sat 14/12/2024

interviews

theartsdesk Q&A: Shirley Collins - 'There was no way I could ever sing to be popular'

When Shirley Collins appears at The Roundhouse next week, it will be 50 years since she last played there. On 30 May 1969, she and her sister Dolly were on a bill promoting their then label Harvest Records. When she plays there on 31 January, she is...

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Director Alexandria Bombach: 'I feel like a completely different person'

Nadia Murad caught the world’s attention when she spoke at the United Nations Security Council. She spoke of living under ISIS, daily assaults, escaping, and the current plight of the Yazidi people, in refugee camps and still under ISIS control. It...

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Postcards from the 48% review - wistful memorial to forgotten values

Writer and director David Nicholas Wilkinson felt moved to make his reflective, rather melancholy documentary on the 48% who voted to remain in the EU, he says, because nobody else was making one. When it came to funding the project, not a single...

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Fatherland, Lyric Hammersmith review - loud and proud, shame about the content

Masculinity, whether toxic or in crisis (but never ever problem-free), is a hardy perennial subject for British new writing, and this new piece from playwright Simon Stephens, Frantic Assembly director Scott Graham and Underworld musician Karl Hyde...

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David Shrigley talk, Brighton Festival review - comedic stroll through a career in art

As the Brighton Festival 2018 draws towards its closing weekend, its Guest Director, the artist David Shrigley, has committed to an illustrated talk about his work that “will contain numerous rambling anecdotes but not be in the slightest bit boring...

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Picks of Brighton Festival 2018 by writer-director Neil Bartlett

Director, playwright and novelist Neil Bartlett has been making theatre and causing trouble since the 1980s. He made his name with a series of controversial stark naked performances staged in clubs and warehouses, then went on to...

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John Tusa: 'the arts must make a noise' - interview

In our era of 24/7 news, downloadable from anywhere in the world at the touch of an app, it's hard to remember that not so very long ago the agenda was set by the BBC - the Home Service as Radio 4 was then called, and BBC TV, just the one channel,...

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DVD: Dispossession - The Great Social Housing Swindle

In the week that the police announced the final Grenfell Tower fire death toll, this is a timely release. Paul Sng’s 82-minute documentary, narrated by the actress Maxine Peake, is a serious investigation into the state of social housing in the UK,...

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DVD: Death of a Gentleman

Death of a Gentleman begins as a hymn to Test cricket, and becomes an elegy, as its makers cross the globe in a deceptively haphazard-looking pursuit of the men who run the game. Jarrod Kimber and Sam Collins are two journalists in search of a story...

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Interview: 10 Questions for Tori Amos

The past few years have seen the anniversary reissue, or concert tour in which classic albums are performed in their entirety, become something of a standard. Not so for Tori Amos, who this year is celebrating two decades since the US release of her...

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Arena: Amy Winehouse - The Day She Came to Dingle, BBC Four

The first anniversary of Amy Winehouse’s death seems like both a temptation and an opportunity for a sensationalist, hyperbolic tribute. Refreshingly, this Arena film, which told the story of the night that a superstar in the making performed to an...

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theartsdesk Q&A: Musician Cosmo Jarvis

Cosmo Jarvis (b 1989) was born in New Jersey but grew up in Devon. He has produced two albums, Humasyouhitch/Sonofabitch (2009) and Is The World Strange or Am I Strange? (2011), that combine incisive lyricism, goofy humour, rap, rock, terrace-chant...

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