SENNA is a movie masquerading as a documentary. In the late 60s and early 70s there were a slew of racing movies and SENNA could stand with the best of Paul Newman and Steve McQueen in any of them.

Ayreton Senna’s career was well and intensely filmed, from his go cart racing to his death at the San Marino Gran Prix. The film from his car camera brings the audience right into the race. The bumps and grinds and twists grab you as he races F1 tracks bringing fame and honor to his native Brazil. Watching him win a world championship while racing in a car that is stuck in 6th gear is awesome.

The audience on Tuesday night was sparse but they were enthusiastically there to see SENNA. Unfortunately a lot of people are going to miss this great movie that ends Thursday night. Don’t be one of them!

Charlotte Blake Alston, the great story teller/musician, graces the Lyric stage on Sunday at 3 pm. Tickets are still available!

I didn’t know much about CBA until I checked out her website and have copied her biography here for everyone to check out as well. This looks to be a great family event for an October Sunday afternoon. Tickets still available!

CHARLOTTE BLAKE ALSTON
Master Storyteller, Narrator, and Singer

Charlotte Blake Alston is a storyteller, narrator, instrumentalist and singer who performs in venues throughout North America and abroad. Venues are wide and include the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Smithsonian Institution, the Kimmel Center, the Women of the Word Festival in Cape Town, South Africa, prisons, detention centers and a refugee camp in northern Senegal.

She breathes life into traditional and contemporary stories from African and African American oral and cultural traditions. Her solo performances are often enhanced with traditional instruments such as djembe, mbira, shekere or the 21-stringed kora. In 1999, Charlotte began studying the kora and the West African history-telling traditions of Senegal, Mali, Guinea and Guinea Bissau. Her teacher was the highly respected Senegalese griot (jali), Djimo Kouyate. Her repertoire is wide and programs are adapted to any grade level or age group.

She brings her stories and songs to national and regional festivals, schools, universities, museums, libraries and performing arts centers throughout the United States and Canada, as well as local and national radio and television.

Charlotte is the first storyteller to perform with the Philadelphia Orchestra on both their Family and Student concert series. Since 1994, she has been the host of “Sound All Around”; the orchestra’s preschool concert series and continues to appear as a guest host and narrator on family concerts. For 6 seasons, Charlotte hosted “Carnegie Kids”, Carnegie Hall’s Preschool concert series and has been a featured artist on the Carnegie Hall Family Concert Series in NY since 1996. She has been a featured teller at The National Storytelling Festival, The National Festival of Black Storytelling, and at regional festivals throughout North America. She has been a featured artist at both the Presidential Inaugural Festivities in Washington, DC and the Pennsylvania Gubernatorial Children’s Inaugural Celebrations in Harrisburg, PA. In addition to her solo performances, Charlotte performs with her brother, world-renowned jazz violinist, John Blake, Jr. and his band in Tellin’ On The Downbeat: A Program of Storytelling And Jazz. In Fiddlin’ With Stories, Charlotte and John perform as a duo featuring violin and kora, in a program that celebrates the role of stringed instruments in African and African American culture. She has collaborated with numerous instrumental ensembles as well the Opera Company of Philadelphia, Opera North and the Carolyn Dorfman Dance Company. She has been a featured narrator for several orchestras and conductors including The Philadelphia Orchestra, The Orchestra of St. Luke’s, The Cleveland Orchestra, the Saint Louis Symphony, the Orpheus Chamber Ensemble and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. She represented Carnegie Hall in 2003 when she hosted a series of concerts in Miyazaki, Japan with the Eddie Arron String Quartet and fellow storyteller, Motoko. Currently, she performs as both pre-concert artist and host of Carnegie Hall’s Family Concert Series. She has served as co-host of the Cultural Exchange and Global Encounters student concerts. The Weil Music Institute at Carnegie Hall administers the international student concert series’. In 2010 she hosted 2 of Carnegie Hall’s Community Sing-Ins. One Sing-In featured the acappella group, Take 6, the other the Fisk Jubilee Singers. Charlotte’s narrative voice can be heard on documentaries including Plenty of Good Women Dancers, The Peddie School, and Crosstown. In the PBS documentary Safe Harbor, producers proclaim her “strong, steady voice is like a lantern in the darkness”. She herself was featured in the award-winning documentary Family Name that aired around the country on PBS. Kinocraft Media Productions converted her “Martin Luther King Storypoem” to video format for educational distribution. The video is entitled A Closer Look: Martin Luther King.

Ms. Alston has produced several commissioned works including narrative texts for orchestras and opera companies as well as a commission from the Huntingdon Council of the Arts to craft and tell the story of the African American community of Mount Union, Pennsylvania. Her libretto and collaboration with composer, Andrea Clearfield, resulted Kabo Omowale: Welcome Home Child - a work for orchestra, chorus and narrator. She has also created and narrated an original text for 2 movements of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherezade for The Philadelphia Orchestra.

