Arts & Entertainment
Winners announced in fourteenth annual Artsies, with Swift Creek Mill and Virginia Rep sweeping gala
Swift Creek Mill and Virginia Rep swept the night, with 6 awards for “Murder for Two” and 5 for “Mamma Mia!”

The 14th Richmond Theatre Community Circle Awards (Artsies) (formerly, Richmond Theatre Critics Circle Awards) was back as an in-person black-tie event to recognize excellence in Richmond-area theater. The theme of this year’s event – “We’re Still Here” – speaks to the remarkable tenacity and resilience of the arts and arts organizations throughout the global COVID-19 pandemic.
Not only are the Artsies the community’s recognition of excellence in Richmond-area theater, but they are the primary fundraising event for the Theatre Artist Fund of Greater Richmond (Fund). The Fund provides emergency financial assistance to theater artists who have experienced an exceptional financial need related to a specific crisis beyond their control. Since its inception, the Artsies have raised $89,446.24 for the Fund, which has written 21 grants totaling $30,468 for artists in need.
Despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Richmond-area professional theaters staged a number of remarkable productions – and audiences turned out to see them. Swift Creek Mill Theatre came away with an impressive seven wins, including six for its production of “Murder for Two,” which was also the production that won the most Artsies. The production captured the award for Best Musical and both awards in the new Best Lead Performance in a Musical category, which went to Emily Berg-Poff Dandridge and Mark Schenfisch. Anne Michelle Forbes also earned an award for Best Supporting Performance in a Musical for her performance in “Winter Wonderettes.”
Virginia Repertory Theatre (Virginia Rep) took away ten Artsies, most of them for its production of “Mamma Mia!”. “Mamma Mia!” received five awards, including Best Supporting Performance in a Musical, which went to Grey Garrett. The show also picked up awards for Best Choreography for Ashleigh King; Outstanding Achievement in Costume Design in a Musical for Sue Griffin’s and Marcia Miller Hailey’s costumes; Outstanding Achievement in Set Design in a Musical for Josafath Reynoso’s set; and Outstanding Achievement in Sound Design in a Musical for Jacob Mishler’s sound. Two Artsies went to Virginia Rep partner Cadence Theatre, whose cast won the Ernie McClintock Best Acting Ensemble Award for their performance in “Small Mouth Sounds,” which was also honored for Outstanding Achievement in Sound Design in a Play for Joey Luck’s sound. All three awards for Best Supporting Performance in a Play went to Virginia Rep: one to Laine Satterfield for her performance in “Pipeline,” one to Catherine Schaffner for her role in “A Doll’s House, Part 2,” and one to Joy Williams for her work in “Barefoot in the Park.”
All three of Richmond Triangle Players’ awards recognized its production of “Sugar in Our Wounds,” including Best Play, Outstanding Achievement in Lighting Design in a Play for Steven Koehler’s lighting, and Outstanding Achievement in Set Design in a Play for William Luther’s set.
Firehouse Theatre’s production of “The Barber of Moville” was honored as Outstanding Original Work. Firehouse also took away awards for Best Lead Performance in a Play for Jamar Jones’ performance in “Fires in the Mirror” and Outstanding Achievement in Costume Design in a play for Margarette Joyner’s costumes for the same show.
The other award for Best Lead Performance in a Play went to Alec Beard for his performance in Quill’s one-man show, “An Iliad.” Although two theatre companies did not survive the pandemic, they each won an award. The Illuminated Stage Theatre Company was honored with Best Direction of a Play for Julie Fulcher-Davis’ work on “Every Brilliant Thing.” Mikayla LaShae Bartholomew was recognized for Breakout Performance for her role in TheatreLAB’s “The Niceties.”
“’I’ve come through the fire. I’ve come through the flood. I’ve made it through, and so have you.’ The words of this old spiritual could have been written to describe the resilience of the Richmond theatre community,” said Julinda Lewis, RTCC President. “We have been through a lot these past two years. We’ve taken some blows, but we’re still here, standing strong, together.”
