Anna (Emma) and Rishan (Knightley) stopped by to chat about Virginia Stage Company’s witty, romantic, and delightfully chaotic production of Kate Hamill’s Emma. Between laughs and Regency-level banter, they shared what it’s like to bring Jane Austen’s most opinionated heroine and her ever-patient sparring partner to life on stage.
In the late evening of May 2, 2025, Virginia
Stage Company received word that the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) was withdrawing a $15,000 grant that had been awarded to us to support performances of the mental health-focused play, Every Brilliant Thing, for high school audiences. The NEA’s email explained that our program does not align with new funding priorities, intended to “reflect the nation's rich artistic heritage and creativity as prioritized by the President.”
By Jerome Langston
“Every Brilliant Thing is a play that I have seen more often than any other play that I’ve directed,” says Tom Quaintance, the Producing Artistic Director of Virginia Stage Company, during a recent phone chat earlier this week. It’s quite the striking statement from this long-time AD and theatre director, who has obviously seen a whole lot of shows during his decades long career. Tom led VSC’s 2022 production of Every Brilliant Thing, which closed out season 43. Now it’s bringing season 46 to a fitting close, with a short run production on stage at the Wells, that also celebrates its successful touring production — a show that has impacted thousands of people with its over 70 performances.
Contrary to some who complain that theater has gotten too political (theater, of course, has always been political), Virginia Stage Company‘s “Little Shop of Horrors” is merely, in the words of director Tom Quaintance, an innocent “horror comedy rock musical” designed to lull audiences into a plant-like stupor …
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