My thoughts about books, writing, life and so many other things….Judy Leigh/ Elena Collins.
January isn't most people's favourite month. I've heard a lot of people complaining about it. It's cold. Christmas has gone and won't be back for a long time so it seems like there's nothing to celebrate. It hasn't snowed. It probably won't. A holiday to somewhere warm would be nice but.... So, with a brief …
Continue reading My top ten to bring us in from the January cold
I took time out last weekend to see Josie Lawerence in Mother Courage. It was in a lovely little theatre in Southwark. I had front row seats, which is ideal for a Brecht play, to be able to take in every facial expression. I couldn't understand why the theatre was three quarters full: tickets were …
Continue reading Amazing production of ‘Mother Courage’. It should be on national TV.
Several years ago I saw Ralph Fiennes as Prospero in The Tempest. It was directed by Trevor Nunn, at the Theatre Royal, in 2011. Ralph, as in Salph and Sound, had only been on stage for twenty seconds. He hadn't spoken a word. He simply raised a digit slowly into the air and -pow! Thunder …
I was excited to be travelling to the Winchester Writers' Festival with two talented writer friends. It was the first time I'd been to this festival and I was really looking forward to the workshops, the talks and meeting the agents. Given the horror stories I'd heard beforehand of writers rushing out of their sessions …
Continue reading Winchester Writers’ Weekend: more than just words.
In a previous blog, I hinted that Shakespeare's plays may have been early soap operas for the thousands of groundlings who cheered and hissed and threw missiles at the stage when the tragedy was notched up a gear. They would have paid a penny, these butchers and tanners, seamen, shop keepers, wig makers, to stand …
Continue reading Concerning Corrie: we need more grit and less suds
'... we will draw the curtain and show you the picture.' I loved Shakespeare when I was at school, despite my English teachers. They were not the enthusiastic pedagogues of today, striving to make the bard accessible because every child mattered. My teachers were dry pecking birds who wanted to perpetuate a class system in …
Continue reading Sublime Shakespeare: ‘Tis Beauty Truly Blent
Today, I was discussing the new film 'Loving Vincent' with an Art student. Apparently, it is a really exciting and ambitious film, to be released this year, in which Van Gogh's troubled and brilliant life is told through animation; there will be 56,800 hand-painted frames in the entire film in the style of the artist. I watched the trailer …
Continue reading Cumberbatch and Van Gogh in the same frame. Fascinating.
That quintessence of dust 