Although Queen Elizabeth has been neatly reinstalled in Buckingham Palace after her recent visit to the former colonies, Western North Carolina still seems to have a case of royalty fever. For those looking for a reason to curtsey, the Teen, Miss and Mrs. North Carolina International Pageant takes the stage at Diana Wortham Theatre this […]

Alone on stage during Chesapeake, actor Charlie Flynn-McIver has a few questions to answer: Why is the National Endowment for the Arts the Right’s perennial whipping boy? Where do we go when we die? And more importantly, what do dogs really want? Dogged by the Right: In Chesapeake, a beleaguered performance artist struggles against a […]

Forget the cliché about recording artists who find inspiration after downing a bottle of Jim Beam and driving their Harley out the second-story window of a Beverly Hills mansion into the oversized swimming pool below. Laura Veirs uses a lot of oceanic imagery, but she keeps her head above water. Because singer/songwriter Laura Veirs isn’t […]

Every culture has its mythical (often religious) heroes and tales of quests, battles, immortality, death and redemption. For the Chinese, the main man is a monkey, variously referred to as Monkey, the Monkey God, Great Sage Equal to Heaven, or the Monkey King. Susan and Giles Collard have elected to use the latter in a […]

A Reluctant Endorsement When it comes to jam-band music, I’m pretty much a hater. There are exceptions, certainly, but on the whole I’d much rather spend an evening applying a Dremel tool to my molars than, say, listening to Phil & Friends. And yet, one of Asheville’s biggest and most important annual concerts—the Warren Haynes […]