11.16.22 INDY Week

Raleigh W Durham W Chapel Hill VOL. 39 NO. 46

CONTENTS NEWS 6

Four newcomers to Raleigh's city council bring fresh energy, diverse, experiences, and new ideas. How will they play with four incumbents?

BY JASMINE GALLUP

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In Durham courts, domestic violence survivors struggle with a tough choice: hire a costly lawyer or represent themselves. BY ADEJUWON OJEBUOBOH

ARTS & CULTURE 12 Feral felines across the Triangle are finding new homes through the "Working Barn Cat" initiative. BY JASMINE GALLUP 14 Preservation Durham's tours of local cemeteries honor the past.

BY CLAIRE KRAEMER

16 Bookstore and DIY reading series across the Triangle are breathing new life into the local literary community. BY SHELBI POLK 18 Save a few squeaky wheels, a performance of A Doll's House, Part 2 was robust and dimensional. BY BYRON WOODS

THE REGULARS 3 15 Minutes

4 Quickbait

20 Culture Calendar

The North Carolina Chinese Lantern Festival opens at the Koka Booth Amphitheatre on Friday, November 18. (See calendar, page 20.) PHOTO BY BEN MCKEOWN

COVER Photo by Brett Villena | Design by Nicole Pajor Moore

WE M A DE THIS PUB LI S H E R John Hurld EDI T O RI A L Editor in Chief Jane Porter Managing Editor Geoff West Arts & Culture Editor Sarah Edwards

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Staff Writers Jasmine Gallup Thomasi McDonald Lena Geller Copy Editor Iza Wojciechowska Interns Chad Knuth, Lia Salvatierra Nathan Hopkins

November 16, 2022

INDYweek.com

Contributors Madeline Crone, Grant Golden, Spencer Griffith, Lucas Hubbard, Brian Howe, Lewis Kendall, Kyesha Jennings, Glenn McDonald, Nick McGregor, Gabi Mendick, Dan Ruccia, Rachel Simon, Harris Wheless

CR EATIVE Creative Director Nicole Pajor Moore Graphic Designer Jon Fuller Staff Photographer Brett Villena

ADVER TISING Publisher John Hurld Sales Digital Director & Classifieds Mathias Marchington CIR CU L ATION Berry Media Group

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BACK TA L K

Last week for print, Thomasi McDonald wrote about some Hayti

residents

who

are

unhappy with the Durham Housing Authority’s plans for affordable housing for Fayette

Place, arguing that the community needs a much broader framework for tackling gentrification. Readers had thoughts.

Wrote Facebook commenter and motivational speaker BASEMENT TO BALCONY on Facebook: “The more you allow this #propoganda to infiltrate your thought process, you’ll ALWAYS be at the mercy of those who have what you desire. However, the moment we apply hard work and dedication in the form of Black Group Economics, we will rise to the top WITHOUT stepping on the necks of others ... regardless of how they treated us.”

Wrote Facebook commenter and unsuccessful candidate for the NC Senate LARRY COLEMAN: “It is interesting that this issue never gets resolved and the Durham PACs and local media continue to endorse and Durham voters elect officials that never address the issue.”

Wrote commenter MARY MOLINA: “This needs to be more than a cover photo! Residents of Durham need continuous and detailed reporting on how our elected officials are handling this crisis. INDY can lead the way.”

Also for print last week, Jasmine Gallup wrote about new scrutiny surrounding the Wake County Public Libraries system following its decision to stock an anti-trans book based on two requests from patrons.

“I would like to see data on how many purchase requests WCPL receives and how many are acted upon,” says Twitter commenter PATRICIA LADD. “This article makes it sound like 2 people asking for a book impels the library to buy it and that has definitely not been my experience with purchase requests.”

“Hate it, but we can’t ban it. We just won the Wake County School Board, rejecting book bans and general crappiness the GOP wants,” wrote Twitter commenter @JULITHOMAS5_21.

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Raleigh

15 MINUTES Susanne Morais Transpersonal hypnotherapist

BY CHAD KNUTH backtalk@indyweek.com

What is the fundamental difference between psychotherapy and hypnotherapy?

Rather than dealing with the conscious thinking analytical brain [as with psychotherapy], you are accessing the subconscious, where all feelings and emotions and behaviors exist, where 90 percent of our being is, where our brain function is. And so by quieting the thinking mind and understanding your issues, it makes getting to the root cause pretty fast and effective.

Can you give an example?

In the subconscious, sometimes there’s just glitches. From the time we are very young, let’s say our mother saw a mouse and screamed, and we may have been only one year old and don’t have a conscious memory of that, but here we are as adults and we are afraid of mice and we have no idea why. In talk therapy, it’s great to be able to pinpoint that issue, talk around it, and consciously process it, but a lot of time it is limited because you can’t actually clear the emotion itself. With hypnosis we can go right back to that very moment when your mother screamed, because our subconscious holds everything. The subconscious doesn’t know time, past or future.

I understand there’s a difference between hypnosis and hypnotherapy. Can you explain their relationship?

Hypnosis is a part of hypnotherapy. Typically hypnotherapy has a purpose to help somebody resolve an issue. Hypnosis is a bit more broad, and people unfortunately have a connotation that hypnosis is what you have seen in the movies, where their eyes are spinning and their mind is being controlled, that sort of thing. That’s the myth that needs to be dispelled.

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE SUBJECT

During sessions, clients remain awake, yet it is the client’s subconscious that is ultimately leading the session. Can you elaborate?

The most common thing I hear is “I don’t think I can be hypnotized. My brain’s too busy.” We are all in and out of states of hypnosis all day long. When you’re watching a movie, your conscious brain is not on, you’re in a TV hypnosis. This is the same for video games or when you’re in the heat of an argument, because you’re so focused on only one thing, and it’s all generally feeling based.

Any kind of conscious thought is really not coming in.

And so hypnosis is so much simpler than most people realize. The way that you access the subconscious is through the imagination, and so most sessions start off with a guided meditation. In the end, all hypnosis is self-hypnosis. Ultimately the client decides if they want to be hypnotized or not.

What is the most common reason people seek hypnotherapy?

I mostly see people with behavioral issues: fears, phobias, a lot of emotional stuff, perfectionism, self-sabotage, or even finding purpose in life. A lot of people-pleasing, a lot of inner critic, a lot of inner child. The range that I see is interesting but never the same. I think people really don’t want medication for depression, they’re looking for alternative forms of healing, and they’ve been in psychotherapy and they can’t get past it.

What is one of the more unusual reasons someone has come to you for hypnotherapy?

I had someone come to me who had recently started seeing a vegan but had simultaneously never eaten a vegetable in their life. W INDYweek.com

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Q UIC KBA I T

Vote is Bond

BY JASMINE GALLUP

jgallup@indyweek.com

W

hile voters elected some new faces to the Wake County school board and Raleigh city council last week, they also approved some new construction.

Three major bond proposals on the ballot, totaling more than $1 billion in new funding, each won the overwhelming support of county voters.

Collectively, the bonds mark a significant investment in Raleigh’s parks, Wake County schools, and Wake Tech Community College.

Here’s what all that money will buy.

City of Raleigh Parks Bond A bond to expand and renovate Raleigh parks and greenways passed on November 8 with 73 percent approval from voters. The bond, which was heavily supported by Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin and the current city council, will fund 20 projects, including ones to improve inner city green spaces and some long-overlooked and underfunded parks in historically African American neighborhoods. It will also pay for longanticipated greenway connections, so people can more easily bike and walk through Raleigh. A large chunk of change ($43 million) is going toward a new play plaza in Dix Park, one part of a multistep plan to improve the park, which is expected to raise property values in the area.

