Young people today are demonised for being “too colloquial” with language, despite William Shakespeare being praised for doing the same thing 400 years ago, a theatre director has said.
Intermission Youth Theatre combines 400-year-old language with the modern day, remixing the bard’s work through the lens of youth culture.
This year it celebrated 15 years with a rendition of Taming Of The Shrew, re-titled Taming Who?
The fast-paced Shakespeare remix interweaves old verses with new dialogue to give fresh relevance to the Bard’s original.
The adaptation challenges gender stereotypes and explores identity and coming of age.
Tre Medley played the role of Hortensio, who helps devise a plan for the lead character, Petruchio, to find a wife in order to avoid returning to Nigeria to live with his newly widowed mother.
“Working with Shakespeare and the modern language, being able to adapt such an old text which was done so long ago and then being able to have it modernised in a play set in 2023 is really exciting,” he told Sky News during a break in rehearsals.
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Mr Medley says being among black actors is especially important.
The Nigerian mother is played by Morenike Onajobi, who also assisted in directing the play.
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“Intermission Youth brings a huge diverse audience because we have a diverse cast,” she said.
“Having people put their time into coming in and spending an evening is great. Coming to the theatre is not typical within our community in general so being able to put on a show that our community want to see, can understand and relate to, is really important.”
Darren Raymond, artistic director and playwright, explains young people are as innovative in English language as Shakespeare himself.
“I think our young people are creatives in themselves,” he told Sky News.
“They’re always creating new words like Shakespeare did, but the difference is, they’re demonised for it. They’re accused of destroying the English language – it’s too colloquial, ignorant, all these kinds of things – but they revere a writer who did that 400 years ago and they put him on a pedestal.”
The production was directed by Stevie Basaula, best known for his roles in EastEnders as Isaac Baptiste, and Sky’s Bulletproof.
Basaula is also an Intermission Youth Theatre alumnus, and said young people were at the heart of the project.
“It’s a real 360 moment directing the same piece that I explored as a young and inexperienced actor, nervously but eagerly making my stage debut almost 10 years ago.
“So much has changed for me since then, but sadly, so much of the themes Shakespeare aimed to tackle remain the same. I look forward to finding new ways to address but honour his problematic classic in my directorial debut.”
Taming Who? forms part of Intermission Youth’s 15-year anniversary season of work. Since its inception in 2008, the organisation has been creating reimagined Shakespeare plays using theatre and exploring the Bard’s work to engage young, marginalised people lacking in opportunity.
The annual 10-month drama training programme (IYT) which culminates in a fully realised stage production, performed by a cohort of young people, was also part of this year’s anniversary season at the Arcola Theatre.
Taylor Swift’s new album helped fuel the highest weekly vinyl sales in 30 years – but is our rediscovered love of owning records environmentally reckless?
PVC (poly vinyl chloride), the plastic from which records have traditionally been made, isn’t great for the planet, and concerns have also been raised over packaging as vinyl sales have risedn in recent years.
Rou Reynolds, frontman of chart-topping rock band Enter Shikari, believes leading artists need to shoulder some responsibility to “push forward” change.
“The bigger you are as an artist, the more influence you have, the more you can push things forward and accelerate progression,” he says.
In an interview with Billboard in March, Billie Eilish criticised how “wasteful it is” when “some of the biggest artists in the world” make “40 different vinyl packages”, each with “a different unique thing just to get you to keep buying more”.
“Its reasonable criticism,” says Reynolds, “but I think it’ll basically dissipate as soon as it becomes the standard to use BioVinyl, for instance – that will really take away the possibility of criticism”.
Rather than make records out of regular PVC pellets, over the last few years it has become possible to use renewable sources such as cooking oil or wood pulp.
“Traditional vinyl is an oil-based product,” Reynolds explains. “No one really wants to support the extraction of any more fossil fuels.”
Enter Shikari now insist all their records are made using BioVinyl, and Reynolds is optimistic that if more artists make demands about what their records are made from, it would become the new norm.
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“A lot of independent artists, like myself, we can light these fires, then it spreads and before you know it, it will become the industry standard.”
‘The advances are incredible’
Leading voices within vinyl production want the music industry to listen.
“Along with the Vinyl Alliance and the Vinyl Records Manufacturers Association, we’re looking at the whole manufacturing chain,” says Karen Emanuel, chief executive of Key Production, the UK’s largest broker for physical music production.
“I’ve been in the business probably about 35 years and the advances that have been made, it’s incredible. A lot of the big plastics companies, for PVC they’ve found a way replacing the fossil fuel elements [which] could mean as much as a 90% reduction in the carbon footprint of the vinyl.”
The catch, at the moment, is the cost.
“It’s a bit more expensive to manufacture but if enough people manufacture with it then the price point will come down… it’s something that we’re really trying to push people towards.”
Would fans be happy to pay more for a greener product?
Lee Jefferies, the owner of Leicestershire-based vinyl pressing plant Sonic Wax Pressing, is such a big vinyl lover, he spent £100,000 buying the world’s most valuable Motown record.
“Ultimately everything works from retail back,” he says “And with retail prices already being quite high on vinyl it’s very hard for people to have the extra money to buy biodegradable vinyl.”
