ColumnsIn performance terms, the centrepiece of this year’s Norfolk and Norwich Festival is the presentation of all five episodes of Nature Theater of Oklahoma’s epic Life and Times project but the cross-cultural festival also marks the final date for…
Our theatre foyers need a ‘not-empty’ space award
In the usual way of things a theatre – as a building, as a public space – usually only comes fully to life once, perhaps twice, a day. Speaking at the Barbican in a talk…
Sustaining the arts and our environment
I like to travel light. I’m happiest when I can cram everything into one bag and sling it on my shoulder. I’ve never had to squeeze a whole theatre production into one suitcase though, but…
From Leeds to Brighton
Even while winter refuses to let loose its white, spiny grip on the country, plans are well underway for the coming wave of spring and summer theatre festivals and last week I got a taste…
Little theatres, big visions
One of the consequences of the recent closure of The Brewhouse in Taunton, in addition to the loss of jobs is and the more long-lasting impact it is likely to have on the cultural life…
Sad day as Brewhouse theatre calls time
A candlelit vigil was held on Friday 22 to mark the passing of the Brewhouse Theatre and Arts Centre in Taunton following its closure as a result of cuts to arts funding over recent years….
Can Sansom repeat his Northampton success in Scotland?
As the cast took their bows at the end of the Royal & Derngate’s production of Willy Russell’s One for the Road last week, the show’s director Laurie Sansom was called up to the stage…
Devon invests in the cream of the theatre crop
The question of whether ‘regional theatre’ is in any way a useful term was being debated once again over on Lyn Gardner’s Guardian theatre blog recently. One of the comments made under the post, in…
2013′s wealth of regional theatre riches
As the new year dawns, blinking and Bambi-legged, it seems apt to look, not back, but forwards, at some of the work that’s due to be staged around the UK in 2013. Personally I’m particularly…
Regional theatre at our fingertips
There are a times when a teleportation device would be handy. While acknowledging that I get to see more theatre than most, both in London and around the country, prior commitments, financial limitations and the…
Time for councils to realise true value of the arts
There’s a worrying undercurrent to the proposed funding cuts in Newcastle, the corrosive idea that the arts are superfluous, so much garnish, something for the few rather than the many. What’s missing is any sense…
Eastern promise but too few opportunities
The RSC’s production of The Orphan of Zhao opened last week at the Swan in Stratford upon Avon in the midst of, by now much discussed, controversy over the casting, or lack of British East…
Micro-festivals – a growing force in theatre
Small scale, curated festivals are the antithesis to Edinburgh
Reviewers – there’s a world outside London
Despite the sometimes glorious polyphony of the internet, there are times when conversations about the theatre can feel stubbornly London-centric – with the occasional token wave made at a few high profile productions outside the…
Regional, yes but not ‘provincial’
The word ‘regional’ comes with baggage – but at its best regional theatre is rooted in the community in ways London theatre can’t be
Jobs & Auditions
