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.
-
By Chris Foxon & George Turvey Published by Nick Hern Books Iwas delighted when this how-to book landed on my desk. I’m a writer (over 100,000 words a year). I go to the theatre to review several times a week. I’ve long thought I should somehow knit the strands of my life together and write […]
-
Organised by Nick Hern Books It’s some years since I trod the boards with DAODS at the Orchard in Dartford, but I was keen to join hundreds of other theatre makers at the inaugural Amateur Theatre Festival organised by Nick Hern Books at The Questors Theatre in Ealing. The day was planned to mark 30 […]
-
By Natasha Carthew Published by Bloomsbury It’s quirky. It’s original. It’s lyrical. And it’s a love story. Natasha Carthew’s new novel is also pretty arresting. We’re in what is several times referred to as a “fractal world”. Pirates roam the Cornish coast where the lawless towns are rigidly socially divided, uneasy and sometimes riotous. A […]
-
National Youth Theatre Monologues: 75 Speeches for Auditions Edited and introduced by Michael Bryher Published by Nick Hern Books Whether you’re auditioning for a part in a show, for drama school or for entry to an organisation like National Youth Theatre it can be very difficult – given inexperience and, maybe, lack of informed up-to-date […]
-
Susan Elkin interviews script writer Nick Lane about his adaptation of The Sign of Four for Blackeyed Theatre’s latest nationwide tour. “There are two initial challenges when you adapt a well known Victorian novel for the stage” says Nick Lane, script writer for Blackeyed Theatre’s The Sign of Four which tours nationwide from this autumn. […]
-
Drama teacher and member of the National Drama executive committee Zeena Rasheed puts forward a strong case for Drama in schools and urges you to act in its defence. So why should we keep championing Drama, as an entitlement, more joyfully, and more powerfully than ever? Why should more arts lovers, liberals, politicians, educationalists, academics, […]
-
Nelson Mandela, Marie Curie, Frida Kahlo, Leonardo da Vinci, Amelia Earhart By Isabel Thomas Published by Laurence King Publishing It is never easy to get young readers interested in biography (although I read quite a lot of it but perhaps I was an unusual child). A warm welcome then for this new series Little Guides […]
-
By William Sutcliffe Published by Bloomsbury This tense, uncompromising dystopic novel takes us to what’s left of London – a few years on. We meet two young men through alternating first person narratives – Lex who lives on “the strip”, the bleak remains of walled off, bombed out London. “Desperation is everywhere” he tells us. […]
-
Published by Bloomsbury Annie, the narrator, has cerebral palsy. She can walk short distances but uses a wheelchair for convenience. All her life she has fought – and fought hard – to be seen as Annie rather than as a disabled person. She’s feisty, very bright and good fun. The novel opens as she starts […]
-
Published by Nick Hern Books In the early 1990s, Anna Deavere Smith, an American actress and playwright raised eyebrows with two plays; 92’s Fires in the Mirror and 94’s Twilight: Los Angeles, based on riots that took place in New York (1991) and Los Angeles (1992) respectively. Deavere Smith interviewed those who were part of […]