In the Studio

Agatha Christie is the world's most translated author, with her work being available in over 100 languages. And one of her most beloved characters, Miss Marple, is about to be resurrected with the help of 12 contemporary authors. In The Studio talks to two of those writers: Dreda Say Mitchell who specialises in a different type of crime story, the gritty gangster genre, and Kate Mosse, who is known for her historical sagas. They reveal how they rose to the challenge of reinventing one of the most famous characters in 20th Century fiction.

Maggie O’Farrell’s historical novel Hamnet was published in 2020 to great critical acclaim, winning the Women's Prize. It tells the story of a gifted herbalist, Agnes Hathaway, who is married to a young William Shakespeare. We follow her on her journey as they meet, marry, and later come to terms with the death of their 11-year-old son, Hamnet. Now, the Royal Shakespeare Company is putting Hamnet on stage for the first time in Shakespeare’s birthplace of Stratford-upon-Avon. Presenter Dan Hardoon follows the RSC’s Acting Artistic Director Erica Whyman throughout the rehearsal process. We also hear from award-winning playwright Lolita Chakrabarti on the challenges of adapting the novel for the stage, and from cast and crew as they get ready for opening night.

Beyond Belief - The Life And Mission Of John Hume is a new drama musical about the Irish politician who was one of the architects of the Northern Ireland peace process. Marie-Louise Muir goes behind the scenes of the production staged in Hume's home city of Derry with its director Kieran Griffiths. She follows his young company of actors rehearsing for a major production which will be streamed live globally on the 25th anniversary of the signing of the historic peace accord, the Good Friday Agreement.

The poet Nikita Gill has written several volumes of poetry, and enjoys engaging poetically with her audience using social media. Her work often explores Greek Myths, and her latest project continues with that theme as she embarks on a series of four books, each one focusing on a single goddess. For this episode of In The Studio, we join her as she starts with Hekate, often known as the Goddess of Witchcraft, and about whom little is known, other than that she was brought up in the underworld by Styx. Nikita describes Hekate as a dark anti-feminine goddess and a protest against what is expected of women which is what appealed to her. But how do you go about creating a life for someone who is so mysterious? And as Nikita will also be illustrating her work, how will she decide how to visually portray her? Follow Nikita across several months as she works towards completing her first draft of this exciting new work.

Nick Duncalf meets artist Theo Jansen at his studio in Delft, as he creates his latest Strandbeests, multi-legged creatures designed to walk the sands of Holland’s North Sea coast. Outside his workshop, the grass is littered with bleached plastic pipes; the skeletons of strandbeests past. He has been building these creatures for decades. Each year, new creatures - some the size of shopping trolleys, some the size of cars - are designed, tested, and allowed to run free across the sands. At a battered work table, Theo toils over sections of pipe, heating and bending and attaching pieces of what will become the skeletons of the new beests. In recent years, the Strandbeests have become internet stars, hugely popular on Instagram and Youtube. Theo began this project in 1990, when he was 42 years old. He tells Nick of his annual quest to bring these creatures to life, and to prepare them to battle the elements on the beach. Each year brings new challenges, new dreams, new failures, and new triumphs. Aged 74, Theo will not have another 33 years to continue his work. He is confronting the time limitations of this project, and his own legacy as an artist. There is a renewed sense of urgency in his work, and his boundless energy, enthusiasm and optimism mean that this year’s strandbeests will be more ambitious than ever.

Author Sofi Oksanen shares with Olga Smirnova how she begins a new novel. Olga witnesses how Sofi painstakingly gathers details for the lives of her characters, from choosing the colour of their nail varnish, to the perfumes they prefer, and the difference in the smell of Estonian and Soviet women. Olga visits Sofi’s writing studio in a bohemian quarter of Helsinki where they both listen to the silence which is so important for Sofi to write. We discover why sometimes kneading dough and chopping carrots or onions can help the process. Having an Estonian heritage, Sofi is fascinated by Soviet history. The theme of war in Ukraine is never far from Olga's conversations with Sofi as they discuss how it impacts upon the writing process.

Faig Ahmed is one of Azerbaijan’s best-known contemporary artists, and has won international acclaim for his fantastical woven artworks. Based on Azerbaijan’s ancient carpet weaving traditions, his pieces explore the visual language of classic rug design to radical effect. Pieces can distort and bulge, grow deep-tufted pelts or rise off the walls into the gallery space overhead. His work has been described as psychedelic, surreal, even iconoclastic. Speaking from his weaving workshop in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, Faig Ahmed talks to broadcaster and artist Bidisha Mamata about the process of making these pieces, working with a traditionally all-female team of carpet-weavers who use centuries-old techniques to create his intricate designs. Ahmed also works in other mediums including painting, video and installation, all fed by a restless curiosity and experimental zeal. So we also hear about one of his current works-in-progress: A large-scale performance piece, through which he is exploring the fundamentals of social interaction.

A poet can’t sleep. She sits at a desk in a wooden house at the heart of a palm forest, watching the night sky through the window. The full moon lights up the palm fronds, which dance in the wind. She has been tasked with writing a poem that will be sent into space, to another planet’s distant moon. What should she say? What is the message in a bottle that she should launch out into the solar system? How can she begin writing a poem that speaks of the fragile wonders of our home planet? That expresses our hope that there might be other life out there somewhere, in the stars? In the Studio follows US poet laureate Ada Limón as she crafts an original poem dedicated to NASA’s Europa Clipper mission to Jupiter’s icy moon. Her poem will be engraved on the Clipper spacecraft, which will launch in 2024 and travel 1.8 billion miles to reach Europa - a journey that will last six years. We follow Ada’s creative process over several months, from her first meetings with the NASA team, through many drafts of the poem and a visit to NASA’s jet propulsion laboratory in California to see the Europa Clipper under construction.

Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai is an award-winning Vietnamese writer whose debut novel The Mountains Sing, published in English in 2020, won the International Book Awards in 2021 and was runner-up in the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. It portrays the lives of four generations of a Vietnamese family enduring many hardships, something she understands well from her own upbringing. In conversation with presenter Felicity Finch, Quế Mai shares her writing process as she works on her second novel Dust Child, which is about Amerasians, children of American military men who were abandoned during The Vietnam War. Meetings with her New York publisher and editor Betsy Gleick help guide her through the many months of development as well as her desire to retain the Vietnamese-ness of her prose. This programme was first broadcast in May 2022, but for this version, as dust Child is about to be published, Felicity takes the opportunity to catch up with Quế Mai, to find out how that feels.

Restaurateur Keith McNally is a 71-year-old Londoner, the son of a longshoreman and office cleaner, who moved to New York in 1976. Forty-five years later, he is one of the most celebrated restaurateurs in the city. In 2004, The New York Times dubbed him “the restaurateur who invented Downtown.” In this episode of In the Studio, we get a glimpse into the mind of this unique creative talent, who used his early career in film and theatre to dominate an altogether different stage. The flagship of his New York restaurants is Balthazar, which is packed day and night and has been in operation for more than 25 years. But who is Keith McNally, and how has he created such an iconic success in such a cutthroat business?