Performing Arts Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Comedy Festival Returns To Morgantown

A weekend of comedy kicks off Thursday in Morgantown. Now in its second year, the Red Eye Comedy Festival not only highlights the state’s nascent comedy community, but is also attracting national talent to the region.

Reporter Chris Schulz sat down with festival organizer Cody Cannon to discuss the event.

A weekend of comedy kicks off Thursday in Morgantown. Now in its second year, the Red Eye Comedy Festival not only highlights the state’s nascent comedy community but is also attracting national talent to the region.

Reporter Chris Schulz sat down with festival organizer Cody Cannon to discuss the event.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Schulz: What exactly is the Red Eye Comedy Festival?

Cannon: Just basically a celebration of everything the comedy community has done over the past few years here in downtown Morgantown with a couple of lead up shows across the state. The festival itself is held in downtown Morgantown, multiple venues bringing some of my favorite nationally touring talent starting Thursday, March 30. Friday, Saturday, April 1 is the all-day comedy and beer festival just like we did last year at Morgantown Brewing Company. Eddie Pepitone is doing a late-night show at 123, closing out the whole festival. I did my best to make it a really great deal and experience for those who want to attend.

Schulz: This is your second year doing this now. What goes into an independent festival?

Cannon: Everything I’ve done has been super independent and also my first time doing anything like this stuff. I’m just kind of piecing things together as I go along and figuring out what works.

I need to first reach out to potential headliners and lock those in, try to find a diverse group of people. I also do my festival submission-based. All of the local and regional I try to give them a little more favor because they put a lot of work into the community and stuff. But I also want to highlight people around Appalachia and the country in general. If people are interested in flying out for a weekend festival, then I’d love to have you, but definitely want to focus on local and regional talent. This year, I think we probably had a good 100, maybe 80, submissions, something like that.

Schulz: That’s primarily from West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, or…?

Cannon: Yeah! But we got some people from like Colorado, St. Louis. We have a couple of comedians, like coming from Louisville, and, you know, Florida and stuff like that.

Schulz: What did you learn from last year?

Cannon: I need to get so much more done in advance. I’ve done a little better this year. But next year, I’m planning on stepping it up even further. I’m definitely going forward hoping to reach out to and potentially get grants so I can potentially bring in bigger names and things like that. I just have no experience in that matter, and so I’m just kind of figuring all of this out as I go along.

Schulz: The festival isn’t just local comedians, as you alluded to there, you’re bringing in some pretty big names. Why is it important for you to obviously highlight local comedians, but also to bring in some of those bigger names?

Cannon: Well, for me, I’ve committed to staying here. I have a kid here, I want to stay here at least till he’s old enough to travel. So I want comedians to want to come to the state since I’ve committed to staying here. Also I just really love the state. I’m hoping this summer to take a couple of comedians on whitewater rafting trips. And every time a comedian comes through town, always the morning after a show I take them to Tudor’s Biscuit World. I try to make it an experience.

For me, it’s cool because I’m hanging out with people I look up to and aspire to be like one day. But it’s also because I get to introduce a community, the comedy community, to a place that I love very much. Since I started producing shows after things opened up in 2021, most of the comedians that I’ve had through have told me that it’s the first time they’ve ever been to West Virginia, other than maybe driving through but never like stopping for shows.

I would love to see the state thrive. I would love to see more tourism. The music scene is pretty great, and you get a lot of pretty fantastic touring bands. I just saw an opportunity, a vacuum, for touring comedy and decided to open up those roads and have more stops for comedians to potentially make money.

Schulz: Talk to me a little bit about, you know, the local scene and how that’s been progressing since you started this last year.

Cannon: I’m so grateful that I am surrounded with so many talented and excited and enthusiastic comedians because everyone’s pulling their own weight. Everybody’s kind of doing little things here and there to try to make the scene more exciting and interesting to people who might not normally think to come to a show in Morgantown, West Virginia. I’m just so proud of where everyone’s at and how hard everyone is working. Everyone’s constantly coming to the stage with fresh and exciting material and trying to work on new stuff and I’m really proud of everyone that I work with.

