Front Row

Michael Palin on staging a version of Beckett’s Waiting For Godot to raise money for The Royal Theatre Fund - and what else he’s been doing during lockdown.We round up the week's big arts stories. The Last of Us Part II is one of the most highly anticipated games for a generation. Part I was an unexpected hit, praised for bringing the storytelling qualities of films to gaming. Elle Osili-Wood and Aoife Wilson review Part II which has a lesbian love story at its heart. They discuss the BBC’s announcement that from April 20% of commissions must be given to diverse productions, and Elle visits a bookshop in Independent Bookshops Week to see if the experience is as special as it was before social distancing. Plus, Aoife, Elle and Samira give their cultural recommendations.Anthony Thwaite is 90 this week and joins Front Row to read two of his poems. He published his first in 1957 and his last (he thinks) in 2017. He talks about his work including his sojourns in Japan and Libya, and producing at the BBC where he shared an office with Louis MacNeice and broadcast poems by the then little-known Philip Larkin. Nicola Triscott is Director of FACT (Foundation for Art & Creative Technology). For BBC Radio 4’s Rethink she argues that given how important internet access to art has been in lockdown, we should value and invest in it.Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden has announced a five stage roadmap for the reopening of the performing arts. It comes without dates or a financial support package, so what is included, how helpful is it, what’s been the reaction, and what more needs to be done to save a sector in crisis? Front Row talks to Matt Hemley, News Editor of The Stage.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Jerome Weatherald Studio manager: Matilda Macari

Redundancies at the Theatre Royal Plymouth - over 100 jobs have been announced at risk as income falls by over 90 per cent due to the pandemic. We hear about the devastating impact on staff and the region, the threat to the theatre’s existence, and the warning bell it sounds to the future of theatre across the country.Stuart Evers on his new novel, The Blind Light – a story of two families from across the class divide and across the decades, living in the shadow of nuclear fear and political events of the past 60 years.The statue of Edward Colston - now it's been fished out of Bristol harbour, what is happening to it now? Fran Coles is the conservationist in charge of preserving the statue, and the graffiti which is also part of its story. She tells Samira Ahmed about this work, and the important discovery found tucked in the bronze fold of Colston’s frock.Eurovision, the film - a new film comedy, starring Will Ferrell and set at the Eurovision Song Contest looks affectionately at the glorious ridiculousness of the annual kitschfest. Eurovision veteran, the BBC’s Paddy O’Connell, has been to every one since 2004 and joins us to review the new Netflix film.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Emma Wallace Studio Manager: Tim Heffer

The Holberg Prize is awarded annually to a scholar who has made outstanding contributions to research in the arts and humanities, social sciences, law or theology. This year the 6 million Norwegian kroner prize (approximately £500,000) has been awarded to the British-Canadian art historian Professor Griselda Pollock who the judges described as “the foremost feminist art historian working in the world today”.In the month when she would have travelled to Norway to receive the prize, she joins Front Row to discuss why art history is too important a subject to be left to art historians.Presenter: Katie Popperwell Producer: Ekene Akalawu Studio Managers: Phil Booth and Mike Smith

The arts world is facing a “cultural catastrophe” with the impact of Covid-19 leading to the loss of an annual revenue of £74 billion according to one report along with warnings of 400,000 jobs lost. But does this terrible crisis also provide an opportunity to rethink the arts world? Frances Morris, Director of Tate Modern, Amanda Parker, Editor of Arts Professional and Director of Inc Arts, David Jubb, theatre producer and former Director of Battersea Arts Centre, and Music Writer Alexandra Coughlan share their ideas for positive change. Radio 4's Rethink week is exploring ways in which the world should be rethought after the pandemic. Main Image: Luke Jerram's coronavirus - Covid 19 - glass sculpturePresenter: John Wilson Producer: Ekene Akalawu Producer: Tim Prosser Studio Manager: Duncan Hannant

Alan Bennett's Talking Heads have been remade for television decades after the original series. Alongside two brand new monologues, ten episodes have been re-created with actors including Jodie Comer, Sarah Lancashire and Lucian Msamati. Theatre critic Sam Marlowe reviews these socially distanced dramas, and actor Lisa Dwan joins her to discuss the art of the monologue.The pandemic has changed all of our lives, but could there be a way to change society for the better as we re-build after coronavirus. As part of BBC Radio's Re-think season, musician and broadcaster Jarvis Cocker makes the case for creating space for nature.Thomas Clay discusses his new film Fanny Lye Deliver’d, which he wrote, directed and composed the music for, and which he describes as a ‘Puritan western’. Maxine Peak and Charles Dance star as a married couple on a remote Shropshire farm in the wake of the English Civil War, whose lives change forever following the unexpected arrival of a young couple in need.Main image above: Tamsin Greig in BBC One's Talking Heads Image credit: BBC/London Theatre Company Productions/Zac NicholsonPresenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Hannah Robins