Community center projects $72 million $14,750,000 . . . Method Community Center improvements $15,375,000 . . . Sertoma Art Center improvements $12,375,000 . . . John Top Greene Center improvements, construction of South Park Heritage Walk $29,500,000 . . Tarboro Community Center redevelopment

Park projects $99.8 million $11,500,000 . . . Devereux Meadows restoration and improvements $7,000,000 . . . . Erinsbrook Park implementation $4,500,000 . . . .Green Road Park improvements $54,250,000 . . John Chavis Historic Park expansion and improvements $9,000,000 . . . Kyle Drive neighborhood park planning and development $11,500,000 . . . Neuse River Park planning and development $2,000,000 . . . Strickland and Leesville Road Park improvements

Other projects (playground, tennis courts) $49.8 million $6,750,000 . . . . Biltmore Hills tennis complex expansion $43,062,500 . . Dix Park: Construction of 18-acre Gipson Play Plaza

TOTAL:

$275,000,000

Bike/pedestrian projects $26 million $21,000,000 . . Lake Wheeler Road bike and pedestrian path, other improvements $5,000,000 . . . Construction of walkable and bikeable connections to city parks and greenways

Greenway/trail projects $27.4 million $4,500,000 . . . .Crabtree Creek Greenway to Sandy Forks Road greenway connection $3,937,500 . . . . .Lake Lynn Trail Loop improvements $3,375,000 . . . . Marsh Creek greenway planning and design $5,625,000 . . . . Mine Creek greenway improvements $10,000,000 . . Walnut Creek greenway improvements

Source: https://raleighnc.gov/parks/parks-bond-referendum

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Wake County Schools Bond

Wake Tech Bond

Voters also passed a $530.8 million bond for Wake County Schools last week in overwhelming approval of the district's long-term plan to renovate old schools and build new ones. About 71 percent of voters cast ballots in favor of the bond. The county's aging school buildings, some 30 or 40 years old, are in critical need of repair, according to some longtime school board members. The funding will pay for HVAC replacement and safety upgrades, among other things, at existing schools as well as the construction of multiple new locations to meet the needs of a growing county.

Finally, Wake Technical Community College got another big boost in funding—this time $353.1 million—to build four new academic buildings and renovate facilities across its six campuses. Voters approved the bond with 69.5 percent of the vote.

Money will go toward a new health sciences building, a new cyber science facility in Morrisville, and construction of a permanent Western Wake Campus in Apex, among other projects. “We are so grateful for the outpouring of support from the people of Wake County,” Wake Tech president Scott Ralls said in a news release. “It’s clear that voters understand the critical role that Wake Tech plays in preparing a skilled workforce for the companies in our region.”

Associated construction costs $51 million

New equipment/furniture $12.1 million

Building renovations $53.6 million

$1,100,000 . . . . Permit fees $2,400,000 . . . Environmental/ADA $5,700,000 . . . . Temporary classrooms $20,900,000 . . Program management $20,900,000 . . Program contingency

$4,400,000 . . . Furniture replacement $7,700,000 . . . . Educational equipment

$38,000,000 . . Southern Wake Campus buildings/facilities $15,600,000 . . Repairs, renovations, and infrastructure upgrades across all Wake Tech campuses

TOTAL:

TOTAL:

$530,800,000

Aging school renovations $193.8 million $5,500,000 . . . Brentwood Elementary $5,600,000 . . . . Briarcliff Elementary $11,200,000 . . . Lockhart Elementary $5,500,000 . . . . Washington Elementary $7,300,000 . . . . Ligon Middle $51,700,000 . . . North Garner Middle $5,000,000 . . . Athens Drive High $75,000,000 . . HVAC, boiler, and other building infrastructure renewal/replacement (district-wide) $27,000,000 . . .Partial renovations and improvements (district-wide)

Source: https://www.wcpss.net/domain/20322

$353,100,000

New school projects $273.9 million

New building construction $299.5 million

$59,800,000 . . Bowling Road Elementary (Fuquay-Varina) $59,800,000 . . Pleasant Plains Elementary (Apex) $5,500,000 . . . . Wendell Elementary (Wendell) $8,000,000 . . . Unnamed high school (West Cary/Morrisville) $140,800,000 . Parkside Middle and Wake Early College of Information and Biotech (Morrisville)

$105,000,000 . Health sciences building and parking deck $75,500,000 . . . Business/university transfer building $54,000,000 . . Life sciences/biotechnology building $65,000,000 . . Cyber science building and parking deck

Source: https://www.waketech.edu/2022bond/projects

INDYweek.com

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Raleigh

The New Guard CACs on the way back? Pressing developers on affordable housing? Raleigh’s four newly elected council members bring fresh energy and diverse experiences, but how will they work with the city’s incumbent mayor and three members of council?

BY JASMINE GALLUP jgallup@indyweek.com

L to R: Megan Patton (District B), Mary Black-Branch (A), Christina Jones (E), Jane Harrison (D) PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA

T

he Raleigh City Council saw a major power shift on Election Day, with four political newcomers voted into office. But while these women may want to move the council in a slightly different direction, they’re all prepared to tackle the city’s biggest issues right away, from affordable housing to community engagement.

The new council, now 6-2 majority women, is set to start the work of governing next year, following the induction of the new members next month. Broadly speaking, there are two main factions: the incumbents, who campaigned to stay the course, and the newcomers, who pushed for a more transparent council with better engagement with residents.

The council is now evenly split between these two groups, meaning that, despite winning a bid for reelection, Mayor MaryAnn Baldwin is likely to face more pushback in the coming months.

The council is also likely to divide more on some issues; some votes could depend on a single outlying member. On one hand, there are incumbents Baldwin, Stormie Forte, Jonathan Melton, and Corey Branch, who remain on the city council, with Forte taking an at-large seat. On the other, there are newcomers Mary Black-Branch (representing District A), Megan Patton (District B), Jane Harrison (District D), and Christina Jones (District E).

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The new cohort is one of the youngest in history, a group of professional women who say they want to change things for the better. The first time they saw each other after Election Day, at an INDY Week photo shoot in Brentwood Park, shouts of congratulations filled the air and hugs were shared all around. Their conversation was like any among a group of friends: exchanges about the best calendar app to use, an unlucky car accident, and midnight phone calls from reporters. Black-Branch was finishing up a video chat on her phone when she stepped out of her car.

“We’ve been supporting each other for months,” Black-Branch says, adding that her fellow newly elected council members feel like family now.

Community engagement One major trait the newbies have in common is their attitude toward community engagement. During the election cycle, each said that the city needs to do better engaging residents and responding to their concerns. Clearly, the message resonated with voters.

The debate over community engagement began when the city council abruptly dismantled Citizens Advisory Councils (CACs) in 2020, arguing they were an archaic and

ineffective system for communicating residents’ concerns. The city’s 18 CACs varied widely, with some representing tens of thousands of households across large geographic areas and some representing just a few thousand in a handful of neighborhoods.

Baldwin and other council members argued CACs were not representative of the city’s diverse population. In-person meetings often occurred on weekday evenings, which meant not everyone could participate. People who attended CAC meetings also held a wide variety of concerns, from zoning and development to worries about food deserts, education, and crime, noted Mickey Fearn, the consultant hired to study community engagement for the city.

But the role CACs played in guiding development was likely the overarching factor in the city’s decision to abolish them. The groups didn’t meet just to discuss community issues; residents could use them to loudly oppose, and sometimes stall, new proposed development projects.

Before defunding, CACs could cast votes on proposed rezonings. The Raleigh Planning Commission then considered these votes before making a nonbinding recommendation to the council.

Since CACs dissolved, the city has been slow to create a new system of public outreach, and many Raleighites say they feel ignored. Now, we may see the return

of CACs, albeit in a modified form. Harrison and Jones each say they want to see the groups re-funded and re-formed, with changes to promote citywide engagement and improve representation of Raleigh’s diverse population.

Jones, the current (and longest-serving) chairperson of the overseeing Raleigh Citizens Advisory Council (RCAC), says she doesn’t feel bitter or frustrated about the way CACs were sidelined. The results of the election speak for themselves, she says.

