Fierce Festival is a “youthful and joy-filled festival of international theatre, performance and experiences” which takes place in and around Birmingham every two years.   Midlands editor Steve Orme spoke to Fierce’s artistic director Clayton Lee and Adam Kinner whose one-to-one show Manual will be presented daily in the Library of Birmingham.   Fierce Festival will run from Tuesday 15 until Saturday 19 October.   (Photo: Clayton Lee and Adam Kinner, credit Steve Orme)

In 2009, TV writers Trevor Suthers and John Chambers put together a night of short, brand new plays written by established TV writers which took its name from its original venue, the Joshua Brooks pub on Princess Street in Manchester. Fifteen years on, and now at fringe venue 53two, JB Shorts is an established biannual event on the Manchester theatre calendar with its two-week runs of six 15-minute plays. With the 25th JB Shorts about to open, BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Trevor...

Derby Theatre is to present a new play, Welfare, by local playwright Abi Zakarian, that will take audiences to The Derbyshire Miners’ Holiday Camp in Skegness, where miners went initially to convalesce and later to holiday, as it was turned into a holiday camp for Derbyshire miners and their families. Midlands Editor Steve Orme spoke to director Sarah Brigham and three of the actors, Jo Mousley, Hanna Winter and John Holt-Roberts, about the play and about the history behind it, both local...

The next production to open at the Rose Theatre in Kingston, London is a new adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, adapted for the stage by Suzanne Heathcote and directed by Christopher Haydon, Rose Theatre’s Artistic Director. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Christopher just before a rehearsal for the play about the adaptation, working with one of his literary heroes, the necessity for co-productions and the state of arts funding and arts education in the UK at the moment. ...

Guy Masterson, one of the most well-known and well-respected theatre producers on the Edinburgh Fringe, this year celebrates his thirtieth consecutive festival season. However, he has announced that this is also to be his last festival visit as a producer. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Guy just after the first performance of one of the shows in his programme for this year about producing nearly 150 shows over three decades, the trials and joys of producing, writing, directing and...

2024 marks twenty years since Just the Tonic venues first appeared at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, although founder Darrell Martin had been putting on shows at the festival since 2002 and started the company by running Sunday night comedy clubs in 1994. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Darrell before the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe about 20 years on the Fringe, the current state of the Edinburgh festival season, getting into the business as a fan of comedy in the ‘80s, running comedy clubs...

Writer-director Paul Hendy brings back three comedians through performers Bob Golding, Damian Williams and Simon Cartwright. Every year, the Edinburgh Fringe programme features solo performances about real people, which in the past have included Bob Golding as Eric Morecambe in Tim Whitnall’s Morecambe from 2009, Damian Williams as Tommy Cooper in Being Tommy Cooper by Tom Green from 2012 and Simon Cartwright as Bob Monkhouse in The Man Called Monkhouse by Alex Lowe from 2015. ...

Pitlochry Festival Theatre in Scotland and The New Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich are co-producing a new production of the stage musical Footloose, based on the ‘80s film of the same name that starred Kevin Bacon. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to New Wolsey Artistic Director Douglas Rintoul, who will direct the production, and Pitlochry’s Artistic Director, Elizabeth Newman, about the production, other musicals that both their theatres are producting this year (Little Shop of Horrors,...

Guildford Shakespeare Company began with an outdoor production of Much Ado About Nothing in Guildford Castle Grounds in 2006. Eighteen years on, the company is celebrating its coming of age with a production of Romeo and Juliet which mostly takes place along Guildford High Street. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to the company’s founders, Matt Pinches and Sarah Gobran, about the production and about the challenges, practical and financial, of mounting their style of theatre in spaces that...

The 2024 summer season at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in London will open with a new production of William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night Or What You Will directed by Owen Horsley, an Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company and an Associate Director for Cheek by Jowl. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Owen at a break during rehearsals about his approach to the play, his love of Shakespeare and the perhaps unusual way he was originally introduced to the Bard’s work. Twelfth...

Actor, writer, choreographer and film-maker Lanre Malaolu’s play Samskara had a sell-out run at London’s Yard Theatre in 2022 and was subsequently published by Nick Hern Books. Now, I See is the second play of what has become a trilogy which, like the first part, examines family relationships through a modern black, British lens. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Lanre about the play, his writing process, how his work comes from his own experiences and observations and his introduction...

Actor Greg Hicks has played many leading roles at the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company over the last forty years, as well as starring on the West End and appearing on screen in films including The Mercy and Snow White and the Huntsman. He is about to perform a one-man show, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, based on a short story by Dostoyevsky, at the new Marylebone Theatre in London. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to him a few days before it opened about the play and how...

