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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Susan Elkin champions the case for banning food and drink in theatres If you want to picnic then go to a park. In a theatre “The play’s the thing” in every sense. Eating and drinking are for elsewhere. Traditionally gentlemen bought rustly chocolates to impress the ladies they wanted to impress. Theatres sold said expensive […]
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It’s good to see a grandiose, gothic musical – not particularly successful by Andrew Lloyd Webber standards when it first aired in 2004 – scaled down and given vibrant new life. It now uses an ensemble cast of three (plus a child) supporting seven principals accompanied by a nine piece band – and it works […]
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by West End Producer Published by Nick Hern Books Published late autumn this was definitely the best theatre book of 2017 and I suspect it will be unsurpassed this year too. Written in the same wickedly dead-pan tone as his earlier Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Acting (But were too sloshed to ask […]
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Susan Elkin meets up with Ebony Feare, 36, an actress currently playing Tortoise in Pied Piper’s touring production of Hare and Tortoise
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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 […]
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By Jamie Read, Co-Director of READ College here are so many myths surrounding healthy voice use for today’s Musical Theatre singers that it can be difficult to know what to believe. The constant worry about damaging your voice, and the stigma often unfairly placed on singers who sustain a vocal injury, can lead to […]
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By Jonathan FS Post Published by Oxford University Press This little book, part of a huge series of Very Short Introductions, is a surprisingly detailed and scholarly starting point for anyone beginning to study Shakespeare’s non-stage work. We casually refer to Shakespeare as the “greatest poet in the English language” with some justification but, Post […]
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By Oliver Ford Davies Published by Bloomsbury Have you ever noticed just how many apparently single parent fathers there are in Shakespeare? Prospero, Capulet, Lear, Leonato, Egeus, Shylock et al. Of course, Ford Davies has played most of them. That means that he’s worked with many interesting young female actors such as Mariah Gales who […]
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By Matt Haig Published by Canongate When I interviewed Matt Haig for September’s edition of Ink Pellet I was struck by the writer’s belief in the power of story-telling and how it can help young people understand the fragility of life. His fiction (Matt writes for both children and adults) pushes the boundary of the form […]
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van Placey’s excellent play operates at lots of levels and in different worlds. It’s a topical, intelligent, thoughtful, feminist take on Robert Lewis Stevenson’s novella rather than a dramatisation of it. And it’s rollicking good theatre – frank, uncompromising, fresh and often quite confrontational. In Victorian England, Dr Jekyll’s widow Harriet is dabbling in […]