The Arches went into administration today. The press release with all the details is here. This is terrible on a great many levels. It means the loss of an incredible venue which kick-started a a huge amount of careers and provided a fantastic starting point for a great many companies (including us, as our first professional piece, Selfish, …
Here’s a great provocation from This Thing Called Artist Development at Ovalhouse by Alex Swift. The full title of the talk is “Samuel Beckett’s First Play Was Shit And It Took A World War For Him To Write A Good One (and he was 40 before he did) or Artist Development Programmes are a Form …
The Arches in Glasgow was the venue that had the courage to give Daedalus its first proper, professional gig, and the result was that we made and premiered Selfish there (show here, with Onur Orkut). The Arches has a unique model: it’s a very successful club but uses the profits to fund new and often very …
Scenes from 68* Years is an amazing new script by Hannah Khalil about the lives of Palestinians in the shadow of occupation. The world premiere will be at the Arcola Theatre next year, as long as funds are raised…! If you can help, however small (or large) the amount, please do! Here’s the link: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/scenes-from-68-years#home
Rich Mix, which made possible our East community storytelling project, is under threat of closure by London Borough of Tower Hamlets. Your help is needed to tell Tower Hamlets just how important this venue is to the local community, audiences and artists alike. For more information and to sign the petition, click here: http://chn.ge/1F0tOQU
As part of the research for the Daedalus/Black Smock Band Radical History Project (yeah, still a working title), a few of us visited the Disobedient Objects exhibition at the V&A. It was fascinating and inspiring. And a bit overwhelming – a lot of very emotive stuff in one room. Well worth seeing before it closes. Last day …
The Black Smock Band, with whom we regularly collaborate, and in which our artistic director Paul plays fiddle, will be playing at the Old Red Lion in Kennington this evening. It’s free, and starts somewhere around 8pm, with the band on at 9ish. Or thereabouts. There’s a Facebook event here, or you can look at the list …
In the afternoon before last week’s public performance, we shared East with Year 6 of Stebon Primary. It was a very interactive session and it was great to hear the children’s thoughts and opinions, as well as have a good old singalong and share some stories. Thank you, Stebon! Photo credit: Eeshita Azad
Various people involved in A Season of Bangla Drama were on ATN Bangla TV channel last night, to be interviewed about their shows. Sef and Paul were there to talk about East. And on Wednesday evening, Shamim and Paul will be on Betar Bangla radio. Massive thanks to the A Season of Bangla Drama team for giving us these …
One of the great privileges of being part of A Season of Bangla Drama is meeting the other people involved. There’s an amazing community of performance-makers here in Tower Hamlets, and this festival really illustrates how Bangladeshi culture in the borough can become a catalyst for something truly diverse and cross-cultural. Our project is a perfect example: …