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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SUSAN ELKIN is enchanted by the multi-faceted and prolific writer Adèle Geras, still writing – at her own pace – at the age of 72. Most interviewees elect to meet journalists on neutral territory such as a coffee shop, hotel or reserved space at a theatre or publisher’s. It is typical of the warmth and […]
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SUSAN ELKIN pays a visit to the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School as part of its anniversary season to discover a thriving septuagenarian. It’s anniversary time in Bristol. 250 years ago, in 1776, the city’s Old Vic Theatre opened, probably now Britain’s oldest surviving theatre still in business. It has a long and illustrious history […]
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JOSEPH BIRD interviews Daniel Raggett, Associate Director of 1984 at the Playhouse Theatre, about his inspiration, the new cast and his thoughts on the book ahead of its return to the London stage this summer. What inspired you to go down the career path of becoming a director? I was lucky enough to be taken […]
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The Regional Theatre Young Director Scheme is aiding more aspiring directors to gain experience and find their feet. SUSAN ELKIN discovers more. Many young people fall in love with theatre but soon discover that, for whatever reason, acting is not for them. Yet they want to be very actively involved in what happens on stage […]
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As NT Connections reaches 21 years, SUSAN ELKIN offers an insight into its continued success and hopes your school will participate next year. I saw and enjoyed Blackout by Davey Anderson at the Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury in April. It opens dramatically with 30 or so teenagers staring silently and balefully at their phones and then unravels […]
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Susan Elkin visits the Chichester Festival Theatre to chat with Dale Rooks and discovers a strong emphasis on nurturing young talent Chichester Festival Theatre’s recent production of The Enemy of the People featured two boys, alongside Hugh Bonneville and the rest of the cast. Alfie Scott and Jack Taylor are both members of CFT’s thriving […]
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GRAHAM HOOPER tears himself away from exam marking to take in the retrospective at the Jerwood Gallery in Hastings.
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Remember Joey from War Horse? Well, meet Oona the elephant. She’s full size and spectacular. Puppeted by four people, three inside her and one on her serpentine expressive trunk, she flaps her ears, rocks her head, farts and responds to everything going on around her. There’s also a magnificent tiger, pounding and snarling, a terrifying […]
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Published by Samuel French 4000 Days by Peter Quilter, is the story of Michael a passionate and entertaining man, and his recovery upon suffering a complete loss of memory of the previous eleven years of his life, ten of which were spent getting to know and love his partner, Paul (a more practical but admiringly […]
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Published by Oberon Books In 2014 actor and author Michael Pennington arrives in New York to play the title role in King Lear directed by Arin Arbus for the company Theatre for a New Audience (TFANA). Two years later finds him in the UK about to tour as Lear in a different production directed by […]