In December 2022, the world lost filmmaker and YS villager Julia Reichert, who advocated for women’s and workers’ rights, and was a mentor to a legion of documentarians.
As a director, Reichert was nominated four times for Academy Awards, and won an Oscar in 2019 for “American Factory,” which she co-directed with her life partner, Steven Bognar.
To honor Reichert’s legacy, the Yellow Springs Film Festival and PNC Bank in 2024 created the Julia Reichert Award, a $3,000 short film prize to be given to an emerging female documentarian.
The prize is to be awarded again this year, with the winner being announced Oct. 4, at The Little Art Theatre, during the 2025 YS Film Festival, scheduled Oct. 2–5. Further festival programming is to be announced this summer.
Submissions are open now and will close at 11:59 p.m. Friday, June 27. To apply for the award, go to http://www.ysfilmfest.com/juliareichert.
To contact YSFF founder and Executive Director Eric Mahoney, email eric@hotshotrobotproductions.com.
By Chris Wyatt
May 17, 2025
I think I need to do a spot of tidying in the great room at the Hall.
I was going to stay out there last night but it was too dark and cluttered to find anything, so I returned home. I think I’ll launder bedding and tidy up the D&D stuff, which, to be honest, is everywhere.
The whole place needs a good sweep, and it looks like being a fair day today so I can open both doors and the one functioning window to let the air move through the house. Stink bugs are everywhere so a bit of a purge is required.
I do think a picnic under a shady tree will happen. Ham, cheese, bread — simple things.
May 20, 2025
I made some salve from several of the plants growing at the Hall — lemon balm, etc. I extracted the goodies into coconut oil, which is solid at room temperature, and so makes for a good salve.
The crock pot was my friend, here. A simple, four-hour infusion at 250 F should have pulled everything out of the plants. It will be used to help with Karen’s shattered ankle, my aches and pains and, just generally, as a moisturizer for my bald head.
My head burns easily in the sun — I suffer from vitiligo — so the salve will help with peeling skin. I pretty much live in my hats, but I can’t wear them 100% of the time, and even a glimpse of sunlight will burn the patches of skin that have no pigment. However, today is cloudy and 50 degrees, so my head should be safe from UV assault.
May 21, 2025
I should take advantage of a series of cooler days and get some digging done.
I also felled some trash trees and standing dead trees the other day, so they will need cutting into burnable lengths and then drying for a year.
First, I’ll need to sharpen the chainsaw blade, which is a simple process — Stihl makes a failsafe sharpening file. My saw is effective at working with smaller trees and branches, but if I ever have to deal with bigger trees, I’ll need a “Farm Boss.”
At least, that is what I tell myself. I’m sure Karen sees other priorities, and to be fair, so do I. My “we need a bigger chainsaw” request will be met with an arched eyebrow and a broad gesture at the state of Patterdale Hall.
Chainsaw sharpened. It really is an easy chore. However, it’s raining again, so that’s probably the extent of my Patterdale activities for today, though I may go out there to read a bit later.
Oh, but of course. The rain stopped, so I cut up a bunch of honeysuckle. A sharp chainsaw and a dull chainsaw are night and day. Back in my 20s, I never saw sharpening chainsaws in my future; 20s me would be so impressed.
May 22, 2025
The seal is broken. I weeded and dug over half a vegetable bed this morning.
The soil is rich and loamy, but I added two bags of well-rotted cow manure to fortify it. I’ll dig over the other half of the bed tomorrow, as it was raining and 50 degrees this morning. This bed will be for tomato plants and maybe some chiles.
Last year’s chile crop was an absolute disaster, and this year I think I’ll focus on hot little Thai chiles, tabasco and cayenne. Hot and spicy but not insane. The crazy hot chiles need perfect weather, and I think I’d rather grow something more user-friendly this year. I’ve had a lot of success with big hatch green chiles, but I eat a lot more Indian food than Tex-Mex, so some long, thin, spicy chiles are really what I’m looking for this year.
As far as tomato strains go, it’s hard not to grow sungolds. They are the perfect cherry tomato — sweet, tart and perfect for salsas or sandwiches. Also, my friend John has given me a Ten Fingers of Naples tomato plant, so I’m looking forward to growing them, as they are good for sauces, and I make a lot of sauces.
May 23, 2025
The five-finger death-punch tomato plant is in the ground. Now begins the planting.
I will head to the Yellow Springs Farmers Market in the morning for chiles and other exciting things. We are two weeks behind the planting that happened last year, but that isn’t entirely surprising given the quantity of rain that we have experienced.
Morris graduated yesterday. It was pretty wonderful to be able to take his grandmother to see him walk. My favorite part of the evening was driving him past The Gulch in the parade; all the patrons were cheering and blowing bubbles. This is a truly special town.
