Federal grant to support production of Loving v. Virginia withdrawn
NORFOLK, Va. (WAVY) — The Virginia Opera said a federal grant they were supposed to get for a recent project never came.
The grant, given by the National Endowment for the Arts, was meant to support the production of 'Loving v. Virginia.' 10 On Your Side previewed it in April.
World premiere of Loving v. Virginia opera to happen Friday night in Norfolk
The opera detailed the landmark Supreme Court case that helped overturned laws that prohibited interracial marriage in the United States.
John-Paul Schaefer, interim general director and CEO of the Virginia Opera, said they received news that the $25,000 grant from the NEA was being withdrawn May 8.
Schaefer explained that the funds were supposed to be dispersed towards the back end of the project.
'The reason given to us was that the funding priorities of the NEA had changed, although we felt as though we had complied with the original grant award all the way up until we produced the production of Loving v. Virginia,' Schaefer said.
Schaefer emphasized that it is highly unusual for a grant to be canceled this late in a project.
He said that the NEA grant is very prestigious and highly competitive, and the Virginia Opera was happy to be a recipient.
'It's certainly understandable if you get an award from an agency and you don't do the project or the project changes materially as you go through it,' Schaefer said. 'But that is not the case here. What we represented in our original application is what we put on the stages for all of Virginia to enjoy.'
This situation comes on the heels of President Donald Trump's proposed budget calling for the elimination of the NEA entirely.
As a result, the Associated Press reported that many organizations across the country have also had grants rejected or rescinded.
Schaefer added that there was no impact to the sold-out performances of Loving v Virginia across the state, but the loss of funding has still affected the organization.
'It has left us a hole in our funding that we are going to have to fill between now and the end of our fiscal year, at the end of June, to the tune of $25,000,' Schaefer said.
If you would like to support the Virginia Opera, .
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Yahoo
‘Materialists' Review: Dakota Johnson Measures Value Of Love Between Chris Evans And Pedro Pascal in Celine Song's Sublime Romcomdram
Watching writer-director Celine Song's follow-up to her feature debut, indie darling and 2023 Best Picture Oscar nominee Past Lives, all sorts of supposed cinematic influences ran through my mind from Billy Wilder's The Apartment to James L. Brooks' Broadcast News to Mike Nichols' Working Girl and just about anything from Nora Ephron. I left the screening thinking I had just seen the best movie about the search for love in many years. Call it a romcom, call it a romdram or any shorthand attempt to categorize it, but this is a movie that defies that kind of easy description. But on its surface, Materialists easily recalls so many Hollywood confections where the girl is torn between two guys vying for her eternal love. In this case, though, it is a lot more complicated for Lucy, a character perfectly matched with a never-better Dakota Johnson, who, as a matchmaker in a high-end New York City agency called Adore, has a great track record for hooking up others but not herself. Fast-food TV matchmaking The Bachelor this is not. More from Deadline Chris Evans On 'Avengers: Doomsday': "It's Sad To Not Be Back With The Band" 'How To Train Your Dragon' Won't Be Laggin' At Summer Box Office With $175M-$185M Global Start For Live-Action Redo - Preview 'Eddington' Trailer: Joaquin Phoenix Gets Into Standoff With Pedro Pascal In A24's Covid-Era Western From Filmmaker Ari Aster Song actually worked as a matchmaker when she was a struggling NY playwright, and clearly that was the inspiration, or kernel of an idea, to follow up such a widely praised feature debut as Past Lives which in its own unique way has its lead female caught up in a different way between two men and two times of life. It too defied easy definition and, coupled with Materialists, confirms Song one of the most exciting new filmmaking voices of her generation. So Lucy makes about $80,000 a year trying to find perfect matches for high-end clients with a checklist of wants in finding the ideal partner. Vignettes with some of them are hilarious, both for men who want to stop at age 29 as consideration for a match or women with their own quirky needs. In this world, love is a negotiation, and in Lucy's mind — personally and professionally — money is a big part of the attraction. This goes