Multi-national, multi-lingual theatre company Footsbarn will be playing a few dates of their new show Crock of Gold in the Allier and Paris before setting off for a summer tour of Ireland. For fifty years, Footsbarn has travelled the world with its unique mix of theatre, music and circus, drawing its inspiration from the many … Continue reading “The Leprechauns and the Crock of Gold”
A musical about Latino communities in New York – it’s not Steven Spielberg’s long-awaited remake of West Side Story but In the Heights – by Hamilton creator Lin Manuel Miranda. It’s all singing, rapping and dancing and screams “summer”! It’s a feelgood story about a Manhattan neighbourhood threatened with gentrification, and the aspirations of the … Continue reading “Musical New York Taken to New Heights”
Nomadland is a fascinating insight to a largely invisible U.S. community: modern-day nomads not so far removed from the Depression-era migrant workers from John Steinbeck’s novels. Based on the non-fiction book Nomadland: Surviving America in the 21st Century by Jessica Bruder, it explores a diverse group of often elderly Americans who have decided to reduce … Continue reading “On the Road: Nomadland”
The Littérature Live Festival will take place in Lyon and the surrounding region, as well as online, from 25 to 30 May 2021. It’s the successor of the annual Assises internationales du Roman and this year features 40 different contemporary authors, quite a few of whom write in English. As well as events at the … Continue reading “Literature Festival in Lyon”
A new biopic of Billie Holiday alleges the blues singer was persecuted by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics over her support for the civil rights movement and her insistence on singing the powerful anti-lynching anthem “Strange Fruit.” Jazz singer Andra Day won a Best Actress Golden Globe for her portrayal of Holiday. The United States … Continue reading “Billie Holiday: Blues and Civil Rights”
No, it isn’t fake news: Covid permitting, there will be an exhibition on Fake News running from 27 May 2021 to January 2022 at the Fondation EDF in Paris. Designed for school groups as well as the general public, it will be a great opportunity to have your pupils develop their critical-thinking skills. The exhibition … Continue reading “Fake News Exhibition”
The winner of the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction, Maggie O’Farrell, is doing a talk at the Irish Cultural Centre, or rather online, for the ICC, on 29 April. She’ll be discussing her winning novel, Hamnet, an imagined biography of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, who died at the age of 11. O’Farrell had been convinced that … Continue reading “Online Talk about “Hamnet” by Maggie O’Farrell”
It was a night of lots of superlatives. The first socially distanced Oscars ceremony, held in the vast halls of LA’s Union Station two months after the original date. The first woman of colour to win best director, and only the second woman at all. The oldest best actor, and a Korean-speaking best supporting actress, … Continue reading “Oscars 2021”
News of the World has many features of a Western but its hero has much more psychological depth than Western heroes of old. The film takes its title from the main character’s job. Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd is a Civil War veteran who now makes his living by travelling from one small frontier town to … Continue reading “Searching for Answers in the West”
The longlist has been announced for Britain’s Women’s Prize for Fiction 2021, which will be awarded in July. The prize was created after the 1991 Booker shortlist contained no books by women writers. To celebrate its 25th year, readers voted for a “winner of winners”: Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun, … Continue reading “Women’s Prize Book News”