Front Row

Oliver Stone has written or directed some of cinema's most powerful films - Midnight Express, Platoon, Scarface, Salvador, Natural Born Killers. Now he has written a memoir, Chasing the Light - How I fought my Way into Hollywood From the 1960s to Platoon. Making films, he tells Tom Sutcliffe, is his vocation, but getting them done...that's never come easily. Feeling betrayed by his parents' divorce Stone dropped out of Yale, he enlisted as a 'grunt' and fought in Vietnam, then was briefly imprisoned for smuggling hash from Mexico. He recalls studying on the film course at New York University - where Martin Scorsese,a tutor, admired his first short. Even so, throughout his career Stone has struggled to finance his projects - he had to flee from Canada with the print of his first feature. Decades later, making Salvador after global success and winning an Oscar, the difficulties were much the same.Early on Stone worked with Michael Caine and Robert Bolt, gaining insight into acting and writing. While directors such as Jean-Luc Godard improvised, Stone respected the script, yet left room for great actors to work. So Al Pacino 'punched up lines' in Scarface.Stone talks about his cocaine use - which brought him into contact with dealers and gangsters - so was crucial research. Writing Scarface opened doors - wherever Stone went afterwards, he says, corrupt, powerful men had respect for him. Narco-terrorist Pablo Escobar was a big fan.These days Stone is making documentaries. He admires the films being made for television - streamers - but regrets the loss of the communal experience of cinema, a couple of thousand people together, responding to the film. There aren't, he laments, any movies anymore.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Julian May

An icon of 1960s feminism and freethinking, Nell Dunn – now in her 80s - author of Up The Junction, Poor Cow and Steaming talks to Tom Sutcliffe about The Muse, A Memoir of Love at First Sight about her friendship with a woman named Josie who inspired much of her work. Kelly O’Sullivan discusses her film Saint Frances which she has written and stars in as Bridget, a 34 year old whose life is transformed when she starts work as a nanny. It's a gentle comedy which explores issues such as post-coital menstruation, interracial lesbian relationships, abortion, post-natal depression, and conception in a most un-Hollywood-like fashion. For a new project, 846, commissioned by the Theatre Royal Stratford East, playwright Roy Williams brought together 14 British Black and Asian writers to respond artistically to the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the Black Lives Matter Movement. Elle Osili-Wood reviews the collection of short audio pieces exploring racial inequality, whose title comes from the eight minutes and 46 seconds it took a police officer in Minneapolis to kill George Floyd by kneeling on his neck. And co-founder of Q Magazine David Hepworth on the closure of a cornerstone of rock journalism after 34 years.Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Dymphna Flynn

Josephine Mackerras discusses her award winning first feature film, Alice, which she has directed, written and produced. Alice is living an enviable life in Paris with her handsome husband and young son. Then a card payment is refused, their bank account is empty and her husband disappears. He has spent their money using expensive escorts, which gives Alice an idea about how to save her home and her son – and achieve some independence and control. Welsh artist Sean Edwards has won a Turner Bursary of £10,000 for his work, which includes the exhibition Undo Things Done which represented Wales at the Venice Biennale last year and featured his mother's voice which was broadcast live in the gallery each afternoon from her home in Cardiff. We speak to the artist about his work and what this money, which has replaced the Turner Prize this year, will allow him to do.As lockdown restrictions lift, including on live performance, critic Sam Marlowe gives us a run down of what theatre will be happening around the country this summer and how venues are making it work.Many of us have been reading for solace and distraction in recent months. Professor of English, John Mullan has been making the case for picking up Jane Austen - tonight he tries to tempt us with Mansfield Park.Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Hannah Robins

American actress Alfre Woodard on her powerful lead performance as a death row prison warden in Clemency, written and directed by Chinoye Chukwu, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. The government has announced that live performance will be possible again in indoor venues from August. The London Symphony Orchestra has already experimented with socially distanced live performance and their managing director, Kathryn McDowell, joins Front Row to talk about the possibilities and limitations.Our Friday Review this week covers new independent film Come As You are about three disabled men who embark on a road trip in a quest to lose their virginity, plus Ellie Goulding's new album, The Brightest Blue, her first since 2015. And in the light of the announcement that facemasks will be mandatory in shops from the 24th of July, our reviewers Mik Scarlett and Amber Butchart will be discussing the fashion world's reactions to COVID 19. Comedian, writer and podcaster Richard Herring on his new family comedy Radio 4 series Relativity, based on his own family life. Plus we hear about his prolific podcasting keeping him busy in lockdown, and on the plight facing stand up comedy in the pandemicPresenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Sarah Johnson Studio manager: Emma Harth Production Co-ordinator: Caitlin Benedict

Film director and writer Mike Hodges, of Get Carter fame, on his 1989 film Black Rainbow, starring Rosanna Arquette. Despite being critically acclaimed, it went straight to video, but has now been restored and re-released on DVD and streaming.Plus, the financial plight of freelance arts workers in the pandemic: the government has agreed a £1.57 billion rescue package for the arts, but how much will make it into the pockets of the many freelance and self-employed arts workers who have been put out of work? Theatre director Fiona Laird is concerned the money will be swallowed up by bureaucracy, and joins Samira Ahmed to discuss this, alongside Dominic Cooke, former Artistic Director of the Royal Court Theatre.And Oreet Ashery, one of ten artists to be awarded a £10 000 Tate Bursary - an initiative launched after the cancellation of the Turner Prize due to Covid 19. Working in a range of media, including installation, live art, and video, Oreet talks to Samira about making art inspired by illness: Dying Under Your Eyes, in response to the sudden death of Oreet's father, and Revisiting Genesis - a series of digital slideshows and an experimental film depicting nurses and people with life limiting conditions.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Emma Wallace