May 25, 2025
The tomatoes are in.
I picked up a couple of Juliet cherry tomato plants and a brandywine heritage slicer. The hobbit in me couldn’t resist the brandywine — it’s an important river in the Shire, and I’ve not grown really big tomatoes for a few years.
It’s Memorial Day tomorrow, and as is tradition, we will do very little.
Morris is off on a School Forest trip; Margaret is heading back to the UK; and summer is just beginning.
I think I shall potter at the Hall and dig a bed for some peppers; that seems like good use of my time. There is also a gathering in John Bryan Park that I may attend, but maybe I’ll simply focus on family.
*Originally from Manchester, England, Chris Wyatt is an associate professor of neuroscience, cell biology and physiology at Wright State University. He has lived in Yellow Springs for 17 years, is married and has two children and an insane Patterdale terrier.
Amid its third year, the Mad River Theater Works youth summer residency theater program continues its now-cemented tradition of leading young thespians through the process of devised theater, where they work together to build their own show, from beginning to end.
During a break in day-long creation and rehearsal in the Foundry Theater’s main-stage auditorium this week, residency student Meara stopped to tell the News the theme of the production that will cap this year’s two-week camp.
“Our show is about changing the world,” she said.
This year, the residency’s young actors, who range in age from 8 to 17, are also changing up the formula for the show they’re crafting. In the two-week camp, they’ve incorporated musical numbers from well-known shows into original scenes to help tell the stories they want to tell — big and small stories, all focused around this year’s theme.
The summer residency participants will perform “Everybody Wants to Change the World” Friday, June 13, at 7 p.m. at the Foundry Theater.
Jenna Valyn, co-founder of Dayton’s former Nerve Theater company and new to the summer residency’s teaching staff, said she introduced this year’s show theme as one that seems relevant to the times in which students are living.
“Instead of ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World,’” she said, referencing the Tears for Fears song, “I thought we could shift it and find a positive take on it.”
She added: “We’re already seeing enough power struggles happening in our lives — so let’s try to make it a better place.”
As in summers past, students broke into small groups and created their own scenes — this time with the addition of musical numbers to most scenes, chosen by the students from a list of existing musical numbers.
Young actors Nia, Helen and JoJo told the News that their group chose “Love is an Open Door” — a number well-known to most kids, since it comes from Disney’s ubiquitous musical film “Frozen.” The group chose the song first, and then crafted their scene around it.
“But we changed the lyrics a little bit so that [the song] is more about hope,” Helen said.
Their scene takes place on a bus, the inhabitants of which are all having their own version of a bad day. They eventually realize, however, that they can change their perspectives on their circumstances by forming a community.
“Our scene is about the darkness of life — in a comedic way — and for us, the song represents the light coming through and everyone coming together,” Nia said.
“People are coming at it from different angles,” Valyn said. “Some have the song in mind first, and others have built the scene and then found their song — but they’re all working together, and I think everything will feel really cohesive at the end of the day.”
Young actor Dory said her group’s scene focuses on two students who “don’t feel seen” at their school — but they find a way to make both an impression and positive change in their own way.
“They find out that the school’s gonna get torn down, and they find a dragon — so they use it to help them with protests, and then they use the dragon to help them protect the school,” she said.
Evadene, who’s in Dory’s group, said their scene feels important because it can be common for kids to feel like they’re invisible when they’re in school — particularly if “they’re in a really big class.”
Unlike some other groups, Dory and Evadene’s group wrote their scene first, and then found the song to fit it. They landed upon the quintessential “unseen” song, “Waving through a Window,” from the musical “Dear Evan Hansen,” in which the title character sings: “On the outside, always looking in/Will I ever be more than I’ve always been?”
Playwright, actor and returning summer residency instructor Daniel Carlton said the explosive creativity of the young thespians was on full display during the first week of this year’s program, when students dream up their big ideas. The second week, however, is when they refine and rehearse the ideas they’ve decided to follow.
“A 10-year-old has a universe of imagination — and that means sometimes, when they come back for the second week, they’re still dreaming up multiple settings and years, so the work is all about bringing it back to the core and locking in,” Carlton said.
He added that this year’s students, far from all being only focused on musical theater, have brought “a variety of personalities” and talents, and thus, a variety of approaches to the way the show’s segments are being presented. Some leave room for those who want a vocal solo to stand alone in the spotlight; others are complete ensemble pieces. The actors in one segment chose not to include a song at all.
