[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...