Fierce Festival is a "youthful and joy-filled festival of international theatre, performance and experiences" which takes place in and around Birmingham every two years.
 
Midlands editor Steve Orme spoke to Fierce's artistic director Clayton Lee and Adam Kinner whose one-to-one show Manual will be presented daily in the Library of Birmingham.
 
Fierce Festival will run from Tuesday 15 until Saturday 19 October.
 
(Photo: Clayton Lee and Adam Kinner, credit Steve Orme)

In 2009, TV writers Trevor Suthers and John Chambers put together a night of short, brand new plays written by established TV writers which took its name from its original venue, the Joshua Brooks pub on Princess Street in Manchester.

Fifteen years on, and now at fringe venue 53two, JB Shorts is an established biannual event on the Manchester theatre calendar with its two-week runs of six 15-minute plays.

With the 25th JB Shorts about to open, BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Trevor together with actor James Quinn, who wrote for the very first JB and has written, directed and performed in many since, about what JB is all about and what this next run will offer, as well as how the whole thing began.

JB Shorts 25 runs at 53two, Arch 19, Watson Street, Manchester from Wednesday 9 to Saturday 19 October 2024.

Actor, writer, choreographer and film-maker Lanre Malaolu's play Samskara had a sell-out run at London's Yard Theatre in 2022 and was subsequently published by Nick Hern Books.

Now, I See is the second play of what has become a trilogy which, like the first part, examines family relationships through a modern black, British lens.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Lanre about the play, his writing process, how his work comes from his own experiences and observations and his introduction to creating theatre through Anna Scher drama classes and a transformational experience through Jonzi D's Breakin' Convention at Sadler's Wells.

Now, I See runs at Theatre Royal, Stratford East in London from 10 May to 1 June 2024.

Braham Murray OBE arrived in Manchester in the 1960s as the youngest artistic director in the country, of the travelling Century Theatre, remaining in the city to co-found the 69 Theatre Company which went on to become the Royal Exchange Theatre, still one of the UK's leading regional theatres.

Murray died in 2018 at the age of 75, but BTG editor David Chadderton spoke to him in 2011 when he had just announced that he would leave the theatre he co-founded 35 years earlier. He spoke about working with Century Theatre's travelling auditorium, forming the 69 Theatre Company at the University Theatre (now Contact) and the process of designing the unique Royal Exchange Theatre module, as well as the rebuilding of the theatre after the 1996 IRA bomb.

This interview was originally recorded for TheatreVoice in 2011, but we are reissuing it as a tribute to a man who was very influential in helping to turn Manchester into a major theatrical centre.

For more information about the Royal Exchange Theatre, see www.royalexchange.co.uk.

(Photo of Braham Murray, credit: Mia Rose)

The 2019 Manchester International Festival will take place at various venues around the city in July. An edited version of the main presentation at the MIF launch on 7 March can be heard in a previous British Theatre Guide podcast episode, but we also spoke directly to some of the artists involved.

We asked MIF Artistic Director John McGrath for his highlights of the theatre programme and how Manchester has changed since he was head of the city's Contact Theatre.

We also spoke to Leo Warner of 59 Productions about his collaboration with choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, writer Lolita Chakrabarti and Rambert Dance on an adaptation of Italo Calvino's novel Invisible Cities.

Finally, we asked director Phelim McDermott about Tao of Glass, his collaboration with composer Philip Glass on a new stage performance featuring ten brand new pieces of music composed by Glass.

Invisible Cities will be performed at Mayfield beside Piccadilly Station in Manchester from 4 to 14 July. Tao of Glass will be at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester from 11 to 20 July.

The Manchester International Festival 2019 will take place at various venues from 4 to 21 July.

Photos:

• John McGrath, MIF Artistic Director and Chief Executive introduces the MIF19 programme. Image credit Tarnish Vision.
• Leo Warner, Lolita Chakrabarti, Benoit Swan Pouffer—Invisible Cities. Image credit Joel Chester Fildes.
• Philip Glass and Phelim McDermott. Image credit Rod Morata.

Derby Theatre is preparing for a new adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, in an adaptation by Neil Duffield, which will be the theatre's first ever production to full integrate BSL signing into the production.

BTG's Midlands Editor Steve Orme speaks to director Sarah Brigham about the production, followed by Ivan Stott, who wrote the songs and will play Baloo, and Caroline Parker MBE, who will play Tabaqui and be signing for other characters in the play.

The Jungle Book runs from Friday 5 to Saturday 20 April 2019.

Photo: Caroline Parker (Tabaqui), Ivan Stott (Baloo and composer) and Sarah Brigham (director).

Highlights of the launch event for the Manchester International Festival 2019, held in Manchester on 7 March 2019.

