British Theatre Guide podcast

Kimber Lee's provocatively titled winner of the first International Award from the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting in 2019, untitled f*ck m*ss s**gon play, opened in June 2023 at the Royal Exchange Theatre as part of the Manchester International Festival and will transfer to the Young Vic in London later in the year.

In the lead role of Kim is Mei Mac, who was nominated for a Best Actress Olivier Award earlier this year for playing 4-year-old Mei Kusakabe in the Royal Shakespeare Company production of My Neighbour Totoro at the Barbican in London.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Mei in the middle of the Manchester run and asked her about performing in this often physical and funny production and the serious questions it raises, as well as her experiences in Totoro with the RSC and director Phelim McDermott.

untitled f*ck m*ss s**gon play is at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester until 22 July 2023, then at the Young Vic in London from 18 September to 4 November 2023.

(Photo of Mei Mac as Kim by Other Richard - Richard Davenport)

As You Like It is one of William Shakespeare's most popular comedies. Omar Elerian, who is directing his first show for the Royal Shakespeare Company, was keen to explore it from a "fresh and new perspective", so he has cast a company of actors who are mostly over 70. BTG's Midlands editor Steve Orme spoke to two of the actors, 73-year-old Malcolm Sinclair and Maureen Beattie who's 69. He asked them what it's like performing in a company of mature actors and whether there's still age discrimination in the industry. As You Like It continues in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford until Saturday 5 August.

(Photo of Malcolm Sinclair and Maureen Beattie by Steve Orme)

Jenny Sealey has been artistic director of Graeae since 1997, a theatre company, which, according to its web site, "boldly places Deaf and disabled artists centre-stage in a diversity of new and existing plays".

In that time, she has directed many productions, including co-directing the opening ceremony of the 2012 Paralympics in London with Bradley Hemmings.

However, for her next production, Self Raising, for the Edinburgh Fringe, she will be performing herself for the first time in three decades in a solo piece co-written with Mike Kenny based on her own early life in a family in which she was the only Deaf person.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Jenny about her return to acting ("terrifying"), the play, what Edinburgh Fringe and Edinburgh the city is currently like for a Deaf or disabled person, the excitement and problems of creating the opening ceremony (coming up against the doubts of Jeremy Hunt) and more.

Self Raising will be at the Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh from 2 to 27 August 2023 at 12:30PM.

The Greenhouse is billed as the UK's first zero-waste performance space, holding up to 50 audience members in its in-the-round venue made from found and recycled materials.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Oli Savage, Artistic Director of The Greenhouse about the challenges and joys of making theatre of all kinds in a zero-waste way.

The summer 2023 programme opened at Royal Docks in East London on 11 May and runs until 4 June. The theatre will then move to Canary Wharf from 19 June to 14 July, then Battersea Power Station from 7 August to 3 September.

Pitlochry Festival Theatre in Scotland has announced a repertory season for 2023 featuring a 19-strong ensemble of actors performing in 8 different productions, starting with the musical Gypsy.

While the show was still in rehearsal, BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to the two lead actors: Blythe Jandoo who plays Louise, and Shona White, who plays Louise's formidable mother, Rose.

Gypsy runs at Pitlochry Festival Theatre from 19 May to 30 September 2023, while Elizabeth Newman's adaptation of The Secret Garden will run from 7 July to 19 August and The Maggie Wall by Martin McCormick from 9 to 28 June.

Other productions in the season include Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, Emma Rice's adaptation of Noël Coward's Brief Encounter, new plays from Peter Arnott and Isla Cowan—Group Portrait In A Summer Landscape and To The Bone—and Sherlock Holmes: A Study in Lipstick, Ketchup and Blood by Lesley Hart.

Cornwall's popular and highly acclaimed theatre company Kneehigh shut down in 2021, the year after its 40th anniversary.

When the company closed, the Kneehigh Cookbook, an online educational resource, also closed, but it has become the basis for an ongoing archive of all of the company's work, This is Kneehigh, hosted by Falmouth University and supported by digital arts platform The Space.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Kneehigh founder Mike Shepherd and lead archivist for the project Sarah Jane from Falmouth University about the archive, the process of archiving live performance, the closure of the company and Mike's ongoing creative work at The Barns, the former home of Kneehigh in Cornwall which he continues to run as a creative arts facility.

Contact details can be found on the This is Kneehigh web site—Sarah welcomes any feedback on the site.

David Wood OBE, described by the late great Times theatre critic Irving Wardle as "the national children's dramatist", has written more than 70 plays, including adaptations of books by Judith Kerr, Michelle Magorian, Philippa Pearce and Roald Dahl, as well as original plays of his own.

From 1959 until 2005, David kept up regular correspondence with Frank Whitbourn, whom he credits as his mentor, which is currently being edited into a book called Frank Exchanges.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to David when he was still working on the manuscript with editor Chris Abbott about the book and how Frank's observations helped his career, as well as about writing for children, producing children's theatre with his company Whirligig Theatre, the status of children's theatre in the industry, cultural clashes in theatre-in-education in the 1980s and much more.

Frank Exchanges is due to be published by The Book Guild on 28 June 2023.

[Image of David Wood and Frank Whitbourn at Whitbourn's home in Winchester, 2001, credit: Mary Wright]

Factory International announced the 2023 edition of the biannual Manchester International Festival at an event at New Century Hall in Manchester on 14 March.

After the announcement, BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Manchester International Festival's Artistic Director and Chief Executive John McGrath, Adam Szabo from Manchester Collective about their co-production with Slung Low of Benjamin Britten's community opera Noah's Flood, Scottee about acting as dramaturg for a musical adaptation of Larry Mitchell and Ned Asta's cult 1977 book The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions and MIF's Creative Director, Low Kee Hong.

Manchester International Festival 2023 runs from 29 June to 16 July at venues all around the city centre and beyond.

(Images: John McGrath, credit Tarnish Vision; Low Kee Hong; Rakhi Singh and Adam Szabo, co-founders of Manchester Collective, photo by Robin Clewley.)

David Greig is a leading Scottish playwright and Artistic Director of Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh.

In 2016, he adapted The Suppliant Women, the only fully extant play in a trilogy by Aeschylus, and is now adapting the other two plays in the trilogy, even though only fragments of the originals still exist, the first of which, The Egyptians, opens at Gulbenkian Arts Centre in Canterbury, Kent at the end of February 2023.

BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to David about the fascinating process or reconstructing these ancient works, staging them in a way that gives a modern audiences a similar experience to those who watched them 2,500 years ago rather than as museum pieces and his views on Scottish theatre.

The Egyptians will have an initial run at Gulbenkian Arts Centre in Canterbury from 22 to 25 February 2023.

Macbeth (an undoing) by Zinnie Harris, after Shakespeare, runs at Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh, also until 25 February.

Joe O'Byrne has been producing his own work for stage around the North West, often to great acclaim, for some years, but recently, he has been taking more work further afield than ever.

This year, he will again tour his ghost story The Haunting of Blaine Manor and four of his Tales from Paradise Heights, a series of plays that share characters and a location with interlocking stories: The Bench, Diane's Deli, Strawberry Jack and I'm Frank Morgan: Rewired.

BTG Editor David Chadderton has been following Joe's work for over a decade, and he spoke to him about his work and his newly increased energy and ambition for taking his work around the UK, and potentially onto TV.

For more information on all of Joe's work for stage, screen and canvas, see talesfromparadiseheights.com, and also check out his YouTube channel.