Front Row - Peter Brathwaite, Indecent play review, Small Bells Ring story barge, Lucy Caldwell

Peter Brathwaite, Indecent play review, Small Bells Ring story barge, Lucy Caldwell

Download Peter Brathwaite, Indecent play review, Small Bells Ring story barge, Lucy Caldwell

Visible Skin: Rediscovering the Renaissance through Black Portraiture is a new outdoor exhibition across King’s College London’s Strand Campus, showcasing artworks by opera singer Peter Brathwaite. He talks to Tom Sutcliffe about creating the portraits and images, as well as his role in the new opera The Time of Our Singing.

Indecent, a play which has just opened at London’s Menier Chocolate Factory, explores the origins of the highly controversial 1906 play The God of Vengeance by Sholem Asch, and follows the path of the artists who risked their careers and lives to perform it. John Nathan reviews.

One of the more unusual sights in Coventry City of Culture is a narrowboat that’s a brightly painted floating library of short stories. It’s also an artwork, Small Bells Ring, created by artists Heather Peak and Ivan Morison of Studio Morison. The boat, RV Furor Scribendi welcomes on board the people of Coventry, works with local libraries and hopes to attract those who might not ordinarily engage with books. Reporter Ushma Mistry of BBC CWR steps aboard.

Last year the playwright and author Lucy Caldwell was a judge for the BBC National Short Story Award but this year she’s been shortlisted for the third time for her story All the People Were Mean and Bad. She talks to Front Row about the appeal of writing about a moment of intimacy on a journey, the power of storytelling for children – and whether people really are mean and bad.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe
Producer: Sarah Johnson

Published on Friday, 17th September 2021.

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