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It's time for Just Between Friends, an exclusive roundup of recommendations and previews for Friends of BSR. We could not do this work without your support, and you are our best ambassadors. If you feel good about supporting local, progressive, independent media in this American moment, tell your friends! Outlets like BSR need all the help we can get. Thanks for everything you do.

By this point in September our calendars are full of local events. Our inboxes and Slack are also incredibly busy. Don't forget that if you want us to know about your organization's goings-on, send us materials four to six weeks in advance.

Alaina ran into BSR podcaster Darnelle Radford at the Bearded Ladies Cabaret's preview of "The Layaway" at the Wanamaker.

Alaina's Recommendations

The 14th season of Call The Midwife, a British show set in a mid-century Anglican convent in the Poplar district of London's East End, just arrived on Netflix. The convent houses a family of nuns who work as nurse midwives, plus a rotating cast of young midwives who lodge with the nuns. As a secular, happily child-free person, I never would have thought a show about a bunch of nuns ministering to pregnant folks would be among my favorite TV, but it is. Yes, the show is often predictable and treacly, especially as it stretches on for so many seasons, but there is something so compelling in the way it tackles complex topics like adoption, disability, abuse, poverty, abortion, public health, immigration and assimilation, workers' rights, and healthcare access. Poplar is poor, but the show depicts a community where people care for each other, and every time one of the nuns comforts a distraught character by gently putting down a cup of tea and intoning, "it's well sugared," a little bit of that comfort seeps over to me, too. I also love the way so many of the plotlines focus on female friendships of all ages, and women's professional lives. The camera lingers fearlessly on elderly women whose wrinkled, expressive faces extol the beauty and dignity of aging, a much-needed antidote to the world of Botox, fillers, and dewy contours shining at us from our screens. The show depicts the way basic healthcare access can transform lives, which is something I dearly wish American leaders cared about.

Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature, by Elizabeth Winkler. Did you know there's barely any evidence that William Shakespeare wrote the plays we attribute to him? By all the records we have, he was a middle-class actor and businessman who occasionally ran afoul of the law and never had more than a grade-school education. He died without any reference at all to disposition of manuscripts or written works, and the only handwriting of his that survives is a couple of labored signatures. He never even taught his own daughters to read. Meanwhile, a growing number of scholars contend that whoever wrote the plays traveled widely, spoke English, French, and Italian, and had extensive knowledge of the law, music, military matters, the classics, and life at court. Of course, this all makes scholars dedicated to the shrine of William Shakespeare pretty angry. Winkler's book is a great introduction to the controversy, and the top authorship contenders, including at least two women.

Coming up soon at BSR:

I peeked at our upcoming coverage and, folks, it is packed. Theater, opera, dance, film, there's something for everybody before the month is out. Then looking ahead to the first weeks of October, we're expecting reviews of art gallery shows and a look at a local Rocky Horror Picture Show. One of the exhibitions you can read about will be Working at a Joyous Creative Thing: Weaving, Making, and Material Culture in Letty Esherick’s Legacy, at the Wharton Esherick Museum in Malvern. An artist-in-residence, Kelly Cobb, gives Wharton Esherick's wife her due, alongside other notable interdisciplinary women artists. Opera fans will note that Il Viaggio opens Opera Philadelphia's season. A BSR interview from this spring with the organization's general director Anthony Roth Costanzo gives some context to their current programming. We're also excited for the world premiere of FIRE!! at Quintessence Theatre.

Alice Yorke in ‘Lions.’ (Photo by Ashley Smith of Wide Eyed Studios.)

What Neil's Reading

I grew up in a small town in rural America, the northern end of Appalachia. My home county's population density is 66 people per square mile compared to Philadelphia's density of 12,000 per square mile. But I haven't really lived there since 2001. My trajectory of residences since then, punctuated with hometown visits of a few days to a few weeks, has given me a lot of thoughts over the years about how such regions have changed even in my lifetime, especially when it comes to commercial activities and media options. Lately, I've come across a bunch of articles that speak to my thoughts. I've learned that public radio station KSDP in Alaska is suffering enormously after federal cuts, and while the scale of Alaska presents unique factors, this story is surely a harbinger for other outlets throughout the nation. I also read with interest about a Chinese-American writer's visit to Mount Airy, North Carolina, which I was surprised to learn is doubly famous as the inspiration for The Andy Griffith Show's Mayberry and a home to Chang and Eng Bunker, the most famous conjoined twins. (A cast and the livers of the Bunkers are now at Philadelphia's Mutter Museum.) And that commercial landscape I mentioned increasingly has included family-style chain restaurants, some of which are now on the decline. An essay about this pattern in Canada spoke to me.

You Tell Us!

As is the case each year, we're covering a lot of the Fringe festival and associated activities. We put together multiple guides from multiple perspectives, including Sarah Knittel's clown realm guide and Camille Bacon-Smith's dance roundup. Did you find these helpful to navigating what's on offer in September?

We're also curious: why do you donate to BSR? We heartily appreciate your support, of course, and want to tell others who might be on the fence about becoming a Friend about the value you find.