Peter Straker’s first big break was in the West End première of the musical Hair in 1968, following which he has had a long and impressive career in both musical and non-musical theatre and as a recording artist, notably collaborating with his close friend Freddie Mercury. His show based on the songs of Jacques Brel was a hit a few years ago at the Edinburgh Fringe, but this year, he is trying something new with Adventures of Straker , featuring songs from various musicals accompanied by musicia...
Aug 12, 2022•24 min•Ep. 241
Mischief Theatre, which rose to fame ten years ago with its smash hit comedy The Play That Goes Wrong , is returning to Edinburgh in 2022 with three shows: Charlie Russell Aims to Please , Mischief Movie Night and Mind Mangler: Member of the Tragic Circle . Charlie Russell, who writes and performs the show that names her in the title, has been a co-creator and cast member in most of the company’s shows so far. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Charlie about their three Fringe shows as well as...
Aug 04, 2022•33 min•Ep. 240
John Lloyd, the TV and radio producer behind many classic comedy programmes from The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy , Not the Nine O’Clock News and Spitting Image to Have I Got News For You , The News Quiz and QI , will be asking audiences to put his accumulated knowledge on all subjects to the test at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe in his show Do You Know Who I Am? . BTG Editor David Chadderton asked him about the show, about his career and about the things that continue to fascinate him enoug...
Jul 28, 2022•29 min•Ep. 239
London’s Greenwich + Docklands International Festival began as a free, outdoor festival in 1996, managed to continue throughout the COVID pandemic and has now announced its 27th programme of events which will run from 26 August to 11 September 2022. GDIF Artistic Director Bradley Hemmings MBE, who also co-directed the opening ceremony for the 2012 London Paralympic Games, spoke to BTG Editor David Chadderton about this year’s festival and about its past developments....
Jul 23, 2022•28 min•Ep. 238
One of the biggest hits of the 2009 Edinburgh Festival Fringe was a one-man show about comedian Eric Morecambe written by Tim Whitnall and performed by Bob Golding. When comedy impressionist Jon Culshaw ( Dead Ringers , Spitting Image ) had the idea to pay tribute to comedian Les Dawson, he teamed up with Tim and Bob to create Les Dawson: Flying High , which will make its debut at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe before being extended for a national tour. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to the thr...
Jul 14, 2022•37 min•Ep. 237
David Sefton joined Gulbenkian Arts Centre in Canterbury as Artistic Director in 2021, in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, after running the Adelaide Festival in Australia. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to David about the 2022-23 season featuring companies such as Pussy Riot, 1927 and Improbable, and also about a career that took him from Liverpool to London’s South Bank, where he created the Meltdown Festival working with guest curators including Scott Walker, John Peel, Elvis Costel...
Jul 09, 2022•34 min•Ep. 236
The Still Room is a new play at Park Theatre in London set in the ‘still room’ of a hotel, where the waiters wait, in the North West of England in 1981. It was written by Sally Rogers, best known on TV as DC Jo Masters in The Bill and with theatre credits at the National Theatre, Royal Court and Out of Joint, based on her own experiences of working in a hotel near Stockport when she was just 16. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Sally during previews about the play and its setting, about teac...
Jun 07, 2022•35 min•Ep. 235
On 25 March 2022, Manchester arts venue Contact announced that writer, performer and producer Keisha Thompson would take over from Matt Fenton in June to become its first female, first Mancunian and youngest Artistic Director. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Keisha a week before the announcement. She explained about her 17-year history at the venue, the philosophy behind this unique theatre for young people, which celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2022, all the different production skills ...
Apr 04, 2022•30 min•Ep. 234
British theatre company Les Enfants Terribles celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2022 with a new production adapted from Sophie Anderson’s novel The House with Chicken Legs by company founder Oliver Lansley directed by Oli with Creative Director James Seager. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Oli and James during rehearsals, a week before opening night, about the production and their style and influences and looked back over their work during the last 20 years. The House with Chicken Legs run...
Mar 28, 2022•33 min•Ep. 233
Writer, director and actor Ryan Calais Cameron is artistic director and co-founder of theatre company Nouveau Riche , and his play For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When The Hue Gets Too Heavy is about to open at London’s Royal Court Theatre . BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Ryan a couple of weeks before the Royal Court opening and asked him about the play and its origins, about creating a theatre company without knowing how to go about doing so and about making theatre for the peo...