Introduced by MIF artistic director John McGrath, this episode also features announcements from festival participants including Phelim McDermott of Improbable Theatre, Kwame Kwei-Armah of Young Vic Theatre, actors Maxine Peake and Juliet Stevenson, Leo Warner of 59 Productions, writer Lolita Chakrabarti, choreographer Claire Cunningham, Mary Anne Hobbs of BBC 6 Music and grime artist Skepta.

Other artists appearing at the festival include Philip Glass, Yoko Ono, Laurie Anderson and David Lynch.

Image from MIF launch:
Michael Symmons Roberts, Emily Howard, John McGrath, Maxine Peake, Grainne Flynn, Wesley Thistlewaite, Adam Ali, Kirsty Housley, Claire Cunningham, Leo Warner, Kwame Kwei-Armah, Isaiah Hull, Young identity poet, Reggie Gray, Animals of Manchester child-curators, Sibylle Peters, Karl Hyde, Lois Keidan, Adam Thirlwell, Danny Collins, Adania Shibli, Juliet Stevenson, Lolita Chakrabarti, Benoit Swan Pouffer, Christine Cort, Mark Ball

From Shore to Shore is a play written by British playwright Mary Cooper in collaboration with M W Sun based on real migration stories from Chinese communities throughout the UK that will tour nationally to Chinese restaurants and Chinese community centres rather than theatres.

For this episode, BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to the play's director, David Tse, and veteran British Chinese actor Ozzie Yue, who leads the cast, about the play, the process of collecting stories, their own family connections with Chinese migrant stories and also how opportunities have changed for British Chinese actors over the last few decades.

From Shore to Shore, directed by David K S Tse for On the Wire and starring Ozzie Yue, will open at the Yang Sing Restaurant in Manchester from 9 to 16 March and will then tour until 6 April, with performances in Liverpool, Lancaster, Morecambe, Newcastle upon Tyne and Birmingham.

The latest production from Manchester-based new writing theatre company Box of Tricks is SparkPlug, written and performed by David Judge based on his own experiences being brought up as a mixed race child by a white stepfather in 1980s Manchester.

The production is directed by Box of Tricks Joint Artistic Director and co-founder Hannah Tyrrell-Pinder and begins its 9-week tour at HOME in Manchester, where BTG editor David Chadderton spoke to David and Hannah in a dressing room during a break from technical rehearsals.

SparkPlug runs at HOME in Manchester from 13 to 23 February 2019 before touring to Unity Theatre in Liverpool, Theatre Severn in Shrewsbury, Cheltenham Everyman Studio, Harrogate Theatre Studio, Live Theatre in Newcastle, York Theatre Royal, Hull Truck Theatre, Theatr Clwyd in Mold, Crewe Lyceum Studio, Spring Arts Centre in Havant, The Lighthouse in Poole, Marlowe Studio in Canterbury, Old Town Hall in Hemel Hempstead, The North Wall Arts Centre in Oxford, Square Chapel in Halifax, The Met in Bury and Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, before finishing at Birmingham Rep from 10 to 13 April.

Conrad Nelson's production of Shakespeare's comedy Much Ado About Nothing for Northern Broadsides Theatre Company had a cast change on the first day of rehearsals when Reece Dinsdale had to drop out of the key role of Benedick due to a family illness and Robin Simpson took over the role.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Robin during the second week of rehearsals about the additional pressure that may have put on him and also about the production as a whole, playing Shakespeare, performing comedy and even a bit of panto.

The Northern Broadsides production of Much Ado About Nothing runs at the New Vic Theatre in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire from 8 February to 2 March 2019, before embarking on a national tour until the end of May to The Dukes Lancaster, Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, Salisbury Playhouse, Derby Theatre, Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds, Lawrence Batley Theatre in Huddersfield, Viaduct Theatre in Halifax, The Lowry in Salford, York Theatre Royal and Harrogate Theatre.

A new consortium has been formed to produce new theatre for young audiences, including Pilot Theatre, Derby Theatre, Belgrade Theatre Coventry, Mercury Theatre Colchester and York Theatre Royal.

The first production to come out of this collaboration will be a new adaptation of former Children's Laureate Malorie Blackman's hard-hitting YA novel Noughts and Crosses, which raised issues or racism and forbidden love in an alternative version of our own world.

For this episode, director Esther Richardson of Pilot Theatre spoke to BTG Midlands Editor Steve Orme on the process of adapting this popular novel to the stage, and then actors Billy Harris and Heather Agyepong, who play the two leading roles, discussed their parts in the play.

The Honest Actors' Podcast was founded by Belfast-born actor Jonathan Harden in 2015 and is currently launching its third and final series, featuring long, frank discussions with experienced actors about the joys and torments of their chosen career.

