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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van Placey’s excellent play operates at lots of levels and in different worlds. It’s a topical, intelligent, thoughtful, feminist take on Robert Lewis Stevenson’s novella rather than a dramatisation of it. And it’s rollicking good theatre – frank, uncompromising, fresh and often quite confrontational. In Victorian England, Dr Jekyll’s widow Harriet is dabbling in […]
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Ian McKellen’s Lear is physically and mentally ill from the moment he first appears. He has uncertain, slightly tottery gait. He is in pain and his speech is spat out as if in recovery from a small stoke. It is impeccably observed. So is the capricious mood switching and anger often stressed by the shock […]
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We’re in the Cypress pub as opposed to in Cyprus for this Othello Adapted for Frantic Assembly by Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett. It’s a thuggish world of gang warfare, ruthless competing for girls and a great deal of violence with rounders bats and knives around a versatile snooker table. There’s a lot of powerful physical theatre […]
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Graham Hooper compares two contrasting photography exhibitions currently showing in London
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This Christmas, Sally Cookson will be adapting The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. Mark Glover spoke to the innovative director to discuss nostalgia, story-telling and the pressures of re-working such a classic book.
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In this, the first of a regular feature examining issues facing the arts, Susan Elkin posses the question why so few men still take up ballet
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In 2013, Hull was announced as the UK’s next city of culture. As the year begins its final season of programmes and events Mark Glover explores the work of Hull Truck Theatre and looks back on some of the year’s theatrical highlights.
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Chinonyerem Odimba, 43, is an award-winning playwright best known for Amongst the Reds (Clean Break, Edinburgh Fringe and Yard Theatre London. 2016) A Blues for Nia (Eclipse Theatre/BBC), The Birdwoman of Lewisham (Arcola 2015) and Joanne (Clean Break. Soho Theatre, 2015). Her most recent success is Twist, a radical reimagining of Oliver Twist for the 21st century, commissioned by Theatre Centre. Susan Elkin talks to her.
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Frantic Assembly’s Ignition training programme is aimed at young men, some of whom have never set foot inside a theatre. Mark Glover finds out more about this pioneering scheme and how it’s challenging the male stereotype.
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Susan Elkin meets up with a colourful Rakugo story teller to find out more about this traditional Japanese art form.