The Edinburgh Fringe is back with a blast this summer. But the annual explosion of creativity has a new element. Gone are gloomy stage sets with heavy red curtains and an antique writing desk. At this first full-scale Fringe since Covid-19, digital screens make up the scenery and petri dishes the props. From experimental theatre …
The writer, teacher and disability rights campaigner Lois Keith, who has died aged 73, used her words and first-hand experience as a wheelchair user to challenge the barriers faced by disabled women. Lois began to write about attitudes towards disability in the 1990s, part of a growing band of disabled women, including Jane (now Lady) …
What difference does the internet make? Critics blame it for a range of ills, from social collapse and child abuse to obesity. So shouldn’t we greet with some caution and even sadness the recent announcement that Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite broadband is to reach tiny Pitcairn Island in the Pacific Ocean, home to the handful …
An Atlantic island has become a Hollywood star. Unassuming Achill, off County Mayo, Ireland, is the backdrop for Martin McDonagh’s Oscar-tipped The Banshees of Inisherin, starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson. Surrounded by sweeps of golden beach broken by steel grey sea cliffs, among the highest in Europe, Achill makes an achingly beautiful, and utterly …
It’s a rocky rural idyll on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. The craggy sea cliffs – Europe’s highest – are swathed in the orange setting sun. Animals – sheep, cows, donkeys – gambol rather than walk on the ancient bog and jump over the babbling brooks. The sand is golden, the ocean as green …
What’s so serious about a red nose? How should we analyse the ‘specific socio-historical relations’ and ‘aesthetic trends particular to geographic context’ of the circus? How can we ‘codify’ equestrian performance in the ring? With the publication of The Cambridge Companion to the Circus, this artform has tumbled out of the Big Top and into the …
Oh for the open road! Who doesn’t want to abandon the suffocating suburbs – waking to an alarm at the same time every single morning, hearing brown envelopes pushed through the front door, filling the dishwasher, paying that damned mortgage – and head out for endless sunsets falling over infinitely empty land? Nomadland, starring Frances …
The Victoria and Albert Museum has announced swingeing cuts to its curatorial team and a complete overhaul of its collections. No longer are they going to be arranged by subject matter, but chronologically. Among those earmarked to be reordered into centuries, rather than categories, is its Theatre and Performance department. Presumably Shakespeare’s First Folio will be …
Until the American election, few outside the island of Ireland could point to Mayo on the map. Far from the maddening film crowd of West Cork, where director David Puttnam’s and actor Jeremy Irons’s crew hang out, Mayo isn’t favoured by the fashionable. […]
The circus company founded by Churchill Fellow Dea Birkett (CF 1993), Circus250, has won a prestigious Fantastic for Families Award. This is in recognition of Circus250’s show for families, StrongWomen Science, which received the award in the Best Family Event category in September. “Winning the Fantastic for Families Best Event Award is a wonderful endorsement …