As he was in the midst of launching new episodes in the days leading up to Christmas 2018, BTG Editor David Chadderton turned the tables on Jonathan, asking him about his life and career as an actor, as well as what he has learned from the last three years of interviews with other actors.

The Honest Actors' Podcast is available for free on Apple Podcasts, Acast, Stitcher, Spotify and other podcast directories and aggregators.

(Photo: Jonathan Harden in Children of the Sun at the National Theatre, directed by Howard Davies. Image: Richard Hubert Smyth)

Lichfield Garrick is presenting an alternative show as well as its panto this Christmas as New Old Friends will be staging the latest in its "Crimes of..." series: Crimes of the Christmas Pudding.

BTG Midlands editor Steve Orme speaks to director Nel Crouch and Jill Myers who plays Belgian detective Artemis Arinae.

Crimes of the Christmas Pudding runs at Lichfield Garrick from Wednesday 5 December 2018 until Saturday 5 January 2019.

Actor Greg Hicks has played many leading roles at the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company over the last forty years, as well as starring on the West End and appearing on screen in films including The Mercy and Snow White and the Huntsman.

He is about to perform a one-man show, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, based on a short story by Dostoyevsky, at the new Marylebone Theatre in London.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to him a few days before it opened about the play and how much more of himself he will be presenting to an audience than in other roles he has played.

He also spoke about some of his past roles, including performing naked in Romans in Britain for a role that nearly ended him up in criminal court immediately followed by appearing in full costume and mask for Peter Hall's famous Oresteia (he credits Hall as his mentor at the National in the 1970s).

The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, adapted and directed by Laurence Boswell, is at Marylebone Theatre in London from 21 March to 20 April 2024.

(Rehearsal image of Greg Hicks in The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, credit Richard James Taylor)

2018 marks the second time Evolution Productions has produced Cinderella at the Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury after the venue re-opened in 2011.

Simon Sladen speaks to the theatre's resident Dame Ben Roddy and Marlowe regulars Lloyd Hollett and Phil Gallagher as they star in their fourth panto together.

Simon, Ben, Lloyd and Phil discuss this year's show, their approach to playing the Ugly Sisters and Buttons, the trio's affinity with the Marlowe as well as some top tips for those starting out in the industry.

Derby Theatre's Christmas show for 2018 is Mike Kenny's adaptation of Hansel and Gretel from the tales collected by the Brothers Grimm.

BTG Midlands Editor Steve Orme talks about the show to Derby Theatre Artistic Director Sarah Brigham, who is directing the production, and actors Craig Anderson and Yana Penrose, who play the title roles of Hansel and Gretel.

Hansel and Gretel runs at Derby Theatre from Friday 30 November 2018 to Saturday 5 January 2019.

BTG panto editor Simon Sladen speaks to pantomime company Imagine Theatre's Managing Director Steve Boden and Robert Marsden, director of the Victoria Theatre, Halifax's pantomime and associate professor at Staffordshire University.

2018 will see Imagine Theatre present 14 pantomimes in venues across the United Kingdom having grown from 8 productions in 2009.

In this episode, Steve and Robert discuss Imagine Theatre's style of pantomime, the company and genre's recent evolution and the state of the industry today. Steve and Robert also reveal where in Pantoland they'd like to travel to if they had their very own magic wand.

The first in-house production in HOME Manchester's autumn and winter season for 2018 is a new production of French writer Jean Genet's 1947 play The Maids, in an English version by Martin Crimp.

The play will be directed in-the-round at HOME by Lily Sykes, an English-born director who has lived and worked in Germany for the last ten years and has recently become a German citizen.

In a break during rehearsals, BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Lily about the play, existentialism, polarisation of society, the differences between directing for British and German theatres and a great deal more.

The Maids will run at HOME Manchester from 16 November to 1 December 2018. For more information, see homemcr.org.

(Photo of Lily Sykes by Magnus Reed)

Red Ladder, which bills itself as "Britain's leading radical theatre company", this year celebrates its fiftieth anniversary, tracing its roots back to the left-wing agitprop theatre of the 1960s.

To celebrate, instead of its usual fare of new political writing, it has turned to Brecht's Mother Courage and her Children, which artistic director Rod Dixon has staged as a promenade production in a warehouse in Leeds featuring Pauline McLynn (Mrs Doyle in classic sitcom Father Ted) in the title role.

BTG editor David Chadderton spoke to Rod when the production had been running for nearly a week about the production, the company's other work and philosophy and fifty years of creating political theatre.

Mother Courage and her Children by Bertolt Brecht, adapted by Lee Hall, opened at the Albion Electric Warehouse in Leeds on 28 September 2018 and runs until 20 October.

