Taubman Art Museum and More Theater (In the Heights)
Apr 16, 2022 | Roanoke, VA
It's that time again where we're feeling crunched to get in the last bit of stuff that we've been putting off for whatever reason. We had tickets to see another play, this one produced locally as opposed to the touring group that came through with Cats. We didn't exactly have huge expectations for it after seeing the local group over in Fincastle do Moon Over Buffalo, but it actually turned out to be excellent. More on that later. First we popped over to the Taubman Art Museum since it was literally our last day to do so.
We decided bikes were best even though the art museum is definitely in walking distance to our house---there was too much to get done today. But having said that, we actually dinked around for a bit on our bikes since we hadn't done any downtown riding yet. We rode over a pedestrian bridge we had always been eyeing that went over the train tracks, and then another indoor pedestrian bridge that brought us back over near the museum. For some reason the elevator up to the indoor bridge smelled stronger of urine than any place we had ever been, including the inside of port-o-potties. Guess it provides privacy?
The museum was fairly impressive for a town like Roanoke, I'd say. The architecture of it was definitely cool, and they had a small-to-mid-sized amount of works to view. The most surprising part is that it's free. They definitely have enough going on there to charge, so that's really great that the local governing bodies or non-profits or whoever cover the cost for people. That definitely must lower the barrier to entry for people who are even slightly interested in seeing some art. Erika donated 10 dollars when we were leaving to give at least a little back.
In the evening we got a bit dressed up and walked back downtown to the Mill Mountain Theater which is inside the Center in the Square, the same complex that has the science museum. It also has a pretty extensive pinball and arcade museum, but alas I don't think we're going to make it to see those before we leave. The play we saw was In the Heights. Apparently there is a movie adaptation of it, but we weren't aware at the time. What we had read, however, was that there was a casting controversy leading up to this particular
