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Front Row: Film director Francis Annan, Denise Mina, Amateur dramatics - its development and popularity

02/03/2020

Film director Francis Annan, Denise Mina, Amateur dramatics - its development and popularity

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Film director Francis Annan, Denise Mina, Amateur dramatics - its development and popularity

Film director Francis Annan, Denise Mina, Amateur dramatics

Film director Francis Annan; Denise Mina on writing for the theatre; Amateur dramatics - its development and popularity

Director Francis Annan discusses his film Escape from Pretoria. Daniel Radcliffe and Ian Hart star in the true story of the imprisonment of white anti-apartheid campaigners in the 1970s and their incredible escape from South Africa’s maximum-security Pretoria prison. 

Did you know that amateur dramatics is the third most popular pastime in the UK after fishing and football? Michael Coveney has been a theatre reviewer for four decades and in his new book Questors, Jesters and Renegades he tells the story of Britain’s amateur theatrical companies.  He is joined by Clare Greer from the Bangor Drama Club in Northern Ireland, established in 1935.

Denise Mina is acclaimed for her award-winning crime fiction, and now she’s turned her hand to crime of a different nature. Bertolt Brecht famously said 'What is robbing a bank compared with founding a bank?'. Denise discusses Mrs Puntila and her Man Matti, her new gender-swapping adaptation of a Brecht play which seeks to show how the law is always on the side of the wealthy.

Main image: Daniel Radcliffe as Tim Jenkins in Escape from Pretoria
Image credit: Signature Entertainment

Presenter: John Wilson
Producer: Oliver Jones

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