Best Musical
“Murder for Two”
Swift Creek Mill Theatre
Best Direction, Musical
Tom Width
“Murder for Two”
Best Lead Performance – Musical
Emily Berg-Poff Dandridge
“Murder for Two”
Best Lead Performance – Musical
Mark Schenfisch
“Murder for Two”
Best Supporting Performance – Musical
Anne Michelle Forbes
“Winter Wonderettes”
Best Supporting Performance – Musical
Grey Garrett
“Mamma Mia!”
Best Musical Direction
Mark Schenfisch
“Murder for Two”
Best Choreography
Ashleigh King
“Mamma Mia!”
Outstanding Achievement in Costume Design, Musical
Sue Griffin and Marcia Miller Hailey
“Mamma Mia!”
Outstanding Achievement in Lighting Design, Musical
Joe Doran
“Murder for Two”
Outstanding Achievement in Set Design, Musical
Josafath Reynoso
“Mamma Mia!”
Outstanding Achievement in Sound Design, Musical
Jacob Mishler
“Mamma Mia!”
Best Play
“Sugar in Our Wounds”
Richmond Triangle Players
Best Direction, Play
Julie Fulcher-Davis
“Every Brilliant Thing”
Best Lead Performance, Play
Alec Beard
“An Iliad”
Best Lead Performance, Play
Jamar Jones
“Fires in the Mirror”
Best Supporting Performance, Play
Laine Satterfield
“Pipeline”
Best Supporting Performance, Play
Catherine Schaffner
“A Doll’s House, Part 2”
Outstanding Achievement in Costume Design, Play
Margarette Joyner
“Fires in the Mirror”
Outstanding Achievement in Lighting Design, Play
Steven Koehler
“Sugar in Our Wounds”
Outstanding Achievement in Set Design, Play
William Luther
“Sugar in Our Wounds”
Outstanding Achievement in Sound Design, Play
Joey Luck
“Small Mouth Sounds”
2022 Ernie McClintock Best Acting Ensemble Award
The cast members of the Cadence Theatre, in partnership with Virginia Repertory Theatre, production of “Small Mouth Sounds” are honored for their notable performance as a cohesive and compelling ensemble:
Larry Cook
Marisa Guida
Jenny Hundley
Lauren Leinhaas-Cook
Maura Mazurowski
Jim Morgan
Adam Valentine
Breakout Performance
Mikayla LaShae Bartholomew
“The Niceties”
Outstanding Original Work
“The Barber of Moville”
Firehouse Theatre

Arts & Entertainment
12th annual Richmond Bluegrass Jam set for April 22nd benefitting military veterans and families
The free, family-friendly event features 20 of the region’s best bluegrass and Americana bands playing on multiple stages for nine straight hours, all to raise money for military veterans and their families through two local organizations.

The Richmond Bluegrass Jam will return for its twelfth year on April 22, 2023, from 11:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., at American Legion Post 354, on the banks of the James River in Midlothian, Va. This is the second year the Jam is being held at the American Legion Post after a previous multi-year run at the Cultural Arts Center at Glen Allen.
The free, family-friendly event features 20 of the region’s best bluegrass and Americana bands playing on multiple stages for nine straight hours, all to raise money for military veterans and their families through two local organizations: the Richmond Fisher House, a home away from home for the families of veterans and active-duty soldiers recuperating at Richmond’s McGuire Veterans Medical Center; and Liberation Veteran Services, which provides housing and care for veterans in crisis.
Fans are strongly encouraged to make tax-deductible donations to the Richmond Fisher House and Liberation Veteran Services at the event or online at rvabluegrassjam.com. Over the past eleven years, the event has raised more than $204,000 for the families of military men and women.
The bands—all of which play at no charge in support of the Richmond Fisher House and Liberation Veteran Services—include Tara Mills Band, Cary Street Ramblers, Josh Grigsby and County Line, Cook County Bluegrass, Slack Family Bluegrass Band, and more.
The event also will feature local craft beverages and Richmond’s food trucks.
