Evocative American painter Edward Hopper was to be the subject of an exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland this spring. But since visitors can’t go to the museum, the museum can come to them online. Hopper’s paintings are wonderful jumping off points for creative writing, or, as film director Wim Wenders explains, for … Continue reading “Edward Hopper: Telling Stories”
What is the song being described here?
One of the nice results of the current lockdown, from an audience point of view, is that the UK’s National Theatre is going to be making selected shows available for a week at a time on YouTube. The National Theatre has announced a show a week for the month of April. They are filmed shows … Continue reading “Watch UK’s National Theatre Productions at Home!”
Judy Garland was a child singing star and a global star of stage and screen. Her starring role in The Wizard of Oz at 17 made her a household name. A new film stars Renée Zellweger playing Garland in the final year in her short life, when stardom and the Hollywood studio system had taken … Continue reading “Judy Garland”
Taking folk tales from around the world, British company 1927 bring their latest category-busting show to Paris in English in March. Roots began with a book writer Suzanne Andrade found in the British Library. The Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index is a treasure trove of the world’s folk tales. It gives short descriptions of stories, variations of which … Continue reading “An Extraordinary Theatre Experience”
San Francisco theatre company Word for Word’s annual French tour is being postponed to the autumn. This year their show is a coming-of-age story by Mexican-American writer Octavio Solis, Retablos: Stories from a Life Lived Along the Border. They will perform it in Nancy, Paris, Angers and Lyon. For 25 years, Word for Word has … Continue reading “Tales of the US Border in Theatres Around France”
A new film tells the true story of a battle against endemic racism in the American justice system. It’s based on a memoir by Bryan Stevenson, a lawyer in Alabama, and tells the story of his firm’s battle to prove the innocence of Walter McMillian, who was condemned to death for a murder he didn’t … Continue reading “Just Mercy”
In an exhibition in Bordeaux, a British artist pulls African characters from the background of European paintings and puts them centre stage. Lubaina Himid was born in Zanzibar, Tanzania but brought up in England. She was a leading figure of the Black British Art Movement in the 1980s and won the prestigious Turner Prize in … Continue reading “Bringing African Faces to the Foreground”
What does it mean to be British, French or European? In the light of Brexit, journalist Alex Taylor will discuss this thorny question in a free talk at the British Council on Thursday 5 March. Taylor is proudly bi-national, bi-cultural and multilingual. A convinced European, he has been reporting on Europe, and Britain, in France … Continue reading “Alex Taylor on What it Means to Be British”
Greta Gerwig’s new adaptation of the classic coming-of-age story Little Women retells the story of the novel in parallel with the life of its author, Louisa May Alcott. Alcott wrote the novel in 1868. She had been writing stories commercially for several years when a publisher asked her to write a novel for girls. Alcott … Continue reading “Little Women: Big Film”
