Essential media about the arts

25 random things about Illuminations (again)

9.05.2013 posted by John Wyver Category: About Illuminations, Film, Performance, Television, Visual arts

Back in 2009 we ran a blog post that was based on an article in the New York Times which claimed that the ‘latest digital fad [is] a chain-letter-cum-literary exercise called “25 Random Things About Me”.’ For a while it was big on Facebook, and this was the only excuse the Times needed for its pop psychology: ‘…why this particular distraction has suddenly become a phenomenon is anyone’s guess. For most, it seems to be a creative way to indulge in social networking without coming off as needy or shamelessly self-absorbed.’ The world has moved on a bit since then, as there have been some changes too at Illuminations. Nonetheless, absolved from neediness or self-obsession, we are delighted to offer today the 2013 version of 25 Random Things About Illuminations.
Read more »

The intermedial in action

3.05.2013 posted by John Wyver Category: Digital media, Film, Literature, Performance, Television

Upstage there is a set with an enclosed room and other smaller spaces, including two booths like those used for sound recording. The room is dressed as a kitchen, with walls which have extensive glass panelling allowing the audience to see inside. Downstage there are elements of furniture, a table for sound effects, and video cameras, monitors and lights. This is the setting for Katie Mitchell and Leo Warner’s astonishing Fraulein Julie, originally staged at Schaubuhne Berlin and at the Barbican only until tomorrow. (I started this post on Tuesday night but it’s been a crazily busy week, so apologies for the tardiness of its appearance.) Over 80 taut minutes, the actors and creatives make and mix a live “film” after Strindberg’s play, with live sound effects and music. The appeal is both to the mind and to the heart, with an experience embedded in the late 19th century but also acutely, precisely of now. Yet for me this bold, sometimes breathtaking experiment brought to mind nothing so much as live television drama as it used to be made in the studio twenty.thirty, even fifty years ago.
Read more »

Jacobean jottings

25.04.2013 posted by John Wyver Category: Performance, Television

We are coming to the end of the Screen Plays season at BFI Southbank of television adaptations of Jacobean tragedy. In the final two screenings, tomorrow night (it’s sold-out but there may be tickets on the door) and on Monday, you have the chance to see two full adaptations of Thomas Middleton and William Rowley’s play The Changeling together with substantial extracts from the other two surviving versions. Monday night’s showing is Compulsion (2009, with Parminder Nagra above), a modern updating of the play set in London’s Asian community – from which I have embedded an extract below. More details of this and the other adaptations in a moment, but I want also to use this round-up to mention that we have organised a very informal discussion group about the season from 3-5pm on Friday afternoon at BFI Southbank; if you think you might like to attend, do please e-mail me via john[at]illuminationsmedia.co.uk. Below, I am compiling through Thursday and Friday a number of links and a handful of reflections about the season so far.

A lost masterpiece

22.04.2013 posted by John Wyver Category: Performance, Television

On Thursday night BFI Southbank screened Roland Joffé’s 1980 BBC television adaptation of John Ford’s play ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore. This was shown as part of ‘Classics on TV: Jacobean tragedy on the small screen’, a season of television productions of early seventeenth century dramas curated by Screen Plays, the academic research project on which I am working with Dr Amanda Wrigley.

On the basis of my memories of seeing ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore on transmission more than three decades ago and of viewing more recently a poor VHS copy of – for some reason – only the first half, I wrote a Screen Plays blog post about the film. I knew this was a significant television production but I was unprepared for the impact of Thursday’s viewing. For me, as for many others in the sold-out auditorium, seeing the drama on a big screen was quite simply overwhelming. This is a major work of British film – I am not embarrassed by the word ‘masterpiece’ – that is all but unknown. And it is is crazy, crazy, crazy that it is hidden away in the archives and has hardly been seen for the past thirty-three years.
Read more »

Live blogging live streaming #aiww

19.04.2013 posted by John Wyver Category: Digital media, Performance

I had a ticket to the National Theatre’s Othello tonight, but circumstances now mean that I’m at home. Which offers the perfect opportunity to watch the online live stream of The Arrest of Ai WeiWei from Hampstead Theatre. The stream is on this page – and I’m offering commentary here (read up from the bottom). Do please contribute to the discussion below.

21:55 Of course no-one contributes to blog discussions anymore, do they?

21:52 I really would love to know how much #aiwwlive stream cost – and how many people watched. We need this information to be shared so that other theatres can consider whether or not this is an approach they want to explore.