(Production photo of Pauline McLynn as Mother Courage by Anthony Robling)

Mark Smith talks to Conrad Nelson and Deborah McAndrew about their brand new version of Dario Fo's classic They Don't Pay? We Won't Pay! (also known as Can't Pay? Won't Pay!).

The show is a co-production between York Theatre Royal and Halifax-based company Northern Broadsides, where Conrad Nelson is the Artistic Director. They discuss the company's past and future, the process of adapting and translating theatrical language "from Milan to Middlesborough", and the careful precision required when staging farce - or any play.

"This is so much about being a theatre animal. This play was made by a theatre animal, and we're theatre animals, we're playhouse creatures."

They Don't Pay? We Won't Pay! will run at York Theatre Royal from 5 to 13 October 2018 before embarking on a national tour from 16 October to 2 December 2018.

(Photo of Conrad Nelson and Deborah McAndrew in rehearsal, credit: Nobby Clark)

The latest production from acclaimed theatre company RashDash, Future Bodies, has been produced in collaboration with Unlimited Theatre and HOME Manchester as a trailblazer event for the 2018 Manchester Science Festival.

What does it mean to have and to be a body? As we increasingly fuse our biological brains with technology, at what point do we stop being human? Does it even matter?

During rehearsals at HOME, BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to RashDash co-founder Helen Goalen, who is co-directing the production, about the show, how it was created and the ideas behind it.

Future Bodies will be at HOME Manchester from 28 September to 13 October 2018 before touring to Northern Stage in Newcastle from 16 to 18 October and the Lawrence Batley Theatre in Huddersfield on 19 October.

(Image: Helen Goalen (R) in rehearsals)

Ian Rankin's Edinburgh detective Inspector Rebus, the star of many of his novels and short stories, is about to make his first ever stage appearance in a brand new story from Rankin with playwright Rona Munro.

BTG Midlands Editor Steve Orme spoke about the production to Ian by phone from his home in Edinburgh, then in person to actors Charles Lawson (Jim McDonald in Coronation Street) and John Stahl (Rickard Karstark in Game of Thrones), who play, respectively, John Rebus and his nemesis, the Edinburgh gang boss 'Big Ger' Cafferty.

The world première of Rebus: Long Shadows by Ian Rankin and Rona Munro opened at Birmingham Rep on 20 September 2018, where it runs until 6 October before touring to Edinburgh, Malvern, Nottingham, Manchester, Northampton, Aberdeen and Guildford until November.

(Photo of Charles Lawson and John Stahl by Steve Orme)

Where We Began is a new piece of theatre devised by a multicultural cast and instigated by Stand and Be Counted Theatre. This company works extensively with asylum seekers, migrants and others seeking sanctuary.

Here, BTG reviewer Mark Smith speaks to writer/performer Rosie MacPherson, one of the Artistic Directors of Stand and Be Counted, and Tafadzwa Muchenje, one of the devisers and performers of the show. They discuss the company's development as well as Taf's own route to working with SBC. After ten years living and studying in the UK, his residency status was suddenly thrown into uncertainty. Watching SBC's previous work, Tanja, provided inspiration and impetus for him as he challenged the Home Office ruling on his "right to remain", and led to this new collaboration.

Where We Began is devised by Shireen Farkhoy, Zoe Katsilerou, Fernanda Mandagará, Gaël Le Cornec, Rosie MacPherson and Tafadzwa Muchenje, and directed by Hannah Butterfield. It tours across the country until the end of October.

"We want to give the audience space, in the chaos, to connect with the stories."

For its first production of the autumn 2018 season, HOME in Manchester has again teamed up with Lyric Hammersmith for a pairing of two of Shakespeare's plays, Othello and Macbeth, assembled into one production by director Jude Christian to highlight, in particular, the stories of the female characters in both plays.

A week before the production's Manchester opening, Jude spoke to BTG editor David Chadderton at HOME about how the production came about and redressing the gender politics in Shakespeare, as well as some thoughts on panto, which she will also be directing later this year at Lyric Hammersmith.

othellomacbeth runs at HOME Manchester from 14 to 29 September 2018 before transferring to Lyric Hammersmith from 5 October to 3 November.

(photo by Helen Murray)

Danish theatre company fix+foxy premièred Dark Noon at the 2023 Edinburgh Festival Fringe which "explores one of the great American myths—the Wild West" through seven South African actors.

The production will be restaged at Manchester's Aviva Studios this spring. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to co-directors Tue Biering and Nhlanhla Mahlangu about what and whose story the play is telling and about the process of creating it.

Dark Noon will be performed in the South Warehouse of Aviva Studios in Manchester from 6 to 10 March 2024.