Charlotte has received numerous honors including the prestigious Pew Fellowship in the Arts. She was selected as Philadelphia Magazine’s “Best of Philly” and was the recipient of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Artist Of The Year Award (The Hazlett Memorial Award), which recognizes individual artists “for excellence in the Commonwealth.” She holds two honorary PhDs and received the Circle of Excellence Award from the National Storytelling Association. Charlotte was one of four Americans selected to perform and present at the first International Storytelling Field Conference in Ghana and was a featured artist at the Second Int’l Festival in Cape Town, South Africa. In the summer of 2005, she was the sole American selected to perform on a main stage at the STIMMEN: Voices Festival in Basel, Switzerland. In 1996, she was the Director of “In the Tradition…” the 14th National Festival of Black Storytelling. In 2009 she was the recipient of the Zora Neale Hurston Award, the highest award bestowed by the National Association of Black Storytellers.

It has been a while since we have had a movie of intrigue like The Debt. It is gritty, both in cinematography and in story. Is it true or is it a lie? Is he dead or is he alive? The movie flies through time lines until you feel like you’ve been hit by a truck! I was particularly interested in the German scenes, having lived in West Berlin in the late 60s/early 70s. It is amazing that they found so many Trabants that could still be driven.

There were parts that defied belief - martial arts training in a sixth floor walk up with no German neighbors complaining was disconcerting and not realistic of the time. Frau Knaut, my old landlady, would have sent them packing! But suspending belief is part of enjoying a movie and the intensity of the movie along with the good acting by Helen Mirren helped me get into a “it’s not real but it sure is entertaining” mode. In fact, there were more blood splatters than your average zombie movie. Beware also: WHITE ON WHITE SUBTITLES.

Not a movie for the squeamish, The Debt is a movie I had been waiting for and I wasn’t disappointed.

Be sure to get to the theatre in time for the opening trailer. Senna is coming to the Lyric and talk about intensity! Open wheel racing at its very best!

I started volunteering at the Lyric in early 2002. I had been seeing a therapist, going through a rough time of PTSD from military times and the 9/11 attacks. Having been active in the area music scene in thte 1980s, it was suggested I go to Dublin where they had a music jam certain nights where anyone could join in. The music scene in Blacksburg was in doldrums. Instead, I vasked to volunteer at the Lyric. “One or two nights a month, that’s all we ask.” Well, there were fewer volunteers back then so it bcame one or two nights a week. Back then there were 8 music concerts a year with some fantastic music acts: Del McCoury, Junior Brown, Ladysmith Black Mumbasa Band, Dereck Trucks, Bela Fleck, Edgar Meyers and so on. My volunteerism eventually became a paid position, although I still volunteer. As for my therapist’s suggestion I go to Dublin, I bought a seat at the Lyric instead and have the notation”It’s cheaper than therapy” emblazoned on the arm.

The Lyric has changed a lot over the years. It has become an institution, “The Heart of Downtown Blacksburg”. And it is an AWESOME place - a place for the entire community, not just old townies or young Tech students. It has hosted the Indigo Girls and just recently, the Steep Canyon Rangers. But it has also grown from just a music and movie venue to Live At The Lyric, Midnight Movies, and a great place for non profit organizations to raisse funds for their organizations. Community Voices lecture series, Landjam, Planned Parenthood, Actors Theatre of Blacksburg and many more organizations now plan special events that help bring culture to the Sahara of the Bozart known as southwest Virginia.

I attend many of these events and must say, some are more well attended than others but that is part of what the Lyric is all about. Those people who saw TopDog/Under Dog saw a very intense drama that was very professionally performed. The Christmas pageants put on by New River Stage give young talent the chance to perform on the big stage. I remember my son tap dancing at a recital with Carol Crawford’s School of Dance … and he remembers it well as a highpoint of his childhood.

The Land Trust and Community Voices, as well as many other rganizations, have provided lecture series that enlighten and inform their audiences about how things are and how they can be better. The Lyric has provided candidate debates at election time as a place where locals can see and hear what politicians hope to accomplish should they be elected. Loyalty to the Royalty for King George’s island nation has also been revered when the Lyric hosted the royal wedding of William and Kate. And let everyone forget the wonderous Kazoo Marching Band at the annual Holiday Parade.

Lyric audiences have had a hand in where the Lyric chart’s her course as well. The Lyric has had zombie film festivals, bicycle film festivals, mountain film festivals, sustainability film festivals and now has midnight movie classic film festivals. Recently the Lyric asked Facebook readers would they rather see The Way, a movie recently shown at Virginia Tech, or Senna, an oddity documentary about a Brazilian open wheel race car driver. While it may not be as well attended as The Way, Senna won out and a group of racing enthusiasts will get to see a great, though off beat, documentary.

I have sen the Lyric grow, the audiences grow, the quality of productions grow. Blacksburg has again become more musically diverse, as it was in the 1980s. Instead of focusing solely on music as it did in the early days of the Theatre, the lyric continues to branch out in quality entertainment. This month, Charlotte Blake Alston, a nationally renowned story teller graces the Lyric’s stage. Next month the Barter Theatre brings their massive Civil War Voices production. The Capital Steps are on their way as well. Don’t miss out on the opportunities provieded by The Heart of Downtown Blacksburg. the Lyric Theatre.

The Lyric - it is cheaper than therapy.