Guest Author - Page 4

My collaborator Robert Hudson and I first got interested in writing a musical about the Treaty of Versailles about five years ago. We’d toyed with the idea before, but the Brexit vote and the widening political divide within both the UK and America gave us the impetus we’d been missing, and we began to write the first draft of what eventually became Hall of Mirrors.

I knew there was something to say about today with Stevenson's novella Jekyll and Hyde about good and evil and the darkness in all of us.

John Rwothomach has based his play FAR GONE on his real childhood experience of nearly being kidnapped by a guerrilla group in Uganda.

Paul Bradshaw and I have been friends for years, and to collaborate with him again is an honour. His stories as a working-class, queer Londoner are both poignant and essential. tell me straight feels particularly special for me because of how it explores attraction, desire, connection, and the spectrum of queerness.

In mid-lockdown and after the tragic death of George Floyd, writer Ryan Calais Cameron came to me with a clear and simple question - are people born racist? This started a wide-reaching, knotty and brilliant conversation with young people across the country.

Two Billion Beats is a coming-of-age story about two sisters, Asha and Bettina, who come together every day after school and discuss, celebrate, argue and lament about their lives.

It often comes as a surprise to people that A Fight Against… (Una Lucha Contra…) is a world premiere, not only in English, but in any language, including Spanish.

All around the UK, theatres put on accessible performances for their audience and there’s often different types of access schemes on offer. But what is a relaxed performance?

Here we are, at the Royal Albert Hall, performing Sunset Boulevard. This really is a dream come true.

As our Recovery Season at the Orange Tree Theatre continues, it’s worthwhile considering what exactly we are recovering. A standard definition of recovery is a return to normal. And there were probably many who hoped that there would be a swift return to business as usual after a horrible but aberrant period.

Set in a northern pocket of New Jersey in a world before social media usurped dog as man’s best friend, Jersey Boys can be summed up in one word: Famiglia.

Open relationships have provided great material for increasing numbers of LGBTQ+ writers over the last few years.

At Sadler’s Wells we have an ambitious mission: ‘make and share dance that inspires us all.’ Core to our work on Sadler’s Wells Digital Stage is thinking a lot about the ‘us all’ bit of this mission. How can we best use this space to genuinely provide access to world-class dance experience to us all?  

I’m writing this from the back of the MAST studios in Southampton, where we’re currently in technical rehearsals for Fantastically Great Women Who Changed The World.

I don’t know why I’m starting this article with an admission that I had never really been ‘that into Shakespeare’. It is the sort of casual assertion which leaves a ghostly trail of incredulous disappointment upon the face of the poor actor you have annointed your confessor - they will never really respect you again.

The characters of Brian and Roger were birthed by me and Harry Peacock on a TV set back in 2014. Hanging around between takes, we started to improvise and pretend to be these two divorced middle-aged men, trying really hard to see the positive side of their situation.

My stage play The Sugar House uses the metaphor of gentrification of a former Sydney harbourside sugar refinery to explore the legacy of change for a woman who has come from poverty but now lives a completely transformed middle-class lifestyle

From the moment I first performed in an amateur production of The Addams Family musical back in 2014, I fell in love with the show - with all its weird and wonderful (much-loved) characters, heart-warming story and spectacular score.

From its first run at Glasgow’s Tron theatre in 2018, and its 2019 UK tour, writer and co-director of Pride and Prejudice* (sort of) Isobel McArthur’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s iconic novel is retold by five young female servants with Georgian petticoats: all wearing marigolds and Doc Martens.

The great thing about radio drama is that we can paint complex scenes and invoke whole new worlds through the power of storytelling, using sound alone.