Schulz: Why do you think it’s important to set up a festival and not just focus exclusively on your set, your show and yourself?

Cannon: For one I wouldn’t be where I am without the community I have. It’s a chance for me to show off to this great community. So many of these nationally touring comics that you mentioned, have been like, “Wow, you have a great thing set up here. These people are really supportive. These venues are really cool.”

I like to give back. I’ve always enjoyed festivals in general. Wine and Jazz is one of my favorite weekends of the year. I love a good music festival. I’ve always wanted to do something like that. And so this is kind of me making something happen out of what I love. I don’t know, I just want to keep growing the scene and want people to keep wanting to come to West Virginia. 123 is a magical venue. Every comedian that’s performed there, it’s like “This place is something special.” So, I want to keep that going.

More information, including a list of featured comedians and participating venues, can be found on the Red Eye Comedy Facebook page.

Arts Day At The Legislature Celebrates Longevity, Focuses On The Future

Musicians, theater folks, painters and sculptors filled the Capitol rotunda on Arts Day at the 2023 West Virginia Legislature.

Musicians, theater folks, painters and sculptors filled the Capitol rotunda on Arts Day at the 2023 West Virginia Legislature. There were themes of longevity among the muses, along with an amiable artistic forecast for the future.

Visitors do much more than fiddle around at the Augusta Heritage Center in Randolph County. Celebrating 50 years of preserving and elevating traditional West Virginia art forms, Executive Director Seth Young said the center’s annual July Heritage Series workshops have become an international arts mecca.

“It’s three weeks of music, art, craft, folklore, foodways and folkways on the campus of Davis and Elkins College,” Young said. “People come from all over the world to study things such as Cajun and Creole culture, swing music, classic country music, bluegrass, vocal blues, old-time music, and of course crafts, folkways and folklore.”

West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Mountain Stage is celebrating 40 years of live music performances. Associate Director Mallory Richards said with a network of more than 290 stations airing the program around the globe, Mountain Stage is West Virginia’s calling card to the world.

“You can tune in wherever you are. You could be in the car driving down the road or you can join us here in Charleston, West Virginia for a live show,” Richards said. “It really goes back to hospitality. Everyone’s treated equally. Our artists backstage, it’s like welcoming a family home.”

Ten or so years ago, when West Virginia’s public schools faced serious budget challenges, many said the arts were not a priority. They asked, do we really need a band or theater department? In 2023, the opposite seems true.

Singing in the Senate chamber, the Appalachian Children’s Choir is living proof of what state Curator of Arts, Culture and History Randall Reid-Smith said is a statewide, flourishing font of artistic creativity.

“I was just at the Wood County Board of Education to present awards. They were recognized in all the arts, and they just put back in their school system, fifth grade band. I mean, that is huge,” Reid-Smith said. “We just had, in the last two days, the West Virginia State Arts Conference. We had 147 arts organizations and individual artists that have wonderful outreach programs into our schools. And the thing that they were all excited about is that the arts are back. Arts are great and today we’re here at Arts Day, we have all 55 booths filled, it is all about the arts.”

Reid-Smith said the only pure academic pursuit is the arts, that everything else in life is just an elective.

West Virginia Public Broadcasting is a state agency within the Department of Arts, Culture and History.

Comedy Festival Brings Morgantown Laughs For Days

On March 31, the Red Eye Comedy Festival will bring three days of laughs to Morgantown.

When you think of West Virginia, many things come to mind. But comedy is probably not the first or even second on the list.

Cody Cannon is a Morgantown comedian. He works in the restaurant industry by day, but he’s passionate about what he does. He’s also passionate about where he does it.

“I want comedians to want to come to West Virginia, I want there to be more exciting things happening in West Virginia and I like festivals,” Cannon said. “To create one of my own is kind of like a dream come true almost.”

But that dream was almost never realized, said Noah Basden, another Morgantown comedian.

