this month's
Ink Pellet contains
Dear in the spotlight
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.
Training Central
Royal Central School of Speech and Drama is the UK’s largest drama school and has more than eleven hundred full time students. Susan Elkin provides an insight.
Reading Charter
Susan Elkin chatted to Cressida Cowell, new Children’s Laureate, about her journey and aspirations for her tenure.
Youthquake
This Autumn, Zest Theatre’s Youthquake, described as part show, part TED Talk and part party will be staged in 12 venues nationwide. The devised play, inspired by young people across the UK, is Artistic Director Toby Ealden’s most ambitious project yet and gives a powerful insight into the hidden lives and minds of Teen Britain. Here we catch up with director Toby Ealden to find out more.
LAMDA Examinations
Ensuring they remain as relevant as ever, LAMDA have introduced new syllabi for Communication, Performance, Group and Introductory. Susan Elkin spoke to LAMDA to find out more.
Into Film Festival
Now in its 7th year, the Into Film Festival returns this autumn bigger and bolder than ever, with free screenings and special events.
The Lion King
As Disney’s The Lion King celebrates its 20th anniversary in London, we look at the education opportunities available with Nancy Shakerley, Education and Outreach Manager at Disney Theatrical Productions
Play them classical music
A lifelong lover of classical music, Susan Elkin extols its virtues and implores you to expose your students to more of it, for their benefit and possibly yours!
Modern Attractions
Taking in two current shows at the Tate Modern, our exhibition correspondent Graham Hooper was moved by the forces at work.
The Worst Witch – Vaudeville Theatre
Transferred from Royal and Derngate Northampton, which produced it last year, to the Vaudeville for a short West End summer run The Worst Witch is humane, funny and beautifully staged.
Library
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 Lesley.finlay@inkwellpress.co.uk We hope the section inspires you to share new fiction with your pupils or to revisit old favourites yourself
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Susan Elkin participated in a panel discussion on the current state of education, focussing on the detriment to learning caused by the paucity of arts subjects in the curriculum. 1968 was the year I started teaching. My e-book memoir Please Miss We’re Boys, details it amusingly – I hope. By some mysterious coincidental synergy, I was […]
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Sometimes great ideas spring from the unlikeliest of places. In 1974, an actual chicken shed on the very limits of North London was the venue for one of the first inclusive theatre companies in the UK. Mark Glover uncovers the routes of the Chickenshed. Susan Jamson, Chickenshed’s Press and PR Manager, has been with the […]
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The NT Connections Festival celebrated its 21st Anniversary with a record number of participating groups. Susan Elkin looks at this year’s final performers. Our play is preferred” shouts Bottom gleefully to Peter Quince and the other rude mechanicals in A Midsummer Night’s Dream when he hears that that they’ve been picked to perform at the Theseus’s three […]
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In the last issue of Ink Pellet, Mark Glover, reviewed Lucy Kerbel’s book All Change Please, a rally cry to achieving greater equality in the theatre. The book focused, in part on the influence of young people, and the impact they can make. Here, he delves into the work of the National Youth Theatre, to […]
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GRAHAM HOOPER takes in the Cornelia Parker exhibition, combining visual and verbal allusions that trigger cultural metaphors and personal associations.
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SUSAN ELKIN visited Rose Bruford College to view first-hand the excellent classes offered to young people. Rose Bruford College is an unusual drama school. Operating without a city centre presence, it is tucked away in a quietly rural and very beautiful corner of Sidcup in the grounds of the old house (complete with lake!) which […]
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With, hopefully, warmer evenings set to continue though the coming months, Susan Elkin guides us through some of the open air theatre highlights available this summer. Open air theatre is one of those gloriously British triumphs of hopes over experience. At its best a night at Regents Park or in the grounds of a stately […]
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NYT CPD & Summer Season National Youth Theatre’s latest Teacher CPD Event will take place on Thursday 1 June when the NYT will be opening up their rehearsal room to educators, giving them the opportunity to watch an open rehearsal of Dennis Kelly’s DNA in advance of its limited run at the home of National […]
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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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This year’s CILIP Awards are in full swing, with opportunities for your students to influence the outcome. Susan Elkin sets the scene Have you read One by Sarah Crossan? It’s a first person narrative by a teenage conjoined twin facing separation from her other half. It’s written in blank verse and I’m pretty sure you […]