I've dreaded this week for a long time! We're saying farewell to our associate editor Kyle, who's been on our team for more than seven years (that's a millennium on the Internet). We are still deep in the process of hiring a new associate editor (thank you to the dozens of awesome people who applied!), and while nobody can replace Kyle, we know our new era will be what it's meant to be. Check out our tribute to Kyle, and join me in wishing him well.
This week, our writers are reviewing the national tour of The Notebook (Cameron Kelsall says this stage show will make you long for the much better book or film) and the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival's "Extreme Shakespeare" production of Coriolanus. "The fact that the production works as well as it does is a testament to the value of PSF’s continuing experiment," says critic Kiran Pandey. Pamela Forsythe visits the new Pennsylvania Hospital Museum, crammed with archives and artifacts from this famous Philly hospital's 275-year-history (ever heard of a tonsil guillotine?? It was invented here and used til the 1900s).
And I sit down with two of Philly's top Fringe Festival artists, who bring us in on their paths to the Edinburgh Fringe in August.
We are currently about 60 percent of the way to our goal on our Fringe Coverage Friends Drive. This is a great place to be with one month left in the campaign, but we still need a few more readers to step up and support our Fringe coverage this year! If you value BSR reviews, this is your moment. Learn more and donate here. Can't give right now? We get it! You can still give us a huge boost by sharing this opportunity to support grassroots arts media in your network.
The next several weeks won't look like they usually do at BSR. I will be on my MUCH-needed summer break for the first two weeks of August, but this newsletter will still be coming to you on Wednesday mornings while I'm gone, spotlighting some of our best evergreen reads from the past year. And once I'm back, you'll see some temporary adjustments to our newsletters and coverage until our new editor begins work in October. Our team appreciates your grace and patience during this time!
Kyle will be with you tomorrow, for the last time. If you want to let him know what his work has meant to you, feel free to reply to this email, or write to him directly: [email protected].
Alaina Johns
BSR editor-in-chief
