First things first: A huge thank you to all of our new Giving Tuesday donors, especially our new Friends of BSR! Whether it's a one-time donation or a monthly donation (starting at $5), it makes a huge difference to our team's small budget. If you're enjoying BSR today and think it would be pretty nice to keep reading in 2025, your gift makes it happen.
This week, we're going behind the scenes of the Philadelphia Ballet's Nutcracker, but not with the dancers. The young singers of the local boys' and girls' choirs sing for only a few minutes of the show, but their voices are vital to the ballet's signature magic. How do they do it?
We've also got a review of ELF at the Walnut and a fascinating new show at PAFA (timely for December, a month crammed with religious imagery) where artists wrestle with their own misgivings about the divine. Looking ahead, Kyle will be with you tomorrow morning with his weekend picks, and on Friday, look out for December's installment of BSR in the Wild (exclusive tips for our subscribers on where our team is headed each month). Next week, December reviews keep on rolling.
Also on Friday, our friends over at Philadelphia Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts are hosting a free webinar. The topic is a tough one, but it's important: PVLA speakers will give an overview of bankruptcy, including different kinds of bankruptcy petitions and how to submit a claim. The session will conclude with a Q&A. As usual, PVLA offerings are a great resource for the community, and this one is especially timely, as former employees and students of UArts have a late December deadline to file a claim.
We know that the national media scene continues to be a circus, especially now, so we really appreciate that you are continuing to tune into independent local media, where stories are reported and written right in our own community, for the benefit of artists and readers who access them without a paywall.
Alaina Johns
BSR editor-in-chief
