134 stories by "Chris Grady"
This morning my colleague Jacqui and I hopped in another Hull taxi and, as I have each journey, I asked about Hull City of Culture. This time the conversation in the mirror from a gruff Hull…
Swallow is a stunning three hander, gender blind cast piece of theatre which tackles all of the subjects in paragraph one. It comes from the sure creative heart of Durham student theatre, in…
I arrived at 9.25pm last night from a day in Belfast, and the administrator Joseph welcomed me, not with a welcome pint, but with the news that I was just in time to see a piece of gig theat…
What an extraordinary privilege. I am sitting in the rehearsal room when two leading actors meet their orchestra for the very first time to prepare for the world premiere of a piece which ha…
I am, at times, concerned that emerging talent, especially actors, do not understand the nature of our business. They seem sometimes to forget how small and connected we all are.
The arts in the UK, across the UK and into every pocket of community and fringe, owes a great debt of gratitude to Lyn Gardner and her employers at the Guardian for believing in the importan…
My creative week has encompassed meetings with a playwright exploring 6 new projects which are each in commercial development, an inspiring concert with 4 cabaret bands and over 40 performer…
One scientist floated the heretical idea that science may not now, or ever, be able to answer all the questions " but with the arts they may be able to answer a few more.
Most of my 58-year-old contemporaries are either rich/famous from their creative decisions and brilliant positioning at the centre of the storm, or they have given up years ago and got a rea…
At a time when politicians may be talking about narrowing their focus to the local and the immediate, the chosen ones and sovereignty within borders, we in the arts are opening our arms.
This weekend, I was a guest at the launch of a new collaboration between the China based GengXing Culture Development Company, Ginger.cat, and the UK based Big Foot Arts Education. Big Foot …
Here I was watching the style of archaic, combative, misogynistic, blinkered, self-serving power politics which have helped to bring this country and the USA to a terrifying position of ungo…
I read an article on 18 January in the Evening Standard where Christine Lagarde, head of the IMF, talked at Davos of the "crisis of the middle class", exploring where current Brexit and popu…
There's a creakiness which pervades my creative bones at the start of the New Year. A time to catch up on emails, read a load of assignment submissions from producers, re-arrange the diary w…
Helping people - particularly theatremakers - set goals is my job. No, it isn't…My job is helping people, including myself, achieve desires (to use David Whyte's preferred word), ambitions…
Firstly may I wish you, dear reader, the most harmonious, peaceful festive season you could wish for – and a new year which puts a spring in your step, and a spark in your creative spi…
The challenge for anyone creating a business model for an under 99-seat theatre in a town with a plethora of creative things to do, is to give the space a very special feel, a unique voice t…
I loved the Michael Webborn and Daniel Finn musical when I saw it premiere at the Landor last year and whilst we wait patiently for a cast recording (I asked Santa again and I have been a go…
Hope and Despair flowed this week, and we have reminders of other global game-changers with the anniversary of Kristallnacht (despair), the Fall of the Berlin Wall (hope), Armistice Day (hop…
Last term I sat in a rehearsal room led by one student as they began a "meet and greet". A circle of chairs with a group of individuals who were gathered to get to know each other and then w…
Those who read my blogs will know that I am near despair to see what a Grady can do to help 1500 young people who are literally packaged in containers awaiting dispatch, with no water or foo…
I'm on a posh train, can't find my seat, standing in floods of tears, too tired to walk the ten coaches or so to find my place. That feels a fitting end to a week where I have been in Calais…
For 100+ volunteers in the warehouse a few miles from the Jungle camp, it is business as usual (as I first type this on Day 2 of the evictions). My colleagues and I spent a day sorting donat…
I sometimes wonder how anyone makes sense of my artistic taste and my direction of travel. This last week has been a particularly rich menu and by the end of this blog I may have found a com…
It's gone ubiquitously mainstream. And don't anyone say it's "the War Horse effect". The passion for puppetry across the industry has been growing rapidly for at least twenty years. It is no…
