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...
Feb 08, 2024•32 min•Ep. 271
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 c...
Jan 28, 2024•33 min•Ep. 270
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 Thea...
Jan 18, 2024•31 min•Ep. 269
Pilot Theatre , a York-based touring company that creates theatre for young people is to tour England in February and March 2024 with an adaptation of David Almond’s book A Song for Ella Grey , written by Zoe Cooper and directed by Pilot’s Artistic Director, Esther Richardson. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Esther while the production was still in rehearsal about the play, its North East setting, having a TikTok star in the title role, the process of adapting a challenging novel for the st...
Jan 11, 2024•28 min•Ep. 268
Physical theatre company Gecko , based in Ipswich, was founded in 2001 by Amit Lahav, who is still its Artistic Director. The company’s latest production, Kin , toured the UK in 2023 and will be at the National Theatre in London in January 2024. Amit spoke to BTG Editor David Chadderton about the origins of the production in the story of his grandmother Leah’s journey from Yemen to Palestine as a child in 1932 to escape persecution, how this developed to look at migration stories more widely, th...
Dec 20, 2023•38 min•Ep. 267
Mark Thomas is a stand-up comic whose work for stage and TV has frequently crossed over into theatre and into political activism, in some cases resulting in changes in the law. He is currently performing a show he hasn’t written himself for the first time, England & Son by award-winning playwright Ed Edwards. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Mark while the play was touring about the play, the importance of storytelling, football, class, what makes a ‘creative act’, Oliver Cromwell, Brech...
Nov 17, 2023•42 min•Ep. 266
The Prince of Egypt , the DreamWorks animated film from 1998, was brought to the West End stage in 2020 at the Dominion Theatre but had to take a break due to the COVID lockdown. It completed its run the following year when it was filmed for a cinema release. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to the show’s composer and lyricist, multi-Grammy and Academy Award-winner Stephen Schwartz, about the show’s West End run and how it originally came about, as well as some of his views on songwriting. The ...
Oct 17, 2023•20 min•Ep. 265
Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre and Tamasha will present Tanika Gupta’s adaptation of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens set during the Indian partition in Bengal, directed by Pooja Ghai, Artistic Director of Tamasha BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Pooja during rehearsals about the production, the history and concept behind Tamasha and a recently announced programme to “diversify dramaturgy” funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation. Great Expectations will run at the Royal Exchange Theat...
Aug 30, 2023•32 min•Ep. 264
Dublin Theatre Festival in Ireland has been running since 1957, and Willie White has been its Artistic Director and Chief Executive since 2011. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Willie about the 2023 festival and the history and general focus of the festival. Dublin Theatre Festival runs from 28 September to 15 October 2023. After the Silence , image credit Juliana França Nurith Wagner-Strauss Truth’s A Dog Must To Kennel , image credit Amy Gibson Warrior - Karen Egan, photo Shane McCarthy Zo...
Aug 23, 2023•28 min•Ep. 263
Glasgow-based writer Nat McCleary’s play Thrown for National Theatre Scotland is set in the world of backhold wrestling and is concluding its tour of Scotland with a run at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh as part of the Edinburgh International Festival . It is directed by Johnny McKnight, who spoke to BTG Editor David Chadderton at the mid-point of the festival about the play, Scottish traditions, this year’s festivals and the influence panto has had on everything he does in theatre. Thrown co...
Aug 16, 2023•34 min•Ep. 262
Towards the end of its summer season, Pitlochry Festival Theatre will present the world première of a new play by Peter Arnott, Group Portrait in a Summer Landscape , set in a Perthshire country house during the Scottish Independence referendum of 2014, directed by David Greig in a co-production with Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum Theatre . The main character Rennie is played by John Michie, best-known as DI Robbie Ross in TV’s Taggart , and his friend Moon is played by fellow Scottish actor Benny You...
Jul 28, 2023•33 min•Ep. 261
Kimber Lee’s provocatively titled winner of the first International Award from the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting in 2019, untitled f*ck m*ss s**gon play , opened in June 2023 at the Royal Exchange Theatre as part of the Manchester International Festival and will transfer to the Young Vic in London later in the year. In the lead role of Kim is Mei Mac, who was nominated for a Best Actress Olivier Award earlier this year for playing 4-year-old Mei Kusakabe in the Royal Shakespeare Company produc...
