Stage Directions October 2017

Stage Directions

Shôn Dale-Jones

'I think actually people go to the theatre because they want a conversation and the play is only an excuse to have that conversation'

In this episode I talk theatre criticism's past and future with Megan Vaughan and Catherine Love; I interview Shôn Dale-Jones about the artistic and political journey that led to his latest show Me & Robin Hood; and then I discuss 'theatrical heterotopias' and the Gate Theatre's The Unknown Island with Professor Kim Solga.

Podcast outline

• 00.00.00 Introduction
• 00.01.21 Theatre criticism: introduction
• 00.08.11 Theatre criticism: discussion
• 00.45.47 Shôn Dale-Jones: introduction
• 00.50.38 Shôn Dale-Jones: interview
• 01.22.33 Kim Solga: what she's read and what she's seen
• 01.47.13 Closing remarks and credits.
• 01.58.51 End

Additional Information

In my introduction on theatre criticism, the information about newspaper sales comes from this report. You can go to their websites to find out more about Megan Vaughan and

Clips of Shôn Dale-Jones's work came from these sources:

• Welcome to Invisible Town Stories
• Hugh Hughes: Story of a Rabbit - a song from the show
• The family, doing nothing... from The Doubtful Guest
• Searching in the night... from The Doubtful Guest
• Me & Robin Hood trailer

And you can find out more about his work and the work of his company Hoi Polloi here.

The book I discuss with Kim Solga is:

• Tompkins, Joanne. Theatre's Heterotopias: Performance and the Cultural Politics of Space. Contemporary Performance Interactions. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

And the show we saw was:

• The Unknown Island, Gate Theatre, September 2017, directed by Ellen McDougall, adapted by Ellen McDoughall and Clare Slater from the short story by José Saramago. Performers: Jon Foster, Hannah Ringham, Thalissa Teixeira, Zubin Varla. Designed by Rosie Elnile. Lighting by Lizzie Powell.

Kim Solga's staff page at Western University is here:

• http://www.uwo.ca/english/people/solga.html

And her blog about teaching in the academy is here:

• The Activist Classroom

And the podcast I recommend at the end is Stage Left run by the wonderful Jen Harvie.

Music by Nick Powell and Nick McCarthy
Graphics by Liam Jarvis
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