But a recent survey conducted by Key Production found more than two thirds (69%) of vinyl buyers indicated they would be encouraged to buy more if the records were made with a reduced environmental impact.
The findings also revealed that the vast majority, 77%, of regular vinyl customers are willing to pay a premium for reduced impact products, signalling a significant market demand for eco-friendly alternatives.
Is there a bigger problem?
Ultimately, either the consumer, artists or labels will have to shoulder the cost if vinyl is to be made more sustainably.
But while a big old hunk of PVC might feel like the least green option, are we getting ourselves in a spin when we should also be looking in another direction?
Figures from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) put global vinyl sales for last year at about 80 million – using the IMPALA indepdent music companies association’s music emissions calculator, that works out at producing around 156k tonnes of CO2 emissions.
If you compare that to streaming, with Spotify alone – responsible for about a third of the market – its own estimates for its global carbon emissions were 280k tonnes last year, with vast amounts of electricity being used to power its data storage servers.
For Enter Shikari’s Reynolds, the potential to make vinyl greener is exciting.
“It has the same quality, the same appearance, you really wouldn’t notice the difference, which is incredible,” he says. “I think it speaks to, you know, a lot of the time people think that the transition society is about to go through, we think we’re going to lose luxuries… but I think this is just an example of why that’s not the case.
“You know, all it takes is some thought and some adaptation, and then some adoption… it’s super exciting.”
Perhaps now it’s time for the music industry to take note.
Lily Tomlin, Morgan Fairchild and Ben Stiller have led tributes to “one-of-a-kind” actor Dabney Coleman following his death aged 92.
Coleman made his career playing comedic villains, mean-spirited bosses and villains in films including 9 to 5 and Tootsie, as well as playing Commodore Louis Kaestner in Boardwalk Empire.
Lily Tomlin, who starred alongside him in 9 To 5 with Jane Fonda and Dolly Parton, said: “We just loved him.”
In her post to X, the actress shared a photo of her character Violet Newstead dressed in a Snow White costume beside a tense-looking Coleman as her egotistical boss Franklin Hart Jr.
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Morgan Fairchild, who starred in Falcon Crest and Friends, described Coleman as a “great one”.
“So very sorry to hear of the death of the wonderful #DabneyColeman”, she wrote on X alongside a black and white photo of them together.
“We went out for a bit in the ’80s and I adored him. This town has lost one of a kind!”
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Coleman “took his last earthly breath peacefully and exquisitely” in his Santa Monica home on Thursday, his daughter said in a statement on Friday on behalf of the family.
“My father crafted his time here on Earth with a curious mind, a generous heart and a soul on fire with passion, desire and humour that tickled the funny bone of humanity”, she said.
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“As he lived, he moved through this final act of his life with elegance, excellence and mastery.”
Ben Stiller, Zoolander and Meet The Parents actor, praised Coleman for paving the way for character actors.
“The great Dabney Coleman literally created, or defined, really – in a uniquely singular way – an archetype as a character actor.
“He was so good at what he did it’s hard to imagine movies and television of the last 40 years without him.”
Coleman starred in a number of films and TV series in the 1960s, then made his breakthrough as a corrupt mayor in the satirical soap opera Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, in 1976.
His film credits include a computer scientist in WarGames, Tom Hanks’ father in You’ve Got Mail and a chief firefighter in The Towering Inferno.
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He won a best actor Golden Globe for The Slap Maxwell Story and an Emmy for best supporting actor in Peter Levin’s 1987 legal drama Sworn To Silence.
Coleman also won two Screen Actors Guild Awards as part of the cast of crime drama Boardwalk Empire and received Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for his starring role in the NBC sitcom Buffalo Bill.
Blue Peter’s youngest ever presenter has claimed disgraced entertainer Rolf Harris sexually assaulted her when she was a teenage host of the children’s show.
Yvette Fielding, who joined the long-running BBCprogramme aged 18, told the Sun newspaper how the paedophile predator squeezed and patted her bottom after finding herself alone with him in a TV studio.
The now 55-year-old also recalled an uncomfortable experience with “grotesque” Jimmy Savile, who was later revealed to be one of Britain’s most prolific sex offenders.
Fielding has questioned the role of the BBC in allowing their behaviour, arguing people in the industry “must have known”.
She became a Blue Peter presenter in 1987 and left five years later, going on to host a string of BBC programmes including The Heaven And Earth Show, The General and City Hospital.
Recounting the incident with Harris, she said: “It was very confusing and shocking – just bizarre to think Rolf Harris was squeezing and patting my bottom and I am standing there, thinking ‘I don’t know what to do’.
“Other people in the industry must have known what he was like and you left me alone in the studio with him.
“That shouldn’t have happened. I must have been 18 or 19.
He was also known to be associated with Savile, who managed to conceal his crimes until after his death in 2011.
On her meeting with the late depraved DJ, Fielding told the Sun: “He took my hand and started stroking it. ‘Look into my eyes’, he said, ‘And tell me what you’re thinking’.”
“He was grotesque,” she added.
“I just don’t understand why the BBC allowed him to get away with that for as long as he did.”
Savile worked for much of his career at the BBC presenting programmes including Top Of The Pops and Jim’ll Fix It.