Author: Matthew Westphal

At 86, Sophia Loren Is Returning To The Screen

“[She] stars in upcoming Netflix drama The Life Ahead, which is directed by her son, Edoardo Ponti. In the film, Loren plays Madame Rosa, a Jewish Holocaust survivor who helps raise the children of deceased sex workers with whom she once walked the streets. She then strikes up an enduring friendship with Momo, a 12-year-old Senegalese orphan who tries to steal her candlesticks.” – The Guardian

Fort Worth Opera Names New General Director, Its Third In Four Years

Afton Battle, a native Texan with degrees in voice from the University of Houston and Westminster Choir College, “previously worked in development and consulting for the Joffrey Ballet, New York Theatre Workshop, Red Clay Dance Company, the National Black Theatre, and the African American Policy Forum. [She] is also one of the founders of the recently announced Black Theatre Coalition, [which] has a mission to increase employment opportunities for black theater professionals and eliminate systemic racism in American theater. Battle’s commitment to diversity informs her plans for FWO.” – Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Could A Drive-In ‘Nutcracker’ Work This Christmas? This Company’s Trying It

“For five nights [Atlanta Ballet] will construct a pop-up drive-in movie theater on its surface parking lot, and will welcome patrons at $100 a carload ($150 for the front-row parking spaces). … The film will feature the new staging of The Nutcracker, with its outsize sets and startling video projections, introduced to Atlanta audiences in 2018 by artistic director Gennadi Nedvigin.” – Atlanta Journal Constitution

‘Enormous Upsurge’ In Complaints Of Racist Behavior To UK Equity

“‘In a period of time [during the lockdown] when nothing was happening, we were receiving dozens of complaints from groups and artists, and we’re still receiving them now,’ said [union general secretary Paul] Fleming. ‘There has been a huge amount of dignity issues around hair and makeup through to reports of casual racism in dressing rooms and racist language in casting processes when people are at their most vulnerable.'” – The Guardian

Caravaggio As Therapy (Caravaggio?? Yes.)

Teju Cole: “He was a murderer, a slaveholder, a terror and a pest. But I don’t go to Caravaggio to be reminded of how good people are and certainly not because of how good he was. To the contrary: I seek him out for a certain kind of otherwise unbearable knowledge. … I don’t have to love him to know that I need to know what he knows, the knowledge that hums, centuries later, on the surface of his paintings, knowledge of all the pain, loneliness, beauty, fear and awful vulnerability our bodies have in common.” – The New York Times Magazine

Arts Fundraising Needs To Be Fully Professionalized As A Field

“As many as 44% of fundraisers fell in the profession by accident, with only 5% gravitating to fundraising as an intentional career choice. … We wouldn’t, for example, find a surgeon, accountant or lawyer who said they had got into their role by accident. All those roles would require a set period of study, with key milestones for passing training and competency-based testing. Yet in careers such as fundraising, there is no such pathway.” – Arts Professional