Guest Author - Page 7

When I told people I was going to start a professional producing theatre in Reading the reaction was often the same: a sort of bemused smirk.

My observations at the time of writing and developing Rice was that stories about Asian and South Asian people, whether told through stage, screen or books, tended to focus on family narratives and also stories about the particular ethnic community the characters are from. This meant that if there were Chinese protagonists, then most of the other characters were probably Chinese, they were probably relatives.

Over my 20-year career as a director for theatre, the world we live in and how we communicate has changed beyond recognition. When I first began directing, only a tiny handful of people I knew had mobile phones; now we live a vast proportion of our lives in the digital world and our phones function as a ‘place’ we inhabit, communicate and connect within.

In the words of Cosmo Brown, 'Make 'em laugh' - and how life-affirming to hear waves of laughter ripple through Salisbury Playhouse this week. At times over the past few months, the building has felt like a ghost ship, but now it's awake, buzzing and alive with people having a great night out.

Theatre is the purest form of magic. Heightened with anticipation, we step into a darkened space with a sense of wonder and fascination unmatched anywhere else.

On 14 March, 2020, Rebecca Taichman's original production of Paula Vogel's Indecent played its second preview performance at the Menier Chocolate Factory.

Imagine, if you can, carrying a baby - or your partner carrying a baby - for nine months, and then one day, without any real reason or explanation, that baby dies.

When Little Angel Theatre approached me to write The Wishing Tree it was a literal dream come true. I have long wanted to write a play for this most iconic of children's theatres.

Greenwich+Docklands International Festival (GDIF) is London's annual festival of outdoor theatre and performing arts, probably best known for staging large-scale spectaculars across Greenwich and East London.

It's my hope - after the year we’ve had - that audiences will get the kind of story that sets pulses racing, gets them thinking, talking, connects them.