21:50 The stream is going to be repeated on a loop for the next 24 hours via the Hampstead Theatre website.
Read more »

Memories of the ‘Dream’

17.04.2013 posted by John Wyver Category: Performance, Television

I was 16 years old in the summer of 1971. At school I had just taken my O’ levels, including English Language and English Literature, for both of which I had been taught by the poet Brian Jones. He told my class that in London there was a production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream which, if we went to see it, we would remember for the rest of our life. I followed his recommendation, even though it meant I had to come back to Canterbury on an early-hours’ milk train. And, as it has for so, so many others, that Dream has stayed with me across the past forty-two years. I’m grateful for so much to Brian Jones, who died in 2009 (see here for my earlier tribute) – and I am eternally grateful to the director of that production, Peter Brook, who thankfully and thrillingly is still with us.
Read more »

RSC back in the USA

8.04.2013 posted by John Wyver Category: Performance

These past few months I have spent a good deal of time in Stratford-upon-Avon, where I have been exploring further collaborations with the Royal Shakespeare Company. That’s how I know that many of the company’s leading lights, including artistic director Gregory Doran, have this week decamped to New York. The RSC opens its mega- successful musical Matilda on Broadway on Thursday, and the night before Greg’s production of Julius Caesar starts its run at BAM. (For background, see this Wall Street Journal piece.) I have also been reading Sally Beauman’s truly terrific The Royal Shakespeare Company: A History of Ten Decades, first published in 1982 (and which I can’t quite believe I haven’t encountered before). And that is how I came to realise that this year marks the centenary of the first visit to the USA by the company that much later became the RSC.
Read more »

To be… to be… to be… to be… to be… to be… – or not?

29.03.2013 posted by John Wyver Category: Film, Performance, Television

In the diary next week are two Hamlets. On Monday afternoon I am introducing the 1964 television Hamlet at Elsinore at BFI Southbank, and then on Wednesday I have a ticket to the Royal Shakespeare Company’s new production in Stratford-upon-Avon. The former is showing as part of my Screen Plays season Classics on TV: Jacobean tragedy on the small screen. A co-production between BBC Television and Danmarks Radio, it is a fascinating adaptation with Christopher Plummer, Michael Caine, Robert Shaw and Donald Sutherland (and there are still a few tickets to be had). The RSC’s presentation, which stars Jonathan Slinger (above, with Luke Norris as Laertes) and is directed by David Farr, has had mixed reviews this week (Paul Taylor in the Independent largely pro, Michael Billington in the Guardian mixed and the Telegraph‘s Charles Spencer unenthusiastic), although everyone agrees that Slinger is compelling. All of which is my rationale for simply collecting seven versions of ‘To be or not to be’, starting with this one…

Out of the past

25.03.2013 posted by John Wyver Category: Performance, Television

The Screen Plays season of television adaptations of Jacobean tragedies begins tonight at BFI Southbank. We open with a remarkable 1965 production of Thomas Middleton’s play from 1621 Women Beware Women, which I have written about in detail here. The screening will be followed a discussion with Dame Diana Rigg (who plays Bianca) and Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company Gregory Doran. The show is sold out but if I get news of any returns I’ll announce them on the @Illuminations Twitter feed. And you can still purchase tickets for future screenings, including the wonderful 1964 Hamlet at Elsinore (above) with Christopher Plummer on the afternoon of Easter Monday. (Yes, I know the play was written around 1599-1600 and so is not strictly Jacobean.) Meanwhile, below is my Introduction to the season which argues that these great plays remain relevant and resonant today.
Read more »

Penny-plain People

22.03.2013 posted by John Wyver Category: Digital media, Performance

I have written before about NT Live – the National Theatre’s immensely successful live to cinema broadcasts – including about their showings of Hamlet, Frankenstein and Phedre, as well as general pieces here and here. By and large I am a big fan, and out of the recent screenings I loved One Man, Two Guv’nors, admired Timon and was thrilled by The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. But last night’s live showing of Alan Bennett’s People came across as a rare mis-fire, and I left the Ritzy in Brixton (my regular haunt of the Clapham Picturehouse having sold out) feeling a little short-changed (my members ticket had cost £13, full price £17.50). What I have been trying to work out since is the extent to which this was due to Alan Bennett’s squib of a play and how much of my mood was down to the penny-plain presentation from the Southbank.
Read more »