“It’s really going to be impressed upon the incumbent council and mayor to say, ‘Are you open for the change? Are you open for the discussion?’” Jones says. “Because we all know Raleigh is changing and growing, and no one wants to stop that. I just want to make sure that we’re all a part of it.”

Jones says she’s willing to deny CACs the power to vote on new development projects if it will help bring back regular community meetings.

“One concern I heard on the campaign trail was ‘Oh, [the CACs are] voting on residents’ property rights.’ And while I vehemently disagree, because their vote was never binding, I understand that we have to compromise,” Jones says. “[So] if the vote is what makes people not want to participate in CACs, then take the vote. We haven’t had [one] for three years.

Take it away, but bring the developers in

to give the information. Give us a path to understand where [our] feedback goes … so we know our voice is heard.”

Jones, Harrison, and Patton propose creating more groups that represent smaller areas, potentially using the city’s 28 community centers as bases of operation.

Black-Branch wants to see other changes to community engagement, she says, namely using a hybrid model for meetings so people can attend virtually, an idea Harrison also supports.

In addition, Harrison wants to provide better outreach and communication tools to CACs, so they can reach more people.

“I want CAC leaders to have access to leadership training, as well as term limits to encourage new leaders, including young people and renters. Meeting facilitation, agenda setting, having a structured process of engagement—those are skills that we need,” Harrison says. “I’d even like to encourage groups to meet that go beyond a specific neighborhood. For example, communities like the unhoused or homeless, who also would benefit from regular interaction with city staff and leaders.”

“My guess is that everyone on council in this next term believes Raleigh is better off when neighbors communicate, organize, and advocate to address issues of common concern,” Harrison adds.

Patton takes a softer stance on CACs, saying she does support “reconstituting some form of a neighborhood meeting” but that CACs aren’t the be-all and endall. The city can learn from politicians who are already doing well with community engagement, such as U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who regularly hosts “Ask Me Anything” live discussions on Reddit and Instagram.

Most people Patton encountered along the campaign trail weren’t involved in the firestorm over land use, she says. They simply wanted to know how to get speed bumps on their road and when the city was going to fix that stoplight on the corner.

“I was a person who wasn’t served by CACs. I recognize their limitations,” Patton says. “We should view CACs as what they are, which is one component of community engagement.”

Affordable housing With CACs maybe on their way back, many Raleigh residents are worried that the city council will reverse course to the

“It’s really going to be impressed upon the incumbent council and mayor to say, ‘Are you open for the change? Are you open for the discussion?’” past, when it was more difficult for the city to enact zoning changes. For years, critics say, the council’s approach to zoning privileged traditional neighborhoods and left renters and lower-income families with no place to live.

Jones objects to that characterization and says she’s not serving on the council to stop growth, “just [to] open the door to have more people at the table.” In her view, the conversation around affordable housing needs to include residents’ voices more prominently.

As the city grows and builds more densely, Jones says there is “real room” to ask developers to include more affordable housing. While inclusionary zoning is not permitted under state law, the city could more proactively lobby for change. Council members could also start more conversations with developers about including affordable housing, Jones says, adding that she’s seen developers compromise with the council on projects that were initially market-rate.

“I see the bending. How far can we go in asking [developers] to bend a little bit more? I think there is room for that, especially when you have a council who is there to support that cause,” Jones says. “For the last three years, it’s been rubber-stamping and allowing developers to do whatever they want. I want a council that’s going to ask those questions [about affordable housing].”

While Jones campaigned on keeping developers in check, Harrison, Patton, and Black-Branch took a less confrontational stance. Each of them agrees, in part, with the current city council’s approach to addressing the affordable housing shortage.

But in their view, the city council could do much more.

“Raleigh needs a bold, comprehensive housing affordability plan that engages those directly impacted by rapidly rising costs of living,” Harrison says. “We ought to craft a plan in conversation with residents across the city that considers policies like property tax abatement, utility relief for low-income homeowners,

[and] preservation of naturally occurring affordable housing.”

During their campaigns, Harrison and others promised to address citizen concerns about the disappearance of naturally occurring affordable housing, displacement and gentrification, and rising property taxes.

Harrison also says she wants to do more to stabilize rents, preventing huge annual increases that often force people out of their homes. She says the city should take a harder look at inclusionary zoning, as well as “tenant protections to prevent evictions and provide relocation assistance.”

The current city council has already embraced some of these policies. With the $80 million affordable housing bond approved in 2020, the council has funded initiatives including land purchases along transit corridors, affordable housing construction in partnership with nonprofits, and down payment assistance. But incoming council members say these projects could use more funding and support.

“There are some strategies in light rotation that I’d like to put in heavy rotation,” Patton says. “We need to double down on preserving existing affordable housing.

Property tax relief for tax-burdened residents [has been] ticking along in Wake County, [but] I want our residents to feel the benefits of that.”

The environment With two professional environmentalists now taking seats on the city council—Mary Black-Branch, an environmental activist, and Jane Harrison, a coastal economics specialist—plans to address climate change could be at the forefront next year. Baldwin has asked Harrison to chair the Growth and Natural Resources Committee for the city council, Harrison says.

“The first issue I want to tackle is stronger tree protections for Raleigh,” she says.

“Raleigh should institute protections for native species of a certain size and create

a tree fund when protection isn’t feasible.”

“Trees help clean and cool the air, clean stormwater, reduce erosion, and add immense value to our city and our neighborhoods,” Harrison adds. “We need those safeguards in place to protect our tree canopy. So it’s something relatively simple, but it actually takes care of a lot of different issues.”

Black-Branch also plans to push the city council forward on climate change, she says. She wants to take a look at ways local government can intercede to reduce carbon emissions as well as regulate development.

“I have been meeting with climate advocates and climate scientists … about the ways that we can put some teeth and grit into how we’re focusing on emissions and reductions,” Black-Branch says. “I’m trying to figure out ways … we can actually do climate action, on a real fundamental and proactive level, and not something that’s in text.”

Moreover, Black-Branch wants to mitigate negative impacts development can have on the environment, as well as reduce environmental injustice, she says. Raleigh’s massive growth, which sometimes involves clear-cutting trees, can exacerbate flashflooding and stormwater runoff. Often, these impacts are felt most by historically marginalized people and minorities.

“That heavy rain we had over the weekend? Oh man, so many parts of Six Forks flooded, and it only rained hard here for an hour,” Black-Branch says. “Imagine if we got a really bad storm like we’ve had in the past.

It’s completely possible, and we’re just not well equipped for that.”

Black-Branch plans to look at ways to incentivize developers to build green, as well as invest in community solar.

Patton is also looking forward to tackling sustainability, she says. Her priorities speak to the desires of many younger Raleighites who want to do their part to protect the environment but often can’t afford to buy an electric car or install solar panels on the roof, for example. Patton says she wants to look at ways to incentivize landlords to operate more sustainably and that transit is also a “huge component” of sustainability.

“Big projects [like commuter rail] are already ticking along but have a timeline of a decade,” she says. “We don’t have time for them to move along at a glacial pace. I don’t say that lightly because I know interagency cooperation is a slow process. But residents want to see public transportation now.” W INDYweek.com

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Durham

A Bitter Choice In Durham, domestic violence survivors whose cases end up in court must decide between paying for an expensive lawyer or representing themselves.

BY ADEJUWON OJEBUOBOH backtalk@indyweek.com

J

udge Amanda Maris rocked her gray chair back and forth at the mahogany bench in her courtroom, where she was hearing cases involving domestic violence.

On this October morning at the Durham County Courthouse, only two people sat in the gallery. The metal hinges of the courtroom doors suddenly unlatched. A short brunette with red highlights entered and speed walked up to the table where the accuser typically sits, followed by her grandmother. The brunette, named Amy, sported a denim outfit. The grandmother wore a faded paisley blouse.

