A birthday thank you letter

ShakespeareOn this, his 450th birthday, I would like to say thank you to William Shakespeare. As a suggestion of what Shakespeare has given us all, I do not think Bernard Levin can be bettered:  Shakespeare’s language permeates and shapes our thought. But I am not trying to express a generalised academic or cultural judgement: I want to give a personal thank you.
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Inspiration

SRB LearLast year, my theatre-going declined, for a number of reasons I won’t go into here. The gap was, to some extent, bridged by the NT Live re-broadcasts and our autumn was spent revisiting the past: A Habit of Art, Frankenstein, Hamlet.  But it is not the same. When the performance is of the highest quality, nothing, absolutely nothing, matches the intensity, the fullfilment, the full engagement of live theatre. The immediate impact is immense and etches itself so deeply in the mind that it remains powerful, able to revive and catch the breath. Continue reading →

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I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that*

A week since ResearchEd and a plethora of blogs already.  This is appropriate as ResearchEd evolved from, and remains part of, an ongoing  conversation.  Continue reading →

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it happened on Twitter

6.39am and it is not a school day, though my feelings are strangely akin to those felt by our new Year 7s earlier this week. I’m about to start my journey to Dulwich (no, I didn’t know either but it made me think of Margaret Thatcher) for researched 2013.

In the half light this morning, I couldn’t actually see why the whole thing might not be an elaborate scam. Why were those tweets and website any more convincing than the emails one receives about revalidating bank security details or vague acquaintances marooned in south America suddenly needing to borrow a fiver? Why don’t I stay at home and go to my local agricultural show, fundraising for the scouts and looking at very big cows with the rest of my family?

But it is worth trying..because (clap your hands if you believe in Twitter) this could be for real, and it is rather unusual. A ‘wiki-sourced‘ event which I doubt any one is attending because it is part of their formal CPD or because their Head told them to. For a start, we are all going in our own time (take that Mr Gove with your snide allusions to teachers finishing work at 3.30) and secondly the price was affordable for individuals to pay themselves. Heck, I am not even a teacher .. But I am going to believe that the qualifications for attending are interest and enthusiasm and that these might be my people, emerging from the twittersphere. Right, just going to find my copy of Ben Goldacre’s education paper for a re-read on the train, and I am off.

To be continued

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Know the meaning of enough

Last week we listened to Chris Wood, a wonderful folk singer/songwriter who, through his performance style, takes unassuming to an art form. Continue reading →

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Good deeds in a naughty world

Recently I took my daughter’s watch into Timpsons in the hope of repair. It’s a much loved,10-year old Harry Potter-themed watch, whose plastic buckle had become insecure. We knew it was easy to replace the whole strap but this is embroidered with the Hogwarts house crests, Continue reading →

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And finally, on backing vocals…

In 2012 my new year’s resolutions included going to more live performance.  Not simply theatre:  it’s probably obvious that my addiction to live theatre is chronic and acute, thank God.  I made an effort to go to music events, of all sorts Continue reading →

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Pass it on


NickHytnerI was trying to write a blog contrasting quantitative and qualitative approaches to research and posed the example question “Why has Nick Hytner been good for the National Theatre?”.  NTQuantitatively, one would look at revenue and audience numbers, but the post was entirely hijacked by my instinctive (and more qualitative) reaction, so it seemed better just to concede and share this:

Why has Nick Hytner been good for the National Theatre?


alchemist2The History Boys; the number of times Simon Russell Beale has appeared on stage there in the last ten years;  Jerry Springer; Every Good Boy Deserves Favour;  Continue reading →

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He stars eternally

RichardGriffiths&HistoryBoysI love The History Boys – although explaining how and why I love it is probably another blog.  This weekend, any thoughts of that wonderful production are dominated by our loss of the colossal, inimitable Richard Griffiths.  Continue reading →

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On the Twelfth Day of Christmas..

Twelfth Night at the Apollo TheatreThis is merely a postscript to my post “A Foolish Thing”, after which I was so incapacitated by excitement that I was unable to write another word for months. Ok, less excitingly, but more accurately, the demands of work and studying took over. I was, however, truly excited, Continue reading →

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