[Published on Whatsonstage.com, December 2011] In July 2009 I reviewed a show called Mincemeat for this website. It impressed me so much that I gave it a five-star write-up and immediately signed up to support the inspiring work that the company, Cardboard Citizens, was doing supporting homeless and displaced people, using theatre and performing arts as a catalyst for change. Over two years passed and I was invited to Toynbee Hall, along with other friends of the company, to a public performance of the show currently touring London's hostels, day centres and prisons, Three Blind Mice, by Bola Agbaje. The company is one of the UK's leading practitioners of Forum Theatre, a style of work which calls upon audience members to stop the performance and step in to change the course of the action, with the aim of creating a different outcome for a particular character. The piece is introduced by an emcee known as the 'Joker', who tells the audience which character to look out for in each of Three Blind Mice's three discreet scenes: what does this character want? what are the challenges he is facing? if you were in his shoes, what would you have done...

[Published in IdeasMag November 2011] If you've been to the Edinburgh Fringe, or even ever had a conversation about the world's arts largest festival with a fellow theatre-maker, chances are you'll have heard horror stories of terrible audiences, truculent reviewers and the inevitable accumulation of thousands of pounds worth of debt. But don't be put off: the Fringe may be a challenging environment in which to present work, but for those who pull it off, the rewards are many and varied. Lucy Morrison, head of artistic programme at the theatre, education and new writing company, Clean Break, was initially wary of taking Rebecca Prichard's Dream Pill to the Fringe following a successful run at the Soho Theatre. Her concerns were more than assuaged, however, when the show received multiple four and five-star reviews. “What’s great about the Edinburgh Festival Fringe”, she says, “is that there is an appetite for such a diverse range of shows; there’s room for everything there and your show is taken completely on its own terms and celebrated for that”. For Liam Jarvis, co-artistic director at Analogue Theatre, two-time Fringe First winners for their shows Mile End and Beachy Head, “it's the transformative potential of...

[Appeared in The Guardian, November 2011] Last month's shadow cabinet reshuffle saw Harriet Harman take on the role of shadow secretary of state for culture, media and sport, while Dan Jarvis, who was elected MP for Barnsley Central in a by-election in March this year, has been made shadow culture minister. Neither of them have any experience in the culture sector; Jarvis, in fact, has very little experience in any sector other than the armed forces, having served until very recently as a soldier with the Parachute Regiment, a career he has pursued since leaving university. And meanwhile in government we have Jeremy Hunt as Harman's opposite number, with Ed Vaizey as minister for culture, communications and the creative industries. These two fare little better in the culture stakes. To sum up the current situation as it stands then, neither the individuals with ultimate responsibility for the future of the arts in this country, nor the ministers charged with holding the government to account for its culture sector policies have any practical experience of the fields they lead. Perhaps this isn't such a problem. After all, we don't require our education ministers to have worked in schools or our...

[Published in The Economist, April 2012] On 23 April, the presumed birthday of William Shakespeare, Globe to Globe launched at Shakespeare's Globe on London's Bankside. It's the most ambitious programme of work the theatre has ever staged, with 37 companies from around the world performing all 37 of the Bard's plays over the course of six hectic weeks. The team at the Globe, led by artistic director Dominic Dromgoole and programme director Tom Bird, have made some brave and inspired choices. The national theatres of Albania, Macedonia and Serbia, for example, are performing a Balkan trilogy of the Henry VI plays, the first time the dramas will be staged at Shakespeare's Globe. Belarus Free Theatre, a company banned in Belarus and run by artists with political refugee status in the UK, will be presenting King Lear in Belarusian. The South Sudan Theatre Company, a group specially formed for Globe to Globe, will represent the world's newest nation state with a Juba Arabic production of Cymbeline; it will be the first ever Shakespeare play in Juba Arabic. The list goes on. It's an undeniably exciting undertaking, both for Shakespeare afficionados and for migrant communities in London who are rarely given...