The Fun Palace was an idea conceived originally by influential theatre maker Joan Littlewood with architect Cedric Price in the early 1960s.

Their building-based idea was never built, but writer and actor Stella Duffy OBE came up with the idea to resurrect it in a different way for Littlewood's centenary in 2014. This has become a fast-growing annual event co-directed by Stella with Sarah-Jane Rawlings and is about to celebrate its fifth anniversary.

In this episode, David Chadderton talks to Stella about her realisation of the Fun Palace idea for the twenty-first century on a countrywide scale, and she also makes some provocative suggestions about theatre, culture, outreach projects and diversity.

The fifth Fun Palaces event will be on 6 and 7 October 2018. For information on fun palaces near to you or details of how to create a fun palace of your own, see the Fun Palaces web site.

In our first podcast episode on the 2018 Edinburgh Festivals, we speak to two people who are now veteran Fringe producers and performers.

Rick Conte will return to the Fringe this year as Dog in the multi-award-winning Puppet State Theatre production The Man Who Planted Trees. However he is also performing and producing a new adaptation of The Time Machine by H G Wells that combines puppetry with human actors for The Scientific Romance Theatre Company,

The Time Machine will be at the Scottish Storytelling Centre from 2 to 19 August at 2:30PM, and then The Man Who Planted Trees will take over the same slot from 20 to 27 August.

Guy Masterson has been a fixture of the Edinburgh Fringe for 25 years as an actor, director and producer. With his company Theatre Tours International, his annual programmes of productions have ranged from solo shows to international collaborations and shows with star-studded casts, many of which have lived on after Edinburgh with international tours and West End runs.

This year, Guy will bring four productions to Edinburgh: Hamlet—Horatio's Tale and Henry V—Lion of England will be performed on various dates at Assembly Rooms; A Christmas Carol and The Marilyn Conspiracy will be on most days throughout the Fringe at Assembly George Square Studios.

The Theatre Royal in Nottingham is preparing for its annual Classic Thrillers Season featuring four different plays over four weeks: Peter Gordon's Sleighed to Death, A Touch of Danger by Francis Durbridge, a new adaptation of Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel by Louise Page and John Goodrum's adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Nightmare Room.

In this episode, BTG Midlands editor Steve Orme talks to Karen Henson from Tabs Productions about being back at the Theatre Royal after a year at Nottingham Playhouse due to refurbishments, and also to actors David Callister and Susan Earnshaw about being part of this unique rep company.

The Colin McIntyre Classic Thrillers Season 2018 will be at Theatre Royal Nottingham from 31 July to 25 August.

Philip Fisher talks to John Hopkins and Tuppence Middleton about the differences between working on stage and screen and most particularly their upcoming engagement in Vicky Jones's award-winning The One at Soho Theatre.

As it prepares to leave its building in the hands of developers for refurbishment, Bolton's Octagon Theatre takes its audiences on the road, literally, for its seasonal musical Summer Holiday, based on the Cliff Richard film.

The performance begins at the new Bolton Interchange bus station where the audience will meet before travelling by bus with the actors to the theatre, where the rest of the production takes place.

A little over a week before opening, BTG editor David Chadderton spoke to two of the actor musicians, Barbara Hockaday and Greg Last, and Ben Occhipinti, who is co-directing with Octagon Artistic Director Elizabeth Newman.

Summer Holiday will be performed at Bolton Travel Interchange and Octagon Theatre Bolton from Thursday 31 May to Saturday 23 June 2018.

Filament Theatre's latest production is Rufus Longbottom and the Space Rabbit, which was created after the production team collaborated with more than 600 schoolchildren on ideas for characters for the new show.

At the start of the show's UK tour in Derby, BTG's Midlands editor Steve Orme spoke to Filament co-founder Osnat Schmool, who co-created the project and wrote the music and lyrics, and performer and sound artist Lula Mebrahtu, who plays the titular Space Rabbit using innovative music technology.

Rufus Longbottom and the Space Rabbit opened at Derby Theatre on 21 May 2018, after which it tours to Stratford Circus Arts Centre, Stantonbury Theatre, Greenwich Theatre, Norden Farm, South Street Arts Centre and Pegasus Theatre in Oxford, where it ends on 9 June.

BTG's Philip Fisher talks to Amanda Mehtala from Theatre in Paris, a venture designed to open up the Parisian theatre scene to English speakers by providing English surtitles for French productions in major Paris theatres.

The Tiger Lillies is an Olivier Award-winning and Grammy-nominated musical trio with more than thirty years of success around the world as a live band, as recording artists and as part of several theatre productions, including the Olivier Award-winning Shockheaded Peter on the West End.

