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 […]
A Day in the Life
-
Piers Torday, 45, is the adaptor of A Christmas Carol and The Box of Delights for stage as well as the author of eight children’s novels. Susan Elkin chats to him.
-
Thirty years ago, Nick Hern launched Nick Hern Books, one of Britain’s leading publishers of plays and drama books. Susan Elkin spoke to him. How did you get interested in drama in the first place? I did three plays at my prep school because I was told to: I played Prince Hal in Henry […]
-
Singer, actor, composer and writer Natasha Sutton Williams, 29, is co-founder of the theatre company, Working Birthday. Her one woman show Freud the Musical ran to great acclaim in the recent Vaults Festival and will be part of the Reading Festival in July. Susan Elkin caught up over a coffee. Where do you come from? I can’t […]
-
Susan Elkin meets up with Ebony Feare, 36, an actress currently playing Tortoise in Pied Piper’s touring production of Hare and Tortoise
-
Barry Drummond, 26, is appearing in English National Ballet’s Nutcracker at the London Coliseum over Christmas. In 2008 he won the Lyn Seymour award for the most expressive dancer and in 2012 he was nominated for the Emerging Dancer award. How did you get into ballet? I’m from Callander in Scotland. I started ballet there […]
-
Katy Lipson, 32, has produced over 50 shows, mostly musical theatre. Few school and college students really understand what producing is and what a crucial part of the theatre industry it is. They could learn a lot from the hardworking Katy, as Susan Elkin discovers.
-
Susi Earnshaw founded the Susi Earnshaw Theatre School in 1989. She and her husband David run the full-time school, which is based in Barnet, North London and recently chatted with Susan Elkin.
-
Jenny McLachlan is the author of a series of four books called Ladybirds. Her latest is a standalone. Stargazing for Beginners presents a girl passionate about astronomy and wanting to be an astronaut – as well as managing her life as a teenager with a problem or two. Susan Elkin spoke to her. How did […]
-
Michael Volpe is the director of Opera Holland Park but his background is unusual. He spoke to Susan Elkin
-
Cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason,17, became the BBC Young Musician of the Year in May when he wowed the judges with his account of the Shostakovich cello concerto number 1. Susan Elkin talks to him. What made you take up the cello? I was six. I was already learning piano and violin. The piano was fine but I […]