Innehållsförteckning för September 2023 från Ink Pellet

The Festival programme features thousands of free film screenings, special events and previews, and interactive Q&A sessions with screen industry professionals, making it the perfect opportunity to support young people in enjoying the big screen experience. The Into Film Festival is a free, annual, nationwide celebration of film & education for 5-19 year olds, and this year marks the incredible 10th Into Film Festival, with a packed programme of screenings and events. Having welcomed a cumulative 3 million teachers and pupils to the Festival over the years, this year there will be over 2,300 screenings, previews, and events in 500 cinemas across the UK totalling half a million free seats. This year’s programme of films, will be covering far-reaching themes, including marginalised voices, anti-bullying, mental-health awareness and film industry careers,…

ABTT THEATRE SHOW 2024 Bring your students to the ONLY exhibition in the UK focussing specifically on theatre and live events. Taking place at the stunning Alexandra Palace there are opportunities to join hands-on workshops, technical demonstrations, taster sessions and speak to education/apprenticeship providers in the world of theatre, events, festivals, music and more. Cost: FREE Dates: 5-6th June 2024, Alexandra Palace, London www.abtt.org.uk A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE BY ARTHUR MILLER Arthur Miller’s visceral and compelling masterpiece of unspoken desires, obsessive jealousy and tribal loyalties in a brand-new production, co-produced by Chichester Festival Theatre, Octagon Theatre Bolton, Rose Theatre and Headlong (prescribed practitioners on the AQA syllabus). Cost: CFT offers £8.50 tickets to school groups, plus one free teacher ticket with every nine paid (please see other venues’ websites…

How did it all start? With am-dram. I grew up in Dartford where my mum was very involved with Dartford Amateur Operatic and Dramatic Society (DAODS) and I got drawn in. I attended dance classes at Woodlands House too. Then, when I reached secondary school age, I went to Arts Ed School in Chiswick – commuting daily from Dartford. I did my vocational training at Arts Ed too, finally graduating when I was 21. The really good thing about training, although some people get into the business without it, is that it helps you to work out who you are. That’s the most important thing Arts Ed did for me, really. What was your first professional job break? The summer season in Cannes for Dougie Squires which I did straight…

Every year NT commissions ten short, large-cast plays from a diverse range of important playwrights and offers them for performance by youth theatres and school groups whose members are aged 13-19. The NT has 36 partner theatre venues across the UK from Pitlochry to Plymouth and from Keswick to Kent, along with two in Northern Ireland. Connections groups, who have chosen which play to work on, are invited to perform at these venues. Of these, ten productions are then chosen to take part in a week-long festival at NT’s Dorfman Theatre on London’s South Bank – effectively the best production of each of the commissioned plays. This year I saw (Circle Dreams Around the Terrible, Terrible Past) [brackets – SIC] by Simon Longman in the hands of Ilkley Player’s Greenroom…

I spent the last weekend of the summer holiday teaching a dear colleague, one that turned forty this year, how to ride a bicycle. It was awkward, he was embarrassed, I was patient, but it felt odd. I was flattered that they’d asked me to help them, honored even to be given the task of overseeing that particular rite of passage. I’ve cycled to work for over a decade, lucky to live near enough to where I teach to make it possible. But I’ve ridden bikes for as long as I can remember. There are photographs of me getting my first bike aged 8 or so, as a Christmas present. It was royal blue, with double tubing in the frame and a coaster brake (where you need to pedal backwards…

Itch – Opera Holland Park – Jonathan Dove, libretto by Alasdair Middleton, based on the Itch novels by Simon Mayo Itchingham Lofte aka as Itch (Adam Temple-Smith) is a geeky teenager who collects samples of elements. He’d really like some uranium for his birthday: cue for audience laughter. With the help of his long-suffering younger sister Jack (Natasha Agarwal) he finds a rock on a beach which seems to be radioactive. He has discovered a new element – and one which has huge commercial, destructive potential so others want to take possession of it for ignoble reasons. Eventually, of course, good triumphs over evil. Temple-Smith finds terrific sensitivity in Itch, using his colourful voice to denote a wide range of emotions and Agarwal blends with him well. There’s a strong…

The Woman in Black ran for an incredible 33 years in the West End, and is now touring the UK again. Did you anticipate the show would have such a long life when it first opened? Oh no, we thought it would run for six weeks! It opened in Scarborough in 1988, and it started because they had a pantomime on in the theatre and Alan Ayckbourn who was the Artistic Director wanted to have something to put into the studio theatre alongside the pantomime. Stephen Mallatratt went on holiday and at the airport he picked up The Woman in Black. He was then lying on a beach in Greece and thought he could make this work on the stage. When he wrote to me asking if he could adapt…

For most children writing comes after reading. We teach them to recognise words, letters and sentences and then gradually encourage them to imitate what they see, hear and imagine. And as they continue to progress it is axiomatic that the more they read the better they will write – in every sense. The ideas and even grammar and spelling will flow more readily if the young learner is already steeped in the printed word, whether they are reading independently, being read to or a combination of both. This is obvious to any teacher, even my sixth form tutor who long ago, when I was 18, wrote on my report “Susan would write better essays if she read more. I found, and still find, this hilarious because (QED) I’ve been an…