On 23 February 1942 at half past four in the afternoon in a secluded Brazilian hilltown called Petrópolis about an hour from Rio, a maid and her husband pushed at the bedroom door of a modest rented house. Despite the late hour, the tenants had not yet stirred. The door swung open to reveal, lying on the bed, a young woman in a cotton dress rolled over on her side, an older supine man wearing a jaunty moustache and a punctilious tie. The woman’s body was still warm.

It was a good night for British thespians at the 2016 Golden Globes. The stars of The Night Manager – Tom Hiddleston, Hugh Laurie and Olivia Colman – all visited the podium to collect awards.

Just 22 years old, South Africa’s national “Day of Reconciliation” on 16 December has shuffled into its perplexed young adulthood. Although commemorative events abound, few people seem to know how to strike the right note for this (just) pre-Christmas holiday. It symbolically occupies a date dear both to Afrikaners - victory over the Zulu kingdom at the Battle of Blood River in 1838 - and to their erstwhile victims.

On January 25 1996, after Rent's final dress rehearsal at the off-off-Broadway New York Theater Workshop, its composer Jonathan Larson went home to his scuzzy loft round the corner, switched on the electric kettle and, before the water had boiled, keeled over with an aortic aneurism. Later that night his roommate found his body on the floor of the kitchen.

“I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, Were it not that I have bad dreams…” 2016, with all its protectionist voting, has been the year I’ve taken my production of Hamlet – with just six actors, a sofa and a drum-kit – around Europe. Having visited everything from a thunderstruck Kronborg Castle in Elsinore to an ancient Spanish bullring beset with fireworks, we will land at the Trafalgar Studios at the beginning of December with the roar and encouragement of our continental neighbours ringing in our ears.

It’s a strange time to be alive. Has it always felt like this? When else was there a time when so much felt to be at stake, and the ground moved beneath our feet with the continuous emergence of technologies that affect our everyday lives and our very being, where we know little of our interior selves and yet publish so much about our lives to strangers? We are the chosen generation, we are the people who will be witness to the most radical change in society the world has ever seen! We are fated and also incredibly special! I am special, I must be!

There is nothing more depressing than seeing people you like and admire lining up on opposing sides. Emma Rice’s parting from the Globe has resulted in some unedifying comment, often based more on prejudice than fact. I see value in the arguments of both “sides” but am dismayed at the tone of the debate. Depending on the writer’s point of view, one is likely to be misleadingly characterised as either a joyless old fogey stuck in the past or a mindless iconoclast intent only on vulgar entertainment.

Howard Davies, the theatre director who has died at the too-early age of 71, may not have achieved the renown of many of his colleagues. He didn’t direct blockbuster musicals, rarely ventured into TV and film, and didn’t possess the signature style that gets you noticed – and wins awards – early on.

We've got a lot to celebrate in 2016: 50 years since the Roundhouse became an arts centre and 10 years of transforming young lives through creativity. In celebration of this momentous year we embarked on a journey of discovery to uncover the stories from train-enthusiast accounts of our humble beginnings to real-life high-wire love stories, from week-long raves in the 1990s to politically-charged spoken word in the 2000s. So many incredible stories have emerged from the walls of this beautiful building.

On 10 October 2016, World Mental Health Day, the team of Belarus Free Theatre came back together to start the final stages of production for Tomorrow I Was Always a Lion, a new theatre show based on Arnhild Lauveng’s autobiographical book. Arnhild Lauveng is a Norwegian writer and practicing psychologist. In the book she tells the story of her own recovery from the incurable condition of schizophrenia.