“We’re excited to bring the Richmond Bluegrass Jam back to American Legion Post 354 after a successful event last year,” says Tim Gundlach, president of RVA Bluegrass Jam, Inc., the event’s organizer. “This new location along the James River is not only inspiring, but also further connects the Jam with our military community. This year, we’re expanding our support of our military veterans and their families by raising money for both the Richmond Fisher House and Liberation Veteran Services. We’re proud to partner with these two extraordinary organizations.”
In addition to listening to the scheduled bands, attendees are encouraged to bring their own instruments. Several open jam areas will be available, as well as an instrument check station.
American Legion Post 354 is located in Midlothian, Va. Parking will be available at nearby James River High School, 3700 James River Rd., with free shuttles running throughout the day.
More information at rvabluegrassjam.com and on Facebook at facebook.com/rvabluegrassjam.
Arts & Entertainment
Husband-and-wife duo bringing new restaurant concept to former Mill on MacArthur space
The deal closed Monday for an undisclosed amount. Sperity Real Estate Ventures’ Nathan Hughes worked the deal.

From Richmond BizSense:
Barely a month after its closure, The Mill on MacArthur restaurant space in the Bellevue neighborhood is set to be reborn.
Husband-and-wife duo Rawleigh and Jaya Easley purchased The Mill’s lease at 4023 MacArthur Ave. and its equipment and are planning to open a new restaurant in its place called Neighbor.
The deal closed Monday for an undisclosed amount. Sperity Real Estate Ventures’ Nathan Hughes worked the deal.
Arts & Entertainment
Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU’s bevy of spring exhibitions run the gamut
An international group exhibition studying abstraction and a monumental new public artwork by Navine G. Dossos for ICA’s iconic facade kick off the 2023 spring season

The Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University (ICA at VCU) has announced its Spring 2023 season, featuring a group exhibition and corresponding public art installation, both organized by ICA Senior Curator and Director of Programs, Sarah Rifky, as well as hybrid performances as part of the Test Pattern series. Additionally, Misread Unread Read Reread Misread Unread Reread (MURRMUR), an ongoing research framework that opened in Fall 2022 with the self-publishing pavillion by Rafael Domenech, will continue through 2023 with further iterations and programs by artists and educators.
Installed across the ICA’s multiple galleries and spaces, So it appears, runs through July 16, 2023. The exhibition features nineteen artists from around the world whose works appear inscrutable at first glance—but upon closer examination, tangible, acutely urgent narratives begin to emerge. Grappling with the paradox of how to represent the unrepresentable, the collected artists have surfaced abstraction as a visual strategy—a tactic for encoding, encrypting, and indexing otherwise invisible realities and disasters, as well as speculative futures. Formal abstraction, color fields and conceptual minimalism act as repositories for stories of carcerality, injustice, enslavement, the invisibility of migrants, environmental racism, and sonic warfare, among other realities.
Though created at different times (from 2004 to the present) and in vastly disparate contexts across fourteen different countries, the works presented in So it appears reveal surprising affinities in their approaches, subtleties and associations. Seen together, they invite visitors to reflect on the interconnectedness of the manifold global crises.
Featured artists include Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Monira Al Qadiri, Alexander Apóstol, Navine G. Dossos, Torkwase Dyson, Basmah Felemban, Žilvinas Kempinas, Agnieszka Kurant, Dinh Q. Lê, Jeewi Lee, John Menick, Novo (Reynier Leyva Novo), Trevor Paglen, Walid Raad, Tomás Saraceno, Pak Sheung-Chuen, and Levester Williams. Tasmania-based artist Tricky Walsh and New York–based audio artist and producer Sharon Mashihi will also be in residence throughout the exhibition’s run and will produce new works to be presented on April 21st on the occasion of the ICA’s fifth anniversary.
Concurrently, artist Navine G. Dossos will present a public work, McLean (2023), on ICA at VCU’s iconic N. Belvidere facade, on view for one year, February 24, 2023 – January 7, 2024. For this visually spectacular work, the artist adapted one hundred gouache paintings she created between 2018 and 2020, each panel in response to a news article published in the wake of the heinous murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi—a resident of McLean, Virginia—in October 2019.
