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 Chris Foxon & George Turvey Published by Nick Hern Books Iwas delighted when this how-to book landed on my desk. I’m a writer (over 100,000 words a year). I go to the theatre to review several times a week. I’ve long thought I should somehow knit the strands of my life together and write […]
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The difficulty with adapting Conan Doyle is the complexity of the plots. It can so easily get wordy and this version, adapted by Nick Lane who also directs, suffers (a bit) from too much exposition and not enough action in the first half. It improves after the interval, though. Lane does, however, retell Conan Doyle’s […]
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Written in 1693, this is a play which hasn’t improved with time. Like all Restoration Comedies it’s a complicated, convoluted plot which involves an awful lot of lusting after the “wrong” people. It takes until the interval to work out who everybody is and it’s daft to double cast Zoe Waites whose two characters are, […]
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The National Youth Theatre Rep Company is a vocational training group of 15 or 16 actors aged 18-25 who present a West End season at the end of their quasi-course. It’s the top tier of NYT’s work. Most participants go straight on to professional work. Abridged to 90 interval-less minutes by Moira Buffini and pithily […]
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Director, actor and teacher Roman Stefanski specialises in work for children and has been associated with Polka Theatre since 1980. Susan Elkin caught up with him for a chat.
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Susan Elkin visited a school in north London to see the National Theatre’s abridged version of The Curious Incident, touring schools nationwide, aiming to bring high quality theatre into schools to enrich teaching and learning. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is one of the National Theatre’s most successful shows of recent […]
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After changing their approach to school engagement six years ago, Oldham’s Coliseum Theatre’s secondary education partnership scheme is thriving, benefitting its wonderfully diverse community. Mark Glover headed to the town to find out more. As I wait to meet Carly Barclay, Head of Learning at the Coliseum Theatre, suddenly, there’s a huge clap of thunder, […]
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Mountview has moved to Peckham. Forget the notion of north and south London being in different countries. Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts, whose name derives from its old London phone prefix, has cheerfully crossed the divide and is now a proud Southwark resident in a sparkling, spacious new home. Susan Elkin went to explore. Founded […]
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Long famous as an art college, Wimbledon College of Arts – part of University Arts London – is diversifying. From next year if will offer two new courses: BA (Hons) Acting & Performance and BA (Hons) Contemporary Theatre and Performance and the current college site is being upgraded and developed site to accommodate this work. Susan Elkin paid a visit.
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Susan Elkin puts the case for arts teachers to encourage students to embrace healthy eating and lifestyle. Hardly a day goes by without a hand-wringing news item about worsening obesity and the trouble it is likely to cause if it isn’t already doing so: not least unaffordable NHS costs. In the last month alone, we’ve […]