“...call it a complex venture in meaningful theater. FUN HOME is a brave choice for the Virginia Stage Company. It puts daring back on the boards at the Wells Theatre... FUN HOME gets you to care about these ordinary people on the hunt for a genuine life and acceptance on a personal and social level. This musical production will inspire deep soul-searching. In some ways, it is the delayed start of the new theater season."
Preview of Fun Home on Coast Live. Director Jessica Holt and actress Caleigh Howell talk Fun Home, and give a live performance of “Ring of Keys” with Musical Director, Joanna Li.
When director Jessica Holt and Virginia Stage Company’s producing artistic director, Tom Quaintance, met in New York City last year to discuss the possibility of her directing Fun Home, the Tony Award-winning musical based upon Alison Bechdel’s highly acclaimed graphic memoir…
You can’t cross any intersection in downtown Norfolk this month and not see that A Christmas Carol and The Santaland Diaries are back at Virginia Stage Company at the Wells Theatre…
Tom Quaintance walked a visitor around the renovated Wells Theatre in downtown Norfolk with the pride of ownership. The Virginia Stage Company, which he leads as producing artistic director, actually rents the ornate show-place, a national historic landmark, for $1 a year from the city. But really, the Wells is the Virginia Stage Company and …
For the second consecutive year, Virginia Stage Company will present David Sedaris’ comedically brilliant essay turned one-act play The Santaland Diaries to give grownups — naughty or nice — additional cheer as a complement, or sorts, to Dickens family-friendly A Christmas Carol…
Last weekend, Virginia Stage Company opened its new, immersive production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town at the Wells Theatre. Our Town follows ordinary lives in a fictional town called Grover’s Corners in the early 20th century. The play within a play is a celebration of joys, pains, promises, and the human experience; it’s beloved as a standard of theater in American high schools, begging the question, “What will Virginia Stage do differently?”
Sandia Ahlers has spent much of her young professional life being Patsy Cline, and it’s easy for the actress to slip into the country music singer’s voice…
“She has so many hits,” says actress Sandia Ahlers with a laugh, referring to Patsy Cline, the music legend that she’s portraying in the musical play that opens the landmark 40th season of the Virginia Stage Company, Always…Patsy Cline. The actress is new to VSC, but is certainly not new to portraying Patsy, as she…
"We long for other worlds. For all our individual reasons, which are varied and true, we long to experience the elsewhere. Be it movies, books, tv, theatre, dance, or museums, we welcomingly fall into other places. These places can provide opposition or solidarity, but always stir empathy within. They may be wholly different or strikingly similar to our own worlds but we are never alone in these places to which we have escaped. We become invested in characters and viscerally respond to their triumphs and failures. By the very essence of the human psyche, we see ourselves in these stories regardless of place or status and Virginia Stage Company's recent production of Jane Austen's PRIDE AND PREJUDICE is proof of that."
“A Christmas Carol” is a story of redemption, and this year’s Virginia Stage Company production of the classic tale contains its own redemption story in the form of its Tiny Tim...
“...call it a complex venture in meaningful theater. FUN HOME is a brave choice for the Virginia Stage Company. It puts daring back on the boards at the Wells Theatre... FUN HOME gets you to care about these ordinary people on the hunt for a genuine life and acceptance on a personal and social level. This musical production will inspire deep soul-searching. In some ways, it is the delayed start of the new theater season."