Their latest collaboration is with visual director Mark Holthusen and writer Peder Bjurman on a story set along the Mexican border, Corrido de la Sangre, which will be performed as part of the ¡Viva! Spanish and Latin American Festival 2018 at HOME Manchester.

In this episode, BTG editor David Chadderton speaks to two thirds of the Tiger Lillies, Martin Jacques and Adrian Stout, about the new show and also about the joys and the problems of being uncategorisable outsiders, what it means to be genuinely 'alternative', the way the look and the sound of the band were carefully conceived and have evolved and some other projects currently in development or on the horizon.

Corrido de la Sangre featuring The Tiger Lillies will be performed at HOME Manchester from 20 April to 5 May 2018 as part of the ¡Viva! Spanish and Latin American Festival. They will perform Poe's Haunted Palace at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall from 28 to 30 August 2018.

Director Jake Murray, who was co-artistic director for Manchester's Royal Exchange Studio space with current Exchange Artistic Director Sarah Frankcom until he left Manchester in 2008, is back in the city with his new Durham-based Elysium Theatre Company.

His latest production is of Stephen Adly Guirgis's Pullitzer Prize-winning play Jesus Hopped The 'A' Train, which has only been produced twice in the UK before.

BTG editor David Chadderton spoke to Jake at HOME Manchester a month before the production opened about the play, the aims of the new company, regional theatre in general and in Manchester in particular and about the issue of new plays that opened in London rarely getting new productions in the regions any more—a problem that Elysium is trying to confront with its programming.

Jake Murray's production of Jesus Hopped The 'A' Train for Elysium Theatre Company premières at The Assembly Rooms Theatre in Durham on 14 May 2018 before running at HOME Manchester from 16 to 19 May.

Legacy is a new play written by Paul Birch for the York Theatre Royal as an intergenerational collaboration: its cast is made up of Youth Theatre members as well as actors aged 65-plus from the local community.

Exploring themes of corruption and the uses—and misuses—of individuals' online identities, the play uses a sci-fi thriller lens to examine some extremely timely questions.

Mark Smith talks to director Kate Veysey and performers Hannah Brown and Shirley Williams about the development of the play, as well as the different attitudes to technology brought into stark contrast by the intergenerational nature of the cast.

"It's not an anti-technology play, but it does start you thinking about how much can be changed of what you've said, and how it can be taken out of context."

"It's a very topical issue but for us it's become very personal."

Following Night of the Living Dead—Remix and Dracula: The Untold Story, imitating the dog is again collaborating with Leeds Playhouse, this time on a new adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein co-created by Pete Brooks, Andrew Quick and Simon Wainwright.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Andrew Quick during rehearsals at Leeds Playhouse about the technical challenges of this two-hander for creators and performers, the state of touring shows around the UK and Europe at the moment and the company's style and creative process.

Frankenstein, featuring design by Hayley Brindle, lighting by Andrew Crofts and original music by James Hamilton, will open at Leeds Playhouse from 15 February 2024, before touring to Oxford Playhouse, Watford Palace Theatre, The Lowry in Salford, Cast in Doncaster, Mercury Theatre in Colchester, Liverpool Playhouse, The Dukes Lancaster and Northern Stage in Newcastle.

(Photo of Andrew Quick, credit Ed Waring)

James Brining has been Artistic Director of the West Yorkshire Playhouse since 2012. Prior to that, he spent sixteen years in Scotland as Artistic Director of TAG Theatre and then Dundee Rep.

He talks here to Mark Smith about his forthcoming production of Sunshine on Leith, a musical based on the songs of The Proclaimers, which he originated with writer Stephen Greenhorn at Dundee Rep in 2007.

In a wide-ranging discussion, James talks about the challenges and pleasures of returning to a play in a new production, about community and "home", about different versions of ensemble, and about the different theatre "ecologies" of Scotland and England. Finally, he talks us through the thinking behind the massive redevelopment project which is set to close the West Yorkshire Playhouse's two main stages from June, and how he hopes the theatre will turn to face Leeds and "open its arms to the city".

"All the great companies of the historical past—Molière, Brecht, Shakespeare—they're based on actors. [...] There's something about the durational nature of those relationships—creative and personal—that takes the work into a different sort of place. [...] There's a brutal honesty there that I think can deepen the work."

(Photo of James Brining in rehearsals for Sunshine on Leith by Anthony Robling)

On 20 February 2018, regional theatre director, artistic director and chief executive John Blackmore died at the age of 77.

He was chief executive at Bolton's Octagon Theatre for 12 years, but he also put together a plan to save Liverpool's Everyman and Playhouse theatres, was Artistic Director of Manchester's Library Theatre in the 1960s, founded the company that became Northern Stage in Newcastle, was one of the founders of Out of Joint, was director or artistic director of Midlands Arts Centre (now mac) in Birmingham, The Dukes in Lancaster, Warwick Arts Centre and the English Shakespeare Company and chief executive of Leicester Haymarket.