Jul 19, 2023•30 min•Ep. 260
As You Like It is one of William Shakespeare’s most popular comedies. Omar Elerian, who is directing his first show for the Royal Shakespeare Company, was keen to explore it from a “fresh and new perspective”, so he has cast a company of actors who are mostly over 70. BTG’s Midlands editor Steve Orme spoke to two of the actors, 73-year-old Malcolm Sinclair and Maureen Beattie who’s 69. He asked them what it’s like performing in a company of mature actors and whether there’s still age discriminat...
Jul 14, 2023•22 min•Ep. 259
Jenny Sealey has been artistic director of Graeae since 1997, a theatre company, which, according to its web site, “boldly places Deaf and disabled artists centre-stage in a diversity of new and existing plays”. In that time, she has directed many productions, including co-directing the opening ceremony of the 2012 Paralympics in London with Bradley Hemmings. However, for her next production, Self Raising , for the Edinburgh Fringe , she will be performing herself for the first time in three dec...
Jul 08, 2023•39 min•Ep. 258
The Greenhouse is billed as the UK’s first zero-waste performance space, holding up to 50 audience members in its in-the-round venue made from found and recycled materials. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Oli Savage, Artistic Director of The Greenhouse about the challenges and joys of making theatre of all kinds in a zero-waste way. The summer 2023 programme opened at Royal Docks in East London on 11 May and runs until 4 June. The theatre will then move to Canary Wharf from 19 June to 14 Ju...
May 17, 2023•27 min•Ep. 257
Pitlochry Festival Theatre in Scotland has announced a repertory season for 2023 featuring a 19-strong ensemble of actors performing in 8 different productions, starting with the musical Gypsy . While the show was still in rehearsal, BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to the two lead actors: Blythe Jandoo who plays Louise, and Shona White, who plays Louise’s formidable mother, Rose. Gypsy runs at Pitlochry Festival Theatre from 19 May to 30 September 2023, while Elizabeth Newman’s adaptation of T...
May 04, 2023•30 min•Ep. 256
Cornwall’s popular and highly acclaimed theatre company Kneehigh shut down in 2021, the year after its 40th anniversary. When the company closed, the Kneehigh Cookbook, an online educational resource, also closed, but it has become the basis for an ongoing archive of all of the company’s work, This is Kneehigh , hosted by Falmouth University and supported by digital arts platform The Space . BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Kneehigh founder Mike Shepherd and lead archivist for the project Sa...
Apr 26, 2023•55 min•Ep. 255
David Wood OBE , described by the late great Times theatre critic Irving Wardle as “the national children’s dramatist”, has written more than 70 plays, including adaptations of books by Judith Kerr, Michelle Magorian, Philippa Pearce and Roald Dahl, as well as original plays of his own. From 1959 until 2005, David kept up regular correspondence with Frank Whitbourn, whom he credits as his mentor, which is currently being edited into a book called Frank Exchanges . BTG Editor David Chadderton spo...
Apr 15, 2023•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 254
Factory International announced the 2023 edition of the biannual Manchester International Festival at an event at New Century Hall in Manchester on 14 March. After the announcement, BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Manchester International Festival’s Artistic Director and Chief Executive John McGrath, Adam Szabo from Manchester Collective about their co-production with Slung Low of Benjamin Britten’s community opera Noah’s Flood , Scottee about acting as dramaturg for a musical adaptation of...
Mar 15, 2023•33 min•Ep. 253
David Greig is a leading Scottish playwright and Artistic Director of Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh. In 2016, he adapted The Suppliant Women , the only fully extant play in a trilogy by Aeschylus, and is now adapting the other two plays in the trilogy, even though only fragments of the originals still exist, the first of which, The Egyptians , opens at Gulbenkian Arts Centre in Canterbury, Kent at the end of February 2023. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to David about the fascinating proc...
Feb 16, 2023•42 min•Ep. 252
Joe O’Byrne has been producing his own work for stage around the North West, often to great acclaim, for some years, but recently, he has been taking more work further afield than ever. This year, he will again tour his ghost story The Haunting of Blaine Manor and four of his Tales from Paradise Heights, a series of plays that share characters and a location with interlocking stories: The Bench , Diane’s Deli , Strawberry Jack and I’m Frank Morgan: Rewired . BTG Editor David Chadderton has been ...