Amy was seeking a temporary protective order against her ex-boyfriend. She didn’t show up with an attorney, and none would arrive.

An office assistant desperately hoping to ultimately win a full protective order, she didn’t want to represent herself.

But she essentially had no choice.

A shortage of lawyers Domestic violence cases involve both criminal and civil proceedings. The criminal proceedings are pursued by the district attorney’s office under charges such as aggravated assault. Aggravated assault must cause serious bodily injury or must involve a gun or knife. As of early October, the Durham Police Department had received 160 complaints of domestic aggravated assaults this year.

These 160 victims may also file protective orders or custody petitions to protect children from an alleged abuser.

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Durham County Justice Center

PHOTO BY ALEXISRAEL VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

These proceedings are civil court hearings, which means that in Amy’s case, she was technically the plaintiff. But unlike in criminal court, here there is no constitutional requirement for a lawyer.

Many low-income victims in Durham, unable to hire private attorneys, turn to Legal Aid of North Carolina’s Durham office. In three of four civil cases in the United States, one side is not represented by a lawyer. Legal Aid is the primary source of free civil advice for domestic violence survivors because of its partnership with the Durham Crisis Response Center (DCRC), which provides services to survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking.

“They [Legal Aid] have a committed team that we trust with our most vulnerable survivors,” says Michele Archer, director of the Family Justice Center at the DCRC. Legal Aid’s Durham office handles roughly 30 to 60 domestic violence cases a month, accepting about 90 percent of those referred to it by the DCRC, the police department, and other community partners, according to Gigi Warner, Legal Aid’s domestic violence and family law supervising attorney.

Ten percent are typically turned away because Legal Aid doesn’t have enough lawyers to represent them. At the same time, many domestic violence victims are unaware of Legal Aid’s services. Combined, scores of low-income survivors of domestic violence in Durham end up pursuing their cases without a lawyer.

“He won’t leave me alone” Amy was supposed to arrive at 10 a.m. for the temporary protective order proceeding (known as an ex parte hearing).

She arrived at 10:46.

She and her grandmother sat at the plaintiff’s table. The defendant never showed up.

Ex parte hearings grant temporary protective orders, usually up to 10 days, until a final hearing. (The defendant doesn’t need to attend the initial hearing but must be present at the final one, at which the judge decides whether to grant a full protective order.) Amy navigated this process with some guidance from the DCRC, but she couldn’t get a Legal Aid lawyer. She’s among the 10 percent who didn’t make the cut.

The courtroom clerk swore Amy in while her grandmother rubbed her back. Maris flipped through a folder and gently asked, “What led you to file this protective order request today?”

“On multiple occasions the defendant put his hands on me,” Amy said, sitting next to the empty defendant’s table.

“The most recent time scared me the most.”

(The 9th Street Journal is not fully identifying Amy in order to protect her safety.)

That time was in June. Amy told the court that she and her then boyfriend were driving home from Food Lion one afternoon, when they started arguing about late utility

“It got more loud and I was afraid he was going to hit me, so I went into the bathroom. But he followed me.” bills. By the time they arrived at his home— where Amy also lived—they were yelling.

“It got more loud, and I was afraid he was going to hit me, so I went into the bathroom,” she said. “But he followed me.”

They scuffled, and she hit her elbow on the bathroom wall. She ended up in a corner in the bathroom, she said, “so I put my hands out like this.” She threw both arms straight out from her chest to demonstrate. As she continued her account, her voice broke. Her grandmother touched her hand.

Amy said the defendant threw her on a bed and punched her as she cried. He called her “a stupid b——,” she recalled, as he struck her petite frame. She lay in the fetal position.

“When he stopped punching me,” Amy said, “he just sat down in a chair watching me cry.”

The police charged him with assault on a female, which carries a sentence of up to 150 days in prison.

Amy moved in with her grandmother.

But, Amy said, her ex-boyfriend incessantly called and texted her. He even showed up at her grandmother’s house.

“I thought it was over when I moved out, but he won’t leave me alone,” Amy said, her shoulders folded.

That’s how she ended up in domestic violence court.

A onetime consultation Amy’s ex-boyfriend is free awaiting his criminal trial in February, and Amy said she fears more harassment, which is why she filed this protective order.

“We encourage them [survivors] to file in civil court, because it’s an extra protective cushion,” says Archer, of the DCRC. The order would force Amy’s ex-boyfriend to stay at least 100 yards away from her. If he doesn’t, he could spend up to 150 days in jail.

The DCRC referred Amy to Legal Aid in Durham, but her case was selected only for a onetime consult. Legal Aid does not comment on specific cases, but Warner did say staffing constraints pose a challenge.

“When our staff lawyers reach the number of cases they can attentively handle in

a month,” she says, “there’s not much more we can do besides onetime consultations.”

Amy had her consultation before the October hearing. Legal Aid staff told her how to describe the incident to the judge: provide as much detail as possible. They also assured her that nine out of 10 temporary protective orders are approved.

That’s not the case with full protective orders: in 2017, for instance, North Carolina judges approved only 34 percent of them.

Many cases were dismissed because plaintiffs did not return to court for their final hearing. In some cases, they didn’t have a lawyer to remind them of court dates.

Maris granted Amy the temporary order, and a final hearing was scheduled for a week later. In that proceeding, Amy would have to use evidence to show, not just tell, Maris why her ex-boyfriend should be ordered to leave her alone for one year.

She would need to navigate judicial rules of procedure and perhaps even negotiate with the defendant if he wanted to agree to the order without a trial. That’s a tall order for someone who isn’t an attorney.

Lawyers are expensive. Charles Ullman, a Raleigh attorney who partly specializes in domestic violence cases, charges $120 an hour, which, he says, is “on the cheaper end.”

“These cases are pretty much always messy,” he says, “which means you got to talk to neighbors, family, friends, or any potential witnesses. That takes a lot of hours.”

It takes six hours for Amy to make $120 from her office assistant job.

Amy wasn’t likely to get the help of a lawyer. Her best bet was to seek support from third-year law students at Duke University, UNC-Chapel Hill, or NC Central University who assist Legal Aid with domestic violence cases. Some nonprofits provide onetime legal consults but can’t give in-court representation.

This left Amy with two options: represent herself or incur debt to hire a private attorney.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said. W This story was produced through a partnership between the INDY and The 9th Street Journal. Visit our website to read the full version of this article.

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E TC. Alvin stalks down the brick walkway in front of the Hengstenberg’s farmhouse in Bear Creek on Nov. 9 PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA

Of Mice and Meows A new program in Orange County helps solve the area’s feral cat problem with a simple solution: giving them a job.

BY JASMINE GALLUP jgallup@indyweek.com

W

hen Alvin, Simone, and Theodore were found by Orange County Animal Services earlier this year, they were hostile to any human contact. The trio of black cats had to be trapped from a distance, using baited cages and catch poles.

Eight months later, the change in their behavior is remarkable. On the front porch of a picture-perfect farmhouse in Bear Creek, outside Siler City, Alvin lounges in the sun, while Simone is curled up on her human’s lap, enjoying pets and ear scratches.

“When we got Simone, they actually had to put a blanket over her crate,” says Bill Hengstenberg, who adopted the three cats with his wife Barbara in March. “They said, ‘She’s so feral, if you even get close to the crate, she’ll scratch you to pieces.’ It’s amazing, the change.”

“She was a slicing machine,” Barbara adds. “It took a few weeks, but they love to be wherever we are.”

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As we talk, Alvin nudges up against Bill’s shins, clearly wanting attention. The little black cat is already much more social than he was when he first arrived at the Hengstenbergs’ farmhouse in Bear Creek.

Alvin and the two other cats were kept in quarantine at first, per instructions from animal shelter staff, but that didn’t stop him from launching an escape attempt. At one point, Alvin hid under the stairs, waiting for his chance to climb up the wall and go through a tiny, two-by-four-inch hole near the ceiling, says Barbara.