While the News was at the Foundry, the residency welcomed local resident and hip hop artist Tronee Threat — Guy “Tron” Banks — as a special guest for the afternoon. Banks was there to teach the young residents about hip hop, including some of its history and how to begin employing its verbal rhythms. The group started slowly, repeating after Banks — “Rat-a-tat-tat, just like that!” — with increasing speed. By the end of Banks’ session, the group was working together to rap the lyrics of “My Shot” from “Hamilton,” a song one group has chosen for its scene.
Mad River Theater Works Managing Director Chris Westhoff said it was kismet that Banks agreed to lend his expertise to this year’s residency; Banks is intimately familiar with “My Shot,” as he performed the title role in “The Hamilton Project” in 2019.
“He told us he had two or three things he could work with the kids on, and ‘Hamilton’ wasn’t even one of them — but when he found out one group was doing the song, that’s what happened,” Westhoff said.
Returning instructor AJ Breslin, who helmed this year’s residency, said he’s been encouraged by the way the young artists, with their diverse age ranges, have worked together, with older kids guiding the younger ones, and younger ones offering idea after idea.
“The thing that I’m seeing is they all treat each other as equals,” Breslin said.
Kindness, equality and being receptive to new ideas is the goal, he said — not just within the theater space, but for the future world the kids envision. He pointed toward the show’s opening songs as a kind of evidence: “Let Your Freak Flag Fly,” from “Shrek: The Musical” and “Being Alive” from Stephen Sondheim’s “Company.”
Breslin said he expected “Let Your Freak Flag Fly” — a colorful, upbeat celebration of differences — to be the students’ favorite, but has been surprised at how much they have taken to the meditative, “I want” statements in “Being Alive:” “Someone to crowd you with love/Someone to force you to care/Someone to make you come through/Who’ll always be there/As frightened as you/Of being alive.”
After hearing the song for the first time, Breslin said, the young residents described it as “nostalgic,” “wistful” and even “yearning.”
“So I hope that, when parents and community members come see the show, they understand that these kids are the leaders of tomorrow, and — at the risk of sounding cheesy — they are already yearning and hoping for this better world,” he said.
“Everybody Wants to Change the World” will be performed Friday, June 13, beginning at 7 p.m. — this year in the Foundry Theater’s main-stage auditorium. The performance is free — though donations to Mad River Theater Works are welcome at http://www.yscf.org/mad-river-theater-works — and the public is welcome to attend.
Mad River Theater Works is supported by the Yellow Springs Community Foundation and the Ohio Arts Council.
I’m susceptible to no greater siren song than seeing the title of a new Wes Anderson flick sunbathing on the Little Art marquee — I’m crashing into the front row the first chance I get.
Top to bottom, his filmography just delights me, and always has — except maybe those few self-conscious years when I shunned my natural, so-called hipster impulses. I was a fool; life’s too short to deny the heart what it wants.
The dollhouse worlds Anderson builds are stunning time and time again. They’re brushed in technicolor vibrancy — never a quirky prop out of place — and populated by his increasingly famous playthings, whose breakneck repartee confounds as much as it tickles. Anderson’s newest plot, “The Phoenician Scheme,” stays on brand in all its charming twee.
For the second week in a row, “The Phoenician Scheme” continues its run at the Little Art this weekend, and if you’re at all starved for symmetrical eye candy and over-the-top assassination attempts, buy the ticket and take the ride.
“The Phoenician Scheme” centers around globetrotting capitalist and deadpan tycoon Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro) who, despite his enemies’ best shots, just can’t seem to die. Still, after surviving his sixth plane crash, Korda knows he needs an heir — just in case. His estranged and only daughter, a young woman of the cloth named Liesl (Mia Threapleton), seems like a better fit than any of Korda’s nine sons, especially the one with a bow and arrow.
So, Korda whisks his nun-of-a-daughter around the world to show her the family business, specifically having her shadow him as he brokers a huge business deal — the “scheme” in question — with Arabian princes, sleazy club owners, American entrepreneurs and others. The casting here is nothing short of outrageous. Picture Richard Ayoade as a militant Marxist-Leninist, Bryan Cranston tearing up a basketball court, and perhaps not unsurprising for an Anderson flick, Bill Murray as the most powerful being in the universe.
To hell with them: Michael Cera really stole the show. He plays a biologist with a penchant for bringing praying mantises to dinner, and spends a solid amount of time courting the chaste Liesl. To quote a meme my wife shared with me: “Wes Anderson casting Michael Cera must have felt like a caveman discovering fire.” Suffice it to say, the guy fits in pretty well. Perhaps an heir ascendant to Anderson’s future schemes?
What “The Phoenician Scheme” has in famous faces and visual grandeur, it does admittedly lack in intimacy. Aside from del Toro boring holes into the camera, frame after frame, likely contemplating his black-and-white afterlife — there, shackled to chains rather than wealth — I never felt as if I got much of a glimpse into the complicated interior worlds of the characters.
