Features
theartsdesk Q&A: Singer Sonja KristinaSaturday, 26 April 2014
The March release of North Star, Curved Air's first studio album for 38 years, was no small triumph for vocalist Sonja Kristina and drummer Florian Pilkington-Miksa. Surging yet deliquescent, it echoes here and there the psychedelic pomp of the... Read more... |
Love for Sale - Rupert Everett's guide to the oldest professionFriday, 25 April 2014
Anybody who has read Rupert Everett's book Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins will be well aware of his fascination with sex and prostitution, so it's no surprise to find him very much in his element as writer and presenter of the two-part Channel 4... Read more... |
A Will of My OwnWednesday, 23 April 2014
I hardly knew anything about Shakespeare as a schoolboy and it was only when attending my first acting classes, when we sallow and uncouth students were required to do a speech each week to be tested on, that I had my first awakenings. At the very... Read more... |
10 Questions for Artist Yinka Shonibare MBETuesday, 22 April 2014
Yinka Shonibare MBE makes work from a less entrenched position than his many decorations suggest. This Member of the British Empire (he adopted the initials as part of his name after receiving the honour in 2005) is naturally also a Royal... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Basel: More than MinimalismSunday, 20 April 2014
In a near-perfect, outward-looking Swiss city sharing borders with France and Germany, on a series of cloudless April days that felt more like balmy June than capricious April, anything seemed possible. The doors of perception which had slammed, I... Read more... |
A 21st-century Three SistersThursday, 17 April 2014
About a week after my modern adaptation of The Seagull closed in 2012 at Southwark Playhouse the director Russell Bolam texted me, "Same again?" So it’s now in 2014 that at (the new) Southwark Playhouse we’ve got our modern take on Chekhov’s Three... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Sydney: Strictly Ballroom's backWednesday, 16 April 2014
"Everyone is beautiful when they dance,” oozes the ballroom MC in the midst of a competition that reveals just how un-beautiful terpsichorean people can be when seriously challenged by other dancers, or by anyone radical enough to try to dance to a... Read more... |
Celluloid Man: Preserving the heritage of Indian cinemaTuesday, 15 April 2014
This April is proving the kindest month for cinephiles. Hot on the heels of Mark Cousins’ engrossing A Story of Children and Film comes another documentary about cinema of captivating, encyclopaedic interest, Shivendra Singh Dungarpur’s Celluloid... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Final Frontier: Trekkie weekend in BlackpoolTuesday, 15 April 2014
“I don’t do the costumes,” says an intense bloke called Adrian. “That’s for people without a life. I’ve no interest in that.” Further down the corridor, or the Upper Deck as they’re calling it for one weekend only, there’s Kevin, who presumably has... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Panama: Hubris, suffering and cinemaMonday, 14 April 2014
The contradictions and iniquities of Panama City were very much in evidence last week. The city opened Central America’s first subway system, which many claim is a $2billion folie de grandeur for outgoing president Ricardo Martinelli, rather than a... Read more... |
What Graeae did nextSunday, 13 April 2014
As an 11-year-old, I used to love writing my address as My Bedroom, 50 Ridsdale Rd, Sherwood Rise, Nottingham, England, Great Britain, The World, The Universe. We belong to ourselves, but our sense of belonging is also about people and places... Read more... |
Listed: Top 10 Children's Theatre ShowsSaturday, 12 April 2014
If you are seeking to keep small children entertained this Easter, there's no need to sit around gorging on chocolate with so many egg-citing cultural experiences on offer throughout the UK. This week's edition of Listed suggests a range of choices... Read more... |