The hole didn’t lead out of the barn, just out of the workshop, so the couple was able to recapture him with a laundry basket. Now, he might roam their seven-acre property, but he always comes back for dinner.

Alvin and his “siblings” are clearly a source of constant delight to the Hengstenbergs, and in return they’re treated like royalty. The cats enjoy canned food, a running water

fountain, and a heated and air-conditioned home in the barn. The happy ending is all thanks to a new program in Orange County dubbed the “Working Barn Cat” initiative.

The program, which started taking off earlier this year, helps semiferal or free-roaming cats find forever homes in outdoor settings. Alvin, Simone, and Theodore ended up in the Hengstenbergs’ barn, but hundreds of cats have also wound up in stables, screened-in porches, and large rural homes with acres of land, with 64 already adopted out this year, says Tenille Fox, a spokeswoman for Orange County Animal Services.

“They’re fairly friendly cats, but they can’t handle the shelter environment,” says Fox of the cats who go into the Working Barn Cat program. “We do our best to give them their privacy …. Sometimes we’ll put towels up to try and help them calm down. But some cats, for whatever reason, just can’t fully accept the sounds and the smells of all the other [animals]. It’s just too much for them.”

These are cats that can’t be put on the adoption floor, because they might hiss or try to scratch humans who come near them. Before the Working Barn Cat program, the shelter was forced to euthanize these felines. Now, however, they can be adopted under the right circumstances.

Like other areas across the Triangle, Orange County is dealing with a significant feral cat problem. For years, animal services used the “catch and kill” method, a widespread tactic when it came to feral animals. When feral cats were brought in, they would be euthanized, says Tiani Schifano, the program coordinator of Orange County Animal Services.

Not only was that method inhumane, according to many animal rights activists, but it was also often ineffective. When feral cats were removed from a particular territory, others would simply move in and claim it, Schifano says. In 2019, Orange County Animal Services started using a newly popularized method called Trap-Neuter-Release (TNR), where feral cats are caught, sterilized, and then released. Research shows that this is a much more effective way to manage feral cat populations, Schifano says, and the county is already seeing effects. Last year, the shelter saw 323 cats (who would otherwise have been killed) come through the TNR program. This year, they’ve seen 207 cats so far.

In the long term, Schifano hopes to see less than 100 feral cats roaming Orange County.

When it comes to the Working Barn Cat program, there’s not a strict screening process, but potential pet parents should be able to provide the cats with food, water, and an outdoor shelter of some kind, Fox says. That shelter needs

be able to protect the cats from the elements and have dry, warm places, perhaps with a barn or straw as an insulator. The cats should also have someplace to climb to, so they can avoid predators like large dogs or coyotes.

One cat that was successfully adopted went into a heated garage. “[The owners] really just kind of fell in love with this cat. He had the sweetest face, but he was really unpredictable about humans, people trying to touch him,” Fox says. “It turns out he did well in this heated garage in the winter. Then in the summer [the owners] just let him have regular ventilation.”

Likewise, in the animal shelter, Alvin, Simone, and Theodore were “very reactive,” Fox says. “But once they got into an environment they were more comfortable with, where they could live more on their terms, they became really friendly and even wanted to let people pet them.”

That won’t always happen with semiferal cats, says Fox. In fact, even with daily food and water, they sometimes run away.

In those cases, the shelter is happy to let people try again with one of their other cats. Often, however, the animals are happy to stay safe in a new outdoor home—and even to put in a little work.

The Hengstenbergs originally turned to the Working Barn Cat program as a way to deal with their mouse problem. In addition to rescuing alpacas, the couple raises chickens, which are housed in a nearby coop in the barn. Each night, they would spot some 30 or 40 mice on an outdoor camera, flocking to the chicken feed.

“We would look at the camera at night

and the floor was almost moving. It was disgusting,” Barbara says. “But I swear to God, the day [the cats] got out of the workshop, they took care of the mice. It was incredible. I think they scared most of them off.

We haven’t found any remnants, but we’ve never had another mouse in there. They’re good workers.”

The Hengstenbergs care deeply for their animals, especially their rescues. The alpacas they raise all came from bad situations, suffering terrible injuries, life-threatening illnesses, or simply being left for dead. Likewise, Alvin, Simone, and Theodore came to the couple in bad condition.

The cats had been treated for fleas, vaccinated, spayed, and neutered at the animal shelter, but life on the street left its mark.

Seeing the cats as they are now—playful, social, and with lovely long coats of fur—is its own reward, Barbara says.

As retirees, Bill and Barbara don’t have too many obligations. They moved to North Carolina from Connecticut about three years ago, where they also had a farm. Now, they spend their golden years sitting outside, caring for their animals, and pursuing hobbies. Barbara paints, while Bill woodworks. And of course, they have a million stories about the cats: The way all three of them huddle around Bill’s legs when he’s warming up their food. The odd places Theodore roams during the day. The time Simone got stuck on the roof of the gazebo.

“We don’t have kids, so these [animals] are our kids,” Barbara says. “This is our retirement. We clean out their pens. We go in and talk to them. They’re very peaceful.” W

After getting some scritches from Bill and Barbara Hengstenberg, Simone wanders off toward their barn in Bear Creek. PHOTO BY BRETT VILLENA

INDYweek.com

November 16, 2022

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A Bridge to the Past Preservation Durham’s tours at local cemeteries honor those who have come before.

BY CLAIRE KRAEMER arts@indyweek.com

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n a balmy Sunday afternoon at Beechwood Cemetery, Melva Rigel walked up to the grave of Viola Turner (1900–1988).

Beneath the small stone marker on the ground lay the first female vice president of North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, once the largest Black-owned insurance company in the country. Turner herself never took no for an answer and climbed up the corporate ladder. Rigel said Turner insisted that “you don’t fight physically, you fight with your brain.”

Preservation Durham, a local nonprofit devoted to historic preservation, recently began offering tours through Beechwood Cemetery, a historically Black cemetery where 8,000 have been buried since 1926.

Beechwood is one of two public cemeteries in Durham. Maplewood Cemetery, founded in 1872 as Durham’s first city cemetery, was initially closed to Black residents. For 54 years Black Durhamites lacked a public cemetery, until Beechwood opened.

About 30 years ago, the historic preservation group started tours at Maplewood Cemetery.

“This has been long overdue,” Chris Laws, executive director of Preservation Durham, said of the Beechwood tour. “We can’t do anything about the past and what we should’ve done. We are going to do it right now.”

The tour began with an introduction from Charles Johnson, a history professor at NC Central University. He explained that at the beginning of the 20th century, “in most areas of the South, African Americans in particular were not doing well. But Durham was a bright shining example of what was possible.”

Many of the people described on the tour had parents who were born into slavery and went on to build generational 14

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wealth. Johnson explains, “Many African Americans here had their wealth invested in institutions they owned, which meant that that money stayed within the African American community.”

The tour guides, Beverly Evans and Melva Rigel, grew up in the College Heights area of Durham. They spent hours researching each individual who is buried in the cemetery and knew many of them personally.

As the tour started, Rigel stated, “You will notice that we will not be walking past any grave sites. After all, all lives regardless of profession are important to us. We do not walk past without at least saying their names.” It was true. Over the course of two hours the tour covered each and every person, even if only to simply state that someone was another person’s husband or sister. When Evans or Rigel forgot to comment on a tombstone, one would remind the other to backtrack.

The tour centered around personal anecdotes shared by Evans and Rigel. “All of these people lived as our neighbors,” Rigel explained. “They lived, worked, and played together. And now they’re resting close by.”

Some stories were met with laughter and others with solemn nodding, as the guides shared photos of the person, their families, or their home. Evans and Rigel spoke with familiarity while pointing to each name, providing a lighter air to a tour that might’ve otherwise felt eerie.

