The (Under)Use of Scent in Theatre
Seeing The Woman in Black in theatre is par for the course for anyone studying GCSE or A-level drama, but it wasn’t just my wimpish nature that made me so terrified the first time I saw it. There’s something affecting about being in the same room as the actors, however far removed, especially if
People power in people towers: Castells in Tarragona
Castell: n. (“Cah-stay”) A tower made of people When the music starts, there’s no going down. Standing in a packed stadium filled with cigarette smoke, you watch as the seconds, thirds and fourths amunt, mounting to the refrain of the reed pipes, and the drumbeat which marks the progress
Never Look Back: Free jazz and why it matters
One evening in Vienna, I was part of a thin, bewildered crowd, listening to the Peter Evans Quintet. The shrill whirrs of a laptop synthesiser jarred with Evans’ buzzing trumpet, the double bass and the drums had very little to do with each other, and the keyboard hopelessly attempted to punctua
The rune singer: an ancient art revived
On the rim of the Arctic Circle, in a timber house half-buried by snow, Jussi Huovinen sits before a small fire, an arthritic finger poised to pluck a wooden kantele. Dust dances off its steel strings as snowflakes fall against the windowpane. The smell of boiling lamb warms the room. Three hundred
Statements following Oswald Mosley’s meeting in Oxford (May 27, 1936)
It is very difficult for the outsider who has not been to a Mosley meeting to realise the menace to democracy and free speech represented by his movement. It is not that the Fascists themselves go about directly causing violence and breaking up meetings: their technique is much more subtle and dange
China’s Empty Metropolis
“It doesn’t if it’s a white cat or a black cat, it’s a good cat if it catches mice.” With these words, in 1962 Deng Xiaoping proclaimed China’s new approach to revamping its feeble economy. Forty years on, this dictum which strikes at the heart of the Chinese property bubble in an econom
Invisible Wounds: The ISIS Undergoes Torture to Investigate ‘Enhanced Interrogation’
Content note: graphic description of torture The noise is unbearable – a red ragged pulse which smothers the skin at every breath, the condensation soaking into the hood until it congeals over my nose and mouth and moulds itself into an oppressive black pall. My inner thighs are burning from the s