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Jocelyn Jee Esein, left with, back, Luke Offiah and Stephanie Moreno Beck from St Mary of the Angels Primary School, Bayswater, and Suzanne Gorman. In the front are Ibtisam Nuur, left, and Tamsin Rahman from Princess May Primary School in Hackney. |
Young playwrights are ‘free and open’
WESTMINSTER'S young playwrights have seen their works performed on a West End stage.
The Soho Theatre runs workshops at five schools in Westminster, as well as Hackney. Professional actors are included, so the children can immediately see the impact of their lines.
After the workshop children are invited to submit short plays and 170 entries were received and whittled down to the top 22.
Private performances took place over Wednesday and Thursday last week with a public performance of all the plays on Saturday.
Jocelyn Jee Esein – star of BBC comedy sketch show Little Miss Jocelyn – presented the playwrights with a certificate after the performance.
Director of youth programme Soho Connect Suzanne Gorman said: “This age group are honest and open playwrights. they’ve haven’t shut down their imaginations yet, so their plays are very free and open.”
Umbrellas of trust
RAIN couldn’t dampen the spirits of the crowds that turned out in force to support the work of Core Trust – the Lisson Grove charity set up to help people with drug and alcohol addictions.
In the past, the annual garden party has attracted a roll call of celebrities including Joseph Fiennes, Jake Wood, Nick Moran and Suggs but evidently brollies and teacakes don’t cut it with the Marylebone set.
Still, in the charity’s 20th year, Church Street Labour councillor Barbara Grahame provided enough glitz to light up a very weatherbeaten London last week.
Under a canopy of umbrellas, she did the honours and cut the ribbon, launching the party into full swing.
Assembled guests including a number of clients and ex-clients staved off any potential sniffles with tea and tombola. The Core Trust has won much admiration for its pioneering approach to dealing with alcohol and substance addiction since it
was established.
A taste of true love… as forbidden fruit
THE pursuit of “true love” in a society where such an expression is branded sacrilege is the theme of a new novel by acclaimed African author Sulaiman Addonia unveiled at Victoria Library.
A spellbound audience listened to the London-based, Eritrean-born, writer read excerpts from his bitter-sweet novel of forbidden fruit in Saudi Arabia, The Consequences of Love.
Mr Addonia, who grew up in a Sudanese refugee camp before moving to Jeddah, was invited to regale book-lovers with his story as part of the National Year of Reading.
Why Barb’s in good spirits
YOU would be entitled to raise an eyebrow if I told you that Jacques Brel might be in the audience for Barb Jungr’s performance at the Almeida next Tuesday: the French singer has been dead for 30 years.
Yet it would not be the first time that Jungr (pictured) has been in commune with the spirits.
The winner of two New York awards told me recently that she had recorded her latest album at the behest of none other than Nina Simone.
“I felt somebody hitting my shoulder and saying ‘What about me?’ and it seemed to me to be Nina Simone,” she said. Another time she felt the presence of Jacques Brel in the audience while she performed his song Les Marquises.
Ms Jungr’s show at Islington’s Almeida last year was a complete sellout; this year she’s back by popular demand with her much-requested cabaret repertoire of Brel, Léo Ferré, Elvis Costello and Bob Dylan.
It’s little wonder. Ernest Hecht, owner of the Souvenir Press publishing imprint in Bloomsbury and a mentor to the singer, tells me that Barb is without question “the most versatile chanson singer in the country”.
Seats are sure to be snapped up. |
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