Feb 09, 2023•36 min•Ep. 251
Jonathan Cake is an actor who has worked extensively on stage, film and television in the UK and the US, but his first love has always been theatre, and many of his friends in the business feel the same. In order to investigate what it is about theatre that keeps drawing them back, he has started a podcast, Stage Door Jonny , where he talks to some of those friends including Sam Mendes, Damian Lewis, David Harewood, Jez Butterworth, Ethan Hawke, and, in the very first episode, Sarah Jessica Park...
Feb 05, 2023•48 min•Ep. 250
During the pandemic, Peter Duncan kept the panto magic alive with his online pantomimes Jack and the Beanstalk and Cinderella . This year, he has created his third streamed pantomime: Pantoland . BTG’s Panto Editor Simon Sladen spoke to Peter about his foray into film-making and turning a very live genre into one that can work equally well on screen. Simon and Peter also discuss Peter's first experience of pantomime, growing up in a theatrical household and writing, directing and starring in pan...
Dec 23, 2022•33 min•Ep. 249
London’s VAULT Festival was founded in 2012 by Andy George and Mat Burtcher in the tunnels under Waterloo Station. The lockdown due to the COVID pandemic came during the 2020 festival and resulted in the cancellation of the 2021 and 2022 festivals, but the programme has now been announced for a big return in January 2023. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to VAULT’s Director and co-founder Andy George about the principles and criteria for the festival programme, it’s humble beginnings ten years ...
Dec 16, 2022•35 min•Ep. 248
Since 2005, Manchester-based property company Bruntwood has worked with the Royal Exchange Theatre to present the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting . The 2022 ceremony was held at the Royal Exchange on 14 November. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to the three of the winners—International Award winner Rochelle Fong, North West Original New Voice winner Patrick Hughes and Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting winner Nathan Queeley-Dennis—immediately after the ceremony about their work and how they felt ...
Nov 15, 2022•28 min•Ep. 247
The new Shakespeare North Playhouse in Prescot, Merseyside is an Elizabethan-style theatre which opened in July 2022. However, its first production of a play by Shakespeare came later with A Midsummer Night’s Dream produced by Warrington-based associate company Not Too Tame. The production will transfer to Newcastle for a run in the Epic Space at Northern Stage. David Chadderton spoke to Not Too Tame’s Artistic Director Jimmy Fairhurst, who co-directed the production with Matthew Dunster, and a ...
Oct 17, 2022•43 min•Ep. 246
On 29 September 2022, Manchester International Festival officially announced its plans for the opening of its new permanent performance venue, to be called Factory International , in the St John’s area of Manchester city centre. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to John E McGrath, Artistic Director and Chief Executive of both Manchester International Festival and Factory International, about what the new building would provide for Manchester and the international arts scene, as well as about the...
Oct 06, 2022•53 min•Ep. 245
Derby Theatre and Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch are to stage a co-production of a new adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde . Neil Bartlett has brought the story up to date and introduced some female characters. BTG Midlands Editor Steve Orme spoke to two of the actors, Nicholas Shaw and Polly Lister, about the show while Derby Theatre’s Sarah Brigham who’s directing and Mathew Russell from Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch talk about the benefits of their collaboration. Jekyll and Hyde w...
Sep 20, 2022•23 min•Ep. 244
Nottingham Playhouse is presenting a new play, The Clothes They Stood Up In , which is described as a “bittersweet exploration of marriage, dreams and lives unlived”. Adrian Scarborough appears in the production and adapted the script from a story by Alan Bennett. Scarborough spoke to BTG Midlands editor Steve Orme about writing the script, getting the go-ahead from Bennett himself and how his career has developed over two-and-a-half decades. The Clothes They Stood Up In runs at Nottingham Playh...
Sep 13, 2022•23 min•Ep. 243
Oldham Coliseum Theatre is opening its 2022 autumn season with a revival of Jim Cartwright’s acclaimed portrait of life in a Lancashire town in Thatcher’s Britain of the 1980s, Road , which premièred at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 1986. Returning to the Coliseum after directing the theatre’s first post-COVID production, Love n Stuff , in September 2021 is director Gitika Buttoo , who spoke to BTG Editor David Chadderton about the relevance of the play to today’s world, the stories it te...
Sep 07, 2022•22 min•Ep. 242
