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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The story telling is crystal clear in Ignace Cornelissen’s 75 minute reworking of Othello, translated by Purni Morrell. For example, we start with Othello (Okorie Chukwu) choosing Ronald Nsubuga’s Cassio as his lieutenant over Lawrence Walker’s Iago to make it clear from the outset why the scheming Iago is hell bent on bringing Othello down. […]
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Having studied this classic Steinbeck book last year as part of my GCSE studies, I was keen to see this stage adaptation by Selladoor at the start of its UK tour. The staging was suitably stark and transformed easily from riverbank to bunkhouse and I particularly liked the scene in Crooks’ room as Lenny and […]
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O..M..G.. after all the television coverage of the selection process with BBC One’s ‘Let It Shine’ to find the five members of a band to appear in a live show featuring the songs of Take That, I was not expecting to see what I saw at the Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury. What we heard was what was expected; a veritable treat of melodies, harmonies and hit singles expertly performed by the new group […]
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By Somalia Seaton Published by Nick Hern Books I was pleased when the Ink Pellet editor asked me to review Red by Somalia Seaton. The book is part of Nick Hern Book’s Platform series, plays specially commissioned by Lucy Kerbel from Tonic Theatre, a strong advocate for enhancing opportunities for young females in the theatre. […]
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By Matt Killeen Published by Usborne Sarah, 15, is – or becomes – all three things in the title. It’s a 1940s story but Matt Killeen’s debut young adult novel breaks fresh ground. We’re accustomed to seeing Jews portrayed as supine victims and of course the images move most of us deeply. Sarah is different. […]
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By Andrew Norriss Published by David Fickling Books This is a very strong idea for a young adult novel. For a few pages you think it’s going to be a boring homage to tennis and only likely to interest tennis fanatics, then you realise that it’s actually about mental health, life choices, families and it’s very […]
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When are we going to start developing children as readers rather then mechanically teaching them to read and seeing that as an end in itself? Susan Elkin poses the question.