Jen Adams (Performer in The Maids and The Chairs. Shared work in The Magic of the Mundane)

Musical performance- Kadey Ballard at Petras but also Paramore at Spectrum :)
Best theatre- Hit the wall QC Concerts and A Dolls House Part Two
Art Event- Lady Fest Clt 2023 Goodyear Arts
Movie- Past Lives
Show- Fellow Travelers

Kadey Ballard (XO Director of Training)

Movie: Passages, at the Independent Picture House
Book: Molly, by Blake Butler
Theatre: Will You Miss Me, The Hinterlands
Album: Feel Good, Jaime Wyatt
Live Music: Jessica Lea Mayfield, Black Mountain NC
Dance: Motive Forces
Poetry: Reading by Xavia-Margrith Miles
Arts Event: Multiverse, Goodyear Arts Annual Fundraiser
Restaurant: Beef and Bottle

Laura Scott Cary (Performer: Permanence, Widdershins, The Watchers, The Chairs. Curator: Magic of the Mundane, Playwright: Shotgun!)

Art: glassrain by Rúrí at the National Gallery of Iceland
Book: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard or Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
Album: blondshell self-titled (but 1989 taylor’s version is close second)
Movie: bottoms!!!!
Podcast: who shat on the floor at my wedding?
Theatre: Will You Miss Me? (The Hinterlands), The Effect by Lucy Prebble (National Theatre London)
Restaurant: Kindred in Davidson


​Matt Cosper (XO Artistic Director)


Fiction Read: Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarzchuk
A doorstop of a book that lays out the story of a sect of Jewish heretics in 18th century Poland with wit and humanity and gorgeous prose. An instant classic from the world’s best living writer.

nonfiction read:
Fassbinder: thousands of mirrors by Ian Penman. A magical little book of fragments meditating on the life and work of the prolific filmmaker known just as much for his consumption of cocaine and qualuudes as his darkly glamorous and artfully janky dissections of the persistence of a mutated fascism in postwar Germany.

Movie: Sorcerer at the Independent Picture House. I have never been more tense in life and it’s never been so much fun to be so tense. Wonderful to experience this film for the first time on a big screen in a packed theatre.

Performance: Avant Goodyear Dance Featuring Jesse Factor and Mercury Carter. Jesse Factor’s deconstructed elaboration on the myth and work of Martha Graham was hilarious and moving. Mercury Carter really didn’t seem to want to be there but sounded great regardless.

Album: Billy Woods Maps or Kadey Ballard Sybils. Billy Woods got me back into rap after a long time away. Kadey Ballard is a beautiful genius.

Live Music: Kadey Ballard and Band at Visart. I was sick as a dog but man what a great band and what a great room. Hampton Crump and Brenda Gamble’s string work provides the perfect sonic atmosphere for Ballard’s unearthly vocals.

Restaurant: El Rinconcito Chilango (off Eastway). I have forgotten the name of the dish but it’s basically a little boat made of masa filled with the meat and the cheese and the peppers. ¡Aye de mi! ¡Que Suerte!


Shannon Hager (Sound Design and Composition The Maids and The Chairs)
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Movie:
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Movie experience:
Godzilla Minus One, Regal 4DX at Regal Stonecrest

Album (Remastered and unreleased bonus material):
Beauty Pill - Blue Period

Album (new): [tie]
Corvus Corone - Abandoned in Spring
Bell Witch - Future's Shadow Part 1: The Clandestine Gate

Live music:
Boris, Melvins [40th anniversary], and mr.phylzzz at Cat's Cradle in Carrboro, NC

Animal:
Frogs

Live theatre, touring:
Will You Miss Me?
The Hinterlands at Mint Museum Randolph

Live theatre, local:
POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive
Charlotte Conservatory Theatre at Booth Playhouse

Book:
The Many Deaths of Laila Starr by Filipe Andrade and Ram V Ram (The Deluxe Edition was released this year so I count it)

Audiobook:
Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere by Maria Bamford. Narrated by Maria Bamford

Restaurant: My answer has been the same since 1997…Lang Van

Best glimpse of future “Best of” entries for live theatre, writer, actors, and venue:
The staged reading of Laura Scott Cary’s play Shotgun! by Lauren McDowell, Chloe Shade, Margeaux Sholz, and Nilaja Williams at Visart Video.

Kate McCracken (Performer The Maids, Curator The Magic of the Mundane)

Book:
The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky
Movie:
TÁR / Kiki’s Delivery Service
Performance: Emma Rice’s Wuthering Heights (Chicago Shakespeare Theatre) / Michael Arden’s Parade (Broadway)
Album: The Record by boygenius /Surrender by Maggie Rogers
Live Music: Dawes at Thalia Hall in Chicago.
Restaurant: Fridas in Evanston! My friends and I like to spend the little money we have there with a feast every week.


José Posada (performer in Permanence and The Chairs, Curator The Magic of the Mundane

Book: No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai
Album: Morning by Chu Kosaka
Performance: Will You Miss Me? The Hinterlands
Movie: Godzilla Minus One
Restaurant : Jaleo

Will Rudolph (production design The Maids and The Chairs, performer Widdershins, The Magic of the Mundane, The Children’s Crusade)

Theater: Will you miss me? (The Hinterlands), The Chairs, Doll’s House Part II
Albums: Reset by Panda Bear and Sonic Boom and Joy as an Act of Resistance by IDLES
Book: Foundations of Mechanical Accuracy by The Moore Tool Company
Restaurant: Lang Van
Movie: Past Lives (at the independent picture house)

​Bill Reilly (Performer All The Dogs and Horses, Widdershins, Shrimp Dance, The Magic of the Mundane, #CAKE)

Book: Solenoid by Mircea Cartarescu.
Album: carry them with us-Brighde Chaimbuel Performance: parvathy baul at the just love festival,
Movie: The boy and the heron
Restaurant: leah & louise.


