Culture Articles
Honouring death through dance
Soul Play is a gentle and intimate dance-theatre duet that explores the moments following a young man’s death. Kate Flatt devised it in response to her own grief upon the death of family members. A secondment at a local hospice as part of a Rayne Choreographic fellowship encouraged this...
Lent talks on BBC Radio 4
Novelist Will Self could be labelled an angry old man. But he has charisma and can certainly put over an argument. The ingenious suggestion he makes in the first BBC Radio 4 Lent talks (24 February) is that we are worshipping art rather than God these days. The churches are empty; the...
The O of Home
The O of Home by Jennifer Kavanagh. O Books. ISBN: 978 1 884694 264 8. £11.99 When I went to Jennifer Kavanagh’s launch of this book at the Quaker Centre I wasn’t sure what to expect. Home – how would I define it? Is it the flat above the Meeting house? Is it a place...
Truth as a crescent moon
I took part in a master class the other day. Me and about a thousand others. In a packed auditorium, we practised the sound of one hand clapping. We pointed our right hand at the stage and concentrated on being fully present in the exact point and moment. We clenched...
The night is full of stars
‘The Night is Full of Stars’ by Friedrich Schmitz-Hertzberg. Sessions of York, Ebor Press Division. ISBN: 978 1 85072 397 4 Price: £9.99 plus £2.50 UK postage & packing. There is something vaguely familiar, and slightly unsettling, about the face on the cover of this book. The eyes, looking at something just behind your left ear,...
Spirit Rising
In 2008 Quakers Uniting in Publications gathered an editorial board of ten young people from different branches of Quakerism and different countries. The board spent a year gathering contributions from around the Quaker world. Then they met in 2009 to select and edit the pieces. Now titled Spirit Rising: Young Quakers Speak,...
Leighton Park arts - The Crucible by Arthur Miller
In February Leighton Park staged its senior production, The Crucible. The language is challenging; the narrative gripping; the location atmospheric; the characters beautifully drawn. At Leighton Park, we wanted to concentrate on the emotional content of the play. Student actors often find it difficult to come to terms with the...
Ackworth drama - Hairspray
‘Last term we performed the musical comedy Hairspray. The story explores prejudice against size and race in 1960s America. I played the role of Penny Pingleton, the main character’s best friend. Penny, a quirky, geeky, ‘in-her-own-little-world’ girl, brings with her the majority of the comedy in this play. Her...
Window on the Square
Window on the Square by Alice Beer. Soundswrite Press. ISBN 978 0 9550786 3 7. £3. Alice Beer is a one-off. She is not like any other poet I can think of: she has a totally individual voice, a voice of simple, unassuming, unselfconscious Quaker authority. She writes about the square where she lives, whose moods...
Small but perfectly formed
Celebrating the Quaker Way by Ben Pink Dandelion. Quaker Books. ISBN 978 1 90712302 3 £2.50. Quakers like their theology pocket sized. I’m sure that’s why Advices & queries is so special. There’s something very Quakerly about a mobile text. In this tiny book Ben starts immediately to praise the riches of...