Kya Johnson has gone from go-kart go-getter to founder and CEO of RainbowMe, a company that creates fairy tales and folklore narratives with people of color as the main characters. … More The Color of Augmented Reality
When Parasite became the first non-English language film to win the Academy Award for best picture this year, the spirit of Chapel Hill’s VisArt Video hovered inside the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles like a house ghost at Hogwarts. … More From Video Store to the Oscars
For the first time in the almost two years since she began dating Alex Honnold, the most accomplished free solo climber in the world, she allows herself to think about all the things that could go wrong on El Capitan the next day — when Honnold would attempt to become the first person to climb Yosemite’s monolith with no ropes or safety gear. … More Holding Onto Herself
When Katie Ziglar believes in the power of an idea or a project, it persists — across the decades, across continents, through the halls of the Smithsonian, in the mansions of maharajas, over the demolition of gender barriers and through her polite-but-persistent, lifelong takedown of the phrase, “That can’t be done.” … More Why Not? The Art of Believing
As writer Bekah Brunstetter shows throughout her funny and moving play, The Cake, reconciling traditional roots with progressive values in a polarized world is wrenching work. And while no one should expect to abandon the things that sustain her — be it waffle fries, her faith or the person who has captured her heart — what should be expected, the play shows, is conversation, with a generous dash of understanding and more than a pinch of heart. … More Cake and Conversation
They elbow one another for space in his mind: young black teenagers and their worried mothers, old white supremacists and their nervous wives, skeptical lawyers, gravelly voiced journalists and a slave who mailed himself to freedom inside a box.
Mike Wiley not only plays them all on stage — often more than two dozen characters in a single performance, with no costume changes and few props — the documentary theater actor and playwright rehearses himself to sleep at night with their dialogue, their humanity and inhumanity, strumming through his head. … More Step Into Those Shoes
Beth McNichol 