[Published in Teaching Drama, December 2011] Lovesong, the latest offering from acclaimed physical theatre company, Frantic Assembly, is the story of a couple at the beginning and the end of their life together. Young and old versions of the pair, played by Leanne Rowe and Edward Bennett, and Siân Phillips and Sam Cox respectively, inhabit the same space, not quite interacting with their other selves, but presenting an elegiac portrait of a love affair over many years. The show sees Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett, Frantic Assembly's artistic directors, reunited with Abi Morgan, the BAFTA-winning writer they last worked with 10 years ago on the 2001 play Tiny Dynamite. It's a collaboration with which all three have been delighted to reengage. “I don't know if we really felt we had unfinished business with Tiny Dynamite”, says Hoggett, “but there's definitely residual of that way of thinking about theatre that we haven't done for the last 10 years”. Graham agrees, remarking on the “shared notion of tenderness” in both parties' work and pointing out that despite the creative advances they've each made in the intervening years, “something feels just as it always was”. Lovesong has been touring since the end...

[Published in World of Interiors, May 2012] Approaching the evocatively named 'Life on a Leaf' on the outskirts of Turku, Finland, from the road, you'd be forgiven for mistaking it for a children's daycare centre. The building, after all, is bright yellow, leaf-shaped and decorated with a frieze of red hearts, blue shovels and green Christmas tree shapes. But first impressions can be misleading, for this eccentric-looking place is in fact a private residence, home to the artist Jan-Erik Andersson and his family, and boasting perhaps the most dynamic domestic interior in Finland. In 1999, Andersson, feeling himself frustrated with the overly prescriptive nature of mainstream domestic architectural practice, decided to do something about it. The celebrated installation artist had been involved in architecture for some time, having collaborated with the architect Erkki Pitkäranta since 1995. The two had founded an architectural practice together, its name, Rosegarden, referencing their shared passion for architecture inspired by the forms and beauty of nature. Andersson and Pitkäranta couldn't understand the prevailing obsession with abstraction and fear of ornamentation: they wanted to design buildings and interiors that told stories; made people laugh; were art objects in themselves. The two worked together on several...

[Published in The Stage , June 2012] As with everything connected to London 2012, there has been a great deal of hype surrounding Unlimited, the deaf and disability arts element of the Cultural Olympiad. The programme's £3 million fund, says Ruth Mackenzie, director of the Cultural Olympiad and the London 2012 Festival, “is more money than anyone has been able to find anywhere in the world ever for disabled and deaf artists”. For Bradley Hemmings, co-artistic director of the Paralympics opening ceremony, “this year is doing something seismic” in terms of raising the profile of the disability arts sector. Hemming's co-artistic director, Jenny Sealey, goes so far as to liken it to “a new dawn” for deaf and disabled artists. It all sounds fantastic, but when it comes down to it, will the events of this summer really see deaf and disability arts enter the mainstream? Launched in October 2009, Unlimited is funding 35 collaborative projects between deaf and disabled artists and producers, selected from 166 submissions to three separate commissioning rounds. It has also ploughed lottery money and grants from Arts Council England, Creative Scotland, Arts Council of Wales, Arts Council of Northern Ireland and the British Council...

As part of its tenure as European Capital of Culture 2011, the Finnish city of Turku is embracing environmental art in a rather remarkable way. Dozens of the cultural events taking place over the course of this year are environmentally focused, with commissioned artists taking some truly innovative and unusual approaches towards presenting art with a green theme. Back in the autumn, Kaisa and Timo Berry worked together with local residents to plant 15,000 bulbs in selected locations around the city for a project called You are Beautiful! Now that the ice on Turku’s River Aura has finally melted and spring is well and truly on its way after the long, dark Finnish winter, their project is beginning to bloom, with positive messages appearing as if by magic in public green spaces. The phrases spelled out by the flowers, which include “I’m thinking about you” and “Let’s kiss!”, are designed, the artists say, “to make people happy”. While some of the work the couple do with their design firm, BOTH, is overtly political – using art as a “powerful tool in communicating” issues around climate change and other environmental concerns –You are Beautiful! deliberately takes a more subtle approach...