back to her own experience as we see in a quick flashback to the fifth-anniversary date with her boyfriend John (Chris Evans). Both were struggling actors when they met, John had no money, a beat-up car and lived with two obnoxious roommates. On this anniversary date, we see it all blow up as Lucy finally realizes she is sick of being poor, or at least with John. They break up, time passes, and now at the wedding of one of her successful matches, Lucy is a guest and runs into John working with the catering company. We can still see sparks, but it is clearly over. At the same nuptials she meets Harry (Pedro Pascal), brother of the groom, who looks like he has just come out of Central Casting. He's a rich, successful commodities broker living in a $12 million penthouse, suave, charming, handsome — you name it. She calls these 'perfect' guys unicorns, and does not try to pick him up for herself but instead as a potential date and a surefire winner for any number of her female clients. It turns out, and yes in classic romcom fashion, Harry has no interest in them, only in Lucy, and this does lead to the matchmaker checking off her own list and doing something rather unprofessional by caving to Harry's advances. But will it become true love or just another negotiation, one that Harry is just as comfortable entering into as Lucy thinks she is? Meanwhile, John comes in and out of the picture, reminding us he is the one who still loves Lucy for who she was, even if she doesn't quite know now who she is. Song has cast her three leads to perfection. Johnson nails all the insecurity beneath the surface of this seemingly assured businesswoman and is superb in what might be her best screen outing yet. Evans, always a better actor than he is given credit for, doesn't miss a beat as a guy still struggling as an actor and as a man trying to find his true love, and knowing he probably already did – the one that got away. Pascal, in a role that could have been one-dimensional, gives Harry genuine humanity and likability. This is someone we also can root for, and in a key scene where he reveals his surprising vulnerability (it has to do with a kind of plastic surgery I never knew existed), he is heartbreakingly real. The standout among the supporting cast is Zoe Winters, an Adore client who first gets rejected by a match she was willing to settle for and then, in highly dramatic fashion, as the victim of sexual assault by another match set up by Lucy, who understandably is devastated when she learns of the disastrous date she felt responsible for. This sequence goes into much darker territory than any in the genre usually do, but it also feels right in this day and age to address it. Also fine is Marin Ireland as Lucy's boss, a woman who has seen it all, and Louise Jacobson, who turned from Adore client to bride. I have to say another main star of this film is New York City itself, seen as the backdrop of so many romantic comedies but here beautifully shot by cinematographer Shabier Kirchner and dressed by production designer Anthony Gasparro as a city where the perfect match is hard to light. A montage sequence featuring the lilting Harry Nilsson song, 'I Guess the Lord Must Be In New York City' is a true highlight (trivia fact: Nilsson wrote that song for Midnight Cowboy, but it was replaced instead by 'Everybody's Talking (at Me).' Another shout-out goes to Daniel Pemberton's nicely nuanced music score. Materialists comes at the right time for a 'genre' that studios have forgotten audiences still want, and hopefully it will stand out as a nice alternative in a summer of tentpoles and action. Song has made a film that oddly can be admired by romantic purists and cynics, a movie whose end credits take place over the sight of a hugely busy New York Marriage Bureau visually assuring us sometimes people do find that elusive match, or at least hope so. Producers are Song, Christine Vachon, Pamela Koffler and David Hinojosa. Title: MaterialistsDistributor: A24 filmsRelease date: June 13, 2025Director-screenplay: Celine SongCast: Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, Pedro Pascal, Zoe Winters, Marin Ireland, Louise JacobsonRating: RRunning time: 1 hr, 56 min Best of Deadline List Of Hollywood & Media Layoffs From Paramount To Warner Bros Discovery To CNN & More Sean 'Diddy' Combs Sex-Trafficking Trial Updates: Cassie Ventura's Testimony, $10M Hotel Settlement, Drugs, Violence, & The Feds A Full Timeline Of Blake Lively & Justin Baldoni's 'It Ends With Us' Feud In Court, Online & In The Media
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Inside the star-studded push to save the public arts from Trump's cuts
