this month's
Ink Pellet contains
Back to the future
Don’t ignore apprenticeships as a viable alternative route to a creative career. Susan Elkin looks at several providers and chats to recent participants. You’re 18 or so and you desperately want to work in theatre – not as an actor, but as a backstage creative. So should you go to drama school or university for […]
2020 Visions to Savour
Guiding you through the upcoming year of exhibition highlights, Graham Hooper suggests making time for these exciting shows. This is the time to look back on what a good year 2019 was for art, and the best time for planning ahead to 2020; whether you intend to take a class of students on a study […]
Stage Schools – tell parents to tread carefully
Susan Elkin is encouraged by the breadth of stage schools, but suggests eyes need to be wide open. Stage schools are big business. They are also a bit of a minefield. How do you balance ensuring that children get performing arts opportunities against the decline of those same opportunities in mainstream schools and everyone’s need […]
Holes on stage
Adam Penford, Artistic Director of Nottingham Playhouse, has a passion for storytelling. As he prepares to bring a much-loved story about friendship and doing the right thing to the stage, he shows our imaginations ensure there are no barriers to bringing great tales to life. For the 1.5 million-plus people who have bought the book […]
Mary Poppins – Prince Edward Theatre
It’s techni-colourful and so tuneful that it really doesn’t matter much if the magic’s a bit thin and it sometimes feels a bit like a variety show strong on spectacular set pieces, but light on narrative focus. So rather than carping, swallow that spoonful of sugar with Mary (Zizi Strallen) rather than treacle and brimstone […]
SO YOU WANT TO ACT ON SCREEN
By Michael BrayPublished by Nick Hern Books Yet another good title in NHB’s So you want to … series, this book will help fill in gaps for students who think their training is selling them short. It would also be a good basic introduction for any student or actor just embarking on screen actor training. […]
Piers Torday
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.
THE BIG INTERVIEW: Composed Comfort
Paul Fincham is a composer whose carol Ring The Bells will be sung in concerts all over the country this Christmas and whose opera The Happy Princess got good reviews last summer. Susan Elkin meets him.
A Rye Gem
Susan Elkin met with Theatre Peckham AD Suzann Mclean, discovering this hub has much to offer Founded 33 years ago, Theatre Peckham is an unsung jewel tucked away in the back streets of Southwark about ten minutes walk from Peckham Rye station and close to the centre of Camberwell. Mountview Academy, one of the country’s […]
Free at last!
Fourth Monkey Actor Training Company announces accredited BA (Hons) Acting course and the introduction of audition fee wavers for all. Fourth Monkey Actor Training Company, founded in 2010 enters its tenth year in 2020, and to mark this milestone, the highly acclaimed School is validating its Two-Year actor training programme in partnership with TEF Gold […]
Big Interview
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Producer, social commentator, author and now performer, Susan Elkin met the West End Producer to chat about his alter ego and recent successful Edinburgh run.
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Having ‘retired’ from running their hugely successful company, Oily Cart, Susan Elkin caught up with Tim Webb and Dave Bennett to find out what the future now holds in store.
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Moira Buffini, 53, is an award-winning playwright and director whose innovative reworking of Macbeth is part of the current National Youth Theatre Rep Season. Susan Elkin met her to talk about her career so far. Moira Buffini meets me after work in Islington on a chilly, dark autumn evening. Always busy she has been working […]
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Steven Worbey and Kevin Farrell, both pianists, met at Royal College of Music. Worbey and Farrell, their unusual double act – four hands on one piano – combines virtuosic playing with family-friendly humour. Susan Elkin caught up with them in London on their way home to Edinburgh following a working week on a P&O Cruise […]
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Proving disability and deafness can be incorporated into mainstream theatre, Susan Elkin met up with Garry Robson during rehearsals for Our Country’s Good
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Susan Elkin spoke to playwright Jessica Swale, composer Joe Stilgoe and director Max Webster during the rehearsals for a brand-new adaptation of The Jungle Book which opened at Royal and Derngate, Northampton before Christmas and tours nationally this year. Everyone connected with this production mentions the 1967 Disney film, with its songs by George Bruns which have […]
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Crime fiction author Anne Cassidy, who writes for young adults, hit the headlines in 2004 with her controversial novel Looking for JJ – one of over fifty titles she has to her credit. Susan Elkin meets her.
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The Birmingham Stage Comapany, one of the world’s leading producers of theatre for children, is celebrating its 25th anniversary and Susan Elkin met up with its founder Neal Foster We meet in his theatreland London office, a stone’s throw from Piccadilly Circus and not much further from the Garrick Theatre where Gangsta Granny is to […]
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As champions of new writing, the Royal Court plays a vital role in the link between education and the theatre. Here their artistic director, Vicky Featherstone, chats to Susan Elkin Vicky Featherstone’s middle name might just as well be “new writing”. It has characterised everything this dynamic woman, currently artistic director at the Royal Court, […]
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Ben Ofoedu chats with Susan Elkin about his life and career, from global singing star to scene-stealing genie and beyond He bounds beaming up the stairs to meet me in a Mexican café in Soho. He has chosen this establishment because they’ve given him a Gold Card in acknowledgement of his celebrity status. His rather […]