“This festival was scheduled for 2020 like right before COVID really popped off. It was like it was go time,“ he said.

Alas, a festival in mid-April of 2020 was just one of countless live performances that were hastily canceled as the world adjusted to the emergent coronavirus pandemic. While in-person events have started to recover over the past year, nascent comedy communities across West Virginia definitely took a hit.

“There aren’t as many people, which is a bummer. I really want to see more people coming out to the scene,” Cannon said. “It’s just not the humongous diverse crowds we’re getting right before the pandemic. Now we’re starting to slowly build up steam.”

That steam is culminating with a festival. On March 31, the Red Eye Comedy Festival will bring three days of laughs to Morgantown.

“Red Eye Comedy Festival is a combination of local artists, musical and comedic, and also national acts.Three days, three different venues, three different shows,” Basden said.

Basden spent years working as a comedian in Chicago before moving back to Morgantown. There, he hosted shows in his house under the moniker of “The Potion Castle.”

A festival is certainly a step up from “Do it Yourself” house shows, or even the popular open mics in downtown Morgantown that Basden helped create.

Cannon has been plugging away to create an environment for comedy in Morgantown, too. He’s attracted national names like Myq Kaplan and Joyelle Nicole Johnson to do shows there, often their first time performing anywhere in West Virginia.

For the festival, he has helped to attract touring headliners Aminah Imani and Dave Ross.

Ross will headline Friday’s show, alongside the folks of the satire website “The Hard Times.” Ross came up in the punk and alternative scenes that the site lampoons, with the same kind of DIY ethos that comedy in West Virginia requires.

“I’m really excited to go to West Virginia,” Ross said. “It’s impressive to build a comedy scene from nothing. And that’s a big reason I feel privileged to be booked on this festival. And to be thought of, and why I’m so excited to do it.”

While touring comedians might be a major draw, the upcoming festival aims to highlight local talent. The festival is packed with mostly West Virginia comics, and not just Morgantown’s deep pool of standups. One such comic is Alexandria Runyon of Huntington.

“It’s really exciting for my first participation in a festival to be a West Virginia festival, you know, that was put together by West Virginians,” she said.

Runyon, who works part time as a producer for WVPB’s Inside Appalachia, has been part of Huntington’s comedy scene since she was in college. She sees the festival as a step in the right direction for a region ready for a new way to tell its stories.

“I hope that the future of comedy in the state is just abundant,” Runyon said. “I know that there are so many people here in West Virginia who are storytellers. And I think oral storytelling is a trademark of Appalachian people. And I think comedy is just a very natural way to present those stories.“

That’s a sentiment Cannon can get behind, and drives his desire to see this festival and others like it succeed.

“I want this state to do well. It breeds incredible artists, constantly popping up with incredible talent. And one thing I’d like this thing to do, I only want it to grow,” he said.

Whether the festival will be a success and have a chance to grow remains to be seen later this month, but those involved are giving it their all to ensure some laughs after a difficult few years.

Diversity Speaker Promotes Advocacy Through Art, Theater In The Ohio River Valley

As part of our “Returning Home” series, David talks with Carmen Mitzi Sinnott about her decision to come back to Appalachia after years of delivering keynote performances, workshops, and classes around the world.

Sinnott is a mixed race women from the region who uses her background as an artist and educator to help others discuss equity and identity, through her company, “All Here Together Productions”.

Presently, Sinnott and “ALL Here Together Productions” are working on a project to bring artists together from around the nation to paint murals in Huntington’s Fairfield district. The murals are planned to be painted in the spring of 2022.

The transcript below is from the original broadcast. It has been lightly edited for clarity.

Mitzi: So I had already been traveling to train with dance masters in Columbus, Ohio, so as a high schooler, I was driving myself to Columbus, Ohio twice a week. It was pretty clear at that point, what I wanted to achieve, I wanted to become a professional dancer. Both my parents are successful performing artists, Appalachian successful performing artists. And both of them have aspirations of doing more work outside of here. So when I decided at 16, that was the moment I was like, Okay, I really want to do this professionally. Russell High School in Russell, Kentucky actually take their senior class for a week to New York City and Washington DC. The teachers were so amazing, they let me take dance class outside of the tour that was scheduled.

