I wake up with my arms wrapped around her. One arm is tucked under her head and the other is curled around her waist. I kiss the top of her shoulder. She makes the tiniest noise and shuffles closer. Her…
24 Italian Songs and Arias Brian Lobel with Gweneth-Ann Rand Failure is often marked in numbers: 1 point off the entry requirements, 2 minors on a driving test, 3 inches too short for a rollercoaster. In 24 Italian Songs…
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
I started trying to pin down my views on Ulster American and ended up going a bit apocalyptic. Here are some loosely tied thoughts on shows that tackled sexual assault at the fringe because every time I try to move…
Some of my favourite conversations this fringe have been the ones I haven’t quite caught: Sam Ward whispering to a stranger in [Insert Slogan Here] as he dances with them on a stage strewn with candles and cardboard;…
[Three months in Réo, Burkina Faso.] PART I i. Nighttime Take the second left off the main road and bump through the dirt track. Follow it down until you almost hit the slab of stone in…
Bosnia chokes on its own history. A quarter of a century on from a brutal, bloody war, this heart-shaped country still beats at an unsteady pace. Much of the truth of the past is left unspoken, as regional authorities remain in…
Over Christmas, my grandma knitted baubles to hang on the tree in her communal front garden. As people walked past, they’d look up and notice the woollen snow drops. Kids especially, they’re far better at spotting things than adults. They’d…
Nils Frahm’s music is an expanding lung. It wheezes and gasps as it’s squeezed tight. It fills and fills and keeps on growing and the edges get thinner and it’s about to burst and then it releases and sinks back…
Photo by Mark Douet for Bristol Old Vic. Of the 20 most recent stage reviews in the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, The Times and the Independent, 62% were written by white men, 38% by white women, 0% per cent…
When making coffee in Bosnia, the saying goes that you should always expect an unexpected guest, and therefore always pour an extra cup. This attitude of welcoming unexpected guests really resonates for our group as we navigated ethnic tensions, asking…
This was originally a review for Forced Entertainment’s Real Magic which was performed at In Between Time Festival in Bristol. The show consists of the same scene repeated, with slight alterations, over and over. And over. And over. The review…
I was going to write a post about the most inspiring cultural experiences of 2016, but then thirty nine people were shot dead in a nightclub in Turkey on the 1st of January and it didn’t matter anymore. I was…
This is how everyone should be introduced to every new city. You should get off a train, close your eyes and when you open them there should be a stranger standing before you with their hand outstretched. They should look…
This poster makes Minefield look like an awkward school trip when actually it’s a fucking great explosion that could be the start of a new era of documentary theatre. * The bit with the yelling and the smoke and the…
Jóhann Jóhannsson – Forces Of Attraction Portraits in Motion is a theatrical version of Humans of New York. Volker Gerling goes on long walks in Germany and gets by via the kindness of strangers. He photographs these people he meets…
Note: I know next to nothing about the army. I get the technical details in this from my plus one. ‘We didn’t know it but we were already history. And history’s what we’ve become. Not the kind that’s recorded or sung,…
In 1972 my grandma started keeping a visitors book but lost it in 1983. In the years that followed so many people who stayed with her, chatted, laughed and knowing grandma, probably danced in that house, will have been forgotten. If…
Our washing machine sounds like it’s having a heart attack. It’s rumbling around so violently it has actually managed to dislocate itself from the wall and twist to the side, like it’s running away. *** Two years ago at the…
I have rarely felt so full of love walking out of a theatre. I want to go and make a playlist of all the songs. I want to tell everyone I love that I love them. I want to go…