Through this series, Dossos has developed a lexicon of symbols that stand in for the absent picturing of the case. The work is rendered in Dossos’ double take on Islamic and geometric arts, yet instead of lines and shapes, Dossos composes her intricate work through graphic icons, a representation of the narrative thread, encompassing multiple forms of technology, different individuals, nation-states, law enforcement agencies and human rights organizations. McLean is developed from Dossos’ project No Such Organization (2020) and which will be shown as part of So it appears.
Continuing from the 2022 Fall season is Misread Unread Read Re-read Misread Unread Re-read (MURRMUR), a ten-month curatorial framework and publishing program committed to expanding how we think about exhibitions and what it means to read, publish and distribute art, books and ideas. Developed in conversation with participating artists and educators, MURRMUR seeks to break down, massage, map and circulate information through experiments, improvisations and alternative curriculums. MURRMUR is organized by Senior Curator and Director of Programs, Sarah Rifky, and Assistant Curator of Commerce and Publications, Egbert Vongmalaithong.
MURRMUR presents two new programs in April 2023 and one new installation of research, references and a materials library designed by Sam Taylor in February 2023, organized by Egbert Vongmalaithong, ICA Assistant Curator of Commerce and Publications. On view February 24–July 16, 2023, in the ICA Shop + Cafe, Taylor’s installation provides objects that can be activated with a tap of your phone to reveal media and texts, providing insight on MURRMUR and the upcoming iterations.
One of the new programs is between a book and a soft place, a new commission by new media artist and design educator nicole killian. Designed as a playful learning environment, visitors are invited into this play-space to consider various ways for language to be carried out, embodied, and “queered”: we wear the language, we dance the language and we hold it in our hands. An intervention on the ICA’s 2nd floor, between a book and a soft place, can be considered a study on killian’s research questions around queering design education.
MURRMUR also presents SIT(UATION), a mutable seating and display system by artist Riley Hooker in collaboration with architect Nick Meehan. The project grows from a desire to center the body in the act of reading and the structure can be understood as plasmatic—resisting fixed linearity and promoting intellectual promiscuity. The design pulls from 1960s radical architecture, post-modern seating design a-la Peter Opsvik and Terje Ekstrøm, educational methods developed for neurodivergent students, embodiment and mindfulness practices, and anarchic political theories. The research and process behind these programs will be presented in February 2023 and on view from April 21–July 16, 2023.
In September 2022, MURRMUR opened with The Medium is the Massage, a new commission by artist Rafael Domenech. Visitors to The Medium is the Massage can become authors, readers, editors, and publishers when they enter this continuously transforming publication-pavilion. The living space turns the art gallery from a site of passive reception into a site of active production, right up until it closes on July 16, 2023, when the public will be invited to take the project’s remains out of the gallery and into their homes.
TEST PATTERN
Curated by ICA Assistant Curator and Producer David Riley, Test Pattern is a hybrid performance series inspired by the legacy of visionary public-access TV programs and alternative video movements in the US. The series invites artists to turn the ICA auditorium into an experimental production studio for week-long residencies, during which they collaborate with members of the local community to create a live performance and internet broadcast. Launched in March 2022, past Test Pattern performers include DeForrest Brown Jr., madison moore, SHAWNÉ MICHAELAIN HOLLOWAY, Moor Mother, jaamil olawale kosoko, Kinlaw and Dorian Wood.
Test Pattern returns to the ICA auditorium on Friday, April 7, with a performance by vocalist, composer, and performance artist Holland Andrews. Their work focuses on the abstraction of operatic and extended-technique voice to build cathartic and dissonant soundscapes. Andrews arranges music for voice, clarinet and electronics and frequently highlights themes surrounding vulnerability and healing. In addition to creating solo work, Andrews develops and performs soundscapes for dance, theater and film. Their work has toured nationally and internationally with artists such as Bill T. Jones, Dorothee Munyaneza, Will Rawls and poet Demian Dinéyazhi.