“Romeo and Juliet” Comes to Staunton, Virginia, and Musical Moments

From living in Iowa, I’d become quite familiar with driving distances (Chicago, Omaha, Kansas City, etc.) to attend events. So, it was not at all unusual for me to use the planned drive to Winston-Salem, North Carolina to divert somewhat and attend a performance of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. My original plan was to attend the Music Library Association (MLA) chapter conference jointly organized by the Atlantic and the Southeastern chapters and use the opportunity to visit my aunt in Greensboro, then drive back to DC via the Blue Ridge Parkway. This post will cover through the conference, with other posts addressing the rest of the trip.

As it worked out, I had added the conference to my calendar a week too early. Fortunately, I learned of the error before I made the drive. However, I did need to adjust my trip so that I would instead make the stop at the Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton, Virginia, home of the American Shakespeare Center. The visit was an impulsive decision, made when I saw a Facebook reference to the playhouse as a re-creation of the original Shakespearean indoor theater. Also, I had never seen a live, staged production of a Shakespeare play, so seeing Romeo and Juliet seemed a perfect opportunity to experience a performance in such a facility. It was also nearly a year since my first unplanned visit to Staunton when I toured the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library.

Blackfriars is a beautiful theater with wonderful acoustics and filled with costumes, tapestries and other (I’m guessing) reproductions from Shakespeare’s era. My accessible seating–which I was directed to before much of the audience was seated and so was able to take pictures before and after most folks arrived–was immediately off the stage. I did shift positions during the intermission because there was a post that obstructed my view at various points during the performance.

I admit that I would have preferred a slower patter to the actors’ rendering of Shakespeare’s text, but that was a decision that I am not an expert to judge. The audience clearly enjoyed the entire production, so I put that down to personal preference. The play reached the famous fight scene when Romeo kills Tybalt, when the young actor playing Romeo’s antagonist injured himself. After an extended break, the remainder of the production was cancelled, and the young man had to be taken to the hospital for treatment. It was an unfortunate, but totally understandable, ending to the evening.

As I began the all-night drive to Winston-Salem, I saw an object in the night that I couldn’t identify at the moment, so I was amused to see that the photo I quickly snapped was of a giant watering can.  This picture and a few others from the evening are below, with the rest available at https://singin1.pics/piwigo/index.php?/category/Romeo-and-Juliet-Saunton-VA-102325.

Trips to North Carolina and my hometown of Greensboro have become an opportunity to reminisce about the foods I grew up eating. This trip is no different. I reached Winston-Salem very early Friday morning. My first order of business was to make two stops, the local Krispy Kreme (with its Hot sign ablaze in the dawning light) and Bojangles, where I got a country ham biscuit for the first time since my last visit to the Tarheel state a few months ago. My early arrival allowed me to locate and possess the closest accessible parking to the University of North Carolina School of the Arts‘ library. Members from MLA’s Atlantic and Southeastern chapters met together on the library’s fourth floor for three days of sharing information related to music librarianship. I was not scheduled to present, and since my retirement in 2023, my involvement in the professional organization has shifted. Still, I wanted to take advantage of the close proximity to the DMV and attend because I wanted to see colleagues I would be unlikely to engage with at long-distance national conferences because of the out-of-my-pocket expense.

The presentations were interesting, especially one about composer Undine Smith Moore and another about a little-known composer from New Orleans. As expected, I saw several colleagues, including former Florida State University co-worker Sarah Cohen. Sarah gifted me with a sample packet of hard candy from her family company, Lofty Pursuits, which I barely managed to keep unopened until I sat down to write this blog.

As usually happens when I visit a library with a music collection, I found myself browsing the stacks. This time, I found that several choral and solo voice music scores of Negro spirituals–including a few by composer Harry T. Burleigh published before his famous first publication of “Deep River” in 1916–and took pictures of several covers. What I didn’t expect was the nearly frenzied response from members of my Facebook’s Art of the Negro Spiritual group, including several requests that I copy and share the score. The day was scheduled to end with a buffet dinner, but I was feeling the effects of 24+ hours of driving and conference. Instead, I drove to nearby Walkertown and picked up a delicious seafood dinner (it was Friday, after all) at the Seafood Shack and called it a night.

By Saturday morning, the reactions to that post had nearly reached 500. I had brought my travel computer and peripherals, including a flatbed scanner, on the trip to use during my visit with my aunt in case she had some family photos she would allow me to scan. The library was closed to the public on Saturday, so I adjusted my plans and visited her on Saturday, then I returned to Winston-Salem, had a wonderful BBQ dinner from the drive-through at Little Richard’s BBQ, and spent Sunday afternoon scanning every spirituals score I could find.

I decided to make the drive to Asheville in western North Carolina that evening, so I made a hotel reservation for the night and was pleased that the Sunday evening traffic wasn’t too heavy. I reached town with plenty of time to rest and be ready for the drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway from Asheville to Smoky Mountain National Park. Unfortunately, the weather I awoke to Monday was cold and rainy–not at all conductive to me enjoying a day-long scenic drive. With that in mind, I extended my hotel stay by a day and used the time to relax and work at my computer.

Pictures from the conference are below and available at https://singin1.pics/piwigo/index.php?/category/AtMLA-Conference-Winston-Salem-NC-October-2025.

As always, I thank the Lord for granting me the stamina to make the trip, the damn good reflexes to steer the Silver Bullet (SB) as she needed to be guided, and the ability to enjoy His handiwork as it whizzes by my windshield.

I did a lot of driving so far, with even more scheduled to come. The map here gives a general route of this first leg.

The additions I made to Randye’s Replay playlist meant that I was able to complete that portion of the trip without playing through the entire list, and it did the job I hoped for, providing lively music to keep me engaged throughout the extended drive.

SB handled the drive with her usual reliability. We’ve been together now for five years, and her mileage at the start of this trip was 74,459. Lord willing, we will have many, many more to share.