this month's
Ink Pellet contains
A Final Haunt
After 33 extraordinary years, Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black will haunt the stage of the Fortune Theatre for the final time, as the production ends in the West End on Saturday 4th March 2023. PW Productions announce that after 33 extraordinary years in London’s West End, the theatrical sensation that is Susan Hill’s THE […]
Reaching for the Moon
Susan Elkin paid a visit to Half Moon theatre in London’s East End to chat with CEO Chris Elwell about their extensive education outreach and innovative theatre programmes. Half Moon Theatre sits in the heart of Limehouse in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, spitting distance from the DLR and mainline station. Formerly a pretty […]
National Youth Theatre Rep Company
The National Youth Theatre’s Rep Company is celebrating its first ten years and Susan Elkin paid a visit to learn more. Each year a group of fifteen or so talented NYT members, aged 18 to 25, are selected by audition to join this company. In just a few months they rehearse three shows, many of […]
Apprenticeships
An important and often overlooked route into the industry, especially for many non-performing roles. Susan Elkin has some suggestions. Theatre is like an iceberg. For every role on stage there are probably at least half a dozen technicians you can’t see. And the industry has been telling us for decades that there are skills shortages […]
School Shows
Never underestimate the power of a school production – for every single person involved. When you meet former students, sometimes from decades back in my case, it’s usually taking part in Oliver! or A Midsummer Night’s Dream that they reminisce about with shining eyes. Most importantly it’s a terrific bonding exercise. We hear a lot […]
New Perspectives
With three separate Lucian Freud exhibitions currently on, Graham Hooper took time to visit and here is his review of these contrasting shows. LLucian Freud would have been 100 this year, and that’s a good excuse to look back over his life and work, but especially his work, as the two have a rather nasty […]
Grandad Anansi – Half Moon Theatre
Predicated partly on Black History Month, Elayne Ogbeta’s muliti-layered play presents Grandad (Marcus Hercules) and his primary school age granddaughter, Abi (Jazmine Wilkinson) in his garden. Like everything else in this show, the garden designed by Sorcha Corcoran, is beautiful with lots of colour, light and plants that Grandad knows by name and talks to. […]
Theatre Review – The King of Nothing – Little Angel Theatre
Ben Glasstone’s charming, witty account of The Emperor Who Has No Clothes works well for two main reasons. First it is one of the most perceptive stories ever written, dealing as it does with vanity, self delusion, conformity and truth. It’s both topical and timeless. Second, we have a cost of living crisis and the […]
Book Review – Activist
by Louisa Reid Published by Guppy Books Cassandra, narrator of this powerful verse novel, is a reluctant sixth former in a prestigious mixed school, formerly all boys, where toxic culture simmers. Driven by her own experience, and by nature a feisty “shouter” she campaigns forcibly for acknowledgement that some of the boys at school treat […]
Book Review – A Poetry Pedagogy for Teachers: Reorienting Classroom Literacy Practice
by Maya Pindyck and Ruth Vinz, with Diana Liu and Ashlynn Wittchow The thrust of this detailed, well-researched, quite academic book about the poetry in classrooms is that we shouldn’t teach students to search for meaning so that “the poem becomes a specimen for examination under the microscope of interpretative practices”. Instead we should experience […]
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by Andy Hinds Published by Oberon Books Acting Shakespeare’s Language opens with the following quote by Ralph Fiennes: “Andy Hinds offers a rich and detailed path towards a precise contact with the challenge of speaking and inhabiting Shakespeare’s language. This book is an immensely useful resource for anyone teaching, speaking and acting Shakespeare.“ I won’t […]
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by Bryony Pearce Published by Stripes Publishing From award-winning author Bryony Pearce, comes this gripping YA trilogy set in a future world where fossil fuels have run out and democracy has collapsed. An outlawed pirate crew fight for survival on their ship, the Phoenix, kept afloat by whatever they can salvage or scavenge from the […]
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by Daniel Hahn (second edition based on original 1984 edition by Humphrey Carpenter & Mari Pritchard) Published by Oxford University Press By anyone’s standards it’s an ambitious project to attempt to cram into a mere 500,000 words the whole of children’s literature, including that from other English speaking cultures and books translated into English. Children’s […]
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Having read Mark Haddon’s best-selling novel only a few weeks before seeing the National Theatre’s production of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, I wondered if this would be a hindrance or a help. But believe me, this touring NT production took the story of Asperger’s suffer Christopher onto yet another magical […]
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Based on the unexplained suicide of four women who starved themselves to death over a period of 40 days and who systematically destroyed any clues that might have helped us to understand their actions, Lippy will not be every theatregoers cup of tea. If the play’s subject is bleak, the dramatic treatment of the subject […]
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Presenting a classic like Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice for the theatre holds certain risks. Patrons who are seasoned lovers of the English classics have certain expectations, and would be disappointed if the stage production differs greatly to the novel. Fortunately Tamara Harvey’s production rose to the challenge, bringing the story to life with its […]
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2015 marks the centenary of Arthur Miller’s birth and the RSC has honoured it with a near definitive account of what is probably Miller’s finest play – Death of a Salesman. Miller’s powerful, painful take on the elusive Great American Dream is not easy to bring off on stage but Gregory Doran’s characteristically assured touch […]
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Award-winning playwright Nick Payne, has amazed audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. Here he shares the sociable side of his nature with a dinner party full of ‘big’ characters.