The Isis interviews Oliver Mason, Founder of Gulp Fiction
Gulp Fiction probably doesn’t need an introduction for readers of The Isis. A new place in the Covered Market? A bookshop? A café? A pub? Oxford students would be sold on just one of those things. All four is the stuff of fantasy (or my Pinterest boards, at least). How did we get so lucky? [&hell
Review: An American in Paris
The keynote of An American in Paris is struck about halfway through the first song, when the singer Henri Baurel starts telling off the composer. ‘I Got Rhythm’ is far too sombre for his taste: “Look at their faces, people need to laugh! Paris needs it!” “Who said music has to cheer people
Review: Cruelty
Content warnings: suicide, gun violence, death, self-harm, exploitation Climbing the stairs of the Burton Taylor studio for Cruelty, Gabriel Blackwell’s debut play, I feel like I might be at Bridge Thursday. The studio is bathed in lilac lighting and Beyoncé’s Heated booms over the speakers. Ju
Artist of the Week: Christopher Churcher
Christopher Churcher is a composer. Tell us a bit about yourself. I’m a first-year music student at LMH, and I write music. At one stage I might have defined myself as a composer and musician – I also play the piano, bassoon and sing – but it has become increasingly difficult to deny that comp
Review: Cassels’ ‘A Gut Feeling’ at Modern Art Oxford
I walk into the basement of Modern Art Oxford, the walls freshly scribbled all over in blue Sharpie. And What, the first supporting band to play, are already channelling riot grrrl plaintive. Their next song is called ‘Another Year’: the two-piece is like a long chorus and catharsis, a steady to
Review: The Golden Cockerel
A trumpet blares – tremolo builds, anticipation hovers. The mesh background drips starlight as the orchestra drifts downward in a minor key. A soldier glares at the audience, and I find myself in an enchanted world somewhat reminiscent of our own. An astrologer takes the stage. There is a deceptiv
A Day at the Zine Fair
Several versions of Zayn Malik’s disembodied head pout at me from a pile of old Vogue copies, The Guardian’s Feast magazine, printed stills from Bend It Like Beckham, Pritt Sticks, left-handed scissors and stacks of multi-coloured paper. I pick out a particularly sulky portrait from Malik’s q
Repatriation and Reconnection: An Interview with Saba Qizilbash
Saba Qizilbash is an excellent storyteller, which is fitting for an artist whose work is so concerned with narrative, from the interrogating and reworking of old narratives to weaving together new ones from the fragments of neglected histories. Burrowed into a corner of Blackwells’ Caffè Nero, sh
Review: Every Brilliant Thing
How do we know what makes life worth living? By making it our mission to find out, to notice and write down the small things: a colour, a song, an interaction with someone you love. ‘Every Brilliant Thing’, the one-woman play by Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe, sets out to do just this. This