The guides described veterans of world wars, football players turned haberdashery owners, homemakers, and well-known business leaders like William A. Clement (1912–2001) and C.C. Spaulding (1907– 1987). The group zigzagged through the cemetery, seeing family names intertwine.

First wives were laid to rest next to second

Guide Melva Rigel leads a tour of Beechwood Cemetery.

PHOTO BY CLAIR KRAEMER, THE 9TH STREET JOURNAL

wives. Daughters and sons of families that had been introduced earlier reappeared, married to other daughters and sons we met later in the tour.

One grave belonged to Evans’s and Rigel’s French teacher at Hillside High, Cynthia P. Smith (1874–1952). Smith’s most famous student was André Leon Talley, the American fashion journalist. “After two years of speaking French, she insisted that we could only speak in French,” Evans said. “So then I had to get out of the class.”

Edna Mason (1919–2021) was in a birthday club with Evans’s mother. The members had to be between the ages of 98 and 110.

The last living member recently turned 110.

Charlotte Sloan (1920–1995) was another active member of the community.

“She particularly taught us etiquette,” Rigel explained. “She would invite us to high tea.

It didn’t matter how many utensils she had, we had to know how to use them.”

Charles McLester (1889–1966) was the pastor of Morehead Baptist Church. He was so active in the church that he took his wife, Johnnie B. McLester, to a Baptist convention on their honeymoon in 1946. “You can call it dedicated to your work, or you can call him a man with a lot of imagination,” Rigel said.

“Due to the fact that people were slaves and their parents were slaves, they knew how important it was for people to get ahead,” Rigel explained. “They always asked

about your grades, and they wouldn’t take your word for it, you’d have to show your report card, too.”

The 214 people introduced on this tour represent the first generation of African Americans who were able to build their own wealth in Durham. They created successful businesses, fought for representation in various professions, built schools, and worked toward ensuring the lives of the next Black generation were better than the last. Rigel’s and Evans’s work preserves their memories.

This is only the beginning of Preservation Durham’s tours at Beechwood Cemetery.

“I believe that ‘preserving’ is an active word,” Laws says. “We are going to be very active here in Beechwood. It’s just a pilot episode of a series that will be returning in the spring. It is our goal over the next decade to do this all over Beechwood.”

At the end of the tour, before people scattered, Rigel thanked everyone for coming. In a time of incredible growth and change in Durham, at Beechwood Cemetery we are reminded of some of the people who laid the groundwork for what the city is today. “I hope you learned a bit more about why African Americans are the way they are,” Rigel said. “At least the way some of us are.” W This story was produced through a partnership between the INDY and The 9th Street Journal. Visit our website to read the full version of this article.

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November 16, 2022

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PAGE

Reading Room The return of bookstore and DIY readings breathe new life into the Triangle’s literary community.

BY SHELBI POLK arts@indyweek.com

S

elling out a reading isn’t altogether unusual at Flyleaf Books. For years, the Chapel Hill bookstore’s 75-person-capacity space has hosted writers from across the country. But selling out an event in a matter of hours, with enough demand to move it to nearby music venue Cat’s Cradle—where the event also sold out—was a welcome surprise after several years of virtual and hybrid events.

The event was for Tracy Deonn, UNC-Chapel Hill graduate and a New York Times best-selling author, whose latest fantasy series is set in Chapel Hill.

“It only took another, I think, two weeks before we were sold out of the 350 seats,” Flyleaf events manager Maggie Robe says of the move to Cat’s Cradle.

While writing and reading can often be solitary activities, literary readings have long been a way for authors to promote books, for bookstores to generate sales and engagement, and for readers to connect with authors and the literary community. At the onset of the pandemic, readings—often held in small store spaces and dependent on unwieldy author tours—moved online and stayed there for years. These days, though, the event calendars at bookstores around the Triangle, like Flyleaf, Letters Bookshop, Epilogue Books, Rofhiwa Book Café, and Quail Ridge Books, are filling up. (Others, like The Regulator, have been more hesitant to bring back in-person events.)

“Authors are very happy to be back out in the states and meeting with their fans,” Robe says of the return of readings. “If you’ve been putting a book out during the pandemic, you have no idea about the audience response …. You know, authors, they feed off of their fans.”

Last Wednesday, after Deonn’s reading, a crowd waited outside the venue as if waiting for their favorite Broadway star to emerge.

On an even more locally grown level, DIY readings— often poetry, often featuring someone you’ve never heard of—are also thriving, organized independently of a venue.

Paradiso, a poetry reading series run by Marta Nuñez and Laura Jaramillo since 2018, has lived at bars around the Triangle for years: first at Nightlight in Chapel Hill, and 16

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The Concern Newsstand owner Orvokki Crosby at an Attic 506 Reading. now at Rubies on Five Points in Durham. In Chapel Hill, the Concern Newsstand often hosts poetry readings out of the artist-run gallery Attic 506. And at Durham’s NorthStar Church of the Arts, organizers Victoria Bouloubasis, Loan Tran, and Dylan Angell recently launched Evenings, a new quarterly event that features writers, musicians, and videographers in collaboration.

Events managers and DIY organizers alike are working to harness the community’s eagerness for connection. Robe began her job at Flyleaf during the pandemic, when the shop was struggling to maintain virtual event momentum after having run 340-ish events a year before the pandemic.

“Across all of the independent bookstores that I spoke with, so many colleagues and friends were trying to figure out how to make this work for people, our customers, and community,” Robe says.

The space went fully virtual, hybrid, and back to virtual, and finally opened up for full-attendance events this summer. Today, publishers are consistently in touch with Robe about book tours like they were before the pandemic, asking for larger and larger events.

W

hile it might not be a direct causation, hundreds of new independent bookstores spawned during COVID, and sales have been good in the Triangle. At its spacious new Durham location on Main Street—where it moved last year, from a smaller space just down the street—Letters Bookshop is adjusting to having space to host events. The second floor of the new-to-them space,

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE SUBJECT

which was originally a bank, has a stained-glass ceiling and room for chairs. Shop manager William Page says it can seat about 60 people, but they’re keeping it small for now, which fits the events they’re interested in.

“We’re always very interested in working with local authors,” Page says. “This is a space that we want to try to occupy.”

Page and the Letters staff like the way local authors invite their community into the space. At a recent reading featuring Grace MacNair, a New York–based author who grew up in North Carolina and recently released a chapbook through Bull City Press, Page was glad to introduce other local writers to the space.

“It was cool to be able to introduce a new crowd of people to Letters 2.0, as we call the new Letters, and have them potentially begin to think of us as a space that they can look to for events like that,” he says.

Writer Dylan Angell moved back to Durham during the pandemic, and he’s collaborated with organizers of two different readings in the last two years. After living in New York and Mexico City, Angell found himself back in the Triangle, decades after growing up here.

“There are so many writers, and there’s so much going on,” Angell said. “It was way beyond my expectations of what I might find.”

In June 2021, Angell partnered with Orvokki Crosby—the owner of the Concern Newsstand, a shop for zines and small press books—to begin hosting a poetry series on the rooftop of Attic 506. Crosby won a yearlong grant from the

about poetry before.”

They hope the project inspires people to write and to create an organic community around writing.

“It’s not an activity mediated by an algorithm or with any economical motives,” Nuñez says. “I think those spaces are very needed right now. People are very isolated.”

Jaramillo sees the act of paying attention to something like poetry as one that could have a greater significance. While spending time on our phones isn’t exactly a moral failure, Jaramillo says, it can lead to bad habits on a community level.

“People don’t necessarily feel a responsibility to pay attention, because they’re so overloaded,” she says. “So to create a context where people feel a responsibility to the people around them and to the readers to actually be present and not look at their phones … it seems like not a big deal, but it’s actually a notable experience.”

With the move from Chapel Hill to Durham, Jaramillo also hopes to inspire a more intentional DIY scene in the midst of a city grappling with gentrification.

