this month's
Ink Pellet contains
HARMONY IN DIVERSITY
International soprano and Artistic Director of Pegasus Opera Company, Alison Buchanan, speaks to Nilgün Yusuf. Fans of Bridgerton may have seen Alison Buchanan sing in the spinoff series, Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story (2023) easily located on YouTube if you missed it. “That was a high point” the singer reflects. “I loved the show and the whole process. They treated me like artist.” Bejewelled […]
TAYLA KENYON
Tayla Kenyon is a producer, playwright, actor, teacher and workshop facilitator whose award-winning debut play FLUFF is a play text at the National Theatre. Her new play, Tell Me Where it Hurts, explores Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder andis currently on tour. “There weren’t masses of theatres in Hemel Hempstead where I was brought up, although we […]
Let’s fill this country with artists
Mountview is multiplying and now has seven CertHEs across the country. By Nilgün Yusuf. It’s been a long-held view that to make a career in the performing arts, you must move to London. But with sky high rents and the prohibitive cost of capital living, this is not an option for many young people. Mountview, […]
Poetry for Life
Having curated the Poetry Arena at Latitude for ten years from 2006, poet Luke Wright revisited the festival this summer to present excerpts from his latest book, Later Life Letter, and IP caught up with him later for a chat. Inspired by the likes of Blur’s Country House and the tapes of Monty Python, Luke […]
Into Film Supporting Literacy
This year’s Into Film Festival will take place between 6-27 November 2026, and will once again help educators bring learning to life for 5-19-year-olds across the UK by inspiring young people to watch, understand and make films in new and creative ways. Welcoming almost half a million pupils and their educators each year, education charity, […]
Beyond Laughter
Actor, comedian, broadcaster Rufus Hound, 47, has starred in the West End and presented primetime TV. Susan Elkin spoke to him. When I catch up with Rufus Hound he is eating a bowl of noodles between the matinee and the evening show where he is appearing as William in Jack and Sarah at the Mill […]
Matilda the Musical – Writing challenge
“Change My Story” is the Royal Shakespeare Company’s (RSC) flagship education programme accompanying the UK and Ireland tour of Matilda the Musical. Inspired by the musical’s themes of empowerment and literacy, the initiative aims to reach thousands of young people in cities hosting the touring production Roald Dahl’s delightful, subversive novel Matilda champions reading and […]
OHMI Trust
The OHMI Trust’s objective is to enable children and adults with physical impairments to play the instruments they want to play, when they want to play them and where they want to play them (whether at school, in the home or in a professional ensemble). OHMI Trust Music-Makers is a Birmingham-based charity, founded in 2011. Its primary […]
Learn with Mischief
Learn With Mischief is a new, free to use education resource designed for secondary students, and aims to inspire the next generation of theatre-makers and comedians, from the team behind The Play That Goes Wrong. Classrooms usually work better if there’s laughter. We teachers are inclined to get so earnestly involved in “delivering” the curriculum […]
Italia Conti
Italia Conti was an actor and teacher. In 1911 she founded the training school which bears her name. It has trained Naomi Campbell, Pixie Lott. Russell Brand, Noel Coward, Peter Duncan, Jack Hawkins, Lesley Manville and Layton Williams among thousands of others across twelve decades. One of the fifteen members of the Federation of Drama […]
News
Meet John Hopley, the editor of Ink Pellet. He is a bit of a traditionalist (Jane Austen, the Brontes, Shakespeare, Dickens…) who is developing a love of modern teen fiction.
These are just some of our occasional musings on life in the arts world in Stage Whispers, the every day tale of everyday magazine folk…
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Derrick Gask, from Stafford Gatehouse Theatre, shares five of his favourite Shakespearean inventions for your delectation...
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Shakespeare Schools Festival is the largest youth drama festival in the UK, giving primary, secondary and special schools the chance to perform abridged Shakespeare plays in professional theatres across the UK every autumn. This year, SSF are working with 1,000 schools who will perform in one of 120 theatres across the UK. the festival is backed […]
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The National Theatre’s learning Programme manager Melanie Whitehead told LESLEY FINLAY about what audiences can expect from the War Horse tour...
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The National Youth Theatre's artistic director and CEO PAUL ROSEBY describes the work of this new company...
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The buzz word in the stem world is all about code: educators and industry leaders are realising research and development is being inhibited because students are not being taught coding. Many students are not even taught how to use PowerPoint, Publisher or Word to their full capacity. Coding is the language of computers and will […]
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A group of enterprising English teachers fed up with spending enormous amounts of time researching approaches to work have set up their own resources website called www.teachliterature.co.uk. Nicky Madigan told Ink Pellet why they had set up the site: ‘We found that we were spending enormous amounts of time researching authors and contextual information, devising […]
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You cannot beat a bit of of Bertolt Brecht. Chichester Festival Theatre’s acclaimed production of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui opens at the Duchess Theatre in London on September 25 and features Henry Goodman reprising his award-winning performance in the title role. The play is set in Chicago during the Great Depression – the […]
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We all have a story to tell or a poem to sing. The problem is to find the voice to sing it,’ says Michael Morpurgo, chair judge of the Wicked Young Writers’ award. The competition, in its fourth year, is now open for entries. It was established to link the important messages of Wicked with […]
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On the 9 September, international entertainment marketing agency AKA launched a new website for teachers called Hot Tickets For Schools to coincide with the start of a new academic year. This intuitive website is a fantastic new tool for education professionals which simplifies school trip research and bookings for the UK’s top theatre, shows, events […]