How will community theatre companies help restore audience confidence to go back into theatres after the lockdown? And how do we measure how important they are in bringing people to watch live theatre? Alan Lane is director of Slung Low and Holly Lombardo leads the National Rural Touring Simon Stephenson gave up a career as a paediatric doctor to pursue a career in writing. His first novel Set My Heart to Five, a futurisitic story about an Android who wants to feel human emotion is set to be adapted as a film by the Oscar-winning producers of hits such as Notting Hill. Opera North’s Resonance programme offers residencies to BAME music-makers to collaborate with other artists on new work. However most of this year's residencies have been postponed due to Coronavirus, so instead artists have been taking part in a special lockdown instalment of the programme, collaborating remotely to bring together African music with Indian raag, electro dub with traditional Chinese zither playing, poetry and hip hop. Singer-songwriter Tawiah and composer Matthew Kofi Waldren have been working on weaving African gospel sounds with the western choral tradition in a piece that explores themes of matriarchy, motherhood and liberation.

American country group The Chicks (formerly know as The Dixie Chicks), the biggest-selling U.S. female band of all time, talk about Gaslighter, their first album in fourteen years. Natalie Maines, lead vocalist, and Marti Maguire who plays the fiddle, reflect on the band’s outspoken political stances from the War in Iraq to Black Lives Matter and the effect these have had on their work.Actor Hammed Animashaun has won praise and awards for his role as Bottom in The Bridge Theatre’s production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And he also stars in NT At Home’s final production – Amadeus by Peter Schaffer. This year, because of the pandemic, there will be no Turner Prize exhibition. Instead bursaries of £10,000 are being awarded to ten artists. Front Row is talking to the recipients and today Kirsty interviews photographer Liz Johnson Artur about her work documenting the lives of black people from across the African Diaspora.Presenter: Kirsty Lang Producer: Tim Prosser

Winona Ryder, John Turturro and Anthony Boyle star in a new Sky Atlantic drama The Plot Against America adapted by David Simon from Philip Roth’s alternate history which was first published in 2004. Jonathan Freedland reviews. Rachel De-Lahay brings her letter writing project to the Royal Court Theatre for a week-long online festival. My White Best Friend is Rachel's original letter to her white friend explaining the casual everyday racism and microaggressions her friend commits towards her seemingly unwittingly. For the festival, Rachel has invited 10 other black writers to write their own letters of something unsaid. We speak to Rachel about the project.John goes to Houghton Hall in Norfolk to talk to artist Anish Kapoor about his exhibition of outdoor sculptures, and how the art world has changed during the last few months. We also hear from Lord Cholmondeley, owner of Houghton. An old-fashioned method for performers to reach their audiences in these times of social isolation has re-emerged, in a new way. The Drive-in experience is back! Drive-in opera, drive-in theatre, drive-in shows for kids and even drive-in comedy. John Wilson talks to comedian Daniel Sloss who took part in a drive-in comedy gig where the audience flashed their lights and beeped their horns instead of applauding Image: Sky Mirror, 2018 by Anish KapoorPresenter: John Wilson Producer: Simon Richardson Studio Manager: Giles Aspen

The Kanneh-Masons are an extraordinarily musical family of seven siblings who spent lockdown together at their home in Nottingham and were filmed by BBC1's Imagine. Tonight we're joined by pianist Isata and cellist Sheku, who perform live from their home, and we also talk to their mother Kadie.Open air theatre performances with socially distanced audiences are allowed from tomorrow, and first out of the block is The Minack Theatre in Cornwall. Director Zoe Curnow talks about restarting her theatre with a one-man play. Last year’s Turner Prize was awarded not – as it usually would have been – to one artist but to all four finalists as a group. And this year the situation has changed again - Tate Britain announced that ten artists who will each receive one-off £10,000 bursaries. We’ll be interviewing all 10 here on Front Row and start tonight with Imran Perretta.David Mitchell's new novel Utopia Avenue, about a band in the 1960s, is reviewed by crime writer Mark Billingham and books journalist Sarah Shaffi. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Timothy Prosser Studio Manager: Matilda Macari Production Co-ordinator: Lizzie Harris

Today is the 25th anniversary of the publication of Northern Lights, the first novel in the His Dark Materials trilogy that introduced Lyra and her daemon Pantalaimon to the world. It’s been announced that a previously unseen short story by Philip Pullman about a teenage Lyra, Serpentine, will be published in October. He joins Front Row live to talk about its place in the series and what the novels and last year’s TV dramatisation have meant to so many.Mrs America stars Cate Blanchett as conservative political activist Phyllis Schlafly who in 1970s opposed the implementation of the Equal Rights Amendment and the Women’s Liberation movement that supported it. American novelist Meg Rosoff and journalist Elle Osili-Wood consider how the drama portrays real historical events and how relevant the battles depicted in the TV series seem to young women today.Simon Schama talks about his new BBC Radio 4 lockdown series The Great Gallery Tour. He was inspired to make the series because he is badly missing the joy of museums and galleries and he will be exploring some of his favourite treasure-houses of great art around the world: the Prado, the Rijksmuseum and the Whitney. He begins with the Courtauld Gallery in London.Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Hilary Dunn Studio manager: Nigel Dix Image: Philip Pullman Image credit: Roberto Ricciutti/Getty Images