In tribute, this episode is an interview by BTG editor David Chadderton with John from 2011 looking back on his impressive and varied career in theatre, followed by some reflections in 2018 from Mark Babych, now Artistic Director at Hull Truck but previously Artistic Director at the Octagon for ten years, on his time working with John.

Pullitzer Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker's Circle Mirror Transformation is being revived by director Bijan Sheibani for HOME Manchester in March 2018.

Set in a creative drama class in a community centre in Vermont, the cast comprises Amelia Bullmore as Marty, Anthony Ofoegbu as James, Sian Clifford as Theresa, Con O'Neill as Schultz and Yasmin Paige as Lauren.

Just over a week before the production opened, BTG editor David Chadderton spoke to Sian Clifford and Anthony Ofoegbu during their lunch break from rehearsals about the play, meta-acting, accents, pauses and hula-hooping.

Circle Mirror Transformation runs at HOME Manchester from 2 to 17 March 2018.

Midlands editor Steve Orme speaks to actors Sean McKenzie and Jo Mousley about performing Jim Cartwright's popular two-hander Two at Derby Theatre.

The play, which premièred at the Octagon Theatre in Bolton in 1989, focuses on a single evening in a Northern pub, with the same two actors playing the feuding landlord and landlady as well as an array of customers who visit their establishment.

Two will run at Derby Theatre from 2 to 24 March 2018. For more information.

Mark Smith talks to Esther Richardson, Bryony Lavery and Hannah Peel in a busy York Theatre Royal café about Pilot Theatre's new adaptation of Brighton Rock. They discuss the appeal of Brighton Rock's morally complex underworld, getting younger people into regional theatres, creating a musical and choreographic world for the play, and how the company set out to look at Graham Greene's classic story through a lens which is both contemporary and of the time.

Director Esther Richardson has been the Artistic Director of Pilot since February 2016. Her previous theatre work has included productions at theatres throughout the UK, including Soho Theatre, Cast in Doncaster, Tamasha Theatre, Royal and Derngate, Nottingham Playhouse, Bolton Octagon, and many more.

Adapter Bryony Lavery is a renowned playwright whose work is regularly performed internationally. She is a prolific writer and adapter, whose plays include Stockholm, Beautiful Burnout and The Believers for Frantic Assembly, Queen Coal for Sheffield Crucible and Treasure Island at the National Theatre. She has also written numerous adaptations which have premièred at York Theatre Royal, including most recently the adaptation of Brideshead Revisited for the York Theatre Royal and English Touring Theatre's 2016 production.

Hannah Peel is a multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter, composer and arranger, who has recorded as a solo artist as well as with band The Magnetic North and various other high-profile collaborators. She has created scores and co-composed for dance theatre performances at Sadler's Wells and for television.

Brighton Rock runs at York Theatre Royal until 3 March 2018 and then tours to Brighton, Colchester, Hull, Cheltenham, Winchester, Watford, Birmingham, Newcastle, Mold, Derby and finally The Lowry Salford Quays.

(Photo of Esther Richardson, Bryony Lavery and Hannah Peel by John Saunders.)

In November 2015, a new fringe theatre opened up in Ancoats, Manchester with the ambition of presenting full-scale commercial productions of musicals.

Created by musical theatre performers Joseph Houston and William Whelton, Hope Mill Theatre has since won multiple local and national awards, transferred productions to London and been named in The Stage 100, a list of the most influential people in the whole of UK theatre from The Stage newspaper.

In the middle of January 2018, during auditions for Spring Awakening, one of three major musical productions so far announced by Hope Mill Theatre for this year, BTG editor David Chadderton spoke to Joe about the creation, ideals and future plans of this remarkably successful new venue.

Philip Fisher interviews Ngozi Anyanwu about her new play for Atlantic Theater Company, The Homecoming Queen.

Set in Nigeria, it follows the fortunes of a woman returning home for a visit after 15 years as a New Yorker.

They discuss writing, acting and the New York theatre scene in the current political climate, with particular reference to the African-American community.

PUSH from Manchester's HOME arts centre is an annual festival each January that brings together Manchester-based performance artists and companies for just over two weeks of performances, readings, workshops, screenings, exhibitions and other events.

