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 […]
Book Review
Ink Pellet’s book review section covers an eclectic selection of new fiction, teachers’ guides, audio books and classics.
Many of our reviews are written by teachers, so we have an expert eye on how texts will work in the classroom. We hope to create a useful archive of reviews so that you can use this as a reference.
If you would like to join our panel of reviewers, please join in or email the editor john@inkpellet.co.uk.
We hope the section inspires you to share new fiction with your pupils or to revisit old favorites yourself.
-
Annemarie Lewis Thomas, composer, musical director and founder principal of Musical Theatre Academy chats to Susan Elkin
-
Published by Nick Hern Books If you want to know about using the voice well, ask an actor. Whatever field you work in, or want to, somehow you have to learn to speak with clarity and conviction in order to communicate effectively, preferably without damaging your “instrument” and developing voice strain. Actors know more about […]
-
Published by Egmont Elliot is terrified of almost everything.From the moment he was born, his life has been governed by acute fear. The only thing that keeps his terrors in check are the pills that he takes every day. It’s Christmas Eve, there’s a snowstorm and Elliot’s medication is almost gone. His mum nips out […]
-
Published by Andre Deutsch Books The Shakespeare Treasury is a fascinating collection of facts on Britain’s greatest playwright and insights into the enduring popularity of his work. Delving into the inspirations behind his masterworks and the influences of generations of performers, it reveals the incredible variety of ways Shakespeare’s plays have been adapted for stage […]
-
Published by Samuel French 4000 Days by Peter Quilter, is the story of Michael a passionate and entertaining man, and his recovery upon suffering a complete loss of memory of the previous eleven years of his life, ten of which were spent getting to know and love his partner, Paul (a more practical but admiringly […]
-
Published by Oberon Books In 2014 actor and author Michael Pennington arrives in New York to play the title role in King Lear directed by Arin Arbus for the company Theatre for a New Audience (TFANA). Two years later finds him in the UK about to tour as Lear in a different production directed by […]
-
Published by Orchard Likely to work for anyone aged over about 8 or 9, this exquisite succinct historical novel brings together several arts so it should be perfect for Ink Pellet readers and their pupils and students. Heartsong explores the life of a mute musician, an orphan at the famous Ospedale della Pieta in early […]
-
Published by Nick Hern Books BU21 by Stuart Slade is the touchingly topical story of six people of all different backgrounds and ways of life and how a single tragic event on Friday the 22nd July 2016 brought them all together. In writing BU21 (which is also the name of the airliner that is shot […]
-
Shakespeare rhymes ‘war’ with ‘jar’, ‘scar’, ‘afar’, and ‘bar’ in various plays and poems. Never does he rhyme it with ‘more’. That, of course, is because pronunciation changes continually (listen to 1940s radio broadcasts for evidence if you need it) and Shakespeare has been dead for 400 years. And, obviously, it was far from fixed […]
-
Book Review of Much ado about Shakespeare, written and illustrated by Donovan Bixley.