“Rent prices have been really outpacing people’s ability to create robust DIY institutions,” she says. “I think we’re at a critical moment. I think we could shift things in a more interesting direction, but I think there has to be both militancy around culture and doing culture in an intentional way.”

Some event organizers, like Emily Cataneo of Redbud Writing Project, found a surge of interest in their offerings through the pandemic. Cataneo and her cofounder Arshia Simkin are both graduates of NC State University’s MFA program, and they started Redbud to offer community writing classes; teachers hold classes across the Triangle as well as online. The online option in particular took off once COVID-19 took off.

“We had one woman who was Zooming in from India,” Cataneo says. “She got up at three in the morning to take our classes, which was crazy, but amazing.”

At the end of each class semester, participants do a reading at a local bookstore.

While they may not be reading for hundreds of adoring fans, these students get a first taste of what it means to connect with other writers through their work.

“I think there’s just an energy to being in a room with other writers that people have missed out on over the past almost three years,” Cataneo says. “We’re seeing a lot of enthusiasm about being back in the bookstores, being able to buy books after class, and just having that ineffable advantage of being in a room with other human bodies and talking to them rather than talking online.” W

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ke up w a W i

Orange County Arts Council to pay poets (unusual in the business), and Angell curated the poets who would read. These rooftop sessions regularly pulled in 50 to 70 attendees from across the Triangle. For Crosby, the literary scene was a new and welcome development in a space dedicated primarily to the visual arts.

“I definitely noticed in 2021 there was this kind of awkwardness and unsureness of how to interact, and I think the readings were a safe place to be around people,” Crosby says. “You didn’t really have to be close, but you’re sharing an experience.”

When that grant ran out, Angell pivoted toward a more interdisciplinary type of reading with co-organizers Bouloubasis and Tran, while Crosby continues to bring in writers to curate more individual readings at Attic 506.

Bouloubasis, Tran, and Angell contributed videography, poetry, and music, respectively, to their first evening at Durham’s NorthStar Church of the Arts and hope to help bridge the area’s often siloed arts scenes.

“The Triangle has a very rich music scene, and it has a very rich writing scene,” Angell said. “But it doesn’t feel like there’s enough overlap.”

Since 2018, meanwhile, Nuñez and Jaramillo have run Paradiso, a poetry series that pairs visiting poets with local writers.

“When we started, there weren’t any other series happening locally, either DIY or really academic stuff, because previous things had ended,” Jaramillo said. “And we felt that there was a little bit of a void in Triangle cultural circles, but particularly literary circles, in terms of things that were tightly curated.”

Nuñez and Jaramillo, who met in graduate school at Duke, began with the venue: They loved the local punk vibes at Nightlight. Nightlight was glad to have them, and thus Paradiso was born.

The pair wants everyone to feel welcome.

“We tend to not assume that people know who we’re talking about when we mention a poet,” Jaramillo says. The pair curates their series by inviting a visiting poet to read alongside a local artist whose work is somehow in conversation with theirs. At one reading, they had Cynthia Arrieu-King, a poet and quilt maker based in Philadelphia, alongside Hillsborough artist Susannah Simpson, who uses textiles and fabrics in their performance art.

“The atmosphere that we met at, at Duke, was very academic,” Nuñez says.

“So, it was part of our dream to have a series that was more DIY and more open to the public. It would be a place where you’d walk in and you didn’t know anything

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November 16, 2022

17

STAGE

A DOLL’S HOUSE, PART 2 | HHHH

RedBird Theater Company | Durham Bottling Company | Through Nov. 19

A House Revisited Save some outside interruptions, Redbird Theater Company’s performance of A Doll’s House, Part Two was thought-provoking and robust.

BY BYRON WOODS arts@indyweek.com

W

hen a new theater company begins, it first makes a statement about necessity and the future: that it is needed, and that the region’s arts and culture cannot be complete—or as complete— without the contributions it will make. It’s gratifying to note that RedBird Theater’s inaugural production of A Doll’s House, Part 2 fully punctuates that statement with robust, dimensional performances of a thought-provoking script; intelligent direction and design; and production values that, for the most part, meet professional standards.

But given the area’s ongoing shortage of usable performance spaces (documented in our fall season preview), when a company like RedBird debuts in a brand-new venue, it’s also asserting that its space will actually let the company present its work without interference or sabotage. Unfortunately, our first experience Saturday night in the warehouse space within Suite Four at Durham Bottling Company’s coworking complex on Ramseur Road raises questions about whether that can happen there.

But first, the good news—and there’s plenty of it.

Contemporary playwright Lucas Hnath’s odd postscript to Henrik Ibsen’s 1879 drama begins 15 years after central character Nora (company cofounder Jeri Lynn Schulke) has fled an intolerable marriage to Torvald (cofounder David Berberian) that reflected the constricting gender roles and the unforgiving classist mores of bourgeois Norwegian society. Nora now returns to the titled structure for a reckoning being forced upon her.

In the time since, she’s gained no small degree of fame and notoriety for her pseud18

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onymous novels and other writings on “the way the world is towards women and the ways in which the world is wrong,” as she tells Anne Marie (sharp Lenore Field), the woman who first raised Nora as a nanny and then raised her children after she fled.

Those writings—which, through her descriptions, embody tenets of first-wave feminism and probe toward the second— have aroused the anger of a conservative judge. After investigating Nora’s true identity, he threatens to ruin her by prosecuting her for conducting business in ways that a married woman of that time was not permitted to do.

Nora thought Torvald had divorced her 15 years ago and that she had built her career legally. Now she has to ask Torvald to file their divorce (which she also can’t do easily, as a woman) and avert the looming threats of bankruptcy and prison.

Toward that end, she writes Anne Marie and arranges a visit to enlist her help while Torvald’s at work. Field and director Mark Filiaci mine the humor in their initial meeting, as an aging Anne Marie assesses the changes in Nora with the unvarnished candor we sometimes get from the folks back home. “You got a little fatter,” she notes right off the bat, before politely but pointedly inquiring about Nora’s “insides.” These come before she reassures Nora, “I never wanted bad things to happen to you,” while indicating others presumably did.

But when Hnath saddles Nora with stem-winding disquisitions on the state of women, it’s not always clear what favors he’s doing for feminism. Naively, Nora believes the end of marriage as an institution will come, on its own, in 20 to 30 years. In an overused strategy, Filiaci has Schulke, Field,

Jeri Lynn Schulke as Nora and Marleigh Purgar-McDonald as Emmy in A Doll’s House, Part Two PHOTO BY CAMILLE MAHS and later Berberian clearly address entire passages debating the roles of women to us in the audience as a jury in moments that stray too close to courtroom drama.

Though Nora navigates—and attempts to manipulate—her relationships with Anne Marie and Torvald, she finds the tables turned when the only person who can help her is Emmy, the daughter she abandoned 15 years before. Filiaci and talented young actor Marleigh Purgar-McDonald craft Emmy as an enigmatic old soul. Though she bears no animosity, the other cards in her emotional deck remain facedown throughout a suspenseful meeting, until she begins to “correct” Nora on some key assumptions about their relationships.

Hnath considers the issues of interpersonal boundaries with care; there’s irony and maybe justice in how much an estranged and similarly manipulative mother and daughter see of one another before a telling denouement.

Now for the not-so-good news. Theater companies have lived to regret ill-advised real estate choices before now. Throughout both groups’ tenures, Pure Life Theatre and Sonorous Road’s shows at the Royal Bakery building on Hillsborough Street were regularly ambushed by dance music from an event space next door and the horns and rumblings of passing freight and passenger trains. When that happened, the dramatic tension that took productions more than

an hour to develop was irretrievably dispersed in seconds, frustrating artists and audiences alike. To say the least, the region doesn’t need another room like that.

Saturday night, no disco tribute distracted us as Nora confessed to missing her children during her years of self-imposed exile.