Rebel Wilson discusses her new TV series Last One Laughing, where ten comedians are locked in room and if they laugh they get kicked out. The last one standing wins a big cash prize. The death was announced today of the actor Sir Ian Holm. Theatre critic Michael Billington pays tribute.Bob Dylan has just released a new album, Rough and Rowdy Ways. For our Friday Review, music journalist Laura Barton and commentator Michael Carlson give their verdict on whether this is vintage Dylan. And they discuss The Luminaries, a new BBC drama based on the Booker-winning novel by Eleanor Catton set during New Zealand’s Gold Rush in 1866. Unemployed theatre professionals in Minneapolis have been putting their skills to good use, protecting businesses during recent Black Lives Matter protests in the city where George Floyd lived and was killed. As the protests subside, Daisuke Kawachi discusses the University Rebuild project that she's been working on.Alison Brackenbury has been Front Row’s poet-in-residence this week, reading one of her Museums Unlocked poems every evening. Alison travels about the country to give poetry readings. She makes a point, wherever she goes, of visiting the museum or art gallery. With most now closed, Alison has written new poems about some of the museums she has visited. Her final poem is inspired by a letter she came across in Charles Dickens’ house.During the lockdown author Rebecca Stott has re-read Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year, a fictional account of the bubonic epidemic of 1665; Rebecca tells Kirsty Lang how the book resonates during Covid-19.Presenter Kirsty Lang Producer Sarah Johnson Studio Manager Matilda Macari

We mark the passing of Dame Vera Lynn, the Forces' Sweetheart, whose songs helped raise morale in World War Two. After Dame Vera's death, aged 103, was announced today, composer and author Neil Brand explores her unique musical gifts. Scottish guitarist Sean Shibe's critically acclaimed work brings a new approach to the classical guitar by experimenting with instruments and repertoire. His new album Bach: Pour La Luth Ò Cembal, featuring works written for the lute but played on guitar, is number one in the Official Specialist Classical Chart. PlacePrints is a series of audio plays by David Rudkin invoking the hidden stories imprinted on ten different locations around the UK, and spanning time from the Stone Age to the present day. Jack McNamara, director of theatre company New Perspectives, has been recording these vignettes over four years with actors including Josie Lawrence, Toby Jones, Stephen Rea, Juliet Stevenson and Michael Pennington. Theatre critic Susannah Clapp reviews this ambitious endeavour. Alison Brackenbury is Front Row’s poet-in-residence this week taking inspiration from her travels around the country. Wherever she goes Alison visits museums and galleries. Their current closure this has inspired her to write new poems about some of the museums she has visited, and so, imaginatively, open them up. Today she takes us back to the 16th century and to Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh. Here Mary, Queen of Scots, witnessed her husband murder her secretary, and confronted John Knox who objected to rule by ‘the monstrous regiment of women’.Presenter: John Wilson Studio Manager: Matilda Macari Producer: Simon RichardsonMain image: Dame Vera Lynn

Judd Apatow - famous for film comedies like Knocked Up, The 40 Year Old Virgin, and Trainwreck - on his new film The King Of Staten Island, which he co-wrote with Saturday Night Live star Pete Davidson. Pete plays a young man trying to get his life together after the death of his fire-fighter father. Today the damage to UK theatre caused by the Coronavirus has really begun to show: major producer Cameron Mackintosh has announced redundancy consultations for staff on blockbuster shows, including Hamilton and Phantom Of The Opera. Additionally, a hundred leading creative figures have signed a letter calling for government action to save the sector. We talk to Matthew Hemley, News Editor of theatre magazine The Stage, about the crisis faced by UK theatre.We announce the 2020 winners of the CILIP Carnegie Medal for writing for children and the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal for illustration for children, and speak to the winners about their work.Plus Alison Brackenbury, Front Row’s virtual poet-in-residence for the week. She's been inspired by the museums and galleries she visited before lockdown and is sharing a poem a day from her Museums Unlocked series. Today’s is about buried treasure and takes us to Birmingham Museums’ Staffordshire Hoard exhibition, and back to the age of the Anglo-Saxons.Main image: Pete Davidson in The King of Staten Island Image credit: (C) 2020 Universal StudiosPresenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Emma Wallace

In 1923, African American author Jean Toomer published the novel Cane. It wasn’t a best seller at the time but is now held as a modernist classic and a central work of The Harlem Renaissance. A new radio adaptation is to be broadcast on Radio 4. We speak to playwright Janice Okoh and score composer, soul singer Carleen Anderson. Today is Bloomsday, when Dubliners celebrate James Joyce’s Ulysses, the novel about Irish newspaper advertising salesman Leopold Bloom wandering round the city. As Ireland is emerging from lockdown events are moving online and for Zoomsday actor Seán Doyle is MC-ing a Joycean Punk Cabaret with an alternative presentation of extracts, songs, poems as well as Joyce’s saucier love letters. Seán joins us from Dublin just before the event begins. Lockdown came quickly and affected arts organisations around the country with barely any warning. Venues closed their doors and hung up the “closed until further notice” signs. But what’s happening behind the closed doors? We speak to Joanna Meacock from the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow and Anna Renton from Penlee House in Penzance.For one week only Alison Brackenbury is Front Row’s poet in residence. The colsure of museums during Coronavirus has inspired Alison to write new poems about some of those she has visited. Every day this week we will be hearing one of her Museums Unlocked poems. In today’s Alison takes us to Aghanistan via a painting in the Museum of Somerset in Taunton Castle. Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Julian May Studio Manager: John Boland

Tracey Emin discusses the creative burst she has experienced during lockdown, resulting in a series of new paintings created for an online exhibition called I Thrive on Solitude, the first time White Cube gallery has mounted an online exhibition. Alison Brackenbury is Front Row's new Lockdown Poet in Residence. She's written a series of poems inspired by the museums throughout the country which have been shut for months. From Taunton to Edinburgh, Alison opens up these museums in her imagination, beginning tonight with a strange meeting in the Handel and Hendrix Museum. As shops begin to reopen today, bookshops have introduced ‘book quarantine’ bins where books that have been picked up are placed to avoid cross-contamination. So are we now more likely to judge a book by its cover? Designer Jamie Keenan on the secrets behind a good book cover. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Prodcuer: Timothy Prosser Main Image: Self Portrait © Tracey Emin