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Front Row: Xiaolu Guo, Belarus Free Theatre, Blindness, The Leach Pottery

10/08/2020

Xiaolu Guo, Belarus Free Theatre, Blindness, The Leach Pottery

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Xiaolu Guo, Belarus Free Theatre, Blindness, The Leach Pottery

Novelist Xiaolu Guo, Belarus Free Theatre arrests, Bernard Leach's St Ives pottery

Xiaolu Guo on her new novel A Lover’s Discourse; Natalia Kaliada on the arrest of members of the Belarus Free Theatre; Blindness at the Donmar Warehouse; Bernard Leach's pottery

Xiaolu Guo was named as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists 2013. She talks about her latest book A Lover’s Discourse, which is a story of love and language – and the meaning of home set at the time of the European referendum. With a nod to Roland Barthes’ book of the same name, Guo’s  novel is told through conversations between a Chinese woman newly arrived in the UK and her Anglo-German boyfriend. 

It is 100 years since Bernard Leach, with his Japanese colleague Hamada Shojie, established his pottery in St Ives. Since then his influence as a studio potter, making vessels that are both beautiful and functional, by hand, has spread around the globe. Roelof Uys, the lead potter at the studio today, discusses Leach's ideas and work, and the projects marking the centenary.

Last night three members of the Belarus Free Theatre - Nadia Brodskaya, Sveta Sugako and Dasha Andreyanova - were arrested in Minsk, during protests against the results - widely believed to be fabricated - of the election there. Their colleagues in the company do not know where they are being held. We hear from Natalia Kaliada, one of the founding directors of the Belarus Free Theatre, the only theatre company in Europe banned by its government on political grounds.

London's Donmar Warehouse is re-opening temporarily from 3 to 22 August with a socially-distanced sound installation, Blindness, which is based on the dystopian novel by Nobel prize-winning José Saramago, adapted by Simon Stephens and starring the voice of Juliet Stevenson. Susannah Clapp reviews. 

Main image above: Xiaolu Guo
Image credit: Stephen Barker

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Producer Jerome Weatherald

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