Publicly funded art programs are on the Trump administration's chopping block, particularly the National Endowment for the Arts. And organizations like the Creative Coalition and the many arts programs that rely on NEA funding are hoping that some private politicking, in addition to public pressure, can save the arts programs the Trump administration seems intent on destroying. Much like the many other programs Donald Trump and Republicans are trying to kill, the NEA is a congressionally established organization that funds art-related projects and programming nationwide, from summer concerts to school art programs. Trump's budget proposal calls for eliminating the NEA entirely, and hundreds of grants have already reportedly been pulled from projects across the country. As conservatives in Congress determine which federal programs to slash as they look to offset massive tax cuts largely designed to favor the wealthy, several celebrities with the Creative Coalition, an entertainment industry-focused advocacy group, trekked to Washington, D.C., to attempt to convince lawmakers not to slash the funds. In late April, the organization hosted what it called a 'Right to Bear Arts' gala in the capital, attended by actors like 'The Sex Lives of College Girls' star Pauline Chalamet, comedian Tig Notaro, and 'White Lotus' star Jason Isaacs. Since then, the group has been largely focused on meeting with Republicans, given the party's present control in Congress. The NEA is exactly the kind of organization that Congress should support, because it's 'the perfect example of a public-private program,' Creative Coalition CEO Robin Bronk told me. 'Investing in our communities through the arts makes for better and more productive citizens,' she said. Bronk points out that cuts to the NEA are also hurting programs' ability to raise private funds, since the NEA acts as a sort of 'Good Housekeeping seal of approval' that lets philanthropists know which programs they can reliably invest in. That idea that private funding can easily step in to support the arts when federal funds are cut is one of the many misconceptions that Chalamet told me she works to dispel when she speaks with members of Congress and their staffs. She said: A lot of staff of Republican Congress — men and women that we spoke to — looked at this very economically. And rightfully so. They don't want frivolous spending, sure. So they say, 'Why can't it be privately funded?' But the thing is that there are parts of rural America where people won't know who to turn to for privately funded choirs or jazz festivals. We need institutions to exist so that they can get a certain seal of approval from some semblance of authority that validates their project. Other myths the group is trying to dispel are the notion that the NEA is bankrolling coastal propaganda or that it's part of some liberal indoctrination conspiracy. 'There's rhetoric around the arts being, like, part of some kind of liberal elite agenda and, you know, access to it is much higher in cities that tend to vote blue,' Chalamet said, 'But the thing is, that's just rhetoric. That's basically looking at works of art that exist in cities and saying, 'This is what's going on across the country.' What the NEA does is fund American projects.' Funding arts nationwide, Chalamet said, allows 'many different types of people with different opinions to be able to express their opinion.' Both Bronk and Chalamet said the conservatives they spoke with frequently bring up their own experiences with the public arts growing up. So it doesn't sound like the issue here is that Republicans are wholly unfamiliar with what the NEA does. The question seems more about whether Republican lawmakers see American art — arguably our nation's greatest export — as worthy of federal investment. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
‘Days of Our Lives' Filmed John Black's Funeral While Actor Drake Hogestyn Was on His Deathbed: ‘He Understood That This Is a Story Fans Would Want to Be Told' (EXCLUSIVE)
