Today on Women’s Outlook I’ll be running the interview with Nick Harkaway that I made last week at Mr. B’s. You can listen online via the Ujima Radio website. I’ll post the Listen Again links tomorrow.
Also on the show is Philippe Bonneau. I so enjoyed the talk about Chartreuse that he gave at Independent Spirit that I wanted to share it with everyone.
In the evening I’ll be off to the theatre. I’ll be seeing a performance of Frogs by Aristophanes, put on my by pals the Hecate Theatre Company.
Paulette is on holiday, so hosting of today’s Women’s Outlook show fell mostly to me. My thanks to Jackie for giving me 15 minutes off for a breather. Aside from that I did a whole two hour show.
We began with an interview with James Peries of Bristol Old Vic, talking about the show he put on as a memorial to the Jamaican/British playwright, Alfred Fagon. This is a fascinating, if somewhat depressing story. Fagon moved to the UK from Jamaica in the 1950s and, after spells in the railways and army (where he became a boxing champion) he moved to Bristol and got involved in the theatre. Acting led to writing and production, and he got as far as having one play produced on BBC2 before his untimely death. The way in which he was treated by the Metropolitan Police following his death is a national disgrace, and I’m very pleased that a statue of him was put up in Bristol. The award named after him, which benefits young African and Caribbean playwrights, is producing some tremendous results.
By the way, if you are in Bristol, you may want to check out the Old Vic’s production of Great Expectations. The part of Miss Havisham is being taken by Adjoa Andoh who will be better known to you as Martha Jones’ mum in Doctor Who.
The second half hour of the show features Suzie Price-Rajah who is part of the team organizing the Art on the Hill art trail in South Bristol this coming weekend. There’s load of amazing stuff going on. I wish I had the time to go along.
The whole of the first hour is available via the Listen Again feature here.
As noted above, Jackie took over for 15 minutes at the start of the second hour, I think talking mainly about garden gnomes. I’m back after that talking to Suzie again, this time about her career as a diversity trainer.
The final half hour had me talking to Marti Burgess and Delroy Hibbert about the Media Diversity UK campaign, which you may know from the @WritersOfColour Twitter account. Much as I love doing radio, and have my own little piece of the diversity jigsaw to push forward, I very much want to see these folks do well.
The second hour of the show is available via the Listen Again feature here.
When I get the time I will make both the Alfred Fagon and Media Diversity interviews available as stand-alone podcasts.
Yesterday’s Women’s Outlook show began with me interviewing local writer, Bea Hitchman. I first met Bea as part of the 2012 LGBT History Month activities, and have been looking forward to her book, Petite Mort, ever since. I’m delighted to say that I was very impressed with the book. You can find out more about it by listening to the show. Suffice it to say for now that we spent a lot of time talking about the history of cinema, and I got to talk about the lovely little town of Niles.
After the ads we were joined by Kate Dunn. I was somewhat under-prepared for this, for which my apologies to Kate, but as it turned out she fitted in really well. Her book about the early history of television, Do Not Adjust Your Set, sounds really interesting. The TV program of the same name has a Wikipedia page. I particularly loved the Bonzos, and the superhero serial staring David Jason as Captain Fantastic and Denise Coffey as the villainous Mrs. Black.
The second half hour features Paulette talking to some fabulous local charity initiatives, including a couple of brave young ladies who are planning to row across the Atlantic.
In hour two, the second half hour thereof, I’m in on an interview with Edson Burton, a fabulous local playwright and poet. I very much want to catch his new play, The Ithaca Axis, which is a modern take on the tale of Odysseus that takes place in and around the streets of Bristol.
I spent all of yesterday in Bristol. Mainly that was because I had a whole hour of live radio to fill, and two fabulous guests. The show is available here. To whet your appetites, here is some of what we discussed.
The first half hour is devoted to Stephanie Saulter and her fabulous debut novel, Gemsigns. I’ll do a proper review soon, but right now please take it that this one is highly recommended. If you listen to Stephanie talk about the book I’m sure you’ll understand some of the reasons why. The discussion ranges fairly widely, and includes mention of genetic engineering, Heinlein and the X-men, plus Stephanie’s equally talented brother, Storm, whose movie, Better Mus’ Come, is reviewed in the New York Times. Mostly we talk about the dehumanization of minority groups, and there’s a special shout out to Bristol MP, Kerry McCarthy, for her support of the Lucy Meadows vigil.
The second half hour features Hannah-Marie Chidwick of the Hecate Theatre Company. The discussion revolves around around the challenges faced by women in the theatre, what happens when women play roles written for men, and a whole lot of gender politics. There are special mentions for Stella Duffy (obviously) and for stand-up comedian, Elf Lyons, whom I met on Tuesday night at Hecate’s “Curtains for Feminism” event.
My thanks to Stephanie and Hannah for being great guests, to Judeline and Shanice on the panel, the Adrian our tech guy, and of course to Paulette for letting me take over half of her show. I continue to cringe at how many mistakes I make, but everyone else says I’m doing OK and I keep getting invited back so I guess I must be improving.
After the show I took Stephanie around bookstore in Bristol where she could sign copies of her book. There’s nothing quite like watching a debut author see her books on the shelf for the first time. Also she’s very smart and we had lots to talk about, which made it a great afternoon.
Dinner in My Burrito (where they have a lovely new chiptole meatball recipe going) was followed by a trip to Foyles with Jo Hall to see Sarah Le Fanu launch her latest book, Dreaming of Rose. There was fizzy booze, and cupcakes.And finally Jo and I had a meeting with the Bristol Literary Festival folks to hatch plans.
I managed almost 24,000 steps on the pedometer during the day. I’m was very stiff this morning.
Sorry about the lack of bloggage recently. Yesterday and much of today are being taken up with an urgent piece of work for the day job. It makes me money, and nothing else I do does, so I have to give it priority.
Tonight I’m off to Bristol for Curtains for Feminism?, an event put on by the all-woman Hecate Theatre Company which asks, “What should theatre for women really be about?” It sounds fun anyway, but in addition I’ll be interviewing the company’s Artistic Director, Hannah-Marie Chidwick, live on Ujima Radio.
Also on tomorrow’s show I’ll be talking about designer babies with debut SF writer, Stephanie Saulter. Her novel, Gemsigns, is launching at Eastercon, but if you happen to be in Bristol we’ll be leaving some signed copies in Foyles and Blackwells tomorrow afternoon.
Thursday is also an exciting day as it will see the publication of the study on the impact of science fiction on technology by Jon Turney that I helped with. Jon talks about it here.
And after that it is Easter, so all of the UK will shut down for four days and I’ll have a chance to get on with some book production.
No, not another flame war, actual dramatic presentations.
Firstly Marjorie writing about the Neverwhere production at the Progress Theatre in Reading.
And secondly James Bacon writing about a “shadow theatre” production of The Nightmare Before Christmas that was staged at Arisia.
Given the number of Hugo voters who attend Arisia, the latter has a good chance of getting a nomination, I suspect.
A Manchester pub/theatre is staging a play based on Alan Moore and Ian Gibson’s legendary 2000AD comic series, The Ballad of Halo Jones. James Bacon has been to see it, and has written a review for Forbidden Planet International. It sounds like it was an excellent event. As far as I can make out, the play was only staged for a few nights, and has now finished its run. Maybe someone will decide to stage it elsewhere soon.
Dramatic Presentation, Long Form nominee, James?