At the launch on 12 January, BTG editor David Chadderton spoke to one of the programming team for PUSH, Jodie Ratcliffe, as well as some of the artists whose work will be featured in the festival:

• Ben Mellor of Pen-Chant
• Emilie Lahouel and Laura Edwards of Meraki Collective about Only Speak When Spoken To
• Remi Adefeyisan from Truth Be Told about True Stories
• Josh Coates on the Untitled AI Project
• Martin Gibbons of Monkeywood Theatre on The Manchester Project
• Sue Jenkins, producer and director of Narcissist in the Mirror, written and performed by Rosie Fleeshman

PUSH 2018 runs at HOME Manchester from Friday 12 to Saturday 27 January. For more information, including the full programme of events, see the theatre's web site.

Philip Fisher and Village Voice columnist/critic Michael Feingold discuss trends in New York Theatre, the latter concluding that "we have a lot of signs of hope in the theatre".

In 2016, Lawrence Batley Theatre in Huddersfield produced its first ever professional pantomime, Cinderella, written by one of the UK's leading pantomime writers, Andrew Pollard, who has been brought back to write this year's Jack and the Beanstalk.

Andrew is taking a year off from playing Dame at Greenwich Theatre to tour in Around the World in 80 Days as Phileas Fogg. However there are still 6 of his panto scripts in production this Christmas around the UK.

In this episode, Andrew speaks extensively about his views on what pantos should contain, the qualities required for good panto performers and how to deal with changing requirements, demands and attitudes to keep panto fresh and entertaining for new audiences.

Jack and the Beanstalk by Andrew Pollard will run at Lawrence Batley Theatre in Huddersfield from 8 December 2017 to 6 January 2018. Andrew's other pantos this year include Cinderella at Greenwich Theatre from 17 November 2017, another Jack and the Beanstalk at Salisbury Playhouse from 2 December 2017 and Beauty and the Beast at Queen's Theatre Hornchurch from 30 November 2017, all finishing on 7 January 2018.

Andrew can be seen on tour in Around the World in 80 Days until January.

(Photo of Andrew Pollard as Long Joan Silver in Peter Pan at Greenwich Theatre credit Robert Day)

For Christmas 2023, there were two new stage adaptations of stories by Roald Dahl in the UK: The Witches at the National Theatre in London and The Enormous Crocodile at Leeds Playhouse, the first to be co-produced by the Roald Dahl Story Company.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to the company's Artistic Director of Theatre, Jenny Worton, about what the Roald Dahl Story Company actually is, how it develops new shows based on Dahl's books and some of the plans for the future.

The National Theatre production of The Witches runs until 27 January 2024.

At the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester on 13 November 2017, the winners were announced of the sixth biennial Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting.

The winners of three Judges' Prizes of £8,000 each were announced as Tim Foley for his play Electric Rosary, Laurie Nunn for King Brown and Sharon Clark for Plow.

The £16,000 top prize went to the play Heartworm by Tim X Atack, who had just worked at the Royal Exchange as sound designer for a production of Jubilee based on the Derek Jarman film.

In this episode, you can hear the moment when Tim was announced as the winner followed by our interview with him about the play, his work in general and what winning the prize will mean to him.

For more information about the Bruntwood Prize including advice for playwrights, see writeaplay.co.uk. Tim Atack's company Sleepdogs can be found at sleepdogs.org.

BTG's Mark Smith speaks to acclaimed director Sally Cookson about her forthcoming production of family classic The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. The show is set to transform the West Yorkshire Playhouse's main theatre, the Quarry, into an in-the-round stage for the first time in the venue's history.

Speaking towards the end of the company's seven-week creative process, Cookson talks about the "dark days" you can have when devising, as well as the process's moments of joy and inspiration. She discusses what it was that triggered her excitement about adapting this well-loved children's book, as well as her shifting role in the rehearsal room as she works with a range of inventive individuals from different performance traditions.

"I go into rehearsals not knowing. It is terrifying, devising, nail-biting. But it's thrilling. You offer up a challenge: how are we going to do this? And you get fifteen brilliant ideas."

(Photo of Sally Cookson by Anthony Robling)

Mark Smith talks to producer John Tomlinson about SBC Theatre, the company he co-created and which has recently become the UK's first "Theatre Company of Sanctuary".

This status recognises the company's work with, about and for those seeking sanctuary in the UK. John is also Associate Producer at York Theatre Royal, working on in-house shows such as the massive community production Everything Is Possible as well as helping with the programming of other events at the theatre.

John discusses the evolution of SBC into a politically engaged company seeking to raise awareness of the often shocking hardships and issues faced by asylum seekers and refugees. Starting with 2016's Tanja, tackling the stories of women held at Yarl's Wood detention centre, John and his collaborators have aimed to reach beyond conventional theatre spaces in raising awareness and starting conversations with a diverse range of people.

"It felt like when we had Emily as part of this piece that we had really unlocked what Yarl's Wood is and what it stands for as part of our society. [...] Ultimately this is a story that we had to tell, and she had to be part of it."