'Days of Our Lives' fans, get out a box of tissues, because you are going to need them this week. Beginning Monday, the citizens of the mythical town of Salem, Ill., lay to rest and mourn the death of John Black, who succumbed to injuries in a lab explosion. Although that in itself is worth plenty of tears, it's the passing of Drake Hogestyn, who played him for 40 years, last September at 70 from pancreatic cancer that adds the real heartbreak to this already emotional scenario. To add even greater pathos, John's death and subsequent funeral were shot while Hogestyn was still alive as he was dying. Executive producer Ken Corday approached Hogestyn's family and got permission to bring John's story to an end this way, and they signed off on it. 'Drake, as the consummate storyteller that he is, said, 'Absolutely. You gotta tell the story,'' Eric Martsoff, who played his son Brady, tells Variety. 'Drake knew what he was facing. He understood that this is a story fans would want to be told. So Drake graciously said, yes, let's do it. But knowing that this man was on the planet, and we were literally taping his funeral and his death, that was hard. It was really hard.' More from Variety Billy Flynn on His 'Days of Our Lives' Exit After 10 Years and Moving to 'Young and the Restless': 'It Made Me the Person I Am Today' (EXCLUSIVE) Francisco San Martin, 'Days of Our Lives' and 'Jane the Virgin' Actor, Dies at 39 Mark Withers, Television Actor on 'Dynasty,' Dies at 77 The filming of his funeral took three full days, and Hogestyn died the following weekend. 'There was literally zero acting going on during those three days,' Martsoff says. 'Everyone was holding hands to the point where our hands were getting white.' Martha Madison, who played John's daughter, Belle, said it was all very real for the cast and crew. 'For us, it felt like our responsibility and an honor to do it the very best that we knew how,' she says. 'The fact that we were losing Drake at the same time, it was very hard on us emotionally, as we're losing someone we really love. We didn't really have to perform. It wasn't like we were having to dig for anything. It was just all right there.' In a way, it was a beautiful release for everybody on set those days, because of the collective sentiment of, 'We Love you, and we're gonna miss you.' Madison says, 'None of us were able to really see him or be with him towards the end. This was our opportunity to do it as a family, and do it together. And I thought it was so beautifully written — all of the flashbacks and really honoring his whole 40-year career on that show. It was all just very special.' In these exclusive videos, John's family gathers to pay their last respects at his funeral. There, Marlena (played by soap legend Deidre Hall) flashes back to her and John's wedding where she says they think of their family as a garden: 'Each child is unique, beautiful, cherished in their own way.' The couple symbolically builds a 'bouquet' of their family, with each child represented by a flower. Back in present day, each of their children lay their flower beside candles and a memorial photo as a sign of their eternal love. Speaking about Hogestyn brings Madison to tears: 'I just looked up to him so much, and I admired everything about him — his deep commitment to his work and to his family, his joy and playfulness and his ability to bring people together.' Her voice cracks. 'I just admired him so much, and I don't think that he was even aware of the impact that he was having on all of us.' Among the speeches eulogizing John is Marstoff's Brady, who says that his father could be summed up in one word: eyebrow. 'My dad had many, many skills — spy craft, martial arts, baseball. But I think the use of his eyebrow was perhaps his single greatest asset, not only was it effective, but extremely versatile.' Anyone who has watched 'Days of Our Lives' knows exactly what he's talking about: Hogestyn had an ability to raise one eyebrow to express everything from curiosity to consternation. 'Eric's speech that he gives at the memorial is both touching and funny, and I think that is something that Drake, as a person, would enjoy,' Madison says. 'I don't think that he would want us sitting around crying all day, even though people like me couldn't stop. I think he would want this to feel more celebratory, because he was very celebratory of his own life and how lucky he was to have this beautiful job and beautiful family. I think he would want us to honor that. I think that's what you see in Eric's monologue. It's really perfect.' Marstoff says he 'lost a father figure' when Hogestyn died. 'Drake and I were buddies. He usually started the day with a story. He just had so many life experiences. I mean, he was a Yankee at one point, for God's sake!' he says, referring to Hogestyn's pre-acting career as a professional baseball player. 'Fans should tune in because we're going to say goodbye to one of the most iconic men ever to hit daytime television. He was the epitome of a soap opera star on and off the stage, and the man deserves eyeballs, and he deserves that tribute.' Best of Variety 25 Hollywood Legends Who Deserve an Honorary Oscar New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Emmy Predictions: Animated Program — Can Netflix Score Big With 'Arcane,' 'Devil May Cry' and the Final Season of 'Big Mouth?'
