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Front Row: Tom Hanks, artists and risk, Brexit dance piece Brink

03/02/2020

Tom Hanks, artists and risk, Brexit dance piece Brink

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Tom Hanks, artists and risk, Brexit dance piece Brink

Tom Hanks on A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, artists and risk, Brexit dance piece.

Tom Hanks on his latest film, are artists taking more or fewer risks now than 20 years ago? Eileen McClory on creating a dance piece to reflect on Brexit.

Tom Hanks talks about his new film, A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood, which is based on the true story of the popular American children's TV presenter Fred Rogers. For more than three decades Fred Rogers presented Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood , imparting words of wisdom tenderly, without condescension or skirting around difficult subjects, to very young viewers. This film charts the relationship between Rogers and Lloyd Vogel, a cynical investigative journliast looking to dig up and dish the dirt where there is none.  

Prescriptive funders, cautious gatekeepers, social media scrutiny, cancel culture – are we living in an especially risky moment for artists? As part of Front Row’s Risk Season John is joined by playwright Roy Williams, critic Louis Wise and editor of Arts Professional Magazine Amanda Parker to consider how attitudes towards creative risk have changed over the past 20 years. How have the arrival of the internet, more than a decade of austerity and the increasing imperative to represent marginalised voices impacted the choices artists can make? 

The Brexit negotiations may have inspired endless newspaper articles and documentaries but in Northern Ireland, choreographer Eileen McClory decided that she wanted to reflect on the negotiations with a new contemporary dance.  The result – Brink – features two dancers on a small 1.5 metres high table. Eileen discusses why this non-verbal artform was the perfect medium for that most verbose of subjects – Brexit.

Presenter: John Wilson 
Producer: Simon Richardson

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