marking 250 years since the reported signing of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. Allegedly signed on May 20, 1775, predating…
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Novant Health Initiative to Capitalize on the Healing Power of the Arts
Pablo Picasso once said, “Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” One new local art exhibit, however, is challenging that very notion. In A Slice of Life: The Art of Everyday, local artists draw from the everyday moments and mementos that one may brush off as…
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‘…what the end will be’ Is Damningly Futuristic
It’s amazing how public sentiment outpaces settled American law on some issues — specifically in the evolution toward the approval of marijuana, abortion, gay marriage and assisted suicide. When Marsha Norman’s ‘Night, Mother premiered on Broadway in 1983, the concept of physician-assisted suicide hadn’t really evolved into a public issue.…
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Danny McBride’s Don Gato Tequila Hits Charlotte with Hometown Connection
In a video dropped on social media on May 5, actor, comedian and writer Danny McBride (The Righteous Gemstones) hammers away at a manual typewriter in a vast sun-dappled agave field. “Let’s be honest,” McBride intones in voiceover. “Cinco de Mayo is not about waiting two hours in line at…
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Get as Close as You Can to ‘She Kills Monsters’
While movies and TV serve as the hallowed afterlife for Marvel headliners and other superheroes, there are not many comic books that have been adapted into plays or musicals — save for that regrettable Spiderman the Musical fiasco. Video games often make it to the big screen, but never to…
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Perrine DeShield-Jenkins Highlights Black Dandyism at the Gantt
When Met Gala organizers announced the annual ball’s 2025 gala theme, Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, last fall, Perrine DeShield-Jenkins had one thought: Charlotte needs something like that. Wearing a navy tie with red flowers, a light blue button up with white pinstripes under a blazer, and dangling pearl earrings, DeShield-Jenkins,…
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‘Kimberly Akimbo’ Isn’t About Making Wishes
In Kimberly Akimbo, David Lindsay-Abaire’s upsized and upgraded musical version of his 2001 comedy, the perfection begins before the lights go down. We enter Knight Theater, where the Blumenthal production runs through April 27, and see a stage-filling projection of blue sky with white clouds punctuated by a telephone pole.…
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Local Glassworker Puts Passion Into His Pipes
Local glassworker Chris Cooley* apologized for the state of his work bench in Hot Glass Alley as I arrived for a visit on a recent Saturday morning. His studio space was littered with a chaotic amalgamation of spare glass rods, finished and unfinished projects, and tools that are unfamiliar to…
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The Comedy Club at Duckworth’s Fills a Gap in the Local Scene
While the announcement of a new comedy room at Duckworth’s Grill & Taphouse in January arrived without much hype or fanfare, the opening of The Comedy Club at Duckworth’s has been a compelling development for those in the city who are aware of just how starved we are for small…
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Local Production Company Pushing On After Costly Car Wreck
When a car crashed into Kat Martin’s home while she was hosting a Christmas party last December, it was a miracle no one got hurt. However, the loss suffered that night went far beyond the damage done to her home. As co-founder of Mixed Metaphors Productions, an experiential, multimedia theatre…
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‘Violet’ Crosses the Country in a Musical Filled with Blues and Gospel
There are apparently two schools of thought on how to portray a horrifically scarred woman onstage, as we’ve learned over the past month in Charlotte’s theatre scene. Back in late February, Carolina Actors Studio Theatre took the cinematic approach at the original Mint Museum on Randolph, painstakingly applying makeup to…
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Bechtler Exhibit Celebrates Multi-Faceted Career of Virginia Jaramillo
Throughout a career lasting nearly seven decades, visual artist Virginia Jaramillo has remained a pioneer. Among other accomplishments, Jaramillo was the first Mexican American woman to exhibit abstract paintings in a US museum and the only woman included in one of the first racially integrated art shows in America, the…
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Book Scoot Offers One-Stop Shop to Support Local Authors
The Greater Charlotte Annual Book Crawl kicked off on Apr. 1, spanning several Charlotte-area bookstores in a range of municipalities, even crossing state boundaries into South Carolina, with more than 20 indie bookstores offering unique experiences, exclusive promotions and a chance at a literary grand prize for folks who check…
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