Michael Brandon is sitting in an office above the King’s Head theatre in north London, where’s he’s currently playing in Paul Minx’s The Long Road South. The drama, set in the midst of the Civil Rights movement in mid-sixties Indiana, sees some strong wit among the...

Striking and engaging to watch, Lois Chimimba is currently starring as Aly, the teenager struggling to find herself, in Damon Albarn and Moira Buffini’s musical Wonder.land at the National Theatre. Inspired by Lewis Carroll’s literary classic Alice in Wonderland, the show reflects...

As a Sri Lankan Tamil, born in Malaysia but educated in Singapore, Rani Moorthy knows first hand the life as an outsider and one who has had to reinvent herself. States of Verbal Undress is her tenth play for Manchester-based Rasa Theatre. Combining verbatim interviews with her own writing,...

Spotlight on: National Theatre Connections I wrote a piece for the Guardian a couple of years ago about the importance of school plays and it prompted many memories. Whether it was the thrill of being on stage for the first time or the realisation that non-sporty types had found something...

Brooklyn-based American playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury draws an audible breath down the phone from the Bush Theatre in west London when I ask her about the differences in discourse about race on stage between the US and the UK. She’s is the middle of teching for the European première...

Tis the season for men in tights and audience interaction. Panto can be a sure-fire box office winner for most theatres, but in a crowded market and as a new theatre, how do you make your production stand out? At Park Theatre, I met Jez Bond and Mark Cameron, two new kids on the panto block....

There’s nothing as exciting as seeing fresh, vibrant new writing and performance. The Bush theatre’s inaugural RADAR festival in 2012 brought together more than a hundred talented artists and leading theatre-makers from across the country, and provoked debate about the future of...

Award-winning writer Katie Hims writes for television, radio and theatre.  Her stage plays include Bill (Contact Theatre) and The Breakfast Soldiers (Contact Theatre studio and Finborough). Her first radio play The Earthquake Girl won the Richard Imison Award. She has recently completed a...

Manjinder Virk on her new film, Out of Darkness  As an actress, Manjinder Virk won great critical acclaim for her role as Lorraine Dunbar in Clio Barnard’s award winning film, The Arbor, about the life of playwright Andrea Dunbar. She also played the lead role of a British suicide bomber,...

Actor and rapper Riz Ahmed stars in Mira Nair’s film The Reluctant Fundamentalist. He plays Changez, a young Pakistani man pursuing the American corporate dream, but who post 9/11 returns to his native Pakistan as a radicalised university lecturer.  I caught up with him about how the...