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Front Row: Anais Mitchell on creating her musical, Hadestown

15/10/2020

Anais Mitchell on creating her musical, Hadestown

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Anais Mitchell on creating her musical, Hadestown

Anais Mitchell on Hadestown; Belfast International Arts Festival; Chris Killip remembered.

Anais Mitchell on writing the musical, Hadestown; what's on at the Belfast International Arts Festival; report from the South London Gallery; photographer Chris Killip remembered.

Anaïs Mitchell took the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice and turned it into Hadestown, which became an immensely successful musical at the National Theatre and on Broadway. Now she has written Working on a Song, a book that gets down to the nitty-gritty of writing for musical theatre, tracing the development of the songs of Hadestown from the spark of an idea to performance by a big ensemble and a full band on a huge stage.

Northern Ireland’s foremost cultural event – Belfast International Arts Festival – is in full swing. As the city is introducing strict coronavirus restrictions, its mainly online content is proving a welcome distraction. But it's also a chance for everybody around the UK to watch the highlights from their front rooms as tickets are largely free. Marie Louise Muir gives her picks of the festival from a Macbeth reboot to an operatic version of the Good Friday agreement. 

Every day this week we’re hearing from one of the five winners of the 2020 Art Fund Museum of the Year. Today it’s the turn of the South London Gallery, who in the past year have doubled the size of their exhibition space by acquiring the fire station across the road. The gallery’s Director Margot Heller takes Samira on a tour.

The photographer Chris Killip produced a series of black and white photographs of the North East of England in the 70s and 80s as it de-industrialised, called In Flagrante.  Images such as a boy hunched on a wall and a ship towering beside children in the street have become iconic.  Fellow photographer Martin Parr joins Front Row to mark the death of someone he calls one of the key players in post-war British photography.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed 
Producer: Simon Richardson

Main Image:  Anais Mitchell.  Credit:  Shervin Lainez

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Anais Mitchell on creating her musical, Hadestown

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