Interviews Archives - Page 10 of 10

Hard hitting urban drama No Milk for the Foxes makes a welcome return online

30Jun

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

Interviews

Hard hitting urban drama No Milk for the Foxes makes a welcome return online

Try as it might theatre all too often gets working class culture badly wrong unless it is created by people who have lived experience of daily struggle and social disadvantage. That’s exactly why the online revival of Beats & Elements’ 2015 production of No Milk for the Foxes is very welcome. Using spoken word, beatboxing and live looping Beats & Elements founders Conrad Murray and Paul Cree explored David Cameron's England from the perspective of their own class. It’s the tale of security guards Marx, a white working-class male from Croydon, and Spaxx, an Anglo-Indian from Mitcham, counting down the hours on a zero hours nightshift. So did Conrad base these two funny and angry men on anyone he knew, or they are composites? “It is when it comes to Spaxx, and it is a...

11Jun

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

Interviews

Lockdown Interview – Willy Russell

On 11th May as part of Bloomsbury Academic and Stage-ed, I had the pleasure of being involved in a Q&A session with writer, composer, and lyricist Willy Russell, best known for Blood Brothers, Educating Rita, and Our Day Out, to name but a few of his celebrated works. I have a confession to make: on a personal level, Russell had a huge influence on me both as a writer and actor. Our Day Out was the first musical I was cast in and Blood Brothers was the first musical I watched. So, to be part of this was something really special for me. Russell spoke openly and honestly as to how Blood Brothers came about and how he wrote and composed the songs for the show, and in a session that was scheduled to last one hour, ever the gentleman, he gave us ninety minutes. With the soundtrack for...

Elizabeth Newman finds new ways of making work

2Jun

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

Interviews

Elizabeth Newman finds new ways of making work

In the second part of an interview with Pitlochry Festival Theatre Artistic Director Elizabeth Newman our Features Editor Paul Clarke hears about the innovative work her team are doing to stay connected to their audience and community. Like most artistic directors Elizabeth Newman was focused on staging her next season at Pitlochry Festival Theatre and then COVID-19 struck forcing her to abandon most of that work as the theatre closed its doors. That meant Newman and her team at the Perthshire venue had to quickly pivot away from the traditional way of making theatre into a very different way of connecting with their audience at the self-styled ‘theatre in the woods’. “As we entered lockdown we launched some really key initiatives,” recalls Elizabeth. “The first was PFT ...

Elizabeth Newman is keeping theatre alive in the hills

31May

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

Interviews

Elizabeth Newman is keeping theatre alive in the hills

In the first of a two-part interview with Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s Elizabeth Newman our Features Editor Paul Clarke asks her about the challenges of being an artistic director in the midst of a worldwide pandemic. After eight successful years as Bolton Octagon’s Artistic Director, Elizabeth Newman moved across the border to lead the team at Pitlochry Festival Theatre, but just as she was preparing to launch a new season of productions COVID-19 struck. Elizabeth and her team at the Perthshire venue are in lockdown after scrapping that season of work. They’ve been using that time to create online work in the maelstrom of a totally unprecedented challenge for the theatre world that managed to keep the lights on even as the Luftwaffe were dropping bombs on London. There's not ...

4May

By Paul DownhamNo Comments

Interviews

Lockdown Interviews – Peter Egan

Peter Egan has been appearing on stage and screen for over 50 years. He is probably most well-known for his roles as Paul in the television sitcom Ever Decreasing Circles with Richard Briers and as Hugh “Shrimpie” MacClare, Marquess of Flintshire in Downton Abbey. Despite being known for his numerous roles in TV and film he is an award winning stage actor and has acted with both the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and The National. I started by asking what inspired him to become an actor. “I left school at 15 with no qualifications. My prospects were pretty dismal. I did a series of jobs all of which I hated. “When I was 16, I stumbled into acting by joining an amateur group in Ladbroke Grove, West London. “I became fascinated by the process of acting by watching this group ...