Sitelines
Cadence Premieres the Sitelines BLM ACTION Film Festival
Proud moment at Cadence's Sitelines BLM ACTION Film Festival! Over 250 amazing souls gathered at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture to celebrate the power of film in driving change. Huge thanks to everyone who contributed to making this event a success!
Photos by Jay Paul Photography
ACTION opened on Saturday, October 14th at 1:00 pm the Virginia Museum of History and Culture, featuring three films written by and starring some of Richmond’s favorites. The lineup included Margarette Joyner’s Still Fighting (directed by Margarette Joyner), Brittany Fisher’s Bleach (directed by Omiyẹmi (Artisia) Green)* and dl Hopkins’ Break (directed by dl Hopkins). The festival included a post-show Q&A with the writers to draw audiences nearer to the artists. A key feature of the festival also included three Welcome Table discussions inspired by the aspirational work of James Baldwin, the inclusive homemaking practices of Josephine Baker, and continued in work such as artist Lois Weaver’s “Long Table.” Facilitators trained by the Virginia Center for Inclusive Communities helped support the communal dialogues meant to inspire participants to continue identifying areas of mutual understanding beyond the festival that lead to ACTION or social transformation.
Continue reading below to learn more about Sitelines BLM, the writers, and the films!
Hear about the Sitelines BLM ACTION Film Festival in the media!
The Roots of Sitelines BLM
Toney Q. Cobb in Margarette Joyner’s Still Fighting. Photo credit Alexyn Scheller.
The Theatre has always been known as "the seeing place," and having a clear view of the stage is crucial for a great theatre experience. Sightlines are important for creating a connection between the actors and the audience. Especially during times of crisis, seeing the humanity in each other becomes more important than ever. In 2020, Covid-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement brought attention to the need for greater inclusivity and support for underrepresented communities in the theatre world.
At Cadence, we're committed to providing opportunities for artists from historically underserved communities. In response to the events of 2020, we launched Sitelines BLM, a program that centers the voices of people of the Global Majority in new and innovative performance spaces throughout Richmond, Virginia. We've already produced three films in partnership with local landmarks such as the Virginia War Memorial, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Shockoe Hill District African Burial Ground, and the Historic Westover Plantation. These films were created by talented writers from our own community.
We're thrilled to announce that Sitelines BLM has been awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to support our upcoming film festival in October 2023 at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture. Our goal is to continue to center the voices of artists from the Global Majority and create new "seeing places" that celebrate cultural heritage and bring communities together.
Film crews working on Brittany Fisher’s Bleach at the Rumors of War statue at the VMFA. Photo credit Danny Caporaletti.
Screenwriter, actor, and Director dl Hopkins filming Break on location. Photo credit Mark Ramirez.
THE WRITERS
Brittany Fisher
Brittany Fisher (she/her) is an NYC-based playwright with roots in Richmond, VA, and graduate of Juilliard's Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program. Her play How to Bruise Gracefully won the 2021 Kennedy Center Lorraine Hansberry Award and was recognized by the Rosa Parks Award and Paula Vogel Award. Her play Your Regularly Scheduled Programming was a 2022 O’Neill NPC selection and recognized by the Kennedy Center Mark Twain Award. She was a 2018-20 Pipeline New Works Playwriting Fellow, and her work has been featured at and developed with the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, National Black Theatre, Great Plains Theatre Conference, the Alliance Theatre's Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Competition, Cadence Theatre Company and Virginia Repertory Theatre. She received her B.A. from James Madison University.
dl Hopkins
dl Hopkins is an award-winning actor, poet, and the former Artistic Director of the African American Repertory Theatre of Virginia. Hopkins is a founder of the Southern Revolutionist Literary Guild (SRLG), a collective of poets and spoken word artists. While serving on the Board of Directors of James River Writers, Hopkins created the Just Poetry Slam, Richmond’s first and longest-running poetry slam. Hopkins is a founding member of the Jazz Actors Theatre established by his mentor, Ernie McClintock, founder of Harlem’s Afro-American Studio for Acting and Speech and the 127th Street Repertory Ensemble.
Margarette Joyner
Margarette Joyner (she/her) is a Director, Actress, Poet, Singer, and Costume Designer based in Charlotte, NC. Joyner is a Visiting Professor of Costume Design at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. She graduated with a MFA from VCU after receiving her undergraduate degree from the University of South Alabama. Joyner founded The Heritage Ensemble Theatre Company in 2012 and served as the Artistic/Executive Director for 10 years. She has taught theatre and served as an academic advisor at the university level for six years. In addition to writing several stage plays, Joyner recently co-authored a book, When I Kill Him, Jesus Can Have Him, released through Pecan Tree Publishing. She also served as an Actor Interpreter at Colonial Williamsburg, where she not only performed but wrote several of her own solo programs. She was honored to give voice to those of the enslaved community of Williamsburg's 18th Century. Joyner has designed costumes and props for Cadence Cinema Film & TV’s "Still Fighting," "Bleach," "Break," and "Bloodlines". Of all these accomplishments, her greatest is to have raised a daughter who is a loving human being and her best friend. Says Joyner of her talents, "I am humbled by the fact that God has chosen me to represent His work in so many ways."
*Colocho Mairena or Obadiah Parker were also included in the original class of commissioned writers.