Anderson didn’t pop the hood on his cast like he has in the past. Think: Steve Zissou telling us about his boat, the brothers in “Darjeeling Limited” reconciling after their father’s death, Zero seeing nothing but perfection in Agatha’s scarred face as carnival lights spun and blurred behind her in “The Grand Budapest Hotel.” Remember what it was like to fall in love? To lose a parent?
In essence, “The Phoenician Scheme” wasn’t quite as emotionally evocative as what came before. Maybe that’s fine. Not every painting in the museum needs to move. We can still admire the textures, the careful brushstrokes, the ornate frame, the ironically detached subject staring blankly beyond the foreground.
Perhaps “The Phoenician Scheme” was Anderson’s way of mirroring his Korda’s dogged rebellion against death or irrelevance. Rather than a cabal of invested financiers, the director wrangled all the celebrities he could to pull off the impossible: not a scheme to reconnect with a young nun, but to somehow top his past successes with more extravagance than ever before.
Whether Anderson pulled off his latest box-office heist successfully, “The Phoenician Scheme” is worth seeing — if anything, just to give your eyes something to relish, and your funny bone some exercise.
“The Phoenician Scheme” will be screened at the Little Art Theatre, 247 Xenia Ave. in Yellow Springs, at various times Friday–Sunday, June 13–15. For tickets and more information, go to littleart.com.
At regular meetings of both the Miami Township Board of Trustees and Village Council on Monday, June 2, a group of residents who live on and near the section of East Enon Road south of the high school came before the public bodies to express their concerns about potential annexation of nearby land into the Village of Yellow Springs.
As the News reported last month, on May 5, Village Council authorized a resolution allowing Village Manager Johnnie Burns to enter into a development agreement with property owners Matthew and Julie Jones, whose 84-acre property is located within Miami Township, just outside the southwestern corner of Yellow Springs.
Under the terms of the development agreement, the Joneses will work with the Village to annex their land into the Village within one year.
Public discussion of the possibility of annexing the 84 acres into the Village began early this year.
In January, the Joneses agreed to donate 3.6 acres of their land to YS Schools for the potential relocation of the Morgan soccer fields in the event that a low-income housing tax credit application for an affordable housing complex on the fields was approved. That application was denied last month.
Map: Greene County GIS
The pursuit of a possible annexation agreement was part of a list of contingencies outlined between the Joneses and the school district. However, as Village Manager Burns stated at a Jan. 17 special meeting of the school board, annexation of the land was not guaranteed as part of the list of contingencies.
“Staff … is on board to help get the annexation through, but we’re not guaranteeing anything,” Burns said in January. “They can submit an annexation [petition] if they want to.”
Neighbors whose properties abut or are very near to the 84 acres in question said Monday they fear annexation would lead to a large development. Such a development, the group said, could impact property values, infrastructure, traffic in and out and the character of the currently rural area.
Resident Rosemary Shaw, representing eight neighbors of the 84-acre property in question, read a statement in opposition to the possible annexation. The statement noted that annexing the 84 acres into the Village would create an “isthmus of unincorporated land, including enclosing our homes on multiple sides by the Village boundaries and altering the rural nature of and the value of our land.”
The statement went on to note that if the 84 acres are annexed into the Village, according to local zoning code, it will automatically be rezoned as R-C high-density residential. At that point, the statement puts forth, the land’s owners could pursue a planned unit development, or PUD, which could allow a mix of residential, commercial and industrial uses. These expanded uses of the land, neighbors believe, would be “incompatible with the surrounding rural area,” according to the statement.
Kami Berkey, whose land is contiguous with the 84 acres, said at the trustees meeting that the only access point to the 84-acre parcel from East Enon Road is next to her home.
“We’re very disturbed that we are right next to the only way in and out of that area,” Berkey said.
Shaw told Township Trustees that she and her neighbors are also concerned about the expedited nature of the potential annexation.
“Why are we fast-tracking something right now, when there’s no rush except to not let us have an opportunity for discussion?” Shaw said.
The group of residents asked both Council and the Township Trustees to put a pause on the annexation process, to directly discuss the issue with neighbors to the 84-acre parcel and their legal representation, and to bring the matter of annexation to a public vote.
“The process demands transparency, community engagement and accountability — especially when it threatens the quality of life, the property values and the rural identity of our entire neighborhood,” Shaw said before the Township Trustees.
Neither Village Council nor the Township Trustees made any decisions about the annexation Monday night, as the matter was not part of either bodies’ agendas.
The News will continue to follow the potential annexation in its future coverage.
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