David Adkins: What made you change your career from a Dancer to an educator?

Mitzi: For a year I was like Mom, I want to go to Los Angeles. I wanna do Music Videos. I moved to Los Angeles for a year after one year at F-I-T. I realized at that point, there were jobs available for dance teachers in public schools in Manhattan. The position of director of the extended day program at the school of Future became available. And I had worked there for a year part time, their director, Samantha Vincent, who, by the way, is Vin Diesel’s sister, she was like, “Mitzi, I think you could be the next director. I’m leaving to go to Las Angeles.”

David Adkins: What motivated you to start All Here Together Productions, and what motivated you to write the play Snapshot, which is based on your father and your life in Appalachia?

Mitzi: The protests in New York City about the U.S’s invasion in Iraq, it really instigated something in me, where I was already thinking about war, and the ridiculousness of war and not having a real purpose other than destroying families, communities, nations.

So All Here Together Productions expanded to community work, and doing this sort of self reflective, and always thinking about culture, race, ethnicity, and, you know, violent. My story, using it as a way to sound off about who we are, where do we want to be in the future? Like, what are our wounds? What are our pains, what might be holding us? And who do we want to become in the future. So all here together, productions started. Even more, it was always about national and international interactions, like from the start.

David Adkins: When did you start shifting your attention toward the region?

Mitzi: In early 2016, the United Way of the River Cities was beginning to plan their approach to a grant that was called Together We Rise. The United Way nationally wanted to see if their organizations could somehow have conversations around racism and dismantling racism because of them murder, the massacre in Charleston, South Carolina and the church there. So I was asked to come on Sandra Clements had recommended to Laura Gilliam.

They had, already, some community leaders coming together to design what a town hall might look like around racism. They were really nervous about having conversations about racism. What I’m suggesting we do is use art as a way to sort of break up the tension first, create a place for understanding and common ground before we start to get into the conversation. And so I was able to apply that All Here Together style to what United Way river cities wanted to accomplish with their town hall.

So I wrote a short play that had community members performing and that’s how we opened up the first United Way of the River Cities, Together We Rise, with a play, the actors were sitting amongst the over 250 people that showed up in Huntington. I’m so grateful for Huntington, the folks in Huntington who have allowed me to be part of their processes.

Performers Sought for Virtual Juneteenth Celebration

The Herbert Henderson Office of Minority Affairs is looking for performers for the upcoming Juneteenth Celebration.

Vocalists, bands, poets, dancers, choirs, and musicians can apply to be part of the upcoming, virtual event.

The 2021 event will premiere on Facebook and West Virginia Public Broadcasting on Saturday, June 19.

Juneteenth commemorates the 1865 announcement by Union Army Gen. Gordon Granger, proclaiming freedom from slavery in Texas.

President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had outlawed slavery almost two and a half years earlier but enforcement there was slow and inconsistent before Granger’s announcement.

Entries will be accepted through May 15.

All content submissions must meet the following guidelines:

Content must be original work.
Content must be suitable for family entertainment and free from profanity.
Videos must be no longer than two minutes.
Videos should be filmed in horizontal/landscape orientation.
Audio should be clear and easy to hear with minimal background noise.

Those who are interested can submit an online application here.

More information for performers and event updates will be published online.

Pennsylvania Ballet At 50

This special showcases one of Philadelphia’s cultural treasures, Pennsylvania Ballet, and honors the company’s golden anniversary. Pennsylvania Ballet At 50 will present performances in three spectacular works, premiering Friday, May 2 at 9 p.m. on West Virginia PBS.

Featured are the pas de deux from After the Rain by Christopher Wheeldon, Under the Sun Pas de Deux by Margo Sappington and “Diamonds” from Jewels by George Balanchine. Included are interviews with Barbara Weisberger, Pennsylvania Ballet founder, and Roy Kaiser, artistic director of the company.