PROGRAM DIRECTOR
Omiyẹmi (Artisia) Green
Omiyẹmi (she/her) is the originator and Program Director for Cadence Sitelines BLM and had the honor of directing Brittany Fisher’s Bleach, one of Cadence’s award-winning commissions for its 2023 Sitelines BLM Film Festival. As noted in Bleach being “the first black anything” makes clear that progress is being made slowly. However, progress is still happening and Omiyẹmi does not take this distinction in her professional profile lightly. Since the inception of the William & Mary Theatre & Dance department in 1926 and the hiring of its first Black faculty member sixty years later, Omiyẹmi is the first Black woman to achieve tenure and promotion to full professor in Theatre. She also holds posts as the editor-in-chief of the Black Theatre Review, the VP for Professional Development for the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, and a W&M Provost Faculty Fellow.
A director and dramaturg Omiyẹmi’s work has been seen in places such as the Afrikana Independent Film Festival (Richmond, VA), Southern Illinois University (Carbondale), Illinois Wesleyan University, eta Creative Arts Foundation, and Cadence. Her research is published in the Journal of American Drama and Theatre, the Journal of American Folklore, Continuum, the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society Journal Peer Review Section, the August Wilson Journal, August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle: Critical Perspectives on the Plays (McFarland), and African American Culture: An Encyclopedia of People, Traditions, and Customs (Greenwood). She has forthcoming work in Theater Magazine, Applied Theatre and Racial Justice: Radical Imaginings for Just Communities (Routledge), and August Wilson in Context (Cambridge University Press).
Since graduating from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2003 (MFA, Theatre Education) she has held teaching positions with Morgan State University, Chicago State University, and Purdue University’s Black Cultural Research Center. Omiyẹmi’s accomplishments include two William & Mary NAACP Image Awards for Outstanding Faculty Support, a Plumeri Award for Faculty Excellence, a W. Taylor Reveley, III Interdisciplinary Faculty Fellowship, a WMSURE Mellon Faculty Fellowship, an Arts & Sciences Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence, and a term professorship as the Sharpe Professor of Civic Renewal and Entrepreneurship. She has earned $230K in external and internal awards for her teaching and research, and creative work, has been recognized by the Black Theatre Alliance Awards, and supported with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, CultureWorks, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
THE FILMS
Bleach by Brittany Fisher
Bleach is set during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 and filmed at the Virginia Museum of Art’s Rumors of War statue and at Richmond’s African Burial Ground. Three young people in a poetry collective play a game that opens the door for conversation about how to stay safe when racial tension is again on the rise in the former capital of the Confederacy. Bleach is simultaneously a film about the erasure of history and a memorialization to the beauty and humanity of Black people everywhere.
Stills from Bleach by Brittany Fisher.
Bleach is the proud recipient of
Vesuvius International Film Festival - Finalist for Best Trailer
4Theatre Festival - Finalist for Best Low Budget Short, Finalist for Best Drama Short, Finalist for Best First Time Short
Focus International Film Festival 2022 - Finalist, SAPPHIRE Trailer Award
Festival for Trailers Monthly - Official Selection
Indie Short Fest - Official Selection, Honorable Mention for Best Trailer
International Independent Film Awards - Silver Winner 2022
WILDsound Festival - Official Selection
Austin Indie Fest - Nominee
Break by dl Hopkins
Jackson Ward recalls the horrors of a weekend outing to amused coworkers and entertained onlookers. The story plays out in real time in front of the audience as Jackson narrates the event, dinner at a friend’s house, and discovering that the house sits on a plantation. Filmed at the Richmond Slavery Reconciliation Statue and the Historic Westover Plantation, Break explores differing perspectives of the same situation, discovering the communication gap between worlds and the deep-rooted need for reconciliation of our collective truth.
Poster by Velicia Gourdin.
Stills from Break by dl Hopkins. Film footage by Danny Caporaltetti, Michael Duni, dl Hopkins and Mark Ramirez.
Still Fighting by Margarette Joyner
Still Fighting stretches across generations to answer the question: have we really made any progress? After centuries of resistance — through slave revolts, the Civil Rights Movement, and waves of Black Lives Matter — the question remains. Still Fighting speaks to the frustrations and fatigue of young, Black individuals as they continue the struggle to end racial injustice in this country. The work also acknowledges the sacrifices made by ancestors to ensure that the fight can continue today. Within the site-specific context of the Virginia War Memorial, Still Fighting explores the parallels between the Black Lives Matter Movement and previous conflicts—such as the Vietnam War—on the backdrop of a space of memory.
Stills from Still Fighting by Margarette Joyner. Film footage by Alexyn Scheller Photo and Video.
OUR PARTNERS
Sitelines BLM is produced by Cadence in collaboration with the Virginia Museum of History and Culture, the Virginia Center for Inclusive Communities, City of Richmond’s Department of Recreation and Parks, CultureWorks Richmond, Omiwerx, and professional film artists.
For more information, contact Omiyẹmi (Artisia) Green, Program Director, Sitelines BLM at avgreen@wm.edu.
The mission of Cadence is to inspire, transform, and educate our community by developing local talent and presenting contemporary theater and film works that uplift the spirit, challenge the mind, and honor both our individuality and our shared humanity.
About Sitelines
Sitelines is an exciting initiative that brings contemporary works to public spaces and cultural venues throughout Richmond. This innovative program was made possible through an Innovative Priority Grant from CultureWorks’ Grants Program, which received support from several partners including Altria, The City of Richmond, The Tomato Fund, the Virginia Commission for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. By offering performances in public spaces, Sitelines aims to increase community participation in live theater and encourage people to rediscover and engage with our city spaces. Sitelines is also focused on building connections, promoting inclusion, and encouraging dialogue within our community.
Previous Productions
The Flick by Annie Baker | The Byrd Theatre | October 8—11, 2015
My Name is Rachel Corrie by Rachel Corrie | Maggie Walkers Governor’s School | March 11, 2017
The Gun Show by EM Lewis | Maggie Walkers Governor’s School | March 11, 2017