Mar 21, 2022•32 min•Ep. 232
Pilot Theatre is based in York in the UK, but for its latest project has collaborated with an Australian playwright on an adaptation of an Australian novel. The Bone Sparrow by Zana Fraillon has received award nominations for both the Carnegie and the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize for a story about a young refugee born in an Australian permanent detention centre. The adaptation has been written by S Shakthidharan and will be directed by Pilot’s Artistic Director, Esther Richardson. Esther an...
Feb 02, 2022•26 min•Ep. 231
With Panto Season 2021 now well under way, BTG Panto Editor Simon Sladen caught up with award-winning writer, composer, actor and musician Vikki Stone. This year, Vikki has penned Aladdin for the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, having previously appeared at the venue as Abanazar and Fleshcreep. They discuss Vikki's pantomime career, challenges facing the genre today and top tips for budding pantomime writers. More information on Vikki's many projects can be found at her web site . Aladdin runs at the...
Dec 04, 2021•39 min•Ep. 230
Hilary Mantel’s Man Booker Prize-winning novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies were brought to the stage in 2014 by the Royal Shakespeare Company, adapted by Mike Poulton and directed by Jeremy Herrin. The third in the series, The Mirror and the Light , has opened at the Gielgud Theatre, again directed by Herrin but this time adapted by Mantel herself with Ben Miles, who has played the central character of Thomas Cromwell across all three plays. Also returning is Nathaniel Parker as King Henr...
Oct 08, 2021•37 min•Ep. 229
Mark Ravenhill has been well known as a British playwright since the 1990s, when he was a leading figure in the group of writers labelled ‘In Yer Face’. Director Hannah Price was founder and Co-Artistic Director of Theatre Uncut and a Resident Artistic Director at the Donmar Warehouse. From 1 October 2021, Mark and Hannah will take over as joint Artistic Directors of the King’s Head Theatre , London’s oldest pub theatre. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to them both about their ideas for helpin...
Aug 25, 2021•36 min•Ep. 228
After the cancellation of the 2020 Edinburgh Festivals due to the coronavirus pandemic, apart from a small number of online shows, the 2021 festivals are going ahead, with some shows happening in front of live audiences and some online. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Fringe performer, writer, director and producer Guy Masterson, in Edinburgh to perform a cut-down version of his one-man Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas for his 27th year on the Fringe, about how different Edinburgh seems this...
Aug 19, 2021•20 min•Ep. 227
After a record-breaking year in 2019, with more than 600,000 attendees, Brighton Fringe had to cancel its 2020 festival at fairly short notice due to the first lockdown of the coronavirus pandemic in England. However, the Fringe is back for 2021, slightly later in the year than usual, with a hybrid live and online programme of events. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Brighton Fringe CEO Julian Caddy about the festival and what it will be offering attendees this year, as well as the difficult...
Apr 23, 2021•28 min•Ep. 226
#WeMakeEvents was launched in April 2020, soon after the first coronavirus lockdown, by PLASA, the Professional Lighting and Sound Association, to highlight the plight of its membership, the majority of whom are freelance workers and therefore not eligible for government furlough payments. The campaign has grown to include other industry bodies and has become a global movement, with major performance venues lighting their buildings in red to highlight the red alert status of the industry. It off...
Mar 30, 2021•43 min•Ep. 225
Hear Me Out is a new theatre podcast produced and presented by Lucy Eaton, the both real and on-screen sister of Simon Evans, creator of BBC lockdown comedy Staged starring David Tennant and Michael Sheen. Hear Me Out features interviews with leading theatre actors in which they discuss and then perform a speech from a play in which they have appeared which holds particularly strong memories for them. The first four episodes are now available, featuring Claire Skinner on Harold Pinter’s Moonligh...
Mar 23, 2021•48 min•Ep. 224
At the beginning of each year, The Theatres Trust produces a document known as the Theatres At Risk Register, which lists the theatre buildings in the UK which are at the most risk of being lost forever. Just after the 2021 Register was released, BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Theatres Trust Director Jon Morgan about this year’s list, the work of the Trust in general and the extra help it has been giving to theatres during the pandemic. The latest Theatres At Risk Register can be downloade...
Feb 18, 2021•47 min•Ep. 223
In January 2020, BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Elizabeth Newman, Artistic Director of Pitlochry Festival Theatre in Scotland, about her plans for the coming year. Less than two months later, the country shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic. The season was cancelled and the future of this theatre, amongst many others around the country, looked bleak, but it continued to commission and produce new work, mostly online. A year on, and Pitlochry has announced its 70th anniversary season i...
