Blinding performances: all eyes out on-stage
Last week I went to see Complicite’s Shun-kin, a play which (spoiler alert!) features two fairly nasty incidents of blinding. One is an act of spite; the second, an ultimate demonstration of love, devotion and self-sacrifice. It’s also pretty squirm-inducing: there are needles involved. Wriggling around in my seat, I felt this wasn’t the first time I’d been tempted to cover my eyes to avoid seeing another’s popped out on-stage.
By Holly Williams | Arts | Wednesday, 17 November 2010 at 10:42 am
The Planets – an HD Odyssey: where music meets space missions
The Barbican kicked off their autumn classical music season with an event that showed how our solar system can inspire, in both artistic vision and scientific endeavour.
By Holly Williams | Arts | Monday, 18 October 2010 at 6:48 pm
Edinburgh: on the fringes of the fringe
The “Edinburgh festival” doesn’t exist. The multi-faceted cultural mass that splurges over the city during August is formed of, amongst others, the Edinburgh International Festival (the “official” bit, founded back in 1947), the Fringe festival which sprung up around the EIF (and, to some extent, ate it) plus the book festival, art festival, The Edge [...]
By Holly Williams | Arts | Tuesday, 17 August 2010 at 3:07 pm
Land rights: 100,000 people will march
In 2007, 25,000 people marched for a month across India, to campaign for improved land rights. Some 21.8 million people – usually the countries’ poorest – have been displaced from the land they had been living and working on for generations, as corporations and industry move in.
PV Rajagopal, an Indian activist for charity Ekta Parishad, [...]
By Holly Williams | Notebook, The Foreign Desk | Thursday, 12 August 2010 at 1:49 pm
Arts Council Cuts: a blow for rural areas
Times are tight now, the axe is falling everywhere. But recent Arts Council cuts come as a particular blow in communities that are already struggling to support their cultural institutions. Of course, it’s easy to nod and mutter “had to be done” – until it affects an area you know well.
By Holly Williams | Arts | Tuesday, 13 July 2010 at 11:28 am
Not By Bread Alone: Israeli deafblind theatre comes to North London
When I sent out a mass text message to my friends, inviting them to come with me to a play by an Israeli deafblind theatre company, one charming response was that it sounded “like a parody of something a liberal journo arts graduate would want to see” (although he would have joined me if he [...]
By Holly Williams | Arts | Wednesday, 7 July 2010 at 3:23 pm
Hop Farm: the rest of the fest
Although a recent addition to the summer schedule, Hop Farm guarantees interest this year with an impressive line-up squeezed into just two days. Dominated by rock dinosaurs – from Bob Dylan, Van the Man and Blondie, to Kinks frontman Ray Davies, and Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac fame – the line-up also sees a [...]
By Holly Williams | Arts | Tuesday, 6 July 2010 at 12:30 pm
‘Life Streaming’: technology, intimacy and intensity
When is theatre not theatre? When you sit at a computer, when the “performance” is mostly a typed conversation, when the “actor” is on the other side of the world?
Director Dries Verhoeven’s work is termed “experiential theatre” in his native Netherlands, and is often closer to art installation or an interactive experiment than traditional stagecraft. [...]
By Holly Williams | Arts | Monday, 28 June 2010 at 5:41 pm
Tune Yards: live magic
Sometimes, you go to a gig you just can’t get out of your head. Tune Yards, at Scala near Kings Cross on Wednesday, was one. Not that it’s easy stuff to describe …
My housemate introduced me to Tune Yards, after she saw her stealing the Dirty Projectors’ thunder in a support slot last year. tUnE yArDs [...]
By Holly Williams | Arts | Friday, 25 June 2010 at 6:00 pm
Keeping it in the musical family
As I wrote in a review of the tribute concert for Kate McGarrigle, they really kept it in the family, with parents and kids, brothers and sister, aunts and cousins singing together for a common aim: to celebrate the life and work of a great folk talent. There were Wainwrights, McGarrigles, Lankens and Thompsons, all [...]
By Holly Williams | Arts | Wednesday, 16 June 2010 at 3:41 pm
Most viewed
|
|
Latest from Independent journalists on Twitter