There I sat, my face covered in goop, my hair wadded up in a rubber bald cap and my chest covered in a barber’s drape. No, this wasn’t the result of a wild night out gone horribly awry, but art in progress. Lifecasting is an art form. It is also a lot of fun. The premise is simple: take a mold of someone’s face, hand or other body part using a substance called alginate, pour some plaster into the mold, and voilà! You have art!

The top ten Valentine’s Day pick-up lines as submitted by the staff of the NOVA Fortnightly.

It’s that dreaded time of year. A time that brings anxiety to every man and swells anticipation in every woman: Valentine’s Day. Psychologists are already preparing for the annual onslaught of post-Cupid depression. There’s little doubt that expectations of Valentine’s Day are high. Therefore, some of you are bound to screw up.

When that happens, there are two things you can do. You can either give up on the relationship and hope she doesn’t tweet about everything she believes you did wrong on Twitter, or you can try to make amends with flowers.

But how many flowers should you give? Just a single rose or a dozen doesn’t always make up for your bad deed. So, to help you out, here’s a guide.

A Centreville-based band is set to hit the airwaves and the local music clubs this spring. Their music, a fusion of piano and violin instrumentals set to an electronica backdrop, challenges its audience to redefine rock music.

The Black Cat is filled with admiring fans, and the two-member ensemble with a flair for the theatrics captured their hearts and pulled in their attention to the musical spectacle. Alex Gioeli, 19, has always dreamed for this scene to come to fruition. Turn a pedestrian gaze at Gioeli and see nothing out of the seemingly mundane college sophomore. Open an inquiring eye and see a passionate and ambitious musician looking to make it big one day.

“My dreams are a very active part of my life,” Annandale English instructor Raymond Orkwis said, right after stressing the importance of strict realism in life-planning essays. Orkwis’ outlet for those dreams is poetry, occasionally published, sometimes heard in coffee-houses, and usually, as he says, “surreal.”

When you come ever closer, my heart starts racing and my mind starts escaping me! What shall I say, what shall I do as my thoughts start scattering? I can hear them trying to leave, but there’s no way out. As I approach you I find myself forgetting what I’m trying to say! “Just try to relax and calm down,” I find myself saying to me. Sometimes I worry about my tongue getting tied if we ever were to speak! As your voice runs through my ears, …

Standing here in your loving embrace, I stare into your eyes.
If they were a sea I could get lost in, I’m sure I would be found alive. Can you feel my heart pound out of my chest as my fingers crawl up and down your back?
I wished that I could hear yours also, before our hands detached.
With such a loving embrace, I wouldn’t want to let go, but as you turned away, you
held out your hand, like you wanted me to stay!
As you laid your head on my chest, I …

For the actors and crew of the Nova Woodbridge Theatre Group, Arthur Miller’s 1947 classic, All My Sons, is a work in progress. They had only reached their third rehearsal as of September 17, so the actors, with scripts still in hand, performed in a phase between reading and acting, moving through an approximation of what will, in mid-November, be the final set.
Professor Eric Trumbull, who teaches acting and theatre workshops at Nova Woodbridge, gave them time to get used to the words and the play, all the while …

this is a new phase

writing on a fresh page

part two in the book of my life

regrets put aside for dreams realized

letting my talent be recognized

At NOVA’s Loudoun campus, student-based theater and community theater have combined for a modernized version of John Guare’s 1990 play, Six Degrees of Separation. The play centers around the way a gay con man — who is also a sensitive, moving speaker — affects the wealthy Kittredge family in New York.