It was just the sound of someone wheeling a single utility cart with something heavy on it across the outside sidewalk into the room next door, breaking down a wedding reception that night that had made the company delay curtain until 8:15.

It was the only such interruption during the show. It also compromised a dramatic moment in a very good production.

Then, when a passing train blared behind the building less than five minutes after the show—perhaps Amtrak’s Piedmont, which runs that track each evening at or after 9:33—I reflected that if the production had taken 10 minutes longer, the playbill’s estimated running time, Nora’s departure might have been given a very different impact.

Can RedBird successfully play dramatic dodgeball, timing shows and intermissions against trains that don’t always run on time? Can Durham Bottling staff guarantee that its event space will be quiet throughout prime weekend performance hours?

Not an insignificant part of the success of RedBird’s inaugural season hangs on these two questions, and on its opening weekend, the answers were inconclusive. W

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November 16, 2022

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CULTURE CALENDAR

Please check with local venues for their health and safety protocols.

Courtney Marie Andrews performs at the Cat’s Cradle Back Room on Wednesday, November 16.

PHOTO COURTESY OF CAT’S CRADLE

music North Carolina Symphony: Korngold Violin Concerto $22+. Nov. 18-19, various times.

Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

Dro Kenji / midwxst $22. Fri, Nov. 18, 9 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Games We Play $16.

Fri, Nov. 18, 7:30 p.m.

Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

Palm $15. Fri, Nov. 18, 9 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Sons of Serendip $27. Fri, Nov. 18, 7:30 p.m. Cary Arts Center, Cary.

Courtney Marie Andrews $17. Wed, Nov. 16, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Corrosion of Conformity $25.

Thurs, Nov. 17, 7:30 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.

Manchester Orchestra $32. Wed, Nov. 16, 6:30 p.m.

The Ritz, Raleigh.

The Dolly Disco $15. Thurs, Nov. 17, 9 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

Undeath $18. Wed, Nov. 16, 7:30 p.m.

Local 506, Chapel Hill.

Duke University Wind Symphony: In Living Color Thurs, Nov. 17, 7:30 p.m.

Baldwin Auditorium, Durham.

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November 16, 2022

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Pretty Sick $15.

Thurs, Nov. 17, 8 p.m.

Local 506, Chapel Hill.

Senses Fail $25.

Thurs, Nov. 17, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Stop Light Observations $13.

Thurs, Nov. 17, 8 p.m.

Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro. ¡Tumbao! $12.

Thurs, Nov. 17, 9 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

The Stews $13+. Fri, Nov. 18, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

UNC Faculty Jazz with Special Guest Philip Dizack $25.

Fri, Nov. 18, 8 p.m.

Sharp Nine Gallery, Durham.

Carolina Abortion Fund Benefit: Easy Tiger / At Your Cervix $10+. Sat, Nov. 19, 7 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.

Habib Koité $30.

Sat, Nov. 19, 8 p.m.

Stewart Theatre, Raleigh.

INZO $25. Sat, Nov. 19, 10 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.

Rebecca Kleinmann $25. Sat, Nov. 19, 8 p.m. Sharp Nine Gallery, Durham.

Rose City Band $15.

Sat, Nov. 19, 8 p.m.

Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Speak Up, Sing Out: Our Rights Now $15+. Sat, Nov. 19, 3 and 7 p.m. Eno River Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, Durham.

The Taylor Party: Taylor Swift Night $25. Sat, Nov. 19, 8:30 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.

Cosmic Superheroes $10.

Sun, Nov. 20, 8 p.m.

Local 506, Chapel Hill.

Meechy Darko $25. Sun, Nov. 20, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

Old Sea Brigade $15. Sun, Nov. 20, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.

Omar Apollo: The Prototype Tour $67. Sun, Nov. 20, 6:45 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.

Aesthetic Perfection $20.

Mon, Nov. 21, 7 p.m.

Local 506, Chapel Hill.

Harry Connick, Jr. $80+. Nov. 22-23, 8 p.m. DPAC, Durham.

Larry & Joe and Charanga Carolina Tues, Nov. 22, 7:30 p.m. The Fruit, Durham.

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art

Adam Lucas: The Amazing Story of Carolina Basketball’s 2021– 2022 Season Wed, Nov. 16, 5:30 p.m.

Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

Gallery Talk: Stacy Lynn Waddell Thurs, Nov. 17, 6 p.m. The Nasher, Durham.

Liza Roberts: Art of the State Wed, Nov. 16, 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.

Marissa R. Moss: Her Country Wed, Nov. 16, 7 p.m. North Carolina Museum of History, Raleigh.

Matthew Quick: We Are the Light Thurs, Nov. 17, 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.

Lecture—Egyptian Tent: Past, Present, and Future Thurs, Nov. 17, 6 p.m. Gregg Museum of Art & Design, Raleigh.

Live from the Studio: Kelli Thompson Sat, Nov. 19, 1:30 p.m. NCMA, Raleigh.

Reception—Beverly McIver: Passage Sat, Nov. 19, 5 p.m.

Craven Allen Gallery, Durham.

Michael Parker: I Am the Light of This World Thurs, Nov. 17, 5:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.

Marc D. Moskovitz: Measure Sun, Nov. 20, 2 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.

Carbon Leaf $22.

Sat, Nov. 19, 8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.

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Rebecca t

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E V E NTS Liza Roberts, Art of WED 11.16 the State: Celebrating the Visual Art of 7PM North Carolina

screen THUR

11.17 7PM

Back to the Future and Young Sherlock Holmes $10. Fri, Nov. 18, 7 p.m.

The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

Sleepaway Camp: 39th Anniversary Screening with Felissa Rose in Attendance $10.

Sat, Nov. 19, 7 p.m. The Carolina Theatre, Durham.

Power to the Children: Screening, Q&A, and Fundraiser $10.

Sun, Nov. 20, 11 a.m.

The Fruit, Durham.

Hairspray $25+.

Nov. 15-20, various times. DPAC, Durham.

Emma $20+. Nov. 16–Dec. 4, various times. PlayMakers Repertory Company, Chapel Hill.

Carolina Ballet: Beethoven Symphony No. 9 $40+. Nov. 17-20, various times. Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

North Carolina Chinese Lantern Festival $16+. Nov. 18–Jan. 8, various times. Koka Booth Amphitheatre, Cary.

Carolina Youth Ballet: The Nutcracker $22+.

Nov. 18-19, various times. Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.

Distances Smaller Than This Are Not Confirmed $15. Nov. 18-19, 8 p.m. CURRENT ArtSpace + Studio, Chapel Hill.

Comedy Night with Jessi Campbell and Brent Blakeney $15. Fri, Nov. 18, 8 p.m. The Cary Theater, Cary.

Kleinmann flutist and singer

Sharp 9 Jazz Gallery November 19th | 8pm Rahsaan Barber, saxes Dr. Stephen Anderson, piano Essiet Essiet, upright bass Sylvia Cuenca, drums

Matthew Quick, We Are the Light

Marc D. Moskovitz, SUN 11.20 Measure: In Pursuit 2PM of Musical Time Register for Quail Ridge Books Events Series at www.quailridgebooks.com www.quailridgebooks.com • 919.828.1588 • North Hills 4209-100 Lassiter Mill Road, Raleigh, NC 27609 FREE Media Mail shipping on U.S. orders over $50

durhamjazzworkshop.org

Joe Pera SOLD OUT. Sat, Nov. 19, 7 and 9:30 p.m.

Motorco Music Hall, Durham.

stage

Carolina Youth Ballet performs The Nutcracker at Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts on November 18 and 19. PHOTO COURTESY OF DUKE ENERGY CENTER

INDYweek.com

November 16, 2022

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If you just can’t wait, check out the current week’s answer key at www.indyweek.com, and click “puzzle pages” at the bottom of our webpage.

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© Puzzles by Pappocom

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November 16, 2022

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