“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.

Five! Six! Five, six, seven, eight! When I walked into the dance studio, at the Alexandria campus, I felt a surge of intensity come over me. There stood Kathy Harty Gray, wearing all black, hair pulled back in a low ponytail, clapping with vigorous rhythm. Every move, bend, kick and flex came so naturally to her — she had been dancing since childhood. The girls seemed to mirror her unconsciously.

Gray’s love for dance shows in the lightness in her footwork. Her graceful movements are illustrated the moment she steps foot in a dance studio.

They say you never forget your first love. Well, I’ll never forget my first car. I had turned 16 and was the third child. Since there are only so many cars a parent can afford while also thinking about paying for college, I got my dad’s old Ford Country Squire station wagon with wood paneling on the side that was similar to the wood paneling in our den and a cassette player with radio.