Jeremy Shane (performer The Bald Soprano, ThomThom, The Chairs, Costume Design The Chairs.)

Movie: querelle (1982) by rainer werner fassbinder/ not a new movie but new to me/ an exceptional queer ballet of masculinity. Also there were Big castles that looked like dicks.
Music: jennifer vanilla’s castle in the sky (expanded) jennifer vanilla is the world I aspire to vibe in. it grounds me, xcites me and calls you to play your own “body music”
Book: the bhagavad gita Easwaran, Ehnath/ indian religious text the story of Arjuna and God. God tells him to fight his family or not, but either way imma gonna eat you! :) hungry god is a hot god, DAD BOD GOD!
NEW SELF. NEW WORLD (recovering our senses in the 21st century) by philip Shepard/ the book offers a lot of theory from the perspective of not just the singular body but the collective. It can be flipped thru and offer advice on a daily basis.
Theatre: Vampire Lesbians of Sodom by Paperhouse theatre/ I found myself craving some tight space backroom buffoonery this year and Paperhouse offered that up in just the right amount, flesh, drag and tomfoolery! Ashby really did that!
also
The Chairs by XOXO and YES BECAUSE I WAS IN IT. If i wasn’t trapped in a hot room or offering commentary on body odor I was enjoying the universe experiencing itself in that very way. Namaste.
Shen Yun: my friend took me and said it was a cult. SO WHAT IF IT IS, AT LEAST THEY DANCE PRETTY TO DISPELL THE LIONHEADED GOD OF ILLUSION! If i didnt know better i would say that was sophia boy!
Restaurant: The Pizza Bar at Harris Teeter


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I really don't think this is a defeatist position.

I really want to frame this as a question for those of us making performance (theatre/dance/etc...) in Charlotte (or anywhere in the contemporary USA I suppose).

In the face of "Big Box" Culture Industry what is the role of...well, everyone else?

Perhaps this is a problem specific to Charlotte. I've not researched this exhaustively but I am fairly certain that we are the only city of our size where the largest professional theatre is the touring house. And the gap in budget and reach between that house and every other theatre in town is astronomical. When it comes to professional theatre made for adults, local audiences are attending work (in droves, it seems) created and performed by artists from New York. When it comes to theatre, Charlotte is an import town.

Now before anyone comes howling about the amazing work being done on smaller stages around town. Yes. I know. There is work being done by small theatres in Charlotte and some of it is even quite good. That isn't what I'm talking about. What am I talking about? I don't know!

I guess what I'm winding my way around here is a question that goes something like this:

If we accept that there is an audience for theatre in Charlotte, (and attendance at Blumenthal's touring productions tells us there is), what is keeping that audience from supporting locally made theatre in a way that would make a local professional theatre viable? Is our work just not as good? Is our work not as accessible? Do they just not know about it?

As to the question of quality...we can always do better. so let's try. that's another post for another time.

As to the question of accessibility...What are we even talking about? Parking? Content? Pricing? The fact that the audience can't see the work because of how you set up the chairs?

Do potential audiences just not know about it? Are my 8,000 instagram posts not working? Is it that the daily paper doesn't really cover the arts anymore? Is the Big B's marketing budget that impressive?  (As a side note...I would like to suggest that if someone gave me the Blumenathal's marketing budget as XOXO's operating budget for a year we'd knock your socks off.)

Maybe the question we all need to be asking ourselves is "in an ecosystem dominated by Big Box Import Theatre...what is our role?"

As every 2nd year acting student's problematic fave Sandy Meisner was often heard to exhort his acolytes...We need to be specific. Sitting in the Belk Theatre watching the latest bus and truck production of the latest broadway juke box musical, we could be anywhere. There is nothing particularly Charlottean about the experience. The theatre/entertainment industry isn't immune to the malaise of this moment in history. Take a look around you the next time you are playing pickle ball at a just add water, oh so authentic prefab entertainment district, or look at the beige apartment buildings springing up all over the city. How do you know you are in Charlotte? You could just as easily be in Denver or Dallas or Des Moines. "Culture," my friend Chiron once said,"is how specific people respond to living in a specific place." And in our current moment of flattening (all in the service of global capital, but I digress) is Culture, as Chiron framed it, even possible?

To make culture, we need to be specific. We need to make work that feels like RIGHT HERE AND RIGHT NOW. That doesn't mean every show has to be a devised piece about how the trolley workers of the old west side were displaced (although it could be and I'd be down to watch that.) What it does mean is that we should stop trying to make work that feels correct; that feels acceptable and safe and flat. we should stop trying to make work that is going to get us an A+ and a pat on the head. Now I don't think anyone is doing this intentionally. At least I hope the cops in our heads are more subtle than that. I think we do this because we want to succeed. We want to succeed when what we maybe should be aiming for is to flourish.

We flourish by being ourselves. By responding to the world around us honestly and by encouraging others to do the same.

We have to nourish our wilder impulses, access our unconscious and trust in our vision. We have to make the room and find the resources to allow local writers, directors, actors and designers to be themselves, to be artists. When we do that, we create experiences that could only happen right here and right now. And in a world ever more explicitly mediated by screens and a thousand different kinds of difference and alienation, what people crave more than anything, I think, is the communion that theatre offers right here and right now.

This doesn't guarantee us the funding we need. It doesn't guarantee us the audiences we crave. But it might be the path to giving those audiences a reason to come to us. Not out of a sense of obligation or pity, but out of a hunger for the strange, the exciting, the fun. And if the audience's come, the funding might follow. And if it doesn't...at least we'll die with our boots on.


XOXO
MC