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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Spiegeltent, Chichester Festival Theatre Roy Williams grittily hard-hitting 2002 play about racist grooming and knife crime sits very well in a short season Spiegeltent configured as a circular pub by Joanna Scotcher’s set. Within the pub a disparate group meet, ostensibly, to watch the October 7th 2000 football match in which England played West Germany […]
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Gail Louw’s extraordinarily topical new play presents former (2009-2018) South African president Jacob Zuma (Andrew Francis) and white freedom fighter Ronnie Kasrils (Jack Klaff) as old men. I saw it in the week that it was announced that Zuma will face sixteen charges of fraud, racketeering and money laundering and the real Kasrils was in […]
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The best thing about this rather disappointing show is Michael Taylor’s imaginative set which makes lovely use of screens and to create a scientific lab (big tubes and vents right to the ceiling) a pub, a stately home and a lot more. Based on the 1951 film of the same name, The Man in the […]
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By Margaret AttwoodPublished by Penguin Since its publication in September, Margaret Attwood’s long-awaited sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale has made literary history at least twice. It was the first book ever to be longlisted for the Booker prize before its publication and it was kept securely under wraps just as the later Harry Potter titles […]
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By Bill BrysonPublished by Doubleday Because I did A level zoology at school along with a long defunct pre-nursing O level called Anatomy, Physiology and Hygiene – and have always avidly devoured newspaper reports of medical research and developments – I thought I had reasonable knowledge of how the human body works. Then I read […]
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Published by Nick Hern Books Anyone who has ever worked with, or even met, veteran theatre director Peter Brook (see Lou Stein on p15 of this issue, for example) comments on his legendary, profoundly influential presence. That same humble, sometimes quirky, glittering charisma sings through his writing too. His latest book is a series of […]
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By Jess Thorpe & Tashi GorePublished by Methuen Drama Theatre does not have to start with a script and a story given to the cast by someone else. Watch any group of children in a playground playing a make-believe game. The story is emerging as they play. Well slightly more formal theatre can, of course, […]
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Still only, 31, Joel Kern started Make Believe 16 years ago. The company provides drama, dance and singing training for children and now has 50 franchised branches. He chatted to Susan Elkin. Have you always been interested in drama? Yes. I was born in Leytonstone and did GCSE and A level drama at King Solomon […]