this month's
Ink Pellet contains
The National Plan for Drama and Theatre Education
Following feedback from drama teachers, educators and other interested parties, The National Plan for Drama and Theatre Education document is now completed and you can find a direct link to the pdf here. This is a mammoth achievement and a feat of collaboration. It has been widely circulated including to the DfE Team, whose members are also […]
BROADWAY LICENSING GLOBAL OFFERS UK TEACHERS FREE PERUSALS FOR HARRY POTTER AND THE CURSED CHILD SECONDARY SCHOOL EDITION
The Critically Acclaimed Show Has Now Been Adapted for UK Secondary Schools (London)—Broadway Licensing Global London, Sonia Friedman Productions, Colin Callender and Harry Potter Theatrical Productions are thrilled to announce that secondary school teachers can now sign up for a free perusal script of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Secondary School Edition. BLG London […]
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 […]
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Mark Glover speaks to Rebecca Winwood, Special Projects Producer at Huddersfield’s Lawrence Batley Theatre and discovers a venue that cares deeply for its community, working closely with other initiatives to bring art to its surrounding areas. I’ve been living in the North of England for six months now having swapped the sweeping fields of the […]
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Susan Elkin went to the UK offices of Theatre Rights Worldwide five floors above Regent Street to talk to TRW vice president, Drew Baker, about licensing and performing musicals. If you have written a musical – perhaps for your own students – then maybe you’d like it to have an afterlife in other schools. If […]
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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, […]
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Two separate exhibitions this autumn have similar themes. Graham Hooper visited both and gives us his insight into the friendship and relationships, as presented through art. One academic year ends, another begins. Older colleagues retire and new staff fill their roles. Students leave school for college and leave college for work or another course. This […]
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Throwing away a script and using real words from real people from real events can seem daunting; yet verbatim theatre can engage students in ways that traditional forms cannot. Directors, playwrights and theatre companies are offering a genre that uses honesty, truth and authenticity as its foundations. Mark Glover finds out more. Robin Belfield’s first […]
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Susan Elkin pleads the case for writers and publishers to help stretch the vocabularies and minds of young readers. I’m going to quote it in full: “[young readers] should be bombarded with words like gamma rays, steeped in words like pot plants stood in water, pelted with them like confetti, fed on them like Alphabetti […]
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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 […]
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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. […]
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Daniel Evans, artistic director of CFT and director of this show, knows how to stage a spectacle and he’s in fine form with this one which could, I suspect, be Chichester’s next West End transfer. Me and My Girl is a gloriously old fashioned, feel good musical dating from 1937. Like so many of the […]
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Thirty years ago, Nick Hern launched Nick Hern Books, one of Britain’s leading publishers of plays and drama books. Susan Elkin spoke to him. How did you get interested in drama in the first place? I did three plays at my prep school because I was told to: I played Prince Hal in Henry […]