A new voice for
the North East

Monday 23 December 2024
23/12/2024

Author name: David Whetstone

Giving a voice to victims of austerity

Museum of Austerity, coming to Newcastle after showings in London and Manchester, and after winning an international award, promises to leave audiences profoundly moved. First, though, they might be scratching their heads. It’s not a play, although the making of it did require actors; nor is it a film although it does involve moving images. …

Review: Underdog: The Other Other Brontë

How might the Brontë sisters have sounded and behaved if they’d been equipped with a 21st Century mindset? Sarah Gordon’s award-winning play, premiered at the National Theatre in a co-production with Northern Stage, directed by the latter’s Natalie Ibu, takes that unspoken question and runs with it to hilarious effect. Thus you get Victorian women …

Kilbourn in the frame at Ashington Group 90

Special consideration has to be given to an artist who reckoned he spent about a third of his life in semi-darkness. It was a miner’s lot but Oliver Kilbourn endured it uncomplainingly and dedicated many of his daylight hours to standing at an easel, recording what those half-lit subterranean hours were like. “I couldn’t express …

North East ‘young dads’ play triumphs at Offies

In this busy awards season it would be remiss to overlook the success of a play which emerged from research into young fatherhood by a Newcastle University academic. Father Unknown, co-created by Dr Michael Richardson, senior lecturer in human geography, and freelance theatre maker Jonah York, lifted the prize for best online production at The …

How a folk legend became besotted with brass

Martin Green, Sheffield-born composer and celebrated folk musician, well remembers his brass band “epiphany”… the start of a journey that will bring him back to Tyneside in May. It came after he’d moved to Pathhead, a village south of Edinburgh not far from the National Mining Museum Scotland. “They had a brass festival and I …

One artist pays homage to another

When James Lowther, head of visual arts for The Maltings (Berwick) Trust, visited Matilda Bevan’s studio near Hexham, Northumberland, he asked which artists had influenced her. Immediately she mentioned Thomas Hennell so plans were laid for an exhibition in Berwick’s Granary Gallery that would include his work and her artistic responses to it. There could …