Danish theatre company fix+foxy premièred Dark Noon at the 2023 Edinburgh Festival Fringe which “explores one of the great American myths—the Wild West” through seven South African actors. The production will be restaged at Manchester’s Aviva Studios this spring. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to co-directors Tue Biering and Nhlanhla Mahlangu about what and whose story the play is telling and about the process of creating it. Dark Noon will be performed in the South Warehouse of Aviva...

Following Night of the Living Dead—Remix and Dracula: The Untold Story, imitating the dog is again collaborating with Leeds Playhouse, this time on a new adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein co-created by Pete Brooks, Andrew Quick and Simon Wainwright. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Andrew Quick during rehearsals at Leeds Playhouse about the technical challenges of this two-hander for creators and performers, the state of touring shows around the UK and Europe at the moment and...

For Christmas 2023, there were two new stage adaptations of stories by Roald Dahl in the UK: The Witches at the National Theatre in London and The Enormous Crocodile at Leeds Playhouse, the first to be co-produced by the Roald Dahl Story Company. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to the company’s Artistic Director of Theatre, Jenny Worton, about what the Roald Dahl Story Company actually is, how it develops new shows based on Dahl’s books and some of the plans for the future. The National...

Pilot Theatre, a York-based touring company that creates theatre for young people is to tour England in February and March 2024 with an adaptation of David Almond’s book A Song for Ella Grey, written by Zoe Cooper and directed by Pilot’s Artistic Director, Esther Richardson. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Esther while the production was still in rehearsal about the play, its North East setting, having a TikTok star in the title role, the process of adapting a challenging novel for the...

Physical theatre company Gecko, based in Ipswich, was founded in 2001 by Amit Lahav, who is still its Artistic Director. The company’s latest production, Kin, toured the UK in 2023 and will be at the National Theatre in London in January 2024. Amit spoke to BTG Editor David Chadderton about the origins of the production in the story of his grandmother Leah’s journey from Yemen to Palestine as a child in 1932 to escape persecution, how this developed to look at migration stories more widely,...

Mark Thomas is a stand-up comic whose work for stage and TV has frequently crossed over into theatre and into political activism, in some cases resulting in changes in the law. He is currently performing a show he hasn’t written himself for the first time, England & Son by award-winning playwright Ed Edwards. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Mark while the play was touring about the play, the importance of storytelling, football, class, what makes a ‘creative act’, Oliver Cromwell,...

The Prince of Egypt, the DreamWorks animated film from 1998, was brought to the West End stage in 2020 at the Dominion Theatre but had to take a break due to the COVID lockdown. It completed its run the following year when it was filmed for a cinema release. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to the show’s composer and lyricist, multi-Grammy and Academy Award-winner Stephen Schwartz, about the show’s West End run and how it originally came about, as well as some of his views on songwriting. ...

Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre and Tamasha will present Tanika Gupta’s adaptation of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens set during the Indian partition in Bengal, directed by Pooja Ghai, Artistic Director of Tamasha BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Pooja during rehearsals about the production, the history and concept behind Tamasha and a recently announced programme to “diversify dramaturgy” funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation. Great Expectations will run at the Royal Exchange...

Dublin Theatre Festival in Ireland has been running since 1957, and Willie White has been its Artistic Director and Chief Executive since 2011. BTG Editor David Chadderton spoke to Willie about the 2023 festival and the history and general focus of the festival. Dublin Theatre Festival runs from 28 September to 15 October 2023. After the Silence, image credit Juliana França Nurith Wagner-Strauss Truth’s A Dog Must To Kennel, image credit Amy Gibson  Warrior - Karen Egan, photo Shane...

Glasgow-based writer Nat McCleary’s play Thrown for National Theatre Scotland is set in the world of backhold wrestling and is concluding its tour of Scotland with a run at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh as part of the Edinburgh International Festival. It is directed by Johnny McKnight, who spoke to BTG Editor David Chadderton at the mid-point of the festival about the play, Scottish traditions, this year’s festivals and the influence panto has had on everything he does in theatre. ...

Towards the end of its summer season, Pitlochry Festival Theatre will present the world première of a new play by Peter Arnott, Group Portrait in a Summer Landscape, set in a Perthshire country house during the Scottish Independence referendum of 2014, directed by David Greig in a co-production with Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum Theatre. The main character Rennie is played by John Michie, best-known as DI Robbie Ross in TV’s Taggart, and his friend Moon is played by fellow Scottish actor Benny...

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...