Feb 12, 2021•30 min•Ep. 222
Leading black British theatre company Talawa , which will celebrate its 35th birthday in 2021, is releasing a series of short online films titled Tales from the Frontline that examine the experiences of black frontline workers during the coronavirus pandemic through monologues compiled from the words of real people through interviews. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Talawa’s Artistic Director, Michael Buffong, who also directed the first of the films, after two of the proposed six films had...
Dec 11, 2020•25 min•Ep. 221
Peter Polycarpou, an actor with a long and distinguished history in musical theatre, was about to revive a production that he had written called Falling Stars at London’s Union Theatre when the second coronavirus lockdown was announced. Rather than cancelling entirely, the production, performed by Peter with Sally Ann Triplett and directed by Michael Strassen, was recorded to be made available online. Peter spoke to BTG Editor David Chadderton a few days before the recording was due to be releas...
Nov 21, 2020•32 min•Ep. 220
Pursued by a Bear , a theatre company based at Trestle Arts Base in St Albans, Hertfordshire, was preparing a tour of a new project, Nothing on Earth written by Anna Reynolds, before the coronavirus lockdown. As the tour couldn’t go ahead as planned, it was used as the inspiration for a series of short web films called Nothing on Earth: Shorts . BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Pursued by a Bear’s Artistic Director, Rosamunde Hutt, when half of the six films had been released about the proje...
Sep 28, 2020•44 min•Ep. 219
As some theatre performances are starting to open in the UK after more than five months of lockdown due to the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, the people in charge of UK theatres have had to make some very difficult decisions in order to survive. To get the perspective of theatre management on the current situation, BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Roddy Gauld, Chief Executive of the Octagon Theatre in Bolton , just after the announcement that the theatre will reopen in December and Jon Gilchrist...
Sep 04, 2020•55 min•Ep. 218
Cornwall’s Kneehigh theatre company was due to celebrate its 40th anniversary in 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic forced it to postpone any celebrations. After five months of lockdown, the company has released a strategy document, Strike Out! , focussing on its plans for creating art and performance in a post-pandemic world. Just after its release, BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Kneehigh founder and co-Artistic Director Mike Shepherd about what he has been up to during lockdown, the company...
Aug 28, 2020•39 min•Ep. 217
Theatre company Told by an Idiot will be one of the first theatre companies to resume performances to live audiences after the coronavirus lockdown when it takes part in the Greenwich+Docklands International Festival with a revival of its family show Get Happy at outdoor venues. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Told by an Idiot founder Paul Hunter, who is directing the piece, during rehearsals about this and past works by the company, as well as about his comedy influences, some of whom he h...
Aug 21, 2020•38 min•Ep. 216
Tara Arts is a London-based multicultural theatre company which has only had one artistic director, Jatinder Verma MBE, since it was formed in 1977 until he stepped down earlier this year. He will be replaced by Abdul Shayek, a director originally from East London who has spent the last nine years based in Cardiff, initially working with National Theatre Wales and for the last four years running Fio , a theatre company that he formed in 2016. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Abdul just after...
Aug 14, 2020•33 min•Ep. 215
Stephen Schwartz and John-Michael Tebelak’s musical Godspell , based on the Gospel of St Matthew, is about to celebrate its 50th anniversary. To commemorate this, Thomas Hopkins & Michael Quinn for Ginger Quiff Media in association with Manchester’s Hope Mill Theatre are to stream an online concert version of the musical in August 2020 with a cast headed by West End stars Ruthie Henshall, Darren Day, Sam Tutty, Ria Jones and Jenna Russell. Also starring is Jodie Steele, who was touring as Ka...
Jul 29, 2020•27 min•Ep. 214
No Milk for the Foxes was a one-act play written and performed by Conrad Murray and Paul Cree for Beats & Elements at Camden People’s Theatre in 2015 that looked in on the lives of two young, working-class lads, Marx and Sparx, working as security guards on zero-hours contracts and which used beatboxing and live looping between dialogue scenes. An archive recording of this production has now been made available on YouTube in order, according to Conrad, to introduce some diversity into the hu...
Jun 26, 2020•35 min•Ep. 213
New Perspectives Theatre Company has teamed up with writer David Rudkin to produce a ten-part audio series called PlacePrints . Rudkin has written stories set in different locations around the British Isles and they’ve been recorded over the past four years. The cast includes Michael Pennington, Toby Jones, Juliet Stevenson and Stephen Rea. In this episode, Steve Orme speaks to Jack McNamara from New Perspectives about how the series came together and how the company’s work has changed since